Vacation

This was a nice vacation. Didn't go anywhere but got a lot of stuff sorted and put away. Dropped off a trunk full of stuff to Salvation Army. It was also my 38th Wedding Anniversary. We went out to diner in a little whole in the wall restaurant my daughter found. Good Italian food with Frank Sinatra singing in the background. So much food, got a doggie bag for the leftovers.

Finished my Alzheimer's quilt for June. Came out really sweet. My challenge was to use an orphan block that had been sitting around on my ironing board for 3 months. It was left over from my first Small quilt swap. What should I do with it. After looking at it for a while I decided that I either wanted to create a story or make a scene. But what? While looking out my sewing room window, I kept thinking about the rotten caterpillars that ate all my pepper plants last year.  And so a theme was born! I call it:
Midnight Snack

Amish we will go!

The Doll Swap XII is Amish style quilt. Easy peasy, right?  Wrong! Boy did I struggle with this. I started with a nine patch but I made the blocks 3 1/2 inches so one 9 patch ended up 9 inches. Too big.. Then I decided to make small 4 patches and alternate them with something but what was the something. I just couldn't get over the solid colors. I was trying to avoid using black but that was a big mistake. The dullness of the solids screamed for black. I went to about a dozen Amish websites and then researched the Pennsylvania Dutch. That just confused me more. I kept thinking, keep it simple. Don't over think it.

In the end I did use black, gold , red and blue. I ran out of red 2 inches from the end of the binding and had to scrounge for two little slivers, pieced together to finish it off.

June Bug

Well it has been a very long May. I am glad it is over. My middle daughter move back home, from
Seattle WA, after being gone for 5 years. It is quite an adjustment having someone underfoot after all these years. Quite a lot of head banging while we get use to each other again. Lots of tension and stress. Hoping that it is a short stay as it is time for her to get on with her life. The economy and job search being to bad made this move necessary.

So we had to clean out the back room for her and now I have tubs of stuff to find new hiding places for. I tried real hard not to mess up my sewing room after all that work cleaning it up in April. I only ended up with four tubs on the floor in there. They have to go because I can not sandwich my quilts on the drafting table, since I can't move it to the center of the room.  The room is only 10 x 10 ft.

None the less I have made a Alzheimer's Art quilt. I am starting to enjoy the small quilt projects. They don't take up to much time or space and it is a good way to use scraps and raise money for Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. I feel that one day I will go down that path and maybe there will be hope for me to atleast recognize my loved ones.
This one was a challenge to myself to just use the scraps that were on top of my cutting table. I keep it pretty clean because of Puddy, the quilt inspector. She is a curious cat that likes to eat thread if she can get her paws on it.

After I finished this one, started on my Amish Doll quilt for the swap on about.com quilters forum. Nice bunch of ladies. Hopefully I will get to meet some of them one day.

Alzheimers Art Quilt initiative

Well it has been a rough couple of weeks.
I finally finished the little quilt I made for Alzheimers. Mailed it out last week, just waiting to see when it is posted.  I followed the directions from a "Super Mini Quilter" named Martha Wolfersberger. She posted a pattern called Cranberry Relish. Mine was a bit off so I called it Wonky Relish. If you get a chance to look at all the Priority quilts, your jaw will drop when you see hers!  Look for them under the $1000 Promise.
Alzheimers Art Quilt Initiative

I struggled with those 1 inch pieces and gave up. The 4 patch finishes at a 1/2 inch! I didn't even do the secondary block, which actually would have been easier than the star. Also being left handed my star spins counter clockwise. OOPS!

I was going to throw it away, but then remembered that Ami Sims mother continued to make her paint stencils even after being so affected by the disease. I thought to myself, "Would I stop creating and sewing if I were afflicted and my work was not quite perfect"? NO! I would continue to sew and quilt until I could no longer sew on my machine, hold a scissor or a needle. It is my joy and my bliss.

Will start a new one today. Had a wisdom tooth pull yesterday and can't really go anywhere. Good excuse to sew! Do I really need an excuse?? LOL
 
Happy Quilting
Aileen

Time for a change

I spend the last few weeks staring at my fabric stash trying to figure out what I have, how long I have had some of those fabrics, and what can I do to organize it. I can't keep buying fabric! Or can I!!! LOL! My space is limited. The room is 10x10 but the shelves are only 36 inches long and 18 inches deep and 8 feet high. The size of a hall closet. I have over spill in my hallway in six drawer organizer full to exploding. Instead of rummaging through my stash I buy more.  I have spend a week sorting and putting the colors into clear plastic tubs. Now I don't have enough shelves but at least i can grab the colors I need without an avalanche of fabric falling to the ground! I have more fabric than I could  possibly use in what is left of my lifetime. Hopefully will get to quilt more when I retire in 5 yrs.

My stash is a history of my past life in fabric. I  know that some of that fabric is from the mid 90's all the way up to the present. The reason there is nothing earlier is because I moved from NJ to Upstate NY in 1995 and left all my fabric behind. I have been sewing since I was 8 yrs old. I never made a quilt, always clothing.  In 1995 I met an artist, her name was Kit. I told her that I was interested in making a quilt but was fearful that I would not be able to do it correctly. She said "Just do it" and the rest is history.

Many of my fabrics are remanents of old projects that I don't even remember. Wasn't big on doing a photo history then. Others, I don't know what I was thinking when I bought it, or if I was the one that actually bought that mauve floral fat quarter.  Still I can't seem to part with the "uglies" in the stash. I found cheddar colored fabric in my stash. I keep trying to get fat quarters of this hard to find color as soon as I see it. Apparently I have done this several times and forgotten. It is one of those colors that makes things pop but too much is overkill....and there it was all the time hiding under a mountain of yellow and gold.

Why do I want to get organized now? Simply put, I want to create my own designs. So many ideas floating in my head but have only tried to do my own thing a few times. I follow patterns like everyone else then change them half way through because that is not really what I wanted it to look like in the first place. So getting my palette ready was my first duty.

Here is a Church that I designed for a hospice patient I was taking care of 1998. She was a preachers wife and was in her 90's. We had decided to move to Florida and I wanted to give her something that would be special to her and that she would want to keep.  It was approximately 14 x 14 machine pieced and quilted.

It was a labor of love. I did the the fences and vines with specialty stitches on my sewing machine.  Her vision was poor. I was afraid that she would not be able to see it well. She touched everything in the quilt and describe the details back to me. Later she asked if it was okay to frame it. I was very happy that she loved it as much as I loved making it.

Aileen