One Block Wonder Why I Signed Up for This

I was strong-armed into taking Dolores's One Block Wonder Encore class at Quilters Crossing a while back.

Having never made one, I wasn't really wanting to do an "encore," but I did anyway. Mandy helped me pick out my focus fabric with a 12" repeat, which is important to know, but now I don't remember why. I'd go check, but I'm not anywhere near my studio - I'm writing this at the Westchase Marriott waiting for Jill to be done with the L.A. Dance Magic convention.

And besides - you don't care anyway. So here's my fabric (Terrain by Kate Spain) and paraphernalia.

Class Session One:
Ok. So if you're not familiar with the One Block Wonder Why Process, you cut strips out of your 6 identical layers of fabric, then subcut them into 60° triangles. Then you grab each little stack of identical triangles and start playing with the orientation of each. Like this:

These are the same six triangles, just rotated to form different designs. Pretty cool.

Hexagons - Y-Seams - no problem. Sew three together for one half of the block, then sew the other three together. Block 1

I, of course, forgot about 3+3 and sewed 2+2+2. After I sewed the 3rd set of 2, I realized that 3 parts can't be made into 2 halves. Rip.
(Like my white Featherweight? It's not actually mine. Yet. It's Peggy's. Until I finish a few more quilts for her.) Ok, so anyway - Crap. Rip. Add a triangle to each of the 2+2's. Then sew into halves. Finally. There! Done!
Wrong. I musta missed the part where Dolores said, "Don't sew the two halves together - just pin them with two (2) pins - one at the top and one in the center." (Deb? Are you paying attention? Me neither.) Rip again. No photo of me being stupid. Again.

I finished 4 whole half blocks in two hours.
So it was a two-part class with a week in between to get our blocks made.
Time being what it is at my house, i didn't actually sit down to sew my blocks til late Monday night. Fortunately I hadn't broken my rule about not making anything larger than a lap quilt, so I only had to make :I forget how many: blocks. How hard could that be? And more importantly, how long could that possibly take? I'll tell you how long. No, I won't. But I did take a picture of my studio clock to prove what time I finished. I know what you're thinking: "But you could have just changed the clock to whatever time you wanted to make it say!" But you'd be wrong. I actually have 2 clocks in my studio - one for each Daylight Savings Time season. The one on the Bose is set to Fall, and the one on the shelf is set to Spring. That's the one I took a picture of. It's good for a few more days, (wait...hours...oh crud - one more hour) - then I'll spend 6 months only looking at the other one. Scroll down for closing time in the studio.
So remember when I said "How hard could that be?" Yeah. Well, now I know. Just because each of the little triangles are identical, you apparently have to pay attention to what you're doing. Or you could do what I did, and just sew them any which way and be totally surprised when they don't form that cute little spinning design in the center.

Then swear at the dog (who was not doing a very good job of keeping me awake and focused)

and start ripping. Oh. And did I mention that since the 60° triangles are equilateral, (60+60+60=180) that means only one of the three sides is on the straight of grain. The other two are severely biased. Like me. Against these blocks.

Carefully unsew each stitch so as to not stretch the seam, while cursing the person who talked me into this stupid class. (You know who you are.) Then what's really fun is to sew the triangles with wrong side to right side. That doesn't work at all, cuz one triangle shows the backside when you open it up.

Scream. Rip. Watch as Cowardly Mastiff bolts for the door.

Finally finished the blocks and fell into bed. That's 3 a.m. In the morning.

Class Session Two:
I showed up with all my blocks sewn into 2 halves and pinned correctly, and only then found out that I wouldn't be leaving there with a finished top. Even though all my blocks were done. Dammit. I spent the next two hours learning and semi-applying The Rules of Wonder Block Placement. The blocks are supposed to flow and blend into each other from light to dark or...something. No matter how I moved them around the design wall, I could never get them into a square or rectangle: they kept flowing and blending into weird amoeba-like shapes bearing no resemblance to anything vaguely quilt-shaped.

There weren't any blocks suitable for those holes, so Dolores suggested I make a few blocks of the Encore variety. Just pick a couple from the chart to fill in the holes:

This was so not going to work - much less be easy. Or wonder-ful. I numbered the rows, took them all down and stuffed them into a ziplock bag. They're going to the bottom of my UFO drawer. The 2nd UFO drawer with numbers 29-48. They're now 49th on the list.
Screw it.

November 2011 Desktop Calendar

Click on the calendar to expand image to full size, right-click and choose Set as Wallpaper or Background. To really jazz up your desktop, right-click on your background and choose a color that coordinates with the calendar - you'll be the envy of your cubicle!

Is That Daylight I See?

I've finally come up for air after struggling to finish a gorgeous quilt for a first-time customer.

It's 118" x 118". That's 13,924 sq.in. And I quilted every last inch of it. I usually keep track of the hours put into each quilt, but I stopped counting at 30. And that was back in September I think. I don't know when exactly, cuz I stopped keeping track of the months sometime last summer. (Do you like the blurry picture? Me too.)

It's a Bali Star Double Wedding Ring by designer Judy Niemeyer, and if you've ever pieced one of these, you know how many pieces there are and how long it takes. Personally, I'm not that dedicated, and the payoff isn't great enough for me to invest the time and energy into sewing-ripping-sewing-ripping-sewing...and finally throwing the whole damn thing out. I have several friends (Ho's and otherwise) that are s-l-o-w-l-y working their way through this pattern and every time I see them reading through their pattern BOOK, I'm thankful that I can appreciate the lowly 9-patch:

And I want you to notice: it's hand-quilted! So what if it's only 12" square? It's hand-quilted, dammit!! Now that I'm looking at it, I see it could probably use a little more quilting. Maybe I'll do that. Or not.

Hey! Guess what I found on the interweb! A Hen Cam! I've been missing the fresh eggs we used to get for many years from our chickens until we finally surrendered to the local raccoons. A few years back they ate 45 chickens over the period of about 4 months. Nothing we did could keep them out of the henhouse, including trying to enlist the help of these two.

Once, while Andy was getting ready to um...dispatch... a chicken, he looked over to see a coon staring him down for dinner! Then Hurricane Ike took out the henhouse itself and that was the end of that.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Since I finished that quilt, I decided to take a couple of days off, put my feet up, and just meander through the internet for pictures to add to my boards at Pinterest That's when I came across THE HEN CAM!

From dawn to dusk, I can watch somebody else's chickens any time I want. And a rabbit. And two goats! We used to have all of those. Now I'm depressed. The rabbits were yummy, but the goat died of old age. Anyway, now I'm working on plans for the new henhouse out behind my studio. So I can watch my own chickens live and not have to rely on some random farmer's Hen Cam. Maybe I'll install my own. But then I'd have to do hair and makeup every time I went out to collect eggs. Ok. No Hen Cam. But wait - if I did have one, I'd call it my "Chick Cam: Chick's 24/7...Chicks All Day, Errday!" Imagine the number of hits it'd get! And how unhappy most of them would be when they found out they were looking at birds, hay and chicken poop. That'd be worth it.

October 2011 Desktop Calendar

Click on the calendar to expand image to full size, right-click and choose Set as Wallpaper or Background. To really jazz up your desktop, right-click on your background and choose a color that coordinates with the calendar - you'll be the envy of your cubicle!

September 11 - We Remember

It's been ten years since the attacks on our nation, and as I watch the minute by minute reports from 2001, I'm struck again by the unbelievable enormity and gravity, and the bottomless depths of emotions that I felt back then.
Then, as now, I'm in awe of the heroic efforts of our firefighters, our policemen, our paramedics, our ordinary citizens, who performed extraordinary deeds of selflessness and courage.

NYFD Deputy Chief Joseph Curry

Father Mychal Judge

The 33 passengers and 7 crew members of Flight 93President Bush spoke about these brave men and women: “Let us also remember that the first victory in this war came on a hijacked plane bound for the nation’s capital. Somehow the brave men and women on Flight 93, knowing they would die, found the courage to use their final moments to save the lives of others . . . Few are called to show the kind of valor seen on Flight 93, or on the field of battle. Yet all of us do share a calling: Be strong in adversity and unafraid in danger.” The actions of these brave men and women serve as a reminder of both the responsibility and privilege of citizenship of this great country - our America.

And don't ever forget the thousands of dead and missing, and the countless thousands of loved ones left behind.

I was asked to make a quilt by the family of one of the victims, 39 year old Sean Canavan. He went to work on September 11, 2001 and never came home. His brother Cieran's wife Jean asked that his quilt represent elements of his life - he was Irish, and loved carpentry, music, and skiing. The photo of his quilt isn't very good, but here it is anyway.

In addition, I participated in making blocks for the gigantic, 16,000 sq ft "United in Memory" quilt which had one block for every person killed in the attacks that day. This quilt toured the country in the years following and today is being exhibited at St. John's University, Staten Island, NY. All the blocks are in the Gallery, listed by name. These are the four blocks I made for the quilt - the first two are indicative of the little bit of detail I could find out about them, but details about the second two eluded me. As an aside, Mr. Spencer and Mr. Spataro's blocks were sewn on my Jones Queen Alexandra treadle during a power outage...I was on a deadline.

The attacks on our nation on September 11, 2001 are this generation's Pearl Harbor. Teach it, with historical accuracy and without political correctness, to your children and grandchildren. Our nation can survive anything because we, as a people, at our very core, are dedicated to freedom and justice. As Ronald Reagan said, "No arsenal is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."

Remember the innocent victims lost and the heroic sacrifices made on September 11, 2001, and in the days, months and years following.

New: Electric Quilt's "EQ Boutique"

As long as I'm sitting and waiting for Gillian to get out of dance, I thought I'd get caught up on adding the new fabric lines on Quilters Crossing's website.
But then I got distracted by an email that came in from the folks at Electric Quilt. All I saw was NEW & FREE! and I was checkin' out their website faster than I could say, "Sorry Deb...your new collections are gonna hafta wait!"

~ Presenting ~


It's an online pattern shop with a free, downloadable program that comes loaded with 20 Rose of Sharon appliqué blocks. The program lets you print your pattern in the suggested size or any size you want! Sewing instructions are included where applicable, and so are template, foundation, and rotary-cutting versions of the patterns.
In addition to the pre-loaded program, you can download a free set of 12 jazzy Ohio Star block variations that are totally cool. For Free. Really!

Ok, you say, but why "free?"

Well, I'll tell you! They've got tons of other block sets available for purchase by designers like Karen K. Stone (think New York Beauties), Marsha McCloskey (Feathered Stars), Judy Martin (Rotary Cut Stars), Angie Padilla (the cutest Appliqués ever, and so many more! And when you purchase a set of blocks and download them, they automatically go straight into your EQ Boutique program. No muss, no fuss.

And another thing...if you've already got EQ7 on your computer, it'll automatically link the blocks directly to it, just by clicking one (1) button! No "Where the *#%^ did I save that to anyway?!" Being the scatterbrain that I am, I have to confess that I save everything to my desktop so I can find it again, but then I have to wade through all those shortcuts later and get rid of them cuz I can't stand the chaos. This will save me a whole lot of steps. How cool is that?!

And they've got a mess of Fun Stuff: contests, freebies, a newsletter and lots more. And if you've been toying with the idea of combining software with quilting, but you're not sure you can handle EQ7, this is the perfect way for you to get your feet wet and gain some confidence in using your computer for something other than email or Farmville.

Click on that badge up there to check out all the designers, block sets, and directions on how to get the most from the software. I have absolutely NO affiliation with The Electric Quilt Company other than having an intimate relationship with their software since the beginning. Back in the Stone Age, when DOS was the language of choice.

They've come a long way, baby!

September 2011 Desktop Calendar

For the first time in over ten years, I'm offering you a choice of calendars this month. As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the downing of United Air Lines Flight 93, I'm giving you a calendar featuring "Broken Rainbows" - the quilt I made in the month following for the special exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston.

Or, if you need a reminder that it's time to start paying attention to "School Zones":

This is my artist's statement as it appears in the book America From the Heart: Quilters Remember September 11, 2001
"Our perception of our world was shattered for a moment, on 9-11-01, and it, along with the New York skyline, looked pretty dark. But we're recovering, and though we might still be a little shaken, we're not by any means broken. The fabric in the lower left quadrant of the quilt was chosen to represent the lives lost and the rubble at ground zero."
If you'd like to see a photo of the quilt, it's in my PictureTrail Album (Award Winning and Published Quilts)
You can order this incredibly moving book from Amazon:

If you like either of this month's calendars, click on your choice to expand the image to full size, right-click and choose Set as Wallpaper or Background. To really jazz up your desktop, right-click on your background and choose a color that coordinates with the calendar.

Cabin Too Underway!

Thanks to my Super-Son-in-Law Alex and my youngest son, 19yr old MJ, the renovations at our log cabin are starting to show some progress.
First on the agenda was the 26 year old in-ground swimming pool. We'd been pondering having it remodeled for the last few years, and I'm glad now that we didn't. First, the cost: $20k for starters. I don't have that kind of moolah laying around the house, so that was a big fat "No!" Second, I was a little worried about the liability involved with retreaters circumnavigating their way up and down the deck stairs balancing their margaritas and wine bottles. Scary.
We decided that it wasn't worth the risk of potential lawsuits or, for that matter, loss of life, so demo-ing it was the only way to go. MJ voted for dynamite, but we settled on jack-hammering it. We rented the biggest jack-hammer we could find and found out that they don't just throw it in the back of your truck. It's powered by a giant compressor that we had to tow home.

That's Alex and his little boy, my grandson Jackson, unhooking the compressor. After the pool was drained, Alex and MJ started jack-hammering the flagstone around the deck and saving the big pieces to make a new front porch.

Took a while to get that much of the decking torn up, then they decided to start tearing up the bottom of the pool. We didn't want to just fill in the pool, cuz when this drought ends, you know we're gonna go straight into hurricane weather, and we didn't want the pool to hold water like a giant bowl, sucking unsuspecting retreaters, deer, and god-knows-what-else into a man-made Slough of Despond, never to be seen again. Remember "Poltergeist?" Geez - that's all I need!
Anyway - there was still about 2 feet of water at the deep end, all black and murky with things moving in it, so neither Alex nor MJ wanted to get down close to it without making sure nothing was going to slither out after them...like a water moccasin. So, they decided on this solution. In the middle of a Burn Ban. Using diesel fuel.

Nothing swam, crawled or slithered out. They spent the weekend making holes through the bottom and turning it into a landfill.
Let's see...what else...
Oh yeah! I started ordering furniture and cool stuff for the Cabin Too. For the sunroom, I decided on a neat indoor/outdoor wicker set. It's a little plain vanilla, (more like café au lait) but I'll jazz it up with prettier cushions.

And I'm waiting on the rug that'll go under the kitchen table

Then tonight (this morning?) I saw these over at Smak Parlour. I couldn't stand it! I ordered 4 sets of them. Aren't they FABULOUS?? I think I need some for my house, too.

Ok, even though I'm on a roll, I need to hit the sack. "It's a quarter to three..." as the song goes...and I've got a date with a couple of antique-y/junque stores in a few hours. Oh crud. Andy just woke up. Gotta go.