I’m bored out of my mind here at work, so let me take a moment to slip out of the newsroom and actually enjoy my day.
***I’m enjoying the beautiful, sunny Memorial Day by relaxing at home on my day off. It’s been lovely.***
I just got a call from a woman, WAIT! She was a crazy woman, who asked if we had any plans to update a story we ran in March, about two bears that were saved after their mother was killed by a logger. She wanted us to run a story about how they’re freaking progressing! Ahhhhhh!!!! I can’t stand this place!
***I had a beautiful day at home today! Did I mention that I went to the most lovely Memorial Day picnic at Ben’s family’s house. It was really, so lovely. We really should have days like this more often.***
I went to a wedding this weekend for a friend of mine from high school. It’s so strange to see our friends getting married, and in some cases, starting to have kids even. I can’t say much, especially since Ben and I were just about the first of any of our friends to get married. But I was thinking about it later in the evening, that I’ve really got to get all of my girlfriends from high school together sometime. I think I want to throw a dip party, and make lots of yummy dips and have everyone over to my house to see each other. It would be fun to make invitations and food and do it for all of my old friends. I’m not sure if I should do it before, or after A&V’s WEDDING SPECTACULARRRR, since I’m still so wrapped up in projects like the quilt and Angie’s bridal luncheon for that. But I think it would be a whole lot of good-time fun.
I’m still here at work, aren’t I? It’s now 4:45, and I’ve been here since 2:30. This is the most I’ve done yet. Weighing out my options, I do get double-time for my appearance in the Fox 47 Newsroom today though, and it looks like it’s going to downpour any minute now. It’s all good in the end!
I am officially finished with the binding on the wedding quilt for A&V. Let me just capture in words, the thrilling excitment of what I went through when I FINALLY finished it:
YEEEEAAAHHHHH!!! WOOOOGGGGHHHHAAAAA!!!
Ah yes. Life is good.
So now comes the daunting task of figuring out how I’m going to quilt the border. Should be fun stuff. But in the meantime, I’m going to take a trip to my local JoAnn Fabric store to pick out a new book. I got a fun little 40% off coupon in the mail the other day, and I’ve got to use it. The Enclopedia of Classic Quilt Patterns is one that I’ve thought about picking up. It would be nice to have a book of standards in quilts. We’ll see. I’ll probably head out on Tuesday morning to pick something up, and then I’ll post what I get.
In totally other news… KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED! I’m hoping to get a call for a possible new job interview for a position that I reeeeaallly want! I’ll keep updating on what the future may or may not hold.
I’m wallowing in frustration here at work. Instead of typing up a neat, little 20 second vo/sot about the new 20 year master plan at Capitol City Airport, I’m scanning my favorite websites. It’s my retaliation for all of the nonsense I put up with here.
But in my exploration, I’ve found a really neat quilt idea. The crafty-gal behind Going Domestic pulled this together, and I really want to make one now! I was thinking about a red, yellow and white quilt, possibly (it all depends on when I find just the fabric I need) add a yellow, red, and white striped pattern, with the same color. I think the only different thing I would use, would be instead of satin ribbon, I’d use the more woven, ribbed ribbon. I think it might hold up a little better in the long run.
Don’t worry. I finished writing my airport story.
It’s the best of both worlds in our house. I do the quilting, Ben does the math, and these quilts are perfect for us. I’ve seen some of these fractal art quilts in other spots, but it’s neat to see a whole site dedicated to them. Someday the geek and the old woman in us will join forces to make something very, very cool like this.
I’m back to my quilting, and as always, I can’t stay focused on just one project. During some downtime while reorganizing the spare bedroom/sewing room, I decided to take an inventory of the projects that I’m currently working on. I’m just about finished with Angie and Vaughn’s Texas Star quilt, I’ve got my parents birthday/wedding anniversary Apple Core quilt about halfway pieced, there’s the new blue, green, and yellow quilt I decided I had to start, then there’s the machine pieced Trip Around the World Quilt I’ve been working on for 4 years now, and the bold color Texas Star quilt that I thought would be fun to piece when I started the wedding quilt for A&V. Let’s see… five quilts? That’s not too bad, especially considering that I’m almost done with the first one.
I actually dreamed last night that it was a week before A&V’s wedding, and I was only in the place that I am right now, and I freaked out. I’d really like to have the binding done by the end of the week, so I can finish the rest of the quilting. I really am paranoid it’s not going to be finished though. Even with the rest of my projects, it’s still my first concern.
Moving along, I’ve been checking out The Quilters Cache a lot lately. They have an huge amount of free quilt block patterns that you can print off and use. I spent about an hour going through the blocks fast, and printing off some of my favorites, so that I can start even more quilts that I don’t need to be doing. Beware though, it’s so cutsie and country, that it makes me a little sick. Despite its appearance, it is a pretty good place to hunt for things to do.
I’ve been spending considerably more of my time outside doing gardening than inside doing sewing lately, and I think my quilt is mad at me for doing so. Last week I improved an area next to our fence, and yesterday we spent several hours digging up and moving around plants that needed a better home. This spring it was interesting to see where things started growing at, and the people who owned our house last had a bad sense of where to grow things. Then this morning, our dumptruck load of dirt was brought in, and I spent several hours filling my new veggie beds with dirt. I just know I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight.
I also started (but have not finished) reorganizing our spare bedroom/sewing storage room. I was inspired by an episode of HGTV’s Mission Organization and I ran to the room and started chucking things around. Did I mention that it’s still not cleaned up yet? It’s my plan for tomorrow morning since it’s supposed to rain, and I’m not about to move mud into my gardens.
And for the mean time, I’ve found some pretty interesting gardening tidbits at Backyard Gardener. I really don’t have much of a backyard to garden, most of my gardening is done on my side yard, but the either way, it’s still a pretty good site. They’ve got some really random links, but mixed in, there are some links that are good stuff. It’s at least worth checking out.
After a brief hiatus from this little blog, I’m back with more quilting uselessness. LiveJournal was having an attitude problem, and any time I tried to post anything, it would just let the last two or three lines of my entry show up. I refuse to become one of those blog people who think having a blog is really cool, but after about three weeks get bored, and never write again. That’s just no fun. Hopefully we’ll have more fun and excitment here!
But on the up side of all things fun and deeelightful: I’m a few steps closer to finishing my Wedding Star quilt. The main quilting is done, and the binding is about half way finished. After that I’ll finish it by quilting the border, and that will be eveything. I am pleased that it only took about a month or so to quilt the stars and diamonds in it. That’ll mean that I’ll only be working on this quilt for roughly another six months or so. I feel like I’m trying to fly through it since I’m getting eager to do more work on my Apple Core quilt. Yeah, I think I promised that one to my parents only oh… two years ago.
One other thing. I happened to stumble across some high-tech quilting stuff this week. I was flipping through this month’s issue of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine and I found an ad for quilting information at Hewlett-Packard. It turns out that HP super into the fabric printing, and some of it seemed really interesting. I think it would be a really great way to print labels for a quilt, that wasn’t so super detailed. There’s no way I’d ever use it for something I entirely hand pieced and quilted, but it would be especially good for a kid’s quilt.
And one more thing, besides the last one more thing. Sort-of related to quilting; I think I found my perfect quilt rack. We got money from my Granny to buy a quilt rack when we got married last October, and so far, we’ve still not bought one. But today, I found a perfect one at Crate and Barrel. It’s perfect. All of the ones I had seen so far were really country, woody ones. And as many people know, I have a problem with woodiness. It’s perfect, and it must be mine! Get out the AmEx, I’m shopping tonight!
The new Hip To Piece Squares server is up and running with Movable Type as the blogging engine! Happy posting.
Why is it whenever someone finds out that I do my quilting and piecing all by hand, they freak out and tell me I’m nuts? I’m not nuts, I just enjoy it, and really respect people that still do the majority of their work by hand. I’m not against machine quilting and piecing, but it’s just what I prefer to do. It may take longer, but in the end, if it’s a quilt that I’m giving to someone (and I’ve never yet made myself a quilt at this point, they’ve always gone to people as gifts) I think it’s something very special to receive a piece of art that someone has taken that much care to make. Stop freaking out about people who hand quilt! Geez!
So I didn’t get any of the things I had suggested for my birthday on Wednesday. Don’t worry. All of those things could still work for other holiday gifts.
As a treat to myself, I headed off to my local quilt shops to see what was new. It really just turned into a bizarre event. I don’t think that people in quilt shops must take me seriously about why I’m there. I finally made it to a store in Lansing called the The Quilt Depot, and I wasn’t too impressed. It’s not like I’m odd looking, or repulsive, or have blue hair (that’s pretty nice!), but the people in the store acted like I had no reason to be there. It bothers me (and I’ve run into this problem at other quilt shops) that people seem to think that since I’m 23, that I have no idea what I’m looking for and/or what I’m doing in general. But on the other hand, like most times I’ve been there, the people at Country Stitches don’t act like I’m an idiot. Hey! I do happen to know what I’m doing.
I’m getting pretty close to having everything but the border on the wedding quilt I’m currently working on, finished. As thrilled as I am to be closer to finishing up, I have no idea how to quilt the border. It’s three strips of fabric, and I’ve never had to come up with a quilted border design. Everything else I’ve done has just gone to the binding. I bought a stencil to trace a design on one of the strips, but I just don’t think it’s going to work. In the end, as long as it looks good, I don’t care what it looks like.