Quilt Auction Tomorrow

You knew that I made an Alzheimer's Priority quilt, don't you? I called it "Dark Ride". A dark ride is a generic term used to describe any type of [carnival] ride that is in a dark enclosed environment, for example a tunnel of love or a house of horror. It's a multi-faceted term. Here's a link to the post on the making of the quilt.

This little quilt (it is only 9"x12") has been shown on The Quilt Show taping of the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. I turned it into Ami Simms and then tried to follow it's progress. I did not see it listed on any of the sales from Houston and wondered what happened to it. Now I know. It had been set aside for the December auction to coincide with the airing of the AAQI episode on The Quilt Show. This episode, by the way, will be free and can be seen on December 6 on The Quilt Show.

The auction starts tomorrow and I'm going to follow #5548 Dark Ride. If you are so inclined, bid on any of the quilts on this auction (there are quilts by some well known people) or go to the Quilts for Sale page and buy.

Wish my little quilt luck! I want it to raise some money for AAQI.

To Those in the USA...

Wordless Wednesday - Pretty Threads

Need a quick gift idea?

It occurred to me when I got the request from TheKid for one of these quick-to-make plastic bag dispensers that it would make a good tutorial for the blog. These bag dispensers are made from the sleeve of a man's dress shirt and take about 30 minutes to make start to finish, no joke. Now you can either raid your man's closet or pick up a shirt at the thrift store. Go with the second option as it causes less friction in the household. *smile*

Materials
• man's dress shirt; the larger the shirt size the longer the sleeve and therefore it makes a larger bag holder
• scissors and or rotary cutter
• rotary ruler and mat
• marker of some sort
• ribbon, any width up to ½"
• elastic, any width and shorter than the width of the cuff by about 1½-2"
• sewing machine

Start by cutting off the sleeve. Snip, snip.

You can see the shape of the sleeve in the next photo. I like to square up the seam edge and the top.

Once you have this cut and before you stitch the seam, open the sleeve flat and fold down ¼" along the top edge and press. Fold down again (I did about ½" for the second fold) to form a casing for your ribbon. Press.
 

Stitch the folds down right along the edge like in the next photo.

Now it is time to stitch up the seam. Match the edges and pin leaving the top edge open where the casing is so you have a way to thread the ribbon through. Stitch the seam closed. If you forget and stitch the seam closed all the way from bottom to top you will have to either open the seam a bit or cut a slit in the casing for the ribbon. Once you have the sleeve closed back up you can thread the ribbon through the casing. Tie the ends of the ribbon together with an overhand knot.

You can stitch the elastic on now. I placed the elastic in this sleeve right at the upper edge between the buttons and the sleeve/cuff seam. Stitch the elastic on for about 1" and then stretch it to the other edge as you stitch the rest, turn and go back down the other edge of the elastic. If you used a narrower elastic than I did, you should only have to zigzag or straight stitch down the middle. Don't make your elastic too short, you want to be able to get the bags out.

Turn the sleeve right side out and stitch the placket closed. For those that don't know the terminology, that is the opening in the sleeve at the bottom where the cuff opens.

Button the cuff and hang up your plastic bag dispenser. I stuff the bags in from the top and pull them out from the bottom.

In hindsight, I should have used a lighter colored shirt so you could see the steps better. O well. *shrug*

If you want more pattern ideas for one of these bag dispensers, search for "plastic bag dispenser pattern" and a WHOLE LOT will come up. Have fun with this!

Inspired Ideas: The Christmas Issue

Here is a great little online mag for your enjoyment. It has some wonderful crafty Christmas items. Isn't this Yo-Yo Tree cute? This is just one of the offerings in this e-zine. There are wreaths and trees and felt and embroidery, O My!

When you click on the 'Open Publication' just below the embedded image it will take you to a full screen. Want to print something? Just move your cursor up to the top and a menu will pop up. Enjoy!

Open publication - Free publishing - More christmas

I am either way behind or getting ready for next year

This is one of the Focus Projects in Finn's New Year's Eve UFO challenge. For lack of a better name it is just called the Hallowe'en quilt. So what are you looking at here? Well, these are the various strips to make some liberated letters for a very appropriate Hallowe'en phrase along the border. This quilt is totally from the fabric stash but I managed to have enough of the same fabric for the background of the letters and the frames for the blocks in the center of the quilt. Imagine that! The two main orange fabrics even somewhat resemble each other and are a much closer match in color than what you see in the photos.

Here's a sneak peak at one of the blocks. These blocks are embroidered and dye painted. Some of the blocks are my design and others are pulled from various sources including but not limited to Bird Brain Designs and Kaaren of the Painted Quilt.

Remember when I was asking for quilting ideas in a recent post?  This is the quilt I had in mind. As you can see there are words; in fact, each of the blocks has words on it. This is a very wordy quilt. Anyway, I still haven't decided how to quilt this thing. I'm still open to suggestions.

Wordless Wednesday - Water Under the Bridge

Nighttime Noises

One of these Honeywell Long Range Thermo Personal Weather Stations hangs next to the window over the kitchen sink. This is on the opposite end of the house from the bedroom. Last night, in the middle of the night, I awoke to the staccato sound of beeping. Thinking it was the carbon monoxide detector, I sprang from bed and ran into the hallway. No noises came from either the basement where the CO2 detector resides or either of the smoke detectors. What WAS making that sound? I discovered the source in the kitchen. The batteries in this station were dying and it REALLY wanted to let the household know about it. I flicked on the light and removed the batteries... AH, blessed silence. But now I was awake because it was cold and the light was on. Arggh. And why couldn't the batteries die in the middle of the day?

This reminds me of another time about 30 years ago, right after we built our house. Our contractor installed a wired smoke detector on an interior wall that went up to the attic. One night, we were awakened by the smoke detector going "Diiiiiit dit" pause "dit dit" longer pause "dit dit diiiiiiit". Whaaaaaa? We sprang out of bed and went searching for a fire. No smoke, no fire, not hot spots on walls. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Needless to say sleep was out of the question for the rest of the night.

The next day on the television news there was a story about smoke and/or burglar alarms going off during the night. The culprit? Cold air. Seems that if the air temp is under zero, the contacts in the alarms contract (cold contracts and heat expands) and the alarms sound in an erratic pattern. Several nights in a row, this happened to us because the cold air from the attic seeped down into that interior wall. We finally disconnected the wired alarm and installed several battery powered ones around the house. It hasn't happened to us again.

A Wee Bit of Quilt Content

There is a little bit of quilt content in this post. For real. Progress is being made on several fronts. But really, nothing to show you. Do you really want to see a pile of pieces stacked to the side of the sewing machine? Or the light table with the white applique background awaiting the pieces to be glued?

On Friday, I attended the November meeting of our small group. Remember in this post when I asked for a recipe? Well, the Apple Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting that Nancy recommended was very well received. Excellent! Knitting accompanied me to this meeting not quilting, because a pair of Christmas socks is on the needles.

Saturday, was a meeting of Quilty Friends at my house. Deciding that the Hugs and Kisses BOM needed to get caught up, I spent the time prepping the pieces for the October block. The pieces were glued down and a pane of glass placed on top of it to press it flat while it dries.

Today, was another day in the sewing room while the washer and dryer did their thing in the next room. The pieces for the November block were cut out and half of them were prepped when the 'accident' happened. *sigh* I inadvertently brushed the tops of two fingers against the hot iron. All work stopped immediately. I couldn't even pick the iron up by the handle because it put the fingers too close to heat. I had to close up the sewing room.

Veteran's Day 2010

Wordless Wednesday - Goose

I really wish it were this cute

Unfortunately for us it isn't fun to have a mouse loose in the gallery and studio. And he IS getting around. I bought a couple of traps this morning and they have been baited with a mixture of crushed dog food and natural peanut butter. There wasn't any chunky peanut butter to be found around here so I begged some dog food from one of the guys and then mixed it in a baggie with the peanut butter. I just saw the mouse crawl over the back of the guest sofa and he's been seen near the photographer's file cabinet and in the men's room. Tonight will tell whether we need new bait or not.

Update: Got one 5 minutes after I posted. No kidding!  The trap has been re-baited and awaiting the next one 'cause we all know where there's one there's more.

I need a recipe

I am going to a pot luck on Friday and I need a new recipe. The ladies are all dieting and I don't have a clue what to take. Other than a green salad or a bowl of fruit I can't come up with anything to take. Help?

Wordless Wednesday - Rose Hip

Embroidery and Quilting Opinions Needed

I've been working on some stitchery blocks, 9 to be exact. The smallest is about 6x6" and the largest is a whopping 10x10". This is one of my committed UFOs, you can find the challenge over there on my sidebar. Over the weekend I started sewing them into a flimsy. This is not really a question about embroidery or stitchery, but a question about putting embroidery in quilts and then quilting it.

Have you done this? How did you quilt it? Did you quilt up to the embroidery and then leave the embroidery alone? Did you disregard the embroidery and quilt right over it?

I am tempted to disregard the embroidery because of the disparate sizes of the blocks. I have done this before but because the blocks were a uniform size and was being hand quilting, I just quilted a big X in the block; it really is not that noticeable as you can see in the photo above. This new piece, however, is begging for a leafy vine.

Your opinion matters to me, please leave me comment! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Costume Sewing

It's that time of year again when mother's are called upon to make Halloween costumes. I've made several in my time and this year was no exception. What was I sewing this year? A clown costume; I've never made a clown costume for an adult before.

I started by using a pattern for scrubs because I figured it should be comfortable and I didn't want to spent a lot of money for a new pattern and I dislike costumes that are uncomfortable to wear. The pattern was modified by adding long sleeves with a ruffle at the bottom. The pant legs were flared a bit also. Then two rows of narrow 1/4" satin ribbon were stitched to the bottom of the sleeves and the pant leg. A large ruffle with more ribbon at the edge was added at the neck.

He wanted pom-poms down the front and on the hat and I was surprised that I still had the cardboard circles I used many many years ago to make pom poms for the toes of my ice skates. Did you do that? Now that dates me doesn't it? But, I digress. I made two sizes of pom poms for the costume.

The hard part was the hat: a combo pointy hat with a ruffly sailor hat brim. After making a paper pattern I transferred it to Peltex. The key to the hat is the curve not the point. Once I had that curve the brim was easy to draft. It was all stitched together with a very wide zigzag.

I love this kind of sewing. Since it is a costume you don't have to be too precise. I don't make hems, I just edge finish with my serger. Glue works where one would normally sew on embellishments. After all, this is usually a one time garment.

I've made you wait long enough. Here's the result: