Where have you been?

August 5, 2013August 5, 2013 Cowtown Quilts1 Comment

Okay… Where have I been? It’s been a busy month for me and seems like it will continue to be busy for a while longer. I guess I forgot to tell you that I went to Amana, Iowa the week of July 4th for a mini-vacation. One of the fun things I got to do there was sit in a big rocking chair. For those of you who are older, you might remember Lily Tomlin playing the part of Edith Ann and sitting in this particular rocking chair as she played the part.

When I got back from Amana, I tried to catch up on all the UFOs (UnFinished Objects) I’ve got going on right now. Tomorrow is our quilt guild meeting and it is supposed to be the big reveal of all our finished projects. Well, guess what? I am still working on the major parts of them! Eek!

What I have been working on is a variety of other things as well as other people’s’ quilts. First off, the house next door has been bought by a “flipper.” This is his first house flip, and so far he has improved the looks of that house 200%. Before, the yard to that house made my house and yard look good. Now, I need to get my porch fixed and yard fixed up so we don’t stick out as the trashy neighbors. Since I am on a tight budget, I have started recycling, re-purposing, and upcycling. The neighbor asked whose wooden fence that was on the edge of his yard – it’s his. He asked if we minded if he took it down since there were 3 different kinds of fencing over there. I asked what he was going to do with the wood (it is good, solid wood), and he said he was going to burn it. So, I asked if I could have it. My sister and I have been talking about starting a salvage business where we take ugly things and make them beautiful once more; kind of like an antique business. Anyhow, 2 weeks ago, she and I took down the wooden fence, much to my neighbor’s pleasure. He thinks he got a great deal because he got out of the work of tearing down the fence. My sister, Ruthie, and I think we got the good deal, because we got free wood. In fact, it was enough wood to fill up the back-end of my sister’s truck! Here’s a shot of my sister working on the fence. Don’t look too closely, because she wasn’t too concerned about safety (her feet???).

It was so hot that day, we sweat our butts off, but we got it done in several hours… well, it took most of the day. She is going to use the wood as wainscoting on her dining room wall. It looks kind of like barn wood, but they are going to remove the rusty nails (which could have stuck into her foot – one went through the bottom of my shoe !) and then power wash it so it will be like new again. I am going to use some of the wood to make myself some shelves for my many cones of thread.

We had been looking into the many uses of pallets. People are doing crazy stuff with them and are charging for them, too! I got 2 of them for free and thought I was going to be really creative with pallets, but I think this was my first and my last project with pallets (fencing wood is much easier to work with). Originally, I was going to use this for my thread shelving. Ugh!

Yes, it’s crooked. Shazam! Those dog-gone things are not square! This is in my laundry room, holding a bunch of my fabric dye stuff.

I did manage to get a purse made for the UFO reveal tomorrow, but you should see it. In fact, I’m not going to post a picture of it, I’m so embarrassed. It’s not REEEEEAAAAL bad and would probably look a lot better if I’d put my stuff into it. But, when my sister stifled a laugh and said it looks like luggage, I knew it was not one of my better creations. But, but, but… it has tons of pockets and 3 zippered compartments. I was so proud of myself for getting that all figured out. The lesson here is that whatever you do and however it turns out, you learn something from it. And, I learned that this would have been a great handbag if I had left off that stiff interfacing and only used the fusible fleece (next time…).

So, what did I do? I ordered a Vera Bradley handbag, which was the original reason for me making my own. I wasn’t going to spend the money on a Vera Bradley bag if I had the stuff here to make it already (FREE – yes!). I have to say, though, that Vera Bradley has the best method of delivery. My big thing lately has been customer service, and when I opened the box, the money spent on this bag that I could not afford was so worth it. I felt very special. I mean, look at this! On the outside of the shipping box is plain brown, just like any other shipping box. But, when you open it up, you see a happy green with special saying written on it and “signed” by Vera. The bag is wrapped in tissue paper and sealed with an embossed sticker. The invoice is inside a nice embossed card sleeve. I feel so pampered. Vera Bradley has definitely won me over as a customer for life! Thank you, Vera! 🙂

Now to get to the quilts I’ve been working on…

Zipper Leaders

July 9, 2013 Cowtown Quilts4 Comments

Warning! For those of us who are longarm quilters or who want to be longarm quilters, read on… otherwise, this will bore you.Read More »

Wounded Warriors Project

June 23, 2013June 28, 2013 Cowtown Quilts6 Comments

Finally finished with the Marine Corps quilt! This quilt has been made in honor of the Wounded Warriors Project – to find out more about the Wounded Warriors Project, you can go to their website here. Actually, my quilt guild is making quilts to represent 5 branches of the armed forces. These quilts will be donated to the church where we have our meetings, Olathe Bible Church in Olathe, Kansas. They are hosting an event called Wheels ‘n’ Squeels BBQ Challenge – Warrior Edition on Friday and Saturday, August 2nd and 3rd, 2013. Kansas City is known for its barbecue and barbecue challenges. This event has BBQ teams competing for prizes, and they will also have a car show. The Warrior Edition part of the event is to honor servicemen and servicewomen in several ways. One of the ways will be giveaways. Now, I am not sure if the quilts are going to be given away to service members of each of the represented branches of service, or if they will be auctioned off. All I know is that proceeds from this event will go to the Wounded Warrior Project. You can find out more about this event at the church’s website here.

Since my husband is a Marine (once a Marine, always a Marine… retired or not), I was asked to make the Marine Corps quilt. You know the rest of the story from my “Month in Review” post. Personally, I think it turned out well and am really loving it. I wasn’t sure how the 50 stars would work out, but I think they “make” the quilt what it is, a nice quilt. So, I have Susan to thank for her idea and all the hard work she and her helpers; Jackie, Diane, Sue, Karen, and Joyce put into the stars. Here is the finished product.

And, here is a close up of the quilting.

You can see I did squiggly lines in the star blocks and a semi-flag into the background of the emblem center. I used navy blue thread for the quilting on all of the quilt except the red center, where I used red thread. I just wanted a hint of the quilting to show.

For the binding, I did it by machine with faux piping. The reason I did this was because I wanted it to look like the red piping on a Marine’s dress blue uniform.

And, finally, the back… This picture doesn’t show the pocket that is attached to the lower right-hand corner. Susan made a little flag for the pocket, which is where I put a diagram of the stars and the states they represent.

That Marine Corps fabric is made by Robert Kaufman. I got it at Hobby Lobby, of all places, and I used a 40% off coupon when I bought it. Cool, huh?

I hope whoever gets this quilt is thrilled to get it, and I hope that the church and my fellow guild members are happy with the quilt and the effort that was put into the making of this quilt.

Where’s Waldo?

June 19, 2013 Cowtown Quilts3 Comments

Do you like to cook? I will cook to provide meals for myself and others, but I don’t enjoy cooking. My husband, on the other hand, becomes an artist when he cooks. He can taste what’s missing and what is needed. He’ll have me taste things to see what’s missing, and I am lost. I don’t know. And, I don’t care. It’s fine just like it is. Now, let’s eat. But, that’s not going to happen. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining. I think I’m one of the luckiest ladies in the world to have a husband who cooks. It’s very sexy when a man cooks for a woman, imho. I may be partial, but I think this guy is the best cook I know. He throws stuff together and voila, it’s a masterpiece. I don’t know how he does it! He uses spices like artists use paints and is always buying some new spice to try, which leads to my dilemma.

Ever have a cabinet you hate to open for one reason or another? Maybe it’s because there’s stuff in it you shouldn’t be eating, and you know if you open the cabinet door, you will eat whatever is in there. Or, there’s so much stuff crammed in there that if you open that door, the stuff will fly out at you? Well, here’s our spice cabinet. It started out as a small cabinet to the right of the stove. As we got more and more spices and it was harder for me to find the one I was looking for, I moved them to another cabinet, bigger with more room to spread out. The glasses that were on the bottom shelf were moved to the middle shelf, so we could easily see the spices and locate what we needed. As time went on, however, this is what has happened.

Can you help me find the Chili Powder? Those spices go about 5 containers back, and the lid to the Chili Powder is RED. This cabinet began with only the bottom shelf having spices and spread out. Then they got crowded and migrated to the middle shelf, where the glasses got pushed over and the less used glasses moved to the top shelf. Now I find that the spices are migrating into the “glass” section of the middle shelf; not because of me. Someone has added to his collection, and the new spices are traveling to places in front of the glasses I use. So… I’ve put the glass he uses next to the spices. I’m not sure it will work as a “block” but… really? Where am I going to move the glasses to when it’s all said and done?

Month in Review

June 18, 2013June 18, 2013 Cowtown Quilts8 Comments

Whew! It’s been a busy month… well, make that a couple of months. My daughter came in from Denver right before Mother’s Day and brought snow with her. We had planned on planting flowers, but we had to wait until the day before she left, when the snow was melting. These are not the flowers we planted, but this is a reminder that we are now officially out of the winter season. I planted these peonies 3 years ago, and this is the first year they’ve bloomed. 🙂

While I was at the Machine Quilting Showcase in Wichita, I took a class with Kim Stotsenberg. She does wonderful swirly-type quilting. You can find out more about Kim on her blog, Sew-n-Sew Quilting.

I’ve also been working on a quilt for a friend. Trisch is an artist, as far as I am concerned. She has a flair for color and design. I’m truly surprised she is not a designer of some sort, but I imagine she doesn’t have the time for it right now. Anyhow, Trisch allowed me to quilt this modern quilt of hers, and then she went and blogged about it. You can find her at Hadley Street Quilts or you can find the blog about this quilt here.

Those of you who know me personally already know that I am working on yet another quilt for my quilt guild. I must be crazy, huh? This one is to benefit the Wounded Warriors Project. Our guild is making quilts to represent 5 of our branches of service. I am working with Susan on the one for the Marine Corps. Susan wanted to paper piece 50 stars to put on the quilt to represent the 50 states. When she first brought this up, I thought she must be crazy… but I don’t do paper-piecing, so there you go. If you don’t know what paper piecing is or how to do it, check it out here. Oh, yeah, it looks really cool… until you start trying to add the fabric and it’s too short. Then you have to pick the paper off after you are done. It gets to be a real pain in the @$$, if you ask me, which is why I don’t make it a practice to paper-piece. Yes, I’ll do it when it’s called for in something major, but those times are few and far between. Well, I told Susan that I don’t do paper-piecing, but she was not swayed. I then asked if I could get her some help, and she only wanted a couple of helpers. In my mind, I wondered how on earth she was going to get all those stars done on her own.

Anyhow, we forged forward with our design plans, trying to figure out how we could get 50 stars on the front of the quilt. The quilt needed to show that it was representative of the Marine Corps, so I had already planned on putting a Marine Corps emblem in the middle as a focal point. As it turned out, we only had room for 40 of the star blocks, so I put 10 on the back. Here is what we have so far.

And, the back looks like this but with 10 stars…

Oh, and one more thing… I went to my regular eye doctor to see if I could finally get a prescription for glasses. They would not give me a prescription until I had the secondary cataracts removed by laser (Yag Laser Surgery). This was my good eye, so I was really nervous about having it messed with. This would also be the 8th eye surgery I’d had; 2 on my right eye and 6 on my left eye in the past 2+ years. The good news is that I can now see to thread a needle. To someone else, that is no big deal, but to me it is HUGE! I am so happy! I can only hope that nothing else happens to either of my eyes for awhile now. I will be getting glasses in the next week or so – I’m hoping I can see to do a better job on my customer quilts!

Wide backings for quilts are the way to go!

April 29, 2013April 29, 2013 Cowtown Quilts1 Comment

I have always been a proponent of using wide backings for quilts. In fact, I have LOTS of 118″ wide fabric and some 108″ wide fabric in stock for my customers’ quilts. Attempting to sew through multiple layers of seams can wreak havoc on my longarm quilting machine, so these wide backs make my job a lot easier and does less damage to my machine. I just read this article on another blog that I thought was worth sharing. She mentions how it really is cheaper (and it is, trust me!) to use wide backs than it is to buy regular width fabric and then piece it. She even has measurements of how much fabric you will need. I have to disagree with her on the amount, though, as I cannot get a quilt backing with only 1 inch. I need a minimum of 4 inches extra on EACH side – see the tab above marked “Batting and Backing.” Check out her blog post here.

Disclaimer: I did not make these rules.

April 23, 2013April 23, 2013 Cowtown QuiltsLeave a comment

Rules of the refrigerator

Do not put anything on The Rule Maker’s side area of the refrigerator. His area includes the shelf where the blue pitcher resides. If you put stuff on that shelf, it will be removed by The Rule Maker, regardless of the fact that the area under the ice maker houses only Spicy V-8 (because that’s where it goes) and the rest of the refrigerator is crammed full.
The only thing the large glass bowl with the blue lid sitting under the milk is allowed to be used for is The Rule Maker’s Famous Salsa. No. Matter. What! Do not try to sneak a use for it with something else; this will upset the goodwill of The Salsa Bowl’s master to the point where he will be pacing in circles near the refrigerator and will eventually find another container for the perpetrator substance and will replace it with The Rule Maker’s Famous Salsa. The Salsa Bowl will always live in the spot where it is in this picture. If we have too much milk, no matter. It can find another place or rest on top of The Salsa Bowl. If there is room elsewhere in the refrigerator, something else can go there, but The Salsa Bowl cannot.
Do not poke fun at The Rule Maker or the rules of the refrigerator or His rules. This will lead to an unpleasant ending.

Finito

April 23, 2013 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

Fi·ni·to

/fəˈnētō/Adjective; meaning “Finished.”

I am finally done with the quilt. Frida, my longarm quilting machine, is taking a much needed rest before I can go back and check the timing on her; a task I never look forward to doing. You need a micro-magnifying glass to do it, and I can’t see squat anyhow. So… I am working on Home Improvement projects this week and will get around to “massaging” Frida and giving her a check-up when I am done with the other things I’ve been neglecting around my house.

In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures of the customer quilt I just finished.

A close-up of the lanterns…

And, the various handicapped and overweight insects…

Of course, all I could think to put on the leaves were inchworms, so I snuck a couple of animals peeking over the leaves.

My New Best Friends

April 17, 2013 Cowtown Quilts1 Comment

Ever have one of those projects that no matter what you did, things were not going to work out? This latest customer quilt has been my latest challenge. It seems like no matter what I do, I can’t get the mojo flowing with my quilting. My thread keeps breaking, I’ve gone through 5 needles, my machine has a mind of its own and tries to go one way when I am trying to move it another. I swear, it’s as if I am arm wrestling it – I’ve gotten bad headaches from wrestling with it. So, my thread art has turned out to be CRAP! You can’t even tell what some of the drawings are. They say that is you are having a bad day at quilting, to just stop and walk away and come back to it fresh the next day. Well, you can only do that so many times before you decide you’ve got to get the quilt done and back to the quilt’s owner.

The customer wanted the leaves to extend out into the green and black borders, so I thought an insect would be cute here. This is supposed to be a fly. It looks like a tangled mess to me. So, I will be ripping that out with one of my new best friends. The other insects look like they need to go to Weight Watchers, but because I have already spent over 30 hours on this quilt, they are just going to have to content eating on the fabric leaves of this quilt. I feel like I have failed this customer because so much of the quilting looks like scribbling.

One of the things that happened while I was working on this was I ran the needle through my finger. It’s healing nicely now, but it sure hurt when it happened. And, no, I did not get blood on the customer’s quilt. I jerked my finger out from the needle before it had a chance to drip – that was the first thing I thought about before I felt the pain. OW!

I was trying to sew a circle into the green square with this itty bitty template. Can you see how the finger got caught?

After my finger got caught I immediately ordered a different circle template made by the Gadget Girls. It has 3 different sizes of circles and looks like this. I thought it was a bit expensive, but after hurting my finger and the frustration I got from making twisted, wonky circles around that little disc, the cost was worth it for this new “friend” (tool). You can find them here .

And, as you can see, I have much more room to grip onto the template without my fingers getting in the way. I LOVE this template!

This is about as close as I was able to get to a perfect circle on this quilt, with my machine fighting me like it was.

But, I have a few threads to pick out (along with that stupid looking fly in the first picture), so I will be using this new tool. I love my little blue seam ripper that is about 3 inches long, if that. It has a tiny piercing point that slides nicely under the thread. But, it is small for my big hands. I found this one made by Dritz at my local Wal-Mart for $3.97. It’s got the small point, but the handle is bigger than my little blue one and is also ergonomic to fit well into the palm of my hand. I think it is my new best friend.

With this tale of woe, please don’t misunderstand me. I believe that in every good or bad thing that happens, there is a lesson. Although I struggled with this quilt (and I’m not done yet… but almost!), I found out about a better tool and better way of doing things with the circle template. I also learned that less is more. Less is many times better than more. I should have left the fly out of that area. I also found that when I quilted pebbles into the green squares (which you don’t see, because I picked the stitching out with that “picking” tool shown above), it made the quilt look even messier. And, with each quilt I work on, this one included, I find things that I like to do with quilting and new ways to approach quilting. So, even with a punctured finger and a mad quilting machine… it’s all good. I think when I’m done with this quilt, it’s time to give my machine a good cleaning and check her timing.

Free Blog Graphics

April 15, 2013April 15, 2013 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

Ever hear of the Graphics Fairy? She offers free vintage graphics of all kinds at http://www.graphicsfairy-diy.com/ and http://www.graphicsfairy-diy.com/.

Well, now you can also get free blog graphics at http://the-blog-fairy.blogspot.com/. She will even show you how to load the graphics if you have Blogger. Did you notice the theme on my blog changed? She just started this, so she doesn’t have much yet, but I’m sure she will soon.

You can also get free backgrounds for your blog from the Graphics Fairy at http://www.backgroundfairy.com/. She does have more to choose from right now, but she’s been at it awhile. Head on over to take a look!

Cowtown Quilts

Creating tomorrow's heirlooms

Author: Cowtown Quilts