Back to Normal

Last week, I was hoping to be excitedly showing you a finished quilt. One that was quilted and bound. Well, I am excited anyway, because I have a finished quilt top. Again. Everything is back to normal. I had to do some fabric substitutions, and steal some fabric from the border, so I will be adding another border. I'm using leftovers from the fabric I am using for the back. Not quite what I had in mind, but it doesn't look bad. I don't feel like looking for the camera right now, so there isn't a picture to show you, but I am sure you can imagine it from the last two pictures.

Good News and Bad

I have been unusually calm about my problem from yesterday. I would call it a fiasco or disaster, but my sense of calmness keeps from making this into a bigger problem than it is. I didn't even get the initial heart dropping feeling. It's strange, but it is good. After all, it is only fabric. And since it has been a while since I made the top, the sense of loss (time wasted to make, more time wasted to fix) doesn't feel so strong.

Second good news is that I have scrap fabric. I went straight upstairs to a brown paper lunch bag that has the leftover HSTs from this quilt - this quilt created bunches and bunches of them. Underneath that bag was another bag that contained the scraps. I thought I had forgotten about that second bag, but apparently some part of me knew it was there. Since these are the only scrap bag I have - usually scraps get thrown in a box of random scrap fabrics, it makes me wonder why I was saving them. Was I anticipating this? Or more likely, was I planning on making an applique border?

The bad news isn't all that bad. First I think I gave the pattern away. I remember telling someone I wasn't planning on making this quilt again. I just hated the cutting - each fabric goes in each part if the quilt, so lots of cutting of different shapes. I think I enjoyed the piecing though. Since there are only a few shapes I will have to figure out the size, I think I will be okay, even with the limited amount of scraps I have. I think the original pattern was called Peach Parfait. If you own that pattern, I would really appreciate knowing what size to cut these pieces. Otherwise I'll have to do my own figurin' and you know how that can go.

Second, I used tiny stitches to make this quilt. Maybe because of all the bias seams, I wanted to make sure everything was secure. I was planning on ripping out the whole corner and making it again, but with the bias seams and the tiny stitches, now I am only removing the parts where I got happy with the scissors.

And in case you were wondering. When they say you have to cut corners in this economy, I don't think they meant quilt corners. That doesn't seem to help!

A Scary Sight for Halloween

I put the quilt top on the batting to measure how big I needed to cut the batting - just an estimate since I was cutting it big. I didn't realize that some of the top had folded under. yikes! Now I'm going to have to find scrap fabric - and the pattern - from this top from years ago. Hopefully I have some.

Stalkers, continued

I have stalkers, bunches of them, all of them wanting to help me decide how to vote on Election Day. Sometimes when the phone rings, and I am downstairs doing laundry, I run up to get it, my heart is pounding and my breath is heavy as I lunge to the phone, only to get some recording. Or I am in the middle of an interesting part in a show, or in the middle of cooking something, etc.

My reaction has to disengage. I no longer answer the phone. My callers know I am screening calls and that once they start talking into the machine, I will pick up the phone if I know it's them. Of course, that also involves having to run to the phone, since I don't want to inconvenience them to have to leave a long message only to find me home.

But there are also other side effects. The volume of paper that needs to be taken to the recycling bin has increased exponentially, not to mention the wear and tear on the shredder since I shred everything that has my name or address on it.

Today I had someone I didn't recognize come to the door. I assumed it was someone wanting to make sure I didn't need any help getting to the polls. These people are relentless, I tell you. It turns out it was the postal carrier with a squishy package. It in't for me, but still, tomorrow I have to go to the post office to pick it up.

I can't wait until Election Day, and my life can resume as normal once again.

Cake!

We generally have potlucks at our family gatherings, and I generally get asked to bring a side dish. I'm not good at side dishes, so it is always a search in the recipe books and some last minute concoction that gets to the table. This year I volunteered to make the cake. At first I was really excited. After all, I made all sorts of cakes when we were all living together. Then I got scared. There were things I had learned that I have since forgotten. How I am supposed to double the recipe for the batter, but not for the topping. How I'm supposed to use this batter with that topping. How I need to reduce the butter or the sugar. And besides that, I haven't had the recipe cards since I moved out.

Since any cake I would make would be a research experiment for the family anyway, it was a general search through the internet for the right cake. I decided this time to try to find something vegan to match the needs of one of the birthday people. It has normal ingredients. I made Moosewoods chocolate cake and used coffee instead of water so that it would have a normal flavor. I did well. People even commented that it tasted like normal cake, and they wouldn't have suspected it was vegan if they hadn't been told. There was so much food at the party, you might have suspected that there was a wedding going on, and the people from the other side of the family were going to arrive at any moment.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the fabric shop experience also went well. They were having a big sale, and I bought four fabrics for backings instead of the two I went for, but because of the sale, I thought it was worth it, and wound up paying about the same money. And now I have extra fabric that will hopefully help another couple of quilts to quicker completion. My mother has decided to make a full sized scrappy sampler quilt, so she bought a lot of fabric, which means she bought a lot more than I did. A lot of the fabric we bought wound up being the end of the bolt. More time at the cutting counter, and sticker shock at the cashier. I think the cutting counter lady and the cashier were probably happy when they got to my order since it was relatively smaller.

Hopefully this means that you will soon (maybe this weekend) have a finished quilt or two to look at.

Quilty Content

Don't get too excited, but there has been touching of fabric here on the High Road. You probably haven't noticed the lack of quilty content, because there has been a lack of content, period, but I haven't done anything since I finished up the Happy Jacks quilt.

I decided to change that yesterday. I had the option of resuming the Shakespeare in the Park quilt, or to quilt up a top. I entered Finn's challenge a while ago, and was thinking I could use the Happy Jacks quilt as one of my two finishes. Even though it never became a UFO, it was prevented from becoming one, right? I wasn't sure if that was cheating or not, but I figure the other one should at least fit the rules precisely. And who knows, I might get two UFOs finished, and not have to cheat at all.

I wasn't sure why the tops were unfinished. Maybe I was having trouble with free motion quilting. Maybe I had trouble choosing a quilting design. Maybe I didn't have the proper color thread. I have thread now, and batting. And I am going to do a simple meander, cause they are fun and I like how they look on a quilt. What I thought I knew for sure was that there was backing fabric to go with the top. Nope. I moved on to Plan B or is that Plan C with another top. I don't know if I imagined that, or if I stole the backing fabrics for some other quilt, but the reason they are still UFOs today is that there is no backing fabric now.

This means I have to go shopping for backing fabric today. I've been so good about not buying any fabric since June, no temptation even. I'm afraid it might get me started again on a fabric buying binge. I will try to resist.

I did make some quilting progress yesterday though. I haven't cut the fabric yet for the setting triangles, so I cut the 14 squares for SITP. It's not the progress I imagined showing you today, but anything is better than nothing, right? Now I need to cut the remaining triangles, and piece the top together.

Preparing for Winter

I've been meaning to paint the garage door for a while now. I even washed it one day, in preparation, right before it rained and splattered the dirt right back onto the door. I was debating whether it was too late to paint it now. The leaves are already falling and I wasn't sure I wanted to make a leaf collage on my garage door.

The wind was calm and the sky was sunny, so I washed and painted the door (well both the big door and the small one) on the same day.

So now, instead of spending all winter (at least when I use the garage doors) being disappointed that I didn't paint the door, I can simply be disappointed at my imperfect workmanship on my imperfect door.

The photo is from the library, in celebration of Family History Month. It was really interesting, since they had hung the photos in layers in their display room. You really had to be there to see the neat three dimensional effect it made.