Serenity Now? No, Senility Now!

I officially have too much fabric. There, I've said it.
Last week I bought two matching Bella red solid 5" charm packs online and was delighted with them when they arrived. I had a plan to work on a Christmasy project. Yesterday I was admiring them as I sat in my fabric-crowded living room. I must've put them in a "safe" place. Today, they are nowhere to be found. As I searched shipping envelopes and bags, I did find two sets of charm packs that I had forgotten ordering. Sigh. Shhhh, don't call the folks at the Sunnyview Home yet!

What I did do today was to finish up the last of the sets of 4-patches for Step 1 on Easy Street and got them all pressed and pinned into groups of ten. That felt good!

Then I also cut out and kitted up the makings for a set of six churn dash blocks. That felt good!

Additionally, as I was doing that, I completed another Ocean Waves scrappy block as a leaders/enders project and got it pressed and starched. That felt good!

But what felt the very best today was getting so close to this cheery little chickadee friend!

He or she is pretty well camouflaged in the wisteria vines. Nice, huh?

Having Fun On Easy Street

The Easy Street mystery( http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/11/easy-street-monday-link-up-1.html)by Bonnie K. Hunter is great fun for me because I enjoy all my Civil War fabrics so much! The barn red of the constant is a Moda Kansas Troubles called Warm Memories and I never tire of looking at a well-designed floral.

I'm slower than most of the players who already have their step 1 completed. I keep chanting:

IT IS NOT A RACE!     IT IS NOT A RACE!     IT IS NOT A RACE!

But then the competitive spirit of my childhood kicks in and I'm right back to trying to keep up with the pack. So here I am coming down the homestretch of the 200 more or less 4-patch units.

Ironing the rumpled strips, setting their seams first, then pressing open.

Each of those stacks are ten units pressed open and there are 120 done from yesterday.

I made these strip sets this morning and got them onto the cutting board.

I learned that there is a small advantage to lining the strip sets up on the cutting board the exact same way that I'm gonna sew them for nesting seams with the darkest strip oriented on the top feeding first into the machine. It makes them so easy to pick up and feed right through chain piecing.

I should have just a few extra, which is a good thing in a Bonnie adventure.

Chain piecing is kinda like knitting, you do the same motion over and over and you kinda get into a rhythm that is very relaxing. Usually when I'm chain piecing, I'm able to solve all the problems of the world.
 But then it's time to go upstairs for a coffeebreak and I forget all the solutions. LOL! See? It is totally my fault that the world is such a mess! LOL!

Tough Room

My day at the craft fair was fun and light-hearted but not profitable. I netted $21.00 for seven hours of being there, so that's $3 bucks an hour. I made more than that when I was 17 and was babysitting! Oh well, never again! At least I didn't get skunked with no sales nor did I lose money.

It was good to get home to where Felix told me how proud he was of my going to do the fair. He had the most delicious hot turkey rice soup waiting for me. It was most welcome because we had a snow squall and a bit of wind that made it chilly.

A great night's sleep put me up early enjoying the coffee and raring to go on more of those Easy Street clue #1. Here is the next set of strips sewn for the 2" four patches.

That rumpled mess ironed out beautifully into these three pairs of strip sets.

And also there were another twenty of the 4-patches to be ironed and pressed open, too.

I'm loving the deeper toned tans and antique-y tea stained lights that I'm using for this quilt and the churn dash quilt too. It is the first time I've used them as my usual "lights" are a light creamy off white.
There was one leftover churn dash that was already cut out and the parts ready to assemble, so I put that one together. It looks black in the photos but it is actually a rich indigo.

By that time, I was ready for a break for tea upstairs, but before I left, I laid out my "teaser task" to be all ready for me to come back to next time.

Ahh, the next group of 40 4-patches all ready to sew!

Civil War Friday

The car is all packed tonight for the Gilmanton Crafts Fair at the school tomorrow where I will offer five of my quilts and lots of baskets of little quilty goodies for sale. I hope I can at least sell enough to break even on the $40.00 space rental. I can't call it a table fee because I must provide my own table for the 7 1/2' X 10' space. I hope I haven't forgotten anything. I just need to pack a lunch, too. I'm really kinda nervous about the whole thing but it is only from 9 to 3 for one day. Set up is at 7am! Thank goodness the school is only 4 miles away. Thank you to so many of you who have already wished me luck!

I had fun today going first thing this morning to the first Easy Street clue of the newest Bonnie Hunter mystery. http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/easy-street-mystery.html If you just joined me here, maybe you'd like to play! Here are my fabrics all in Civil War reproductions.

We need a bunch of 4-patches made from the constant, which for me is the Moda red floral to be worked with the background tans and creams.

Two inch strips getting cut and sewn together.

Every pair of strip sets yields 20 four-patches and I cut enough for 60. I was using them as leaders and enders for the Golden Gese Churn Dash that I had just started at Charlene Higgins workshop last Saturday.

It is also Civil War so it's fun to work on the two quilts side by side.

Here are the first of the 200 or so four-patches that I need.

I chose to mate them up rather than make them all scrappy.

I got forty done and was very pleased!

Yesterday when the turkey was cooking and the heavenly scent of it cooking was driving me crazy with hunger, I made these churn dashes in green. But I was cutting the pieces from an eighth of a yard piece from a beautiful little bundle sold to me by Stacey Zabarsky of the Sew Far Sew Good quilt shop. http://www.sewfarsewgoodquiltshop.com/ 
As I cut, I totally forgot that to make the churn dash block, I need a solid 2 1/2" piece for the center! Alas! I had cut it all into HST's and 1 1/2" strips for the outer sections of the block. Groan!
I looked around and sitting right out on the cutting table was a nice half-yard chunk of green Thimbleberries that I'd had out to use in the Pistachios quilt but never did need it. See? Sometimes it is a good thing to not pick up your toys!! LOL!
So here is the somewhat silly looking green churn dash.

Raven said she liked it but she always expects a cookie for her opinion.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving:

May your stuffing be tasty,
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes 'n gravy
Have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious,
May your pies take the prize,
May your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs.
     
         -Owen K. Lorian

BEFORE:

AFTER:

A Tisket, A Tasket, A Fabric-filled Basket

Well, I think I have a new hobby! Buying fabric seems to please me as much as piecing fabrics together. LOL!
Grace from Maine and I met in Dover on Sunday and had a fine time exploring a large group antique shop. One of the booths carries precut half-yards of fabric for $2.95 a pop. I totally forgot to bring the camera, but everything was quirky and quaint and looked so sweet with all the Christmas decorations!
I'm already broke, but I hit up my secret money to buy 25 pieces of glorious quilting fabric.

I used this red-dyed basket to hold my loot as I shopped, and then decided to take the basket, too. It was only $9 and it is big and deep. It will hold an entire quilt in pieced blocks. Ask me how I know.

And yes, I WAS wearing my "Fabricaholics Anonymous" red tee shirt! LOL!

Not to be out-done, Grace was wearing her royal purple "Eat, Sleep, Quilt, Repeat" tee shirt. Gosh we had the very best time!
Then we headed over to Newick's Seafood Restaurant and enjoyed a bowl of clam chowdah. Over lunch we talked quilts and without any prior arrangements, we exchanged gifts. Grace gave me a handmade minature pinwheel ornament that is just dear! Thank you, Grace, I love it!

I insisted that Grace sign and date the tiny quilt with the year.
She also gave me two quilty magazines to browse.

Mostly, I get my patterns from the internet, but quilty magazines are a must for Dr.'s waiting rooms. When I looked one of them over, I found a neat pattern that interests me.

Click on the picture to enlarge it. This pattern uses square-in-a-square blocks, which are new to me, so plenty of challenge. But I dare not start anything new right now what with the churn dash in progress and Bonnie's newest mystery set to begin on Friday.

What I have been up to, is whipping out another dozen of those Sawtooth Star potholders for the Saturday Gilmanton Craft Fair where I've taken a booth.

 One space cost $40, now that's a lot of catnip mice at $2 each. LOL!

I'll sell tickets for the quilt raffle for the Bricks & Steppingstones that I made and donated to benefit the Gilmanton Food Pantry.

Thank you so much, Bonnie K. Hunter, for the free pattern!

Churn Dash Workshop

I enjoyed myself yesterday at the Golden Gese Quilt shop where Charlene Higgins was teaching a mixed class of UFO's, Split Four Patch, Shoo fly, and my choice of Churn Dash. It was supposed to be a Shoo Fly class, and two of us were doing that. I decided that I did not like the skinny look of the Shoo Fly and Charlene helped me to adapt the block to Churn Dash, which is a chunkier look.

It was a great group, laughing and joking as we worked along. On the far wall, at the right, you can see the quilt that I was supposed to be making.

"Scottie," my Scotland-made featherweight was sewing like a champ! I got three blocks made before we took a break for lunch.

Here they are laid out on top of a piece of the Williamsburg fabric that I'm going to use as my main color sashing, a constant.

Lying on the table is Charlene's split 4-patch that was a class sample. Nice fabrics, huh?

I was tired so I packed up soon after lunch and went home for a nice nap, but here is a shot of Charlene wearing her pink cardigan sitting and helping Joyce with her UFO.

The shop gives a 20% discount on all fabrics bought for their classes, so I picked out two light Civil War neutrals and 4 Fat Quarters that spoke to me.

I had to buy the .25 cent scraps; they have stars! LOL!

The mail brought my Whittle's of Kentucky order of a couple of Civil War bundles; one in blue, one in brown, and I think I'll be using them in this Churn Dash quilt.

They were only $12 for a bundle of 10 FQ's.!

I was so happy I couldn't nap so I just rested.

Hugs & Kisses Done!

I'm delighted to report that I finished the binding on my little "Hugs & Kisses" quilt that is just 60" square with the borders. It looks wonderful in the pale sunshine, doesn't it?

The teal and tan 5" squares came from 2 seconds or imperfect charm packs that were reduced by 20% at Keepsake Quilting's summer tent sale for about 8 bucks for the two of them. Each pack had 50 charms and the 100 just made this top. I had great fun using up charm packs that were "fresh" and had not been sitting around for twenty forevers. Keepsake got there money's worth out of me though, when I went back and paid full retail for the teal fabric that became both the inner stripe and the binding. LOL! It's all good!

I know. I know. It has stars, I just HAD to have it!

Linda Monasky of The Bear Paw Gallery in Alton, New Hampshire  did a fine job of quilting this. She invented the scrolling flower shape to echo the pattern. It looks terrific!

Then around the borders are sweet little hearts. This quilt is called Hugs & Kisses because sometimes you see the hugs or circle-donut shapes, but then you stare at it and then the x's or kisses pop out at you. And the whole thing is done with two little 2 1/2" squares sewn onto the diagonal corners of each of the 5" charms. Sewing them is every bit as mindless and soothing as doing string blocks! I had a ball and it went pretty fast.

I'm offering this one for sale for $175.00 at the Gilmanton Craft Fair on November 24th and hope to find a good home for it!