Not George Clooney!

I didn't track down the source, but apparently the question is floating around in blogland, "What's on your bed?" My answer is, "Not George Clooney!" Or Johnny Depp or Matthew McConaughey or anyone else exciting ;- )

No, Helen Roll is on my bed at the moment. At least that's what it says on the back of this quilt:



This is my $10 thrift shop treasure which apparently belonged to Helen Roll before she passed away earlier this year. It's a lovely warm quilt but it's only the top layer. Underneath it we have the pinwheel quilt which will go to Miss Margaret when she gets a little older:




I'm not sure whether I've blogged about this quilt yet or not. The Double Pinwheels were made when DD was in elementary school. She picked out some of the fabrics that were used in the blocks. That project was put on the back burner at some point, to be lost in the mists of time. Last year (?) I unearthed the blocks and decided to make a quilt for DD's darling daughter out of them. Of course there were half a dozen or so of the big pinwheel blocks that were too small or otherwise unusable so I went back into my block stash and found some regular Pinwheel blocks exactly half the size of the Double Pinwheels. At that point I decided to put the pinwheels on point (this is turning out to be a very pointy story!). I needed a few more of the smaller ones to fill in the blanks and made sure to make them out of fabric from the same time period. Some of them were made out of scraps from the dresses my mother had made for DD. The center of the quilt needed to be a bit longer before I added the border so I created the primitive hearts. There's a row of them along the top and along the bottom (which you can't see in this picture). They include fabrics from Margaret's other great grandmother. The border fabric also came from that great grandmother. You probably can't tell from the photo, but I machine quilted around each pinwheel. Because DD is such a fan of tied quilts, and Miss M likes to twiddle them, I included ties of embroidery floss in the setting triangles around the perimeter of the quilt. It's not fancy but it's serviceable and that seems to be what I do.

I was really pleased to be able to include all of the women on this side of the family in Miss Margaret's quilt. Hopefully I haven't set the bar too high for future quilts for the other grandchildren!

What I Did on Saturday

Ta da! The Lincoln Logs blocks are all sewn together!

This was the perfect project for me on Saturday because I had a bad reaction headache and needed a distraction. Sewing the blocks together was a fairly mindless activity. I had to take two of the blocks completely apart and put them back together again to make them big enough (the maker of the blocks had taken too deep a seam allowance), one block had a seam where one fabric had only been caught by a thread - literally! - so I took that seam out too and put it back together, and one block was exactly the right size and had to be taken in to make it fit with its' neighbors. When I spread the top out on my bed afterward I was dismayed to see an area with too many light fabrics in it for my taste. I had sewn the blocks exactly the way I'd laid them out on the floor; the problem just didn't show itself until they were actually sewn together. {sigh} What to do?

I thought about moving the offending block(s) but then I'd have to replace it with something from somewhere else. Y'all know what happens then! One thing leads to another and I'd have nothing but a pile of blocks again. I could make a whole new block but I didn't want to leave out any of the blocks my friends had made for me. I seriously considered the suggestion to tea dye the light blocks to tone them down. Eventually the idea dawned on me to just take out the light pieces in one or more blocks and replace them with something darker. I played around with the scraps I had until I found something I thought would work. Swapping out the two smaller light strips from one block made all the difference in the world. That was the only change I ended up making. Whew!

I didn't get to see the granddaughters on Halloween. But when I went over there on Friday Miss Margaret was dressed up in her princess dress and fairy wings, which was her Halloween costume and is currently her favorite outfit (of course!). SHE WAS SO CUTE!!!

And I forgot the camera.

DD has promised me a picture. They were here briefly yesterday but Margaret and I were too busy playing to get any pictures taken. Baby Susan played rag doll the whole time she was here, asleep in her mother's arms. At two months old she is the happiest baby I've ever seen. When she's awake she smiles and laughs and coos and gurgles. I feel like the luckiest grandma in the world!

Happy Halloween!

Just a few more of my decorations... I think the rest of them will have to wait until next year!

Moda witches ~ some of my favorite of all time :- ) These were cut from a border print stripe and backed with an appropriate print of another cotton. Then I filled them with polyfil and plastic pellets to give them weight and make them free-standing.

An addition to the entrance of our home:

And a close-up so you can really appreciate the sentiment:

The hallway in its' almost-complete state:

Not a great picture, but the best I could get under the circumstances. The beaded curtain is made up of little glow-in-the-dark skulls and bone shaped black beads. Love it! The black fabric on the wall is covered in green skeletons. You may be able to see the broom I've left in the corner. I've also hung a (small) witch's hat on one of the hooks on the right wall. (Unfortunately, behind my rain hat and umbrella. I might have to move that.) There's a glow-in-the-dark skeleton hanging from a noose back in the corner too. And there are a couple of soft-sculpture ghosts hanging around. (What appears to be a light fixture overhead is actually a sort of sky light.)

And now, for the next holiday...

Buenos Dias de los Muertos!

(forgive my Spanish - I really have none!)

There's Nothing Like Friends

These three amigos are made of the semi-squishy foam that allows them to be crushed and then regain their original shape. We've had them for several years and they've been through the mill as you can see: the guy on the left has lost an eye!

My friends are much better looking ;- ) Over the course of the last decade or so I've been gifted with three batches of friendship blocks, none of which have been made into a finished quilt. Yet.

The problem with the first two sets was my own fault. I ambitiously asked for blocks made any size as long as they would finish in some increment of 2". I thought it would be fun to put such a puzzle together. Someday it will be! I have had neither the space nor the energy to do much more than get them pinned to a sheet. The first set are all buildings. Houses, shops, barns, even an outhouse! I want to landscape that town properly, and someday I will. I've shown the second set, the black and white and hot pink blocks. I'll get to them too, but that's more of a spring or summer project. In the meantime, I have just received the last blocks from my most recent friendship block request. This time I wised up and asked for a specific block in a specific size (which, of course, they will not all be!). I even provided some of the fabric for the blocks.

My request was for Lincoln Logs blocks in flannel. I thought it would make a lovely, cozy, snuggle-up quilt and be fairly quick to put together. When I counted up the blocks I was given and did some math I realized I could easily make a quilt for my double bed rather than just a couch throw. So yesterday I made seven additional blocks:

Today I have been playing with the blocks on the living room floor to get a pleasing arrangement. In spite of the fact that I gave out two of the fabrics for each block I have a few blocks that are quite unique! Most of the blocks have a "country" flavor to them. Dark colors, floral prints or plaids... you know. The ringer blocks have bright hues in them or obviously juvenile prints. Making them fit in is a fun challenge. (It looks better in person, believe me. The white bits you see on the blocks here are little slips of paper with the name of the block maker on it.)

I think I have an arrangement I can live with. I made detailed notes as to what goes where so I can just sit at the sewing machine and assembly-line sew them together. The real trick will be to create a back for this top once it's complete. I am seriously running out of flannel! One of my goals is to use up old stock; this just might do it.

And now, some more of our old friends...

Dracula is a candy dish. I don't dare put candy in it until Halloween night because, as you can see, the rats might get it! (This is a very special rat. He's from NIMH and wears a beaded necklace.)

Some Good, Some Not So Good...

I'm happy to report that I've been doing some sewing. Just not on either of my journal quilts! In this case I've used a charity as an avoidance technique. (Can a person be both bad and good at the same time?!) These red and white blocks are for Quilts 4 Leukaemia. I'd been wanting to make some blocks for that worthwhile cause ever since I first read about it on Clare's blog.


My son kindly pointed out that one block on my design wall was not like the others. How perceptive of him (heavy sarcasm). As you can see, I worked my way all around the skull journal quilt. What remains to be seen is whether I'll make one more block for a nicely balanced 9-patch set (not that the blocks will end up in the same quilt anyway) or whether this lot of 8 will go as is. They were just easier to make in sets of two. What surprised me was how little I had in the way of red scraps! And how hard I found it to work in only two colors: red and white. Especially for the free-pieced blocks. Traditional blocks often were made in only two colors. I just haven't had the desire to make any traditional blocks lately.

Yesterday morning while I was journaling I had an idea for using the recycled silk ties I collect. Since I had the opportunity to act on that inspiration I pulled out the boxes in which I keep the colors separated and had at it.

My original idea did not pan out. This is what I ended up with.

I can't say that I'm thrilled with it either. (The top row in the picture is not actually sewn in place at this point.) I have an idea for a variation on what I was trying to do but I'm not sure I'll be following up on it today. The pain of failure is a little too fresh. Not that I see this as a complete failure; it just didn't work out the way I had envisioned. And every "failure" serves to help me see more clearly what works for me. So it's not a failure, merely a method that didn't work. Who knows, maybe this will send me to my beads and threads and get me started embellishing that journal quilt!

And now, a little bit of Halloween:

The potholders on either side of the ghost oven mitt were made by a friend of mine, not me (although I have almost every fabric in them in my stash!). My DD has a couple of Halloween potholders that I made last year and saw again for the first time last week. They were cute! Who knew?! I have a couple more Halloween decorations I want to show you so I guess I'll have to get busy and get them photographed in the next couple of days :- )