So Green!

We haven't had rain for a while, but the rain we had in January?  The results are spectacular!

 The daffodils are popping up sporadically, along with a few cyclamen that survived last year's harsh summer.

 And the Johnny Jump-ups are doing their thing...along with dandelions.  That giant weed was pulled, as soon as I saw it in my viewfinder.

 Something that is not so spectacular, was my attempt at fusing.  Oh yes.  Now I remember why I don't fuse.

 All I did was make a great big mess.  Oh well.  I was finally forced to put a new cover on my ironing board, a task that I'd been pushing off for the past couple of months.

My Penny Pie is still visiting, so our days are filled with games and stories.  I've recently begged off on tromping through the park.  My leg hates it, and I end up paying for it for days afterwards.  There are others who are willing to take her, so she's not completely cooped up in the house with this old lady.

I'm not the only one taking pictures.  Whenever she finds my Canon lying around, she picks it up and starts snapping.  Who knows?  Maybe she's got photography in her blood.  Both of my grandfathers were avid photographers, whose photos frequently hung in photo salon competitions.  I have the bug, but not the gift.

And that's it for now.  The Best of the Valley quilts have been juried, but the letters won't be out this morning.  The goal is to have them in the mail by Saturday.  Goals are good!

So Busy!

We're playing lots of games.  Look who won the title of Crazy Cat Lady!

 We found a sewing kit at Joann's, and have done some handwork.

 Bedtime stories - and stories all day long - are a must.

 Wendy brought over her cranky machine, and P did some cranking.

Nice to see that smile, when seated in front of a sewing machine!

 Good thing Gramma has stacks of pre-cut squares on hand.

 Look what I made!  My first quilt top...at age 4.  Start 'em young, right?

Happy stitching!

So Busy

I guess I was right, when I thought my days would be full.  There hasn't been a bit of quilting going on, though there was one day when we played a game, then stitched a label, then read a book, then stitched a label.  I stitched out seven labels, and probably read twice that many books.  And we played Pen the Pig, all day long.  The labels are pinned to the quilts.  One day they will be stitched down.  Maybe tonight?

 One day, we went out to the walnut forest.  Here Uncle is teaching P the finer points of clay/dirt/sand differentiation.

 Inside, he introduced her to the kazoo. 

 It quickly became a favorite.

 All this photo-snapping of P means that turnabout is fair play.  Really?  I'm in my jammies!  My excuse is that it's only 7:15am.

Here I am again.  She finds my camera, turns it on, takes off the lens cover, checks the image and presses the button.  She'll be 5 next month.  I was more than twice that, before I ever touched a camera.

 On Monday, we visited the home of Best of the Valley's 2016 Featured Artist, Ann Hinman.

 This is her Grandma room, where her grandkids hang out and drink rootbeer floats.  Penny settled for reading through a stack of classics.

The past two days have actually included some "real" sewing.  I'm working on a Captain America suit for a friend.  All I have left to do are the pouches for his utility belt.  It will feel good to cross that one off of my list.  Other than that, the deadline has arrived for the quilt show, so all entries need to be processed and prepared for jurying.  The jury meets on Monday 2/22.  Good luck, if you entered a quilt!  This year's selection is spectacular!

Still Zooming By

Wow.  When I titled my last post "Zoom, Zoom," I didn't realize it was going to be a prediction.  I lost a week somewhere, and am stunned that it is already February 9.  oh my.  It's going to be a fast year, if the first few weeks are anything to judge by.

My leg is healing well, and just in time.  My soon-to-be 5 year old granddaughter is here for a prolonged visit.  She arrived a week ago, and is forcing me to become acquainted with the park at the end of our street.  "Let's go to the park, Gramma!"  It's something she and her mom do daily, so who am I to mess with tradition?

 It's definitely easier to visit the park with a 4 year old, than it is with a toddler!

 You may think this is a slide.  It's actually Sleeping Beauty's castle, in disguise.

 And there is Sleeping Beauty, sleeping, of course.

 Her uncle took her miniature golfing.  Of course she wanted the pink club and ball.

Needless to say, the only quilt-related things that are currently happening are all related to the quilt show.  It is five days until the entry deadline, and most quilters wait until the last minute.  I am daily buried in paperwork, but it's a good thing, not a negative.  If you have a quilt to enter, don't forget our online entry option.  Look it up on our website, here.

And that's it for now.  If I don't post much, I'm probably at the park!  :)

Zoom, Zoom

For a person sidelined with a healing bone, I sure seem to be zooming through the days.  I can't believe it's been a week since I posted.  But I was busy, quilting.  And I finished, by the 1/31 deadline I was trying to meet.

"Oceans" by Suzanne Kistler

I squeaked it in for a call for entry with the theme of "Tranquility."  Nothing calms my nerves more than an ocean view, so I just had to sew it up.  On Saturday morning, it still looked like this:

 I sewed like a woman possessed to meet that deadline.  I'd planned to add beads, but then thought they would only distract from the calm of the waves of blue.

Something else I did during the week was to drop this chair off at Quality Upholsterers in Visalia, along with 5 yards of fabric from Joann's.

 Three days later, they had refinished and reupholstered it to create this delightful addition to my living room.  Not bad for a $35 estate sale item, eh?

Another thing that I did was to head out to the walnuts, to see our new tractor.  I am able to walk either with a boot and no crutches, or in shoes, with crutches.  I was wearing the boot.  I acted as spotter for my son, as we tried to clean up some of the mess left behind from the well drillers.

 This was the sky, the day before it opened up and rained down over an 1" of life-giving water.  Today, the snow can be seen so low on the Sierras that it looks like it's almost dusting the foothills.  It's a beautiful thing.

But, now that January has ended, my sewing time has dwindled considerably.  The Best of the Valley Quilt Show will be held April 8-10, 2016, and entries are due by February 14.  You can check out the website and either download entry forms or enter online.  It's pretty straightforward.  Which reminds me.  While I'm in the midst of paperwork, I really need to remember to enter my own quilts into the show.  Goals are good!

Something New

There comes a time when a person just can't face another baby quilt, even if there are still two left in the ToQuilt pile.  And face another UFO?  Again?  In January?  I have a 3/4 quilted quilt that is waiting for attention sitting right next to the machine, but I couldn't deal with it either.  I needed something new.  I needed something different.  And I had just the thing.

Back in November, I heard of a call for entry that ends January 31.  I knew immediately what I wanted to do for it, even going so far as buying about 30 yards of fabric to facilitate the process.  But then Christmas loomed and I slipped in the mud and all that fabric sat in the bag, languishing.  I finally began washing it about 10 days ago.  Then I cut 6" strips from each piece, and they waited and waited and waited for the next step.

I cut the fabrics with freeform curves, and lay them carefully in order, so that sewing them together would be effortless.

 Then I dropped them.  So much for that organization, eh?

 I sewed the light blues together, and let the dark blues stew in their puddle for 24 hours before I was ready to face them again.

 Eventually everything was sewn together.  When will I learn that it is impossible for me to make "ocean foam" with a strip of fabric?  Foam calls for beads, not fabric.  One of these days I'll get that figured out.  Maybe.

Better whack off the bottom, and see what happens.  Hmmm.  Too much light blue.

 If I fold it up like so, maybe I like it better.  Yes, I think I like it better.

 Let's cut it here, and here, and there!  All better.

At this point, the quilt is pieced to my satisfaction.  I spray-basted it - an experiment for something this large, but I wasn't going to wait for someone to set up my basting tables to pin it - and began quilting.  Yesterday I did all of the stabilizing quilting.  Today I hope to do most of the detail quilting.  Goals are good, and all that.

My vivid imagination tells me that I can finish the quilting, trim it, bind it, label it, sleeve it, and bead it before January 31.  Okay, so maybe I can quilt, trim, bind, and bead it.  Or some of the above, by the deadline. 

Even if I don't make the deadline, I will finish the quilt.  I like this one.  I know, I know, I've done a lot of ocean views lately, but I find them to be very calm, soothing, and settling, and that's just the thing to get me through January.

I have another xray scheduled for today.  I have no idea what to expect, but the foot is still quite swollen, and sometimes it hurts.  I am scared to take the boot off, so I kind of think it's not quite healed.  I guess I'll know, soon enough.  Until then, I need to quilt faster!  Quilt faster!  :)

Plugging Along

My living room was a living room, until the first of the year.  Then I started shifting things, to make sewing accessible.  I started small.

 Then added a few things, like two chairs and a light,

 And then thread, and more projects,

 And before you know it?  I've taken over the whole room.  How much space does one quilter need?  As much as she can get, apparently.

The good news is that the productivity has not stopped.  I finished another quilt yesterday.  This one is a Many Trips Around the World, aka, Trips Around the Nursery.

I'm not much for new gadgets, but in November, I picked up two packages of these handy red clippies.  In December, I received another 10, bringing my total to 30.  It is the perfect number, and I really am enjoying using these.  I've always pinned my bindings, but a few years back we had a teacher who started bending and breaking ALL of my slightly bent pins, saying they were "useless!"  I was quite taken aback, but since that time, I've been very aware of my collection of bent pins.  These little clippies are the perfect thing to keep me from ruining any more pins on binding.  I don't remember what they are called, but I believe they are from Clover.

In other quilt news, I've cut 6" slices from my stash in preparation for trying to get an entry done before the deadline of January 31.  I feel like I've finished enough utility quilts this month, and it's time to do something that requires a bit of creativity.  Goals are good, and I keep setting them!  Quilt faster!  Quilt faster!  yep.  That's my mantra, until this leg is healed.

On a Roll!

I finished the binding on another baby quilt last night, woohoo!  Looks like hubby was a bit bleary-eyed when he snapped the photo.  A flash might have been called for.

 I'm starting to feel pretty good about the slowly-growing pile of finished baby quilts.  The bottom one was completed BBL (before broken leg), but the other three?  They're all recent finishes.  They are awaiting labels, and then will be sent off to babies who have long been awaiting their arrival.

What is next on the list?  Well...

I've pulled out a queen-sized hand-quilting project that I finished piecing when my son was in fifth grade.  He's now 26 years old, and a years-ago college graduate.  I worked on it last night, and am wondering if I could possibly find the wherewithall to finish it in time for Best of the Valley Quilt Show.  The entry deadline is February 14, and I have two-thirds of the quilting left to complete.

There is a SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates) call for entry that is due on January 31.  I know exactly what I want to make for it, I just haven't progressed further than pulling fabrics.  I started the project BBL.  Now that I can stand, I might pick it up again.

I have three other calls for entry, for very small projects.  One is 6x8", another 10x10", the third is 12x12".  Will I or won't I attempt to meet the deadlines?  I tell you, I can lay the best plans, but each day seems to be full of surprises.  The only sure thing seems to be the neverending pile of basted baby quilts, waiting to be finished.

And so, I dream of future projects, hoping that I can sew at least one or two of them into reality.  In the meantime, I continue to sew what's in front of me, trying to decrease the size of the "to do" pile and increase the size of the "finished" pile.  Goals are good!

What a Difference!

After my last post, I saw the PA, and he cut off my cast, but again warned me not to put any weight on my leg for another month.  That was a definite improvement.  I requested a second opinion, and saw the Orthopedic Specialist the next day.  He told me to wear the boot, and to walk on it, with crutches!!!  "We don't want your leg to atrophy any more than necessary!"  wow!  To say I was/am thrilled is a serious understatement.  Just being able to put that foot on the ground gives me confidence and stability.  Wobbling on my left leg had been exhausting.

As we were driving home, and I was beginning to wrap my head around the permission to put my foot down, KABAM!!

 A young girl, in a truck, on her way to College of Sequoias, tried to brake.  Her foot slipped, she hit the gas, and she slammed into the back of my favorite vehicle.  It may not look like much, but the handle is bumped in, and I'm afraid to try to open the back hatch, in case it gets stuck open.  Also, the trailer hitch - which we use frequently - is bent down and under the bumper, which is also bent in and under. 

 Good thing I'm not driving anywhere any time soon, eh?  :)

Instead, I am home, and getting a bit more quilting done.  Here's my second finish of the year, another baby quilt.  The front is pretty busy, but I think the red/yellow binding tones it down a bit.  The back is white, with large colorful polka dots sprinkled across the surface.  I asked my husband to make sure that my boot and crutches showed in the photo.  ;)

So far 2016 has been quite productive.  Two weeks into it, and I have two finishes.  It doesn't get much better than that!  I have another baby quilt awaiting binding, and yet another one that is about one third quilted.  I won't be able to make it down to Road to CA this year, but my time won't be wasted.  This week's goal?  Add another finish and make it 3 quilts in 3 weeks.  Goals are good!!