Countdown to My New Stash

Next week is the International Quilt Festival in Houston. I am taking vacation Wednesday through Friday to go enjoy and salivate over the quilts. I enjoy looking at all the quilts and seeing both the technique and the quilting of the piece. I don't usually take pictures, but I'm sure my brain stores ideas that I will want to try some time in the future. A lot of the quilts have signs that say "no photographs", but inevitably pictures are always taken. My goal to get a quilt entered this year came up short, but it was a learning experience and I will start working on next year's quilt. I would really like to see a quilt of mine hanging in the George R. Brown Convention Center.

My new fabric stash is being shipped next week. Apparently the journey from New Hampshire to Texas is approximately six days so I won't actually take possession of my new 2200+ yards of fabric until the following week. I have been dreaming up ideas on what to do with all that fabric and let me just say, I'm going to have FUN with it! I have drawn up new quilt designs and I'm sure there will be plenty of new fabric for me to audition. I will be selling the fabric either on my new, yet to be styled, website, or possibly on Etsy or Ebay. It's an adventure and I'm up to the challenge. There is a small fear that this purchase is a scam, but I feel confident that it's all good.

Quilt Fest

The past several weeks I've been participating in my own personal quilt fest. I made four new quilts and finished binding five quilts. It feels good to accomplish something at night other than lie around and watch TV. Although I must admit, I do like a lot of television shows and I don't have cable.

Last weekend B and I went to the Bellaire Arts & Crafts Festival. I had nine of my quilts there and I did not sell a single one. Fortunately the lady whose booth I shared sold four of her quilts so I was happy for her. I sat there and finished hand sewing the binding on one of my quilts. I am donating two of my quilts to a silent auction this weekend. The benefit is for a 21 year old girl with cancer. This is the 2nd time around for her and I'm saying my prayers for her recovery.

I will soon be receiving the fabric inventory of a store in New Hampshire that went out of business. The decision to buy was made at the same time the market came crashing down. I decided that having the fabric was more important to me than the money. After I had mailed the certified check, I received my 9/30 statements showing my losses for the quarter. And these statements did not reflect the huge downturns in October. Oh, well, who needs to retire, huh?! If I end up homeless, I will at least have plenty of fabric to keep me warm. Always the optimist. Let me know if you want to buy some fabric!!!

Oddities

Let's just say that I just spent a week in Portland, Oregon. If not for reconnecting with my friend, L, after 15+ years, it would have been a totally disastrous trip. I was very happy to touch down on Texas soil and be back among the friendly folk. I wanted to fall in love with Portland and imagine myself moving there. B was able to go with me on my work trip and he was able to enjoy the scenery, but he too felt the coldness of the people. I had it worse as I was working with some very uncooperative coworkers who've never heard of the words "hello" or "thanks". Alas, the trip is over and I miss not seeing my friend. I hope to go back when I don't have to deal with my fellow workers. Yikes, that was painful!!!

Here's a sketch of my latest quilt. By the time it is completed it will probably have evolved into something totally different than what I am imagining right now. But I think the basics will remain the same.

I need to get some sleep. I'm having a hard time adjusting back to CDT.

I am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

I have been thinking about this person I made on the black fabric. Originally I had designed a woman who was celebrating her life at 50. Well that was so last year (literally) so I had to change the design up just a bit. I still like my original drawing from two years ago, but a month or so ago I purchased fabric pens and decided that I would write on this fabric. I tested both writing first and quilting over and vice versa. It didn't seem to make a difference so I decided I would write on the fabric first. As you can see, the fabric pens had a few problems and it was very time consuming. The red pen ending up splattering all over the fabric (I was not happy with that), but I just kept plugging along. The pens seemed to dry up after a couple of words and there was a lot of shaking to get the paint to flow again. I kept thinking that I was both creating art and doing arm exercises as I vigorously shook those pens! I'll let you know if my arms tone up any if I continue to paint on fabric with those pens. My initial inclination is "no", but one never knows. These are all experiments so I will be happy with each one. My latest drawing is courtesy of Sharon Schamber's video. I created this at lunch time one day. I am going to change up the design a bit and then this one will be made for another one of my brothers and his wife. I'm looking forward to this one a lot.

I picked my first pepper of the season last week. I don't know if it's too hot this summer or what, but we only harvested around 10 tomatoes and so far only one pepper. I don't really care about the tomatoes as I don't eat them, but I do like my freshly grown peppers so I hope that there are many more of them to come. Last year we had peppers until February.

I finished my scrapbooking project and I am now up to date with pictures of my quilts in a scrapbook. Of course if I had pictures of my earlier quilts I would probably fill another album, but going forward I should keep things pretty current.

I am leasing out my long arm machine to a fellow quilter who is over here now working on a quilt. I made the offer to her over a year ago when I was fine with someone using my machine and me making a little money off of it. But now that I have the machine running like a dream, I'm not so keen on having anyone use it. Oh, well. This is her second quilt that she's quilting and I think I counted eight more in the queue. Yikes!

Work has slowed down just a bit. At least enough for me to take a Friday off this week. I'm on the third day of my three day weekend and what do you know. This Friday is my real Friday

off so I should only have a four day week this week. Yay!

Well, I guess I will go check on my guest and make sure that all is running smoothly.

Scrappy Sunday

I missed the wedding in Kansas yesterday. I called one of my brothers last night at the reception and asked if they missed me. The siblings were all assembled sans me. It was 8 p.m. and I was just leaving work. Again, thank you Portland! It sounded like everyone was having a great time and this morning I woke up sad knowing that I missed yet another family occasion. I should have just not cared about my job and gone, but I have a responsibility that I don't take lightly. In the end does it really matter that I worked to get my job done on time? No. I should put family first. It's hard to be responsible . . . either way I would have felt guilty. Sorry M that I missed your wedding. I'm glad everyone else was in attendance.

Today was supposed to be my scrapbook/quilting day. Instead I have done relatively little in the way of being creative. I'm just glad that tomorrow I have the day off. And if Gustav hits us (which it's not supposed to) then I will also have Tuesday off. That would be nice, but if we don't have electricity, then not so much!

Well, I think it's time to get back to the table of creativity that awaits me!

Tax Season

Right now we're winding down the tax season. I changed jobs in the middle of tax season this year and had to jump right in and start with new consolidated companies and new software. The amazing thing about that I have discovered so far is certain people's ability to totally ignore the tax department. They make no effort to ease our job burdens. Consequently, we will all be working over the Labor Day weekend because we spent three days waiting for the Portland office (you know who you are) to answer our phone calls and e-mails. I was totally amazed to learn that these people are CPA's. I am a CPA and I would never think to treat my fellow workers that badly. In fact, I would think that I'd be fired for such blatant disregard of our needs, but somehow our office in Portland has some secret shield of protection. Absolutely amazing. The only reason we received our answer when we did is because our controller was flying to New York and while he was at the Houston airport he ran into the Portland office CFO. It was only then that he called his office and had his people call us. If not for the airport incident, we might still be waiting and be yet another couple of additional days behind. I guess the moral to the story is that no matter where a person works, there will always be bad people with which you'll have to work. Ugh!

Consequently no quilting has been done this week. I worked last weekend also so instead of quilting I started putting together the quilting scrapbooks. I'm on Volume I right now. B was kind enough to print off pictures and find fabric scraps for me. We don't have pictures of more than half of the quilts I've made, but that's okay. Going forward we should have everything documented. I hope to have Sunday and Monday off so I should be able to get some kind of creative thing done. I have another drawing for my next quilt. I think this will be for my brother and his wife who celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary this month. Their three kids threw them a big surprise bash. I was unable to attend as I was working and the party was a couple of states away. Saturday their oldest son gets married in Kansas. I will not be able to attend that function either. I will be the only sibling not in attendance (there are eight of us). I will make the Thanksgiving festivities, but I doubt my sister will be there then.

Well, I've been working long hours and it's time for sleep now. Sweet dreams.

Girlfriend

Today's project included my new quilt that I designed while I was napping yesterday. I'm still working on it, but it's turning out okay so far. Tomorrow I have someone coming over to learn how to use my longarm machine. I met her over a year ago, but I didn't hear from her until Friday. Now I'm not so sure I want anyone else on my machine. It's sewing beautifully for me and since we both work full time, we'll be needing the machine at the same time. I think she only has a few quilts she needs quilted so I guess I can live with that.

I had a nice jog this evening after the rain came and went. Usually the rain would be followed by humidity, but tonight it was pleasant and I had to run without the doggie because his right paw is hurt right now. I took him out for a walk this morning and put the bootie on his left paw. I was commenting about how good he was walking when I noticed I had the bootie on the wrong foot. Oops. I got the bootie on the right foot for his afternoon walk. My bad.

Tomorrow morning is the spin class from hell. Just kidding Melanie. Your class is great, just really, really tough. I've been going to her class for over a year now. No results in body shape, but hey, I'm working on it. Last week I did her spin class and then took the dog for a jog. That was tough. I don't know how triathletes do it. Today I watched the women's Olympic marathon. There was no US contender, but I enjoyed watching the women run. Right after that was Dara Torres silver medal win and then another silver medal win in the relay. I think they said she's won 11 medals, but none of them gold. I'm not sure that's true. And then there was Michael Phelps' 8th gold medal win. That was awesome. He seems like a really nice kid too and the rest of the American team was very gracious.

Here's today's project. Enjoy.

Another Week Closer

Two more weeks until the Consolidated federal return and all state returns must be completed. Consequently, I went to work today on my Friday off. I really don't mind. This new job is a really good gig. I can't believe my good fortune to have found such a relaxing place to work. It's amazing. Of course, my dream job would be to stay home and create all day, but I wonder if I would have the discipline. I left work around 2 p.m. today and I took a nap, went jogging and designed a new quilt. I will work on the new quilt tomorrow. It's going to be an experiment, but as B says, all of my quilts so far are experiments and he wants to know when I'll get serious and do one for real. I think they will be experiments for the duration. My philosophy is that they do not need to be perfect; they just need to make me happy. And trust me, they do. We took pictures of some older and newer quilts tonight. I remember thinking when I finished some of the older quilts how excited I was about the stitching. Now I look at them and think, "oh my goodness", but I still enjoy seeing them. Some of them will be donation quilts especially the ones where the bobbin threads have major problems. All I can say is that they keep getting better and better.

Butterflies Are Free

Today I finished the butterfly quilt and took it off of the longarm machine. It turned out beautifully. I still need to bind it so maybe I can get motivated tomorrow to make some binding. This morning I watched the PBS show with Pokey Bolton and I learned a new technique that I'd like to try out tomorrow. It looks really cool, but I'm not sure if it's for use with a functional quilt or if it's only for an art quilt. We'll soon find out.

I just finished walking with doggie and I ran into my neighbors and so I walked with them and their dog. She is also a quilter and has a couple of projects that she may bring over for me (or her) to longarm when she's through piecing. It's been a good weekend so far. B was in Galveston Friday and today with a college buddy. Tomorrow I will do my spin class and then I will jump back onto the quilting bandwagon. The crowds go wild!! It's fun to be creative! I also started reading a new novel today so I am keeping busy. I will post pictures of my butterfly quilt hopefully tomorrow. Until then . . .

Lessons Learned

Quilting is a fun adventure. This year my goal was to enter a quilt in the International Quilt Festival in Houston. As Maxwell Smart would say "I was this close". The entry form was due on Thursday, June 12 and on Wednesday I made one too many errors that could not be corrected by Thursday. I was a bit disappointed, but in the end the quilt turned out wonderfully and I am very happy with it. Since it was a wholecloth quilt with my original design, I discovered that blue chalk really isn't the way to mark a quilt. Luckily, I only made the mistake on the center medallion. I still haven't figured out how to get the lines out. Also, the quilt is huge and it took 54 bobbins. I thought I had enough thread, but at the end of the day, I became cognizant of the additional coding on thread with the dye lot number. I probably used three or four different dye lot numbers on this quilt. In addition, I did not take into consideration the amount of matching fabric needed for the binding. When I went back to the store to purchase another couple of yards, guess what??? That's right, there were five different off white fabrics, but none were either my brand of fabric or the right color. Note to self to remember to buy LOTS of fabric when doing a wholecloth quilt. All in all I am not disappointed. I will be finishing the binding and then I will be giving this as a present to my brother in November. It's a milestone birthday so he's getting the "special" gift!!! I think he and his wife will enjoy it. I am now working on another wholecloth quilt (original design) that I started last weekend. It's a lot smaller and I should be able to finish it up this weekend. Yay!

Since last we spoke I have changed jobs. I spent almost five years at the last company and in June, I made the switch to a job that comes really, really close to being "perfect". It's amazing how nice it is to go to work each day and enjoy the view, do my job, get every other Friday off and get paid a lot to do less work than before. Hmm . . . go figure . . . life is good right now.

Tonight the sky is pink. I took some pictures to capture the moment. It was threatening to rain, but it was only a threat. I guess we got plenty dumped on us this week with Tropical Storm Eduordo.

Well, I must go create. Enjoy your evening.