A Little Walking, A Little Quilting

Today was one of those days where I didn't sit down except for lunch. I don't know how I ever had time to work before. The day started with cutting out blocks for The Disappearing Pinwheel quilt with my neighbor, who is also in my quilt group. We cut out the big blocks and then put one pinwheel together and cut it up so we can show everyone what to do at the next meeting. Then we'll divide up into pairs and make the quilt in an assembly line. We broke for lunch and I made a template so we can check the completed 12 inch block before cutting it into thirds. When we made our block, we cut it with a 12 inch ruler, which of course is really 12-1/2 inch. We caught it after cutting the block into thirds and then had to re-cut some of the pieces.

After lunch we walked the neighborhood and handed out letters to encourage each neighbor to go to the next city council meeting. Our roads are terrible and all they do is fill potholes when what we need is to have the road replaced. The cul-de-sac at the end of our block is nothing but filled potholes. So maybe if the neighbors unite, the council will listen.

Buddy the cat was waiting when I got home again, with a still-twitching trophy in his mouth. He was meowing (sounds more like mwarr than meow with his mouth full) to get into the garage to eat his prey but I just told him that he was a good boy and left him outside. I don't know why he feels he has to eat varmits in the garage and leave their parts for me to clean up. I guess so it can't get away if it can still run when he puts it down. And it may have gotten away because I looked outside when he quit meowing and he was sitting alone by the back door.

Then I had to make yet another trip to WallyMart for fabric to finish this lap quilt. I made these four blocks for the quilt as you go demonstration yesterday, but I liked the way they turned out so I decided to use them in a lap quilt instead of practicing more free motion quilting. Since it was just going to be a practice quilt, I used fabric from my stash and WallyMart. I couldn't find anything to match the fabrics from my stash so decided to make a border from one of the WallyMart fabrics. I needed to go to the bigger nearby town anyway. But that store didn't have the fabric, so I'll have to go to the store in the smaller town tomorrow. You'd think all WallyMarts would have the same fabrics, but they don't.

This block is from the book Lap Quilting with Georgia Bonesteel 1982.

I'll be linking to these blog parties: WIPS Be Gone at A Quilting Reader's Garden #10, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict #79, and Let's Book It at Vroomans Quilts #10

Around the Homestead

Snow! And the temperature is 65°. So ok, it's not snow, it's insulation. We had twelve inches blown in the attic. It's white and it looks like tv snow when it drifts down every time we pull down the attic stairs.


And with this nice weather, Hubby tilled part of the garden and we planted a row of onions.


My New Year's goals, or resolutions, are not going well.

I went to Walmart in my search for blue and tan border fabric, and came home with these


What can I say? They jumped in the basket and I didn't have the heart to make them leave.

The diet is going, if not going well. We ate at I-Hop last night, and one meal alone destroyed my calorie count.

Until next time, may you have blessings and self-control,
Marti

Sewing Machine Fever

It's kind of like new car fever without the tv commercials. It started last week when I was telling Hubby that my mom mentioned that she might give me her sewing machine, a Pfaff which she bought about the same time I bought my New Home (now Janome) about 22 years ago. Only while mine has sewed miles of fabric, she has probably used hers ten times. Hubby asked if that is the kind of machine I wanted, and I told him I didn't know because I've only seen it a few times, I just knew it was nicer than mine 22 years ago. Then Hubby spoke these magical words "Why don't you just go buy the machine you really want instead?"

Excited? I'll say! "Get outta here!" I cried. And he did - keeping up with the lingo is so hard at our age.

"No honey, come back. Get outta here doesn't mean 'leave the room', it means something like 'far out' or 'unreal'.

"So why didn't you say that?" he asked.

"Because no one says that anymore, they say 'Get outta here' or something about bonkers. Never mind that. About the sewing machine, you were saying?"

It's true. He thinks I should finally get the machine of my dreams rather than settling for something that just has basic functions or is a hand-me-down. Wow. I think I'm going to caress some machines tomorrow.

Oh, and in all fairness, we were driving down the highway the other day, and we saw a license plate on an old car, completely tricked out, that said 69 HO, and I thought... well, I thought the worst. Hubby explained that it was a 1969 Hurst Oldsmobile. Oh.

Until next time, may you have blessings and a groovin' vocabulary,
Marti