Guilty of EBay

There are times when I just sit like a slug in front of the computer for hours! One thing that I love to do is to look at all the completed quilts that are for sale there on EBay from all over the country. I study the designs and fabrics in the pictures. Seeing ANY quilt in a thumbnail picture will tell you almost instantly if the patchwork design has good impact.

At first, I was horrified that so many quilts were listed as, "cutter" quilts, to be cut up for crafts. What a sacrilege! Large numbers of quilts are being sold by quilt dealers and general antique dealers that were acquired at estate sales. Imagine; an estate and NO family member wanted the family quilts. That is so sad! It makes me wonder what will become of my handiwork. But I learn a lot about quilts, prices, and what is popular right now.

I have not bought quilts, but did fall in love with a few sets of contemporary made-up block sets that I got for under $20. I figured that I would not have been able to buy the fabric for that price. LOL At least, that was my justification! I put the blocks together with some sashing and borders from my stash and had lots of fun. I firmly believe that the blocks were probably made by illegal aliens for piece-work. Oh well.

I also have a weakness for signed baskets. Alright, almost ANY basket! I spent $5 on a Peterboro, NH basket that the Virginia owner had to charge me $8 to ship it to me back here in NH. It was still cheaper than I could have bought it at the factory. I really must go this year to their tent sale!

I also fell for a basket from a dealer who said that they had acquired it from a Halifax, Nova Scotia estate sale. To me it looks Native American Indian and old. I hope I can figure out how to do some research on it.
It is a wrapped coil construction that is 12 1/2" across and 4" tall in perfect condition. I just love it!

Roll, Roll Cotton Bowl Progress Continues!

Well, the 120 sawtooth strips are DONE!!!! Whew. That was such a struggle for me and I'm so glad to be sailing along on a new part of the mystery quilt.

Now I am working on what I know will become the fancy Seminole style border, which is the second part of Step 6. I got all 344 little Quarter Square Triangles (QST's) cut out. By using the Companion EZ Angle ruler on the 1 1/2" strips of chocolate brown fabric and cutting 8 layers at a time, it went very quickly. Usually I would cut fewer layers but I had gotten a great deal on EBay for Olfa 60mm replacement blades in December. So with a bright sharp blade, I sliced right through all those layers!

I sewed the brown triangles, chain-pieced, to one end of each of the "three-sies" and then pressed and clipped the dog-ears. I discovered that I had made 186 rather than 172, so I'll have a few extras. Maybe tonight I will begin sewing all the brown QST's onto the other end of the three-sies. I love to stack them into piles of ten to bask in the achievement of so many done. I sure am not the fastest on this mystery quilt, but I sure do know how to feel good when I've made progress!

This block layout is not sewed yet, you can see that's a good thing because one of my sawtooth strips, the one along the bottom does not match the others. I was playing with which way I like them. I also tried flipping the dark brown and pink HST's to the outer position, too. No idea what I'll do yet.

Poking Along on RRCB

Today is bright and sunny but cold! I sat outdoors for about 10 minutes and then ran in for more hot decaf tea.
I went downstairs into my basement Quilting Cave, determined to break the inertia problem of not having worked on RRCB, Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll mystery quilt in several days. In combining steps 5 & 6, I think I created a monster. I need 120 units of 5 HST's sewn together. I had 80 done. This morning I got another 10 done so that's 3/4's done! Focus on the positive, focus on the positive...
Sometimes as I am sewing on this project, I am using the next item to be sewn as my leader/ender. But I also keep a nice lil handful of pretty scraps just to the right side of the White Sewing Machine to piece together into little pouches for sachets. I make them about 3"X5" but they vary a bit. I fill them with natural potpourri in one of three scents; French Lavender, Dried Rose Petals, or Balsm Fir Needles. I sell them for $3.00 each or two for $5.00.
But I love to give them to distant friends by tucking one into a birthday card. I made two dozen as a gift for each person in Hospice Care locally. They are marvelous for hospice because the sense of smell in humans is one of the very last things to cease functioning in the process of dying, and these are fine for anyone who is bedridden. This little pouch had bright red, so I put dried Rose Petals into it. Sooooooooo nice!

My Status Symbol

We all have to take pride in some areas of our lives. We need our status symbols. When I was in Foxboro High School, it was a status symbol for a girl to have the longest hair, or to wear nylons to school. When I was in high school, pantyhose had not yet been invented. We used garter belts!
Now that I'm 61 years old, I find that my status symbols have changed a lot. My big status symbol now is having a great big flag on a flagpole in my front yard. My flagpole is just slightly taller than the one for my town hall, now how's that for boasting?
My beat-up car is a 1989 Mercury Marquis sedan that is old enough to buy me an alcoholic beverage. But my flag is beautiful!

Step-by-Step Devil's Puzzle

To make the Devil's Puzzle block, with it's 16 HST's (Half Square Triangles), start by cutting 2 1/2" strips from your light, medium, and dark fabrics to use with your favorite right angle triangle ruler. Mine is an Omnigrid but there are several other brands.
Stack the the light strip on top of the dark strip with right sides together and trim the left side square.

Then turn the ruler to make your first cut; a diagonal running from northwest to southeast, or upper left towards lower right. On my ruler this is lined up on the 2" mark inside the little yellow circle. That's because these HST's will finish at 2"when sewn into a quilt. Please notice that at the upper edge there is a built-in notch.

After your first cut, flip the ruler around so that the two inch mark line is against the very top of the strip-set. Please note that the little clear pointed tip of the triangle ruler is SUPPOSED TO hang off the edge of the fabric. It is actually eliminating one set of dog ears to be trimmed. Now make your next cut, which is straight up-and down.
Make four light/dark sets of triangles and handle them gingerly to keep them together as you sew on the diagonal edge, or the hypotenuse.
Then make four of the same sets using medium/dark strip sets.
Then make eight of the same sets using medium/light strip sets.
Press all 16 open to the darker side.

Because this design is easily confused, I kept a small diagram right beside me at the sewing machine and double checked it as I sewed pairs, then pairs into four-across rows, then rows together. I had no mistakes! Yippee! Do the best you can making the seams nest.

Then it is off to the ironing board! I am guilty of slipping into back-and-forth ironing sometimes instead of lift-up-and-down pressing. Here is where you want true pressing! I do back and front, finishing with a bit of starch.

If you try this block, I hope you have as much fun as I did! It's also known as Winding Blades or Flyfoot.

Happy Epiphany! Happy Twelveth Night!

Hooray, the blessed sun is shining again today here in New Hampshire! Because I do seem to have some Seasonal Affective Disorder, I make it a point to bundle up and GO OUT and sit in the sun EVERY sunny day for 15 minutes. My winter sun is best in front of the garage doors, also protected from the northern winter wind.
I've been having fun the past few days with the "Devil's Puzzle" block from Barbara Brackman's new Civil War website:
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/

The very first block uses Half Square Triangles and I was thrilled that my Omnigrid ruler cut them perfectly! My darling niece, Michelle, had given me a huge hatbox full of Keepsake Quilting scraps for my Christmas present from her. So here are my blocks! I think I just needed a short break from the intensity of the Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll Mystery quilt. Now I'll get back to the last 40 of the 120 sawtooth strips that I need to make.

Happy New Year!

Felix, Matthew, & I enjoyed a quiet evening at home with a yummy cheese fondue over crusty French bread. But the real coupe for me was that twenty minutes before midnight, I was able to finish hand-hemming the binding on Yankee Christmas, my version of Carolina Christmas!!!! Wow! I have been working on this big quilt for 13 months now. And it took  me a week to hem it.
Linda Monasky of The Bear Paw Gallery did a marvelous job on the quilting. She used "Mose's Home" as the all-over pattern in a varigated gold thread. It looks so good to have curvy lines breaking up the straight angles of the top.

The backing is a gold and cream-colored yarn-dyed flannel, and the batting is Warm & Natural cotton. This is a big heavy quilt to go on our master queen-sized bed. We struggle on fixed income with these terrible fuel oil bills, so keeping the thermostat setting low is a MUST. Warm quilts are welcome!

Step 5 & 6 of the Mystery

My goodness, the time I took enjoying family visiting at Christmas did set me wayyyyy behind on the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery! But I am going at my own pace and not rushing.

I found that I could combine the step 5 and step 6 and do them as one. That is, instead of making 600 HST's and then sewing them together later into 120 sawtooth units, I'm making the 120 units as I go. So far, I'm up to 60 of the 120, halfway! Yippee! Here is what they look like.
The one disadvantage to this is that, as I am using WOF yardage for my neutrals, rather than true scraps, my sawtooth pieces are completed as sets rather than all-jumbled up scrappiness. It is my compromise. I know that if I had made all 600 and then stirred them up and THEN sewed them into the sawtooth units, they would probably sparkle with scrappiness. But I must admit that I have felt overwhelmed by these steps! So combining them is just my way of coping so that I don't give up.

The Christmas Spirit

What fun it has been to set most of my patchwork quilting aside to be celebrating Christmas with lots of different family members!
My "kid" sister, who is 50, Lucinda rode the bus up from Connecticut to visit us. I also have an older sister, Anne, who lives just 17 miles away, two towns over. Since everybody's schedule is different, we had our presents on Sunday, December 19th.

Last year, Lucinda got a quilt from me and she loves it. So this year, it was Anne's turn to get one from me. Imagine my surprise that I got one from Anne, too!
These pictures show Lucinda who had just opened a blue cotton hair scrunchie that I had made for her.http://sewing.about.com/od/freeprojects/ss/scrunchies.htm And Anne is modeling a hair tie-up ribbon in a black oriental batik that was a "close-the-shopping-bag-at-the-register" string from Keepsake Quilting in Center Harbor, NH.
Lucinda and I had driven up there, which is about 45 minutes one way, to have me pick out 8 fat quarters as my Christmas present from her. Wow! I felt so rich! I even made one of my choices an oriental calligraphy print to give to Anne, who loves those.

My husband, Felix, and Matthew, who is no relation but like our adopted son, were outdoors in the freezing cold trying to winterize a 2000 Jeep Cherokee Sport for Lucinda to drive back down to Connecticut. The plug to drain out some of the radiator fluid, so that it could be replaced with anti-freeze, had been cross-threaded by the previous owner. It gave the boys hours of trouble. But once they got it free, they got her car winterized to -35 degrees!
Here is a picture of Felix and Matthew doing a little body work on the Cherokee, too. They sure did want hot cocoa when they came into the house!

Anne's gift quilt to me was very special. She had placed the winning bid in the WLNH children's charity auction on a quilt that had been made by Daisy Troop 10972! Yippee! I love the red and green borders and sashing and the panels that the girls colored are just superb! I was so tired that I fell asleep right with it on the futon with my lady labs, "Luau" and "Raven." Ahhhhhhhhh, quilty pleasures!

Sicky Day; Sicky Tea

Today, Sunday, was not much forward progress on Step 3 of the mystery from Quiltville's Quips and Snips by Bonnie K. Hunter. I was too sick to want to play much. I took a morning nap. Then after lunch, I took an afternoon nap. All that wore me out, so I rested by reading emails and sipping "Sicky Tea."

Sicky Tea:

Two decaf tea bags with hot water in a very large mug,
Add a giant squeeze (2 tablespoons?) of honey,
Add a giant squeeze of Real Lemon,
Add a shot of Napoleon Brandy.

Some people call this a hot toddy and it can be made lots of ways, but this is my version. When you have scratchy eyes, runny nose, sneezing and sniffling on a cold winter's day, it sure is a comfort!

On Friday and Saturday, I pushed myself hard and was very pleased to get 30 of the 60 total string blocks done. They are fun and kinda addictive to do as they are mindless sewing of strips with no worry about matching points or seams. Even if your 1/4 seam is off a little, it's okay!

I fretted a bit when using paper foundations for the first time because my blocks were awful "curly!" They would not flatten out even with ironing.

Then I found that once I removed all the paper from the back while sitting upstairs watching TV, all my blocks relaxed their curls and laid flat again. Yippee!

My personal bias for creamy buttery ecru-ish sorts of neutrals begins to show here, right? And I still love all those darling little calico florals that are so dated and out of fashion now. So, IN THEY GO!!! LOL! Now I just need to do another 30 blocks of them.