Sophie's Toes "On the Road" Edition

So the quilting party got put on hold last week when I had to change hats, and get ready for a yarn show in Wisconsin. Janesville, Wisconsin, as in the Janesville Knitting Guild Knit-In. A Knit-In, as I was trying to explain to a muggle friend today, is when knitters gather at a specific place to knit all day without interruption, and there are yarn vendors, and knitting classes, and some food and coffee, and laughing, and lots and lots of knitting. Awesome super nerdy knitting fun!

It was particularly special because it marked the first appearance of our mascot, Sophie herself (and her toes, which have changed considerably from those chubby baby toes of 2005 but are still pretty darn cute, says her mom) at her first yarn show acting as Big Girl Helper.

This appearance would be accidental, owing to a scheduling malfunction between her parents, which necessitated her addition to the trip. However, I will report to being pleasantly surprised at how well it went. This girl has one excellent work ethic, and she earned her payment in m & ms.

She modeled samples, sorted yarn, tidied, modeled, bagged, stapled, modeled, and generally kept up morale. Did I mention the modeling?

What I would like to know is, what great-aunt somewhere in our lineage worked in Vaudeville? Because she didn't get that look from me!

How much product can I model in one shot?

Wait! You forgot to take a picture of me with the yarn!

In Knitting Knews: last week I cast on a new sample in a brand new color of Magic Ball called "Night Owl", which is mostly black and grey with some highlights of dark red, plum, and brown. I intended to get it finished in time for the Janesville show, but I forget that I don't get much knitting done the week before the show because I spend my evenings skeining and tagging yarn.

So my new goal is to get it done for the next show, the Madison Knit In, coming up in a few weeks. Here it is about halfway done. (Raise your hand if you are going to Madison!)

It's a very fun knit and seems perfect for a Magic Ball. The pattern is Wingspan and it's free on Ravelry.

You Are Special

Hello Friends! I just wanted to share the big excitement from our house this morning:

The girls are so different. One handmade her cards from construction paper and doilies. To the other, a box of Barbie cards with tattoos were her "dream come true".

They did join forces for a little while. I had signed us up for making lunches for Lazarus House, a local homeless shelter, and we all thought it would be cheery to include a valentine and candy in each lunchbag, since it was Valentine's day and all.

Molly was adamant that she hand-make all 40 valentines. I thought she was just going to cut out a heart and tape on a candy. I came out to find both girls intently working on them together, and Molly was writing a little personal message on each one.

You're talented

You are kind

You are loved by God

You ROCK

You make people smile

You're special

People care about you

I'll be thinking of you

You're amazing

And my personal favorite: You are beautiful (or handsome)

The Quilt Top of Love

Rumors are flying that there might be fighting over this quilt. My mother tried to surpress a chuckle when I mentioned there might need to be more (2 more, to be exact). Apparently, she had already seen the writing on the wall.

I'm thinking a white background with pink and red letters would be adorable. And maybe a blue/green/red version in solids, for the boy. (Inspired by the iconic Love Stamp, which is actually the first thing I thought of when I saw the quilt pattern.)

Yes. I'll get right on that.

Happy Weekend everyone!

Obsessed with Love

So, Saturday morning I was feeling very obsessed with doing this Love quilt. I asked the girls (so totally nonchalant-like and casual while secretly holding my breath) if they would like to join me and we could make it a sewing party.

They were excited! Woohoo!

Molly is Big Stuff because she has her own machine. I have shown her the basics of how to use it but mostly I just let her take off and do her own thing.

There's not much to "mess up" when you're doing wonky letters and paper piecing, but if she did mess up -- like not catching both layers of fabric in the seam--I took over and re-did it for her. I didn't want her to get frustrated. Ripping out is difficult in paper piecing because you need to use a very short stitch in order to make it easier to rip the paper out later.

She took over the "L"s and sewed many of them. That is, when she wasn't trying to take the machine apart to see how it worked.

Just keepin it real--there were some times of frustration--some storming off--some pouting--we will just gloss over all that because when she decided to come back "and just do her own thing" she created her own little "art quilt".

My sweet girl!

Sophie, who is always my Busy Little Helper, took on the job of finger pressing all the seams so I didn't have to take them back to the ironing station with every seam. She also played go-fer and delivered all the finished blocks from the sewing station to the pressing station, the trimming station, and the layout station.

We all spent lots of time oohing and ahhing and playing around with the layout of the letters.

Even Izzy did a good job as Layout Supervisor. Good Doggie!

By Saturday night we had 3 full LOVE blocks (out of 13 total) completely finished, and most of the rest of the letters. I saved the"E"s for last because they seemed the most daunting but they really weren't.

Sunday afternoon we got busy again and finished up all the LOVEs.

Here are all our finished blocks! They don't look great, above, against the green carpet so here they are below, as I was planning the layout:

I spent most of the superbowl sewing plain blue blocks between the LOVE blocks. Then added a blue border. In the last few minutes of the superbowl we had a finished quilt top!

Some notes:

As I mentioned last post, I used Kelly's free pattern here

I photocopied the letters at 75% and after piecing them trimmed them to 6" x 7.75"

Which made a complete LOVE block of 11.5 x 15

I changed the "E" from lower case to capital, just cause my daughters wanted me to

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Today after school I'm going to show them how to "put that white stuff in between the quilt."

Distracted by Love

Checking in with a quilt update!

This quilt is done, on the bed, and just waiting for the stylist and photographer (me and me) (which means I need to make the bed and put laundry away), so that will happen........soon........... sometime......maybe this week.

This new quilt is coming along very nicely! I gave myself a week off from yarn dyeing last week and had a fun time quilting. Progress photos soon.

I got a little distracted on Friday morning when I saw this tutorial over on sewmamasew. I loved it so much and immediately pictured a whole quilt using LOVE blocks. By Friday night I was pulling from stash and on Saturday morning I was at Joann's, buying 6 yards of light blue background fabric. We had a glorious Saturday with no place to be (first completely lazy Saturday in months) and even the girls got in on the Love Party.

By Sunday night we had a quilt top! I'm going to get my photos organized and show you the whole thing tomorrow.

I hope you had a great weekend! Bye for now!

It's a Start

Hi Friends!

Thank you for your sweet comments. I am so happy to be back.

I think I've touched on this over the past couple of years--I've really had an inner struggle going on about doing/not doing my artwork. It was such a relief to let some things go when the kids were really little-- first I stopped doing my yearly open studio. Then I gave up doing commissions. And gradually I stopped exhibiting my quilts regularly. It helped with the stress level so much. And I really needed that. But (here's the Big But) I stopped making art quilts. And I love making art quilts.

Then I started doing the yarn business. And it was such a fun thing and a nice way to make a little money, and I thought I'd only do it for a few years, but I built it up to the point where it became a Big Thing, which was, once again, difficult to give up.

And the past year or so, I've got the notion in my brain that I would do both, make art quilts and dye the yarn, (and be wife and mother, and volunteer, and cook more nutritious meals...yada yada) but that has been much easier said than done.

But ya gotta start somewhere. A pile of fabric is a good start. Then. Baby Steps. Cut a few pieces and put them up on the wall. Stand back and look. More pieces. More staring. Repeat. (a few hundred times, but we won't think about that yet).

But it's a start! A start is good! Here's wishing you many good things in the year to come! I'm feeling very optomistic about 2012.

Blog Revival

Testing.

One. Two.

Testing.

Hello?! Peeps?! Anybody out there?!

I miss you guys and I am going to try to clobber my writers block and jump back in. How about we just pick back up where we left off--ok?

Quilting? Anyone?

I have spent the first few weeks of January finishing old projects. I have had this quilt basted and ready for the quilting for exactly one year. One year when my studio has been so piled full of yarn that the sewing machine could hardly come up for breath. But I heard that January has been officially declared International Sew For Myself Month* so it's time to get this bad boy done.

Trivia for ya: It takes 36 bobbins to quilt a king size quilt. That equals about 12 taped episodes of David Letterman.

Soooo..............what are you working on?

*just kidding I just made that up!

Paducah Party and Pajama Projects

Hello Peeps!

We are back from Paducah, full of quilts and fabric and maybe a few tortilla chips.

First of all, I have to report on the flooding cause it was big news. Paducah, Kentucky is situated right on the Ohio River, and had a huge flood in 1937, after which they built a flood wall to protect the city.

This exciting bit of photo journalism by Moi, features me standing in a parking lot, looking at Water Street (now closed for public safety) and the flood wall, with scary big river behind it. The scaffolding-like structure in the middle is one of the gates that was installed last week because of the rising river. There are many openings in the flood wall --47 total, I believe--that normally you can walk or drive through to see the beautiful river. When the river is threatening to flood the town, they install the gates in the openings. This is the second time since the 1950s that the city engineers have had to install the gates.

Here is a close up of one of the bigger gates, complete with all kinds of valves and pressurized thingies. I took this photo on the first day, pre-seepage.

Here is one of the smaller gates where we first noticed the seepage. We read that seepage is normal and should be expected. I totally get that. It is, however, kind of creepy. Especially when you know there is a big flood over on the other side of that wall and you can't see it, but you know it's there, and the seepage is the proof.

And this is one of the bigger gates right at the very front of downtown, where the seepage was getting a little more alarming by the last day. (Saturday, April 30th). However, that seepage is NOTHING compared to the video that my sister sent me this morning. When we were there last weekend, the river was predicted to crest at 53.3 feet, (if there was no flood wall, that would equate to about 3 feet of water in the downtown area), and that was supposed to happen on Tuesday, May 3rd. But now with additional rain, the river is predicted to crest at 58 feet tomorrow.

I will breath a big sigh of relief when the river crests and the flood wall holds and things get back to normal. I love that little city of Paducah. I am sure that people of Paducah as well as many more communities (Cairo, Illinois) along the Ohio River would appreciate prayers being directed their way.

Ok, on to sunnier portions of the program.

Here we are, me, my sister and my mom, in front of one of the other Architectural Marvels of Paducah, the Bubble. It does have an official name like the "Pavilion" or something like that, but we just call it the Bubble because that's what it is, and judging from conversation around us, we are not the only ones. I have also heard: Marshmallow, and Bubble Building, and Moon Bounce. It is some kind of plastic, pressurized building that they erected last year when they lost one of their main buildings that housed quilts and vendors. It is a bit creepy in and of itself, but add to the fact that you are in a pressured plastic bubble building just feet from a flood wall holding back a big scary river, and well, it was an adventure. Apparently I will brave quite a bit for the sake of quilts.

Here is a photo of my favorite sister. Isn't she cute! I have mentioned before that she is Milliner Extraordinaire. She is wearing one of her couture creations. She wears her hats often, as a hatmaker should, but this day happened to be the day of the Royal Wedding, and she was stopped often by people so pleased that she dressed up for the wedding. After about the 18th time this happened, she stopped trying to explain that she makes hats, and she regularly wears her own hats, and she just nodded and smiled sweetly.

Ok, onward to the fabric portion of the commentary:

Last year I started a tradition of buying each kid a novelty fabric that I thought they would like, for the purpose of sewing pajama shorts. Here is my selection for Ethan, above (doggies, kitties, spooky, he is all over it!)

From top to bottom:

Basicgrey, Max and Whiskers, for Moda (you have to see this up close it is darling!)

Timeless Treasures Dog c7143

Boo! Kitty by Alexander Henry

Next selection, for my doggy lover, Molly:

Anna Griffin, Fifi and Fido Collection, (so sweet!)

Hush Puppies by Alexander Henry --hilarious

Again with the BasicGrey as above, this time with a brown background.

And for Sophie:

Timeless Treasures Village C7158 (not so much her girly color choice but please note the cow)

Hello Kitty from David Textiles

And the pink one at the bottom--I couldn't have planned a better fabric if I had been Queen of the Universe: Hello Kitty with cow. Also from David Textiles. She almost died.

I hope I have given you enough info here in case you see a must-have for yourself. All of the fabrics were purchased at Hancock's of Paducah with the exception of the 2 Hello Kitty fabrics which I found at the Graphic Impressions booth.

These are photos of the pj shorts from last year. Sleep shorts for the boy details: Forest Fun fabric by Amy Schimler for Robert Kaufman. It is a few years old but I think you might still nab some on etsy. Pattern is Simplicity 2771.

The girls' shorts don't have a pattern, just an old pair of shorts that I cut up. The fabrics are sweet: the pink Girl Scout cookie fabric is from Robert Kaufman --still available, and the Hedgehog fabric by Michael Miller is also still available.

*One note of caution: kids in cute pj shorts might cause excess cuddling, which can lead to excess school tardiness. I'm not saying that you're going to receive an official letter from the school principal telling you (The Mom) to get your butt out of (their) bed and get those kids to school on time, or anything. But you might.