Back to Quilts?

While we were waiting for the twins to come into the world I played around with my 1930's repro prints. I had a few blocks I'd made many, many years ago that hadn't made it into a quilt yet and I'd been reading Gwen's latest liberated quiltmaking book. So some of the blocks are precision pieced and some are more liberated.

Sharon over at Indigo Threads tried out the liberated windmill blocks and had the same experience I did. Eyeballing the cut that creates the blades of the windmill doesn't automatically make the blocks look wonky. It helps when you make the block big enough to trim it down to another size. Then you can cut the whole block on an angle.


I also had the experience of some of my blades turning out looking rather fat and clunky. More so than Sharon's I think. Oh well. That's what makes them wonky!

I'm planning to sew this batch of blocks together and making it the center medallion for a quilt:

I was originally thinking a toddler size quilt, using up as much of my Depression-era repro prints as possible. One of the gals in our local quilt guild is putting together another box of preemie quilts though, and I could easily turn these blocks into a quilt that size in no time. So we'll see what happens. To be honest, I'm already bored with these fabrics. I don't know why, they're lively enough. They're just not me I guess. Another hazard is that it's a new month and I want to make a new ornament for the Bead Journal Project. I'm in the mood to play with beads more than fabric at the moment. So it may be a little bit before I do more than whip up a preemie quilt or two.

Baby Pictures

Thank you, one and all, for your congratulations and well wishes. I'm a pretty happy grandma!

Here they are, our newest little bundles of joy:

They are swaddled in about 3 blankets each because they are having trouble keeping their body temps up. They have next to no body fat to keep them warm. Other than that they seem to be perfectly healthy and will be released from the hospital as soon as they can maintain acceptable temperatures for 24 hours.

"Baby A," the first one out:

And "Baby B:"

They are most likely fraternal twins, not the identical ones we thought they might be. I see elements of DH's mother in Baby B's face, although not necessarily from this angle.

DH and I had the whole afternoon with DD and the babies yesterday. It was heavenly. Because there were so few other people in and out of the room I was able to hold up pretty well. I feel very tired today but it could have been so much worse! I don't know when I'll get to spend that kind of time with the babies again. DD and family will probably be staying with other family until their check-ups next week. After that they may finally return to their own home. The problem is that most baby gear is scented in a way that is too much for my system to handle and DD's house will be full of it. {sigh}

And now I have an idea what I'm going to do for my official February Bead Journal Project. I'm just not sure how soon I'm going to tackle it. ;- )

They're Here!

My two newest granddaughters have arrived! They were delivered by C-section yesterday afternoon. The first one weighed in at 4 pounds 6 ounces and the second one was 4 pounds 3 ounces. Both are about 17" long. I've seen a few cell phone photos of them but don't have anything I can post yet. I also have not seen them in person yet nor spoken with my DD since before the procedure. I want to call her to see how she's doing but I know she needs what rest she can get and is probably pretty busy inbetween times.

I'm debating about whether or not to risk the trip down to the hospital on my own today. If DH can take a personal day from work we may just go down together tomorrow. We're waiting for a second car seat to be delivered too. If that comes today we can just take it with us tomorrow and save ourselves an extra trip.

My oh my, so exciting!

I Double Dog Dare Ya!

I have been reading and corresponding with A Creative Dreamer for a while now. We have developed something of a mutual admiration society. We have also cooked up a little ATC (artist trading card) swap.

If you read the comments I get you may know that Creative Dreamer dared me to make a fabric ATC when I was wondering what I would tackle next. I laughed when I read that but you know what? I turned right around and made this:

It's 2.5" x 3.5," fabric, thread, beads, and sequins. Oh, and a charm. I used a scrap of batting (Warm & Natural) as interfacing and put a piece of watercolor paper on the back. Took me at most a couple of hours to make. And it was fun! I was surprised that it turned out to be so much like the one of the squares I made for the Pink Artists Doll (a detail of which I use for my profile picture).

Anyway, Creative Dreamer and I have decided that we would like to invite others to try their hands at making fabric ATC's for a one-on-one swap. CD will be the swap hostess so you need to go to her blog to formally sign up. You don't need to have a blog of your own, although it would be best if you can send her a digital image of your finished ATC so she can post it with all the others after the swap. You have until Feb. 15 to sign up for the swap and then the finsihed ATC needs to be mailed to your swap partner by March 15. (We figured a short deadline would keep anyone from forgetting about their commitment!)

Paper artists are trading ATC's all the time. I actually begged this one off of Creative Dreamer:

I know fiber artsits have also been making ATC's; I just never jumped into the pool until CD dared me. I intvite you to jump in also, if you haven't already. The water's fine!

Video: Living With MCS

I just found out about this video report done by a news station in Anchorage, Alaska and have to share it with my friends and readers. I tried to add it here but wasn't able to figure out the procedure quickly so just click here and then click on each of the two screens for the whole story.

It's hard to hear the physician in the story say that MCS is not quantifiable and therefore stands less of a chance of being recognized by the AMA as a valid affliction. He's right about it not being quantifiable because every person with this disorder reacts differently to different levels of chemicals and a different variety of chemicals. Every BODY is different. What upsets my system may not affect another person with MCS. However, that does not mean this is not a real physical phenomenon. Like the daughter in the story, my family members can testify to the reality of what happens to me when I encounter something my body can't handle.

I also had to chuckle when I saw the cat one woman lives with. So many people don't understand how I can live with a dog (two dogs at the moment) and not be affected by seasonal allergies but then am completely incapacitated by a whiff of perfume or hair spray. That's the mystery of MCS. And the mystery is what keeps the medical community from coming to our aid.

Triangle Tuesday

No, I'm not starting a new blogger challenge. I'm showing you what I've done with a whole lot of itty-bitty triangles. ;- )

I have this pretty coiled fabric bowl made by my friend Heather. I've been using it as a place to collect the squares and rectangles I make out of the scrap triangles that I've been sewing together as leaders and enders. The bowl was getting to the point of overflowing so I thought I'd better do something about it.

I dumped out the bowl, sorted the bits by size and shape, and started sewing things together. This is what I ended up with:

None of these blocks/units are very big. For example, the brown and ecru Broken Dishes blocks in the middle of the design wall would finish at 2.5." The largest Broken Dishes block (in the top row) will finish at 4.5."

Now my bowl looks like this:

I may play with the stuff on the design wall a bit more today, or I may dive into this and make some more things to play with!

Yes, my book is finally ready for me to read and enjoy. (Actually, it was ready late Sunday and I've already read through it once.) Since I'm sort of between major projects at the moment I'm thinking of dedicating the next couple of days to experimenting with some of the liberated blocks I've never tried before. I own and have read every single Liberated Quiltmaking book Gwen has been involved in but I never really understood what she was saying about making those corner units for the Shoo Fly block. This time I finally got it. Duh! So of course now I'm excited about actually trying my hand at it to see if I really do understand. I know it's not rocket science; sometimes we just get blocked by the simplest things - no pun intended!

Detour

We got a call in the middle of the night Thursday -- Friday morning really. DD was in labor and going to the hospital. Next thing we heard she was being taken by amublance to the nearest hospital with an neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU). We opted to get as much sleep as possible before making the trip down, about 30 miles south of where we live.
She was still in labor when we arrived and the babies were doing fine. We waited... and waited... and the contractions stopped. DD has done this before, with her other two pregnancies. She'll labor for a day, then stop for 24 hours or so, and then go into hard labor and deliver. The doctors decided to put her back on the anti-contraction medication and keep her in the hospital. Maybe until she finally hits the 36 week mark. I half expect to get a call later today saying that she's back in labor or has already delivered the twins. I won't be going back to attend the birth. The hand sanitizers and other chemicals in use in the hospital were too much for my system. I was fortunate that my husband was around the other day so he could get me home after our three hours or so in the birthing room and hallways. I will, however, make the trip again to see the babies as soon as I can.

In the meantime, in my effort to figure out how to control the scrap population here in the Magpie's Nest I have been playing with the leftovers from Sunflower's quilt. I've been cutting 3.5" squares from bigger remnants ever since I had so much fun making my Fungly Quilt. I'd built up quite a collection of them so I used those in conjunction with the larger scraps to make these liberated stars:

I had some offcut triangles I sewed together too, and I made a few crumb blocks. The two you see here are 6.5" in their raw state.

I have more bits that have been pieced together but aren't really big enough to be anything yet. I suspect that my Parts Department is going to look slightly different from Gwen or Freddy's Parts Department. Theirs consists of completed blocks, like my orphan blocks. I think mine is going to consist of pieced bits that could become blocks.

Oh, and my copy of Liberated Quiltmaking II arrived in yesterday's mail. Hurray! I can't wait for my son or DH to get it taken apart for me. I may even risk the fumes to take a quick peek. The wiser course might be to sew some more scraps together while I'm impatiently waiting... But we can't be wise all the time, right? ;- )