The Impatient Patient

That would be me. I've been given to understand that shoulder injuries take a long time to heal. I'm here to testify to the truth of that. I'm doing everything I know to promote healing but it seems to be taking FOREVER!!! I sustained this injury back at the beginning of January. Wasn't able to see the doctor until the end of that month. Then another month went by before my next appointment. There has been improvement since my last visit but it ain't happenin' fast enough to suit me.

I've been taking advantage of the opportunity to read but there's only so much reading I can do in any given day. Daytime television isn't worth talking about. Thank goodness for TCM, the classic movie channel we get via our cable service. Even that has let me down many days however.

I have four quilts waiting to be bound. Bindings have even been made for them. There's another quilt just about ready to come off the long-arm and one that only needs a back made. I might be able to apply a binding or make that quilt back but I don't want to take the chance of slowing down the recovery process. Not yet anyway.

My local quilt shop had a fantastic sale in the clearance department last Saturday: five dollars a yard! Most of her new yardage is selling for twelve to thirteen dollars a yard. Hubby kindly drove me down (driving also exacerbates the injury) and acted as my lackey in the store. He pulled bolts and carried them to the cutting counter. Then he paid for over 18 yards of fabric. Two cuts were four yards each for prospective quilt backs. The rest were colors and prints I simply felt I could put to good use eventually. Hubby picked out a few yards he thought I should add to my stash. The biggest surprise of that lot was this panel print:

He's not particularly a chicken fancier as far as I was aware. What drew him to this, he says, is the deep red in combination with the black and white. And he likes the panel in the lower left corner. It will be fun to play with these panels and see what develops - someday.

In the meantime, about all I've been able to do lately, other than read and watch TV, is embroider. I've even found needlepoint causes more pain than working on a small hooped piece of fabric. So I've started on the fourth "page" of my Year in Stitches sampler.

The light green in the upper left is my first-ever attempt at Chevron stitches. Can't say I enjoyed it but I suspect with more practice my brain will get the hang of it. I had a few false starts with the line of featherstitching across the middle of the block too. The spiderweb was just plain fun (all backstitched).

Of course all of this stitching has been done with Nancy's beautiful hand dyed floss. I have other embroidery projects I could probably work on. I want to be careful not to do too much in any given day however. {big sigh} I just hope all this restraint pays off sooner rather than later!

Retail Therapy

While my elbow is being so tender it's been easier to refrain from buying new fabric. Although that's a sad thing to have to say. That hasn't kept me from indulging in a little retail therapy however! First I bought one of Nancy's gift boxes called Return to Sleepy Hollow.

This is over and above the monthly installment I receive in the limited edition floss club. So far the shipment for November hasn't arrived yet. I only receive six skeins in my monthly installments; twelve in a box feels like a real splurge. I have to say that I am sorely tempted to just buy one of her Kindred Spirits gift boxes too, rather than keeping my fingers crossed to win a box through her current give away. 

The other temptation to which I have succumbed is a bundle of patterns and floss from Sublime Stitching. 

I have far more embroidery patterns than I will probably ever actually use but there are some things I can't seem to resist. You've probably already guessed I'm a sucker for color in threads and fabric. "It's my one weakness" as Dorcas Lane would say (Lark Rise to Candleford). 😉

You may have guessed that my spirits have perked up (finally, thank Goodness!). Now the trick will be not to do too much to aggravate my elbow. There's at least one quilt I had hoped to get done before Christmas so it could be shipped in time to be a gift of the season. Hard to say whether that will happen now. I am not good about pacing myself. When I begin a project I like to keep at it until it's complete (within reason). I will have to learn to work in small bites rather than gorging myself with patchwork and/or binding. {sigh} It's always something, ain't it?!

Two (Hopefully Sweet) Treats

I resolved the issue of borders/no borders on my Broken Dishes Disappearing 9 Patch by putting narrow borders down the sides and slightly wider borders on the top and bottom of the quilt.

That  gave me a bit more length without adding much width. I'll use the same black border print for the binding. 

This quilt should finish around 63" x 78." Kate has said it puts her in mind of cellophane wrapped hard candies strewn across a tabletop. I hope the quilting I have in mind will emphasize that effect. But instead of hard candy I'm thinking I'll call this Scattered Taffy. A couple of family members have a particular fondness for taffy. 😉

Meanwhile, I have yet another Disappearing 9 Patch quilt that I don't think I've shared with you. It's the same setting I used for the Halloween print version but darker alternate patches in the original 9 patch blocks for this one changes the whole look.

This one features food and food-related prints. There are various fruits and vegetables and Peeps and Christmas candy and ice cream and a couple of kitchen appliances. I used pairs (or sometimes four) of each focal fabric so it can be used as an I Spy quilt. I had foster kids in mind when I was making it.

I thought it was especially fun to use the mice-among-the-cheese print next to wedges of cheese!

It will finish around 60" x 73." I had to go out and  purchase fabric to bind it, in spite of all the prints and colors in my stash. Most often there just wasn't enough to go all the way around. I decided to use a red to frame the quilt and blend with the backing

Of course I couldn't get out of the shop without picking up a couple of other prints...

Most of these are just fat quarters. At least a couple of them will end up in Turkey Track blocks eventually. I don't have quite enough of those yet for a complete quilt. I have a feeling I'll be getting back to them soon!

Retail Therapy

I felt better yesterday than I have since I took that fall (two weeks ago now?). So naturally I used my better health to expose myself to fresh toxins. 😉 I find it hard to get creating again after a full stop like the one caused by my accident. I thought some retail therapy might help.

One of our local quilt shops is having a liquidation sale. 😢 My understanding is that they hope to reopen in a new location later this year. I don't get to shop there often but I don't want to see them shut down entirely. Every shop has it's own personality and therefore a slightly different selection of prints from others in the area. But it wasn't fabric that went into my basket first.

I thought this set of stencils might give my embroidery practice a boost. I also bought a chalk pencil and just the one skein of size 5 perle cotton. Couldn't resist that color!

I didn't have any specific project in mind when I went into the store so I ended up just buying yardage that appealed to me. The first bolts came from their Halloween shelf.

There's two yards of the orange batik (which did not come from the Halloween shelf) and a yard each of the spider web print and the orange below it. The two greens and the blue are half-yard cuts and  the rooster print is only a fat quarter. It will be interesting to see where these end up. At the moment I don't have a clue. However, the stencils had the desired effect.

This is what page two of my Year in Stitches sampler looked like before I injured myself:

Now it looks like this:

Remember, this is just a place to practice and play. I marked a few lines with the stencils, like for the snail shell and the twig below.

The hearts coming down the right side are pretty much freehand, each one created with a pair of offset fly stitches.

The first hearts I made (in red, at the top) were backstitched. I used Nancy's hand dyed floss exclusively on this sampler.

This sampler page might be done now. I think I can probably live with the negative spaces that remain. Which brings up the question of how to approach the next page in this year-long effort. I don't think I want to do another grid like I did for the first page. At least, not one that tight (2" square). I think I'd be more comfortable with some kind of structure over a completely blank canvas though. Watch this space!

It's My Own Fault

Today's headache I mean. No sooner did I recover from the last one (brought on by another hour in the vet clinic with Luna. She's finally beginning to act more like her old self, thank goodness.) than I braved the sale at my local quilt shop in order to get some more appropriate fabric for backgrounds for my embroidery project.

Of course I couldn't resist a couple of other pieces, just because. ;- ) Turns out I already have some of the light orange batik, fourth down from the top. Guess I really like that print and color!

It's been deliciously cool in the mornings this week. I ventured out one day to find the first bloom on one of my new David Austin rose bushes.

This is the Queen of Sweden. Judging from the spots on the leaves some bug is also enjoying my new plant.

Here it is the next day, before I brought it into the house. There's at least one other bud on this bush. I found two buds on the Charlotte rose bush. They will bloom yellow. Looking forward to that!

I've been pondering which caravan to embroider next, and what theme to give it. That's partly why I went out for fabric. I thought a broader choice of backgrounds might help move things along. Most of what's in my stash is too busy or too loud to stay in the background. In the meantime I sewed up some more blue scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Managed to get in a few other scrappy blocks as well.

So in spite of the headaches and recovery periods this week I've been relatively productive. You couldn't tell by the number of blue scraps and remnants laying around. I'll link up with the other Rainbow bloggers on Saturday. We should be getting a new color prompt soon now that I think about it!

2014 Tea Towel Challenge

I was visiting over at Quilt Diva Julie's blog and spotted a new badge on her sidebar. That took me over to Sophie Junction where, among other things, I learned about her tea towel challenge for 2014. This isn't the first one ever but it was the first one I'd heard of. I'm a sucker for a textile challenge!

The guidelines are simple:

1. Your quilt must include a tea towel–it can be new or vintage.
2. The colors in the tea towel determine the color palette for your quilt. 
3. Try something new. Since this one is defined by you, it can be anything and is an opportunity to add your own personal guidelines to the challenge.

Well, my something new will be using a tea towel as the major inspiration and focal element in an art quilt!

I didn't have anything in the house that I wanted to use so I did some online browsing. New towels didn't appeal particularly. I hit pay dirt at Etsy.com though. The first towel that caught my attention was this one:

 

I like the house image - I've always like house blocks in quilts - but it was the prayer that sealed the deal.

I've never been a kitchen person. This just seemed appropriate. ;- )

Then I cam across this one:

Another building, and I was confident I could work with the farm theme. The towel is not from 1925, it was put out by Hickory Farms in 1980 or thereabouts.

But seeing these calendar towels got me thinking. About the time of the deadline for this challenge DH and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. That sent me back to Etsy to look for a calendar towel from the year of our wedding.

I didn't have much luck with 1984. But one lovely vendor had a bundle of three vintage towels for sale...

That last one made me add the bundle to my shopping cart. I don't have to use the calendar part after all, and the boy and girl on the towel are in the same style as the Precious Moments figures we had on our wedding cake and napkins.

Don't tell my husband, but the end product of this challenge will be his anniversary present from me. He's been hinting that he needs/wants another piece of my artwork. Of course he didn't start hinting until it was too late to make him something for Christmas. Turns out it was just as well, this works out better anyway!

Oh, and if anyone out there wants one of the other towels for the challenge leave a comment and we'll work something out. :- )

Between Seams, Between Projects

So while I've been working on the Scrappy Trips blocks and another project I have yet to show you I've been sewing up scrap patches into six inch blocks for my Parts Department.

Shoo fly blocks and framed squares:

Bow Ties:

And flying geese:

These are the blocks I make most often between seams. When I cut up my remnants I generally cut 2.875" half square triangles (HST's), 2.5" squares, and 3.5" squares. Since I made those string quilts last year I've been cutting 2.5" and 3.5" strips too. Sometimes I get 3.5" x 6.5" rectangles for flying geese out of my leftovers. When I know I'm going to make Bow Tie blocks I cut 2" squares. I don't use that size/shape very often otherwise.

I tell you all this because I had one of those days in the studio recently. I store my pre-cut patches in tins just under the tabletop where I do most of my machine sewing. Generally the tins are safely out of the way and/or the lids are snugly in place. On this particular day that was not the case. This is what I ended up with:

I had to walk around the mess for a couple of hours before I could face reorganizing them into their neat little stacks in the tin.

I have some goodies to show you too. :- )

I found these cool knee socks locally. How could I leave them in the store???!! The shop carries about a dozen different patterns, all of them wonderful and colorful. I'll be adding more to my sock drawer for sure. You can check out all their designs and order your own here. It's almost time for a new journal too, and this bird makes me smile every time I look at it. And how could I leave those batiks behind?

Last but not least, a friend of mine found this set of glasses in a store I can't safely go into:

Mexican sugar skulls, and the bottom of each glass is coated in a different color. When I saw a picture of them I all but started drooling. Fortunately Heather was willing to go back, they still had some in stock, and now they're mine, all mine! bwaahaahaaa!

How Do You Fight the Blues?

With orange of course!

It may not be obvious from these photos, but these tulips will be orange when they open up.

I suspect the adhesive the dentist used to hold my new crown in place is off-gassing in my mouth and affecting my mood and energy level. This morning I felt the need of some retail therapy. It wasn't until I was back at home that I realized I'd purchased not only orange tulips but also a preponderance of orange prints:

I have no specific plans for an orange quilt. Perhaps this is my reaction to feeling left out of the Halloween festivities this year? There's a yard and a half of the multi-color print on the bottom of the stack above. Maybe it will end up in a quilt with the batik parts I was making a while back.

I also picked up a couple more black and white prints for a project I haven't shared with y'all yet.

Just fat quarters and a half yard piece. I could easily have brought home so much more! Unfortunately, I missed all the sales in my local quilt shop and online last month. These purchases were at full retail. It doesn't take much to make a pretty big dent in the budget at those prices.

I don't know whether I will start in again on the new black and white project or whether I will go through my Parts Department to see what I can pull together for a quilt for a victim of Super Storm Sandy. Don't you wish you just go wrap them in a quilty hug right now?

An Excursion

I haven't been out to the La Conner Quilt Museum in over a year. It may very well be much longer than that; I lose track of time easily. The building itself has been under renovation for a couple of years now. Between that and the visitors who all bring in their own scents and toxins it's just not a safe place for me to be. I had to go this week though, to see the beaded quilts made by Thom Atkins. It was a painful 24 hours afterward but it was worth it in the long run.

The museum had some of its permanent collection on display on the main floor.


Thom's quilts were on the second floor, and the quilts and wearable art of Susanne Staton are on display on the third floor. All of it is outstanding. I was most surprised by the size of some of the beaded quilts. He has a quilt featuring a toucan that, if I remember correctly, is something like 54" wide and 84" long! I took pictures but most of them are not worth sharing. Here's a detail shot of a centipede crawling up the tree the toucan is sitting in:



And here's another detail shot, but from another quilt:



What I was most curious about was where he finds some of his beads. He has huge glass bead leaves and the bodies of beetles that I've never seen anywhere! The only answer I can come up with on my own is that he lives in California. You can get things there you won't find anywhere else in the country, except maybe New York City. ;- )

In the museum's gift shop I was delighted to find a herd of cloth dolls made by an old friend, Gloria Burke. We used to be in a doll club together - back before my MCS diagnosis put the kibosh on classes and group activities. The dolls were very reasonably priced so I brought one home with me. I was feeling very sorry for myself by that time, unable to even crack open any of the intriguing new books in the gift shop for fear of making myself sicker than I already was at that point. On the way back to my car I took the opportunity to pop into one of the many delectable stores in downtown La Conner. That's where I found the perfect pet for my new doll: a scarlet macaw ornament that was made in Guatemala.

I believe I'm going to name the doll Scarlett. Like me, she obviously loves the color red. The macaw will be Buttons, in honor of a scarlet macaw I once knew very well by that name. One of my many retail experiences was co-managing a pet store. The original Buttons belonged to the store owner and lived in the store. Definitely one of the highlights of that particular job!

I found a volunteer long arm quilter for Who Let the Dogs Out?! so I am now free to move on to my next project. It may be time to play with those text prints I've been collecting lately...

Lining the Nest

One of the reasons I named my blog From the Magpie's Nest is because I tend to collect things before I really know what I'm going to do with them. Most often it's stuff I'll eventually use in my artwork. A lot of times it's sparkly; I'm given to understand magpies like to collect shiny stuff. Just for the record, it's my husband who's the pack rat. ;- )

If you've been reading this blog for very long you know I also have a thing for birds in general. So you can imagine how delighted I was to find my recent order from Delta Patchwork wrapped in this tissue paper:


I was thinking of the text quilt I want to make when I ordered these prints.

I'm still not sure what form that quilt is going to take.

The original reason for placing the order was to get yardage of the colorful dotty print below. Quiltdivajulie was so kind as to send me scraps of that print when they didn't make it into her Gotta Love It! quilt.

Apparently sitting in the very room where your stash is kept, right out in plain sight, is no guarantee that you won't accidently order a fabric you already own. I checked to make sure I had used up the spotted yellow print so I knew I wanted more of that. But I didn't realize I still had an untouched piece of the white with black circles on my shelves. Oh well. Now I have almost a full yard of it. Considering that I keep buying black and white prints it's a pretty sure bet I'll be making at least one more quilt using them someday!

Unexpected Purchase

You know how when you go shopping with a friend (or a daughter!) they can talk you into buying something you know you want but wouldn't buy without their encouragement? I blame C~ for what happened to me this week. ;- )

First of all, here's some of the random piecing I'd been doing.

This is Phoebe, the machine they were sewn on.

Turns out I've had Phoebe for 9.5 years. Time flies when you're having fun and getting good results. But this week C~ asked me whether I was aware of the special deal being offered by our local Pfaff dealer. I'd received the flyer but hadn't paid much attention to it because I didn't think I was in the market for a new machine. She filled me in on the details, and the next time I went out on a routine errand I stopped in at the store. The air quality was too poor for me to stay long but I got enough to whet my appetite. Because they know me there and know of my situation the store manager allowed me to take the floor model home overnight for a test drive.

This is the Pfaff Expression 2.0. You may be able to see at a glance that it has a longer arm and much wider throat. There are 3.5 extra inches between the needle and the column. That doesn't sound like much but when you're trying to maneuver a quilt of any size in and around there for quilting it will feel like a lot. This machine finally has the serpentine stitch that I always wished Phoebe had too.

I didn't fall in love right away. That first night I was feeling poorly and didn't realize that I didn't have the even-feed system engaged while I was doing my piecing. Once I figured that out I was much happier with the results. Then the next morning I layered up a sample quilt sandwich and had a go. This machine is capable of faster speed than the poor old Phoebe. Quilting could actually become fun!

All evening long there were discussions amongst my husband, my son, and myself as to which of the four sewing machines in the house I would use to get the $500 trade in credit. Two of the machines are vintage. They belonged to my husband's grandmother and mother respectively. They are quality machines that work but aren't currently up to par. DS has a starter machine he bought with high school graduation money and it has served him well. I wasn't excited at the prospect of trading Phoebe in. So while I tried out the new machine DS tried out Phoebe. By the time I had to return the Expression 2.0 to the store DS had decided that he wouldn't miss his starter sewing machine that much after all!

Because I had a couple of lingering questions about the new machine I took it back to the store the next morning and left the trade-in machine at home. Fortunately at that hour the store was virtually empty and the air quality tolerable. I was able to spend enough time to have my questions answered, my hesitations assuaged, and in the end I made the purchase. DH went back later in the day to turn in the starter machine.

These are the blocks I pieced while trying out the new machine.

I was really glad I had patches at the ready so I had something to practice on. All of these blocks turned out perfectly, in spite of some of the challenges I had. I can't say that I'm head over heels in love with this new machine but I feel confident she will grow on me over time. She is the machine I would have bought when I bought Phoebe if it had been available. All she needs now is a call name. I figure that, too, will come to me over time.

And before you go: I saw this vehicle on the street this week while I was stopped at a light. I was thrilled that this time I actually had my camera with me even though I had to take the picture through my car's window. Isn't it a beauty? Someone has put a lot of time and effort and love into it!