Alien Soldiers

Sure there's been some quilting going on. My friend has resumed making the TATW quilt for her daughter.



But there are alien snow soldiers to be made.



This is our biggest snow for the year. These are the original four. Another one was added to the row, and two of them had to be remade, and the mother wasn't made yet. We might make a second row tomorrow. We ran out of snow!

Quilt Show

I know that my posts were few and far between. Things have been busier at work. I was expecting this, which explains why I allowed myself more than one post a day earlier this month.

It's the weekend, and we went to a quilt show held by a local guild. Such lovely quilts. The picture is a small sampling.



And then we took a walk in the park. The camera helped us forget the cold. We went to a buffet dinner.

10 Best Posts Today Award

I felt bad for not choosing any bloggers for the Lemonade award. Too much pressure to choose the best blogs for anything.

But I decided to share with you some posts and sites that I have seen today. My award; my rules. I am behind on blog reading, so these may not be the most recent post the blogger has posted. Also you might notice that most of these awards have a tendency to be in alphabetical order. Well, that is because I read my blogs in alphabetical order. Sorry if your blog is in the wrong part of the alphabet to get a chance to win an award today. If people like this post, I might do it again another time, and maybe next time, you stand a chance of winning.

Laura Peterson made a quilt called The Quilt Show that was on the Road to California show. You must see this quilt. Click on the link to get to the site. Yes that's a quilt, not a photograph of a quilt show. Be sure to click on the links on the page to get the details on the individual quilts. The little quilts are amazing of themselves, and when put into the show. Wow. That was one idea I had seen before - making a quilt with lots of little quilts. I vaguely remember seeing this concept a long time ago. She did it, and she did a fabulous job.

Thank you to Paulette for showing me this quilt. Also check out the wool crazy quilt she found. Beautiful.

Syko made these beautiful applique quilts. I love her style of applique. Love the freedom. The applique stitches add a lot to the pattern, instead of simply being something to attach the fabric to the background.

Jackie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio makes modern and liberated quilts. She is very inspiring, and she teaches me that you don't have to make a quilt with a million pieces for it to be beautiful.

Tanya lives in Japan, and has helped me tremendously with my Japanophile daughter. She posts daily, and I read her blog daily. since I didn't have any unread posts from her, I almost missed adding her to this list. I've learned a lot about Japan, and consider her to be my friend.

Teri at Teri's Painted Daisies is a quilter, but mostly she paints everyday. One of her posts a while ago, had collage postcards made with words found in newspapers and magazines that were ready to be thrown away or recycled. I used that idea to make my ATCs. I love using words, but then wonder if I'm choosing the right word to feature. This idea made it easy, I was limited by the words that were available to me in the catalog I was using, and I just used the ones that were the right size and had a pretty font. I will be doing more of this in the future.

Vicki from What a Load a Scrap has been showing some pretty quilts. I really like the blue and white one here and the string quilt.

Megan at Will Work for Fabric has been making a patriotic quilt that is a combination of patchwork and applique. It's a nice masculine quilt. Love the horses.

Cheryl Goss at Willowberry Designs is hosting another free beautiful BOM, Under the Sea. I downloaded her designs last year, and still want to make them someday.

Wishes, True and Kind has posted some pretty quilts in her last few blog posts. I really like the value quilt. It's on my very long to-do list.

Okay, I've named 10 sites, and need to stop and work on my doll quilt and cleaning.

Strangers and Stupidity

I've been reading a couple of books, that I thought were worth noting.



Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem To Matter.. But Really Do.
I'm afraid this one didn't hold my interest until the end, probably only because my reading is as scattered as my quilting, so I didn't read the whole thing, but the topic is worth noting. There are many important people that come and go in our life and don't get a lot of attention in life - the coworkers, the people in line, the hairdresser, the store clerk, the librarian, the bus buddy, and now lately, the blogging friends, the Facebook friends who are befriended only because they play the same game. Some of them are short term, some of them are long term, but they are all important. Yesterday, the librarian pointed out a quilting book to me.

There have been several times in my life when I relied on the consequential, short term strangers, to help me get through - like when I quit my job, and all the people in my regular support system were at work, and didn't know what it was like to not work. The people on the child support listserv who helped me understand the various sides of the issue.

Now I've got a new group of Consequential Strangers. The people on the couponing blogs who tell me where to get the best deals. The people who leave reviews for the products I am thinking about buying. The genealogy and quilting bloggers who keep me informed of the current trends in those topics. Most of these people don't know me very well, if at all, and probably wouldn't miss me much if I left their forum. I think now with the new applications, there are more Consequential Strangers to meet, and to appreciate.



Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter.
This one is about how fickle and uninformed most American Voters are. Another one where bringing up the topic is more important than what is actually said in the book. With modern resources, we are able to find out much faster what is going on in the world, and can complete polls and get in touch with our representatives much faster. But we don't seek out information and don't know much about what is going on. Personally, I am willing to take some of the blame. It's true that I don't take the time to find out what is going on in the world everyday. But I think the media has to take the blame as well. Our newspaper, and news shows only cover local and national news. I have to go out of my way to learn about events happening around the world, but celebrity news comes my way from everywhere. I don't know what I don't know, so it is hard to look for it.

It's my Consequential Strangers, my blogging friends from around the world, that are helping me be more informed, not just about quilting and money saving deals and genealogy, but also about what is going on around the world. Thank you.

Lemonade Stand Award

Allie gave me a Lemonade Stand Award. Thank you so much, Allie. that is really sweet of you.

The Lemonade Stand Award, given out for bloggers that show great attitude and gratitude. Now isn't that a lovely award?

Here are the rules:

Put the Lemonade logo on your blog or within your post.

Nominate at least 10 blogs with great attitude or gratitude.

Link the nominees within your post.

Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

[Copied and pasted from Allie's blog.]


I have a very long list of people I visit from time to time, so choosing 10 bloggers is really be impossible, and I think I am going to pass this time. Too much thinking on my part, choosing the recipients among the long list, trying to avoid the popular ones, so I can highlight the hidden gems, worrying about whether they like getting awards, etc.

How Many?

I had hoped to have finished the top of the doll quilt I am making, because other quilts are crying out their names to me. I am planning on hand quilting this, so as soon as the top is pieced and sandwiched, I will be able to move on to a UFO. Almost everybody else has already finished theirs without issue.

I am apparently numerically challenged, despite my career choices, probably because I was trying to count how many there are of each block by looking at the picture of the finished quilt, and I probably did it too fast and haphazardly. I have finished the sixteen patches (most of them anyway), and the triangle setting blocks. I didn't account for the eight patch blocks, so I've got some more sewing to do. This is not a big deal, I am enjoying the process.

It's a big culture shock from doing a raw edge casual project with few pieces to doing a small quilt with so many pieces, where scant quarter inch sewing matters. I had to sew many of the seams again to get closer to the tip to make my points sharper.

In case I make this quilt again, (when I'm done with all the other quilts that are calling my name) I thought I would write down the count here so I don't go through this again.

The directions are on Lori's blog. She was so sweet to do all the measurements for us and give us the directions. Her directions aren't wrong; I just happen to be making mine "easier", by using the same green fabrics in each block. Let's not debate the difference between blue and green, ok? We do that enough at home. The picture makes these look a lot more blue than they do here.


There are twelve of these blocks. The cheddar is cut 3 3/8 inch squares. The squares are 1 1/2 inches. You need 2 light squares and 2 dark squares for each block, so 24 of each. The triangles are cut 1 7/8 inch square. There are 24 of the light and 24 of the dark squares, then cut on the diagonal. It is tempting to count how many pieces there are overall in this quilt, but I should wait until I am done with the quilt. More of the same size squares (not the cheddar) will be needed for the border. More of the cheddar fabric is also needed for the border, just not that size.

There are 13 of the 16 patch blocks. The squares are cut 1 1/2 inches and can be strip pieced.



They are simply alternated. See the picture at the top of this post. My daughter was on the computer and I was trying to lay it out from memory and put it on point. Don't do that. It is an interesting design choice though. When I did sew, I had to be careful, so the lights and the darks properly alternate. I found that if I made sure there was a dark square on the top right, every time, I was doing the rows right.

I kinda like the way the quilt looks without this border. It looks more finished this way. But I think it looks more old fashioned with the border, and am going to put it on. The border pieces are pretty much like half a block.



The cheddar are three 5 1/4 inch squares, cut twice on the diagonals to make quarters. There are 12 of the triangle setting blocks. 6 of them have the dark on the left and the light on the right, and the other 6 have the light on the left and the dark on the right.

There are 8 of the 8 patches. Simply half of the 16 patch blocks.

There are 4 of the 4 patches for the corners.

Yes, I do trim off the dog ears at some point.

Of course, if I stopped blogging about it, and simply made the quilt, I would have been done by now!

Edited to add:
I am submitting this post to Amy Lou's sew and tell. I haven't made any visible progress on this quilt since I wrote it.

I am glad I took the time to write all this though, because I was worried about running out of green fabric to add. With this post, I realized that each of my fabric scrap additions were greener and greener. I am hoping for something that looks like similar values. I was worried it would be too obvious that I didn't plan the colors very well. In the last addition, I was able to add something to the other side of the color range, something slightly bluer. I think I have enough fabric now for the whole quilt.

Quilt National

We went to see the Quilt National show at the Rife Gallery today. Since it was the last day of the show, it was now or never. We were not allowed to take photos, even though someone else there took plenty. I decided to follow the rules. Couldn't take photos outside either because it was raining.

So many beautiful quilts. My mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew and I went. I kept looking at all the techniques, and thinking that I should make a quilt like that. Not to copycat, but to be inspired by the technique. So many quilts, so little time. Hopefully I can make little quilts using the techniques. Here is a link to some of the quilts we saw. Not all of these quilts were in the gallery.

Africa Scarified is made of squares of fabric which may have been appliqued instead of pieced. There were a lot of beads, and couched yarn to make an aerial scene. Wonderful! I would love to make something like this.

Falling Leaves probably starts with a base of the trees, but then has snippets all over for the leaves. There is also a path you can't see in the photo. The artist statement said she used scraps leftover from all the other projects, separated by colors. It is then closely free motion quilted. We tried to see traces of tulle, but we didn't see any. I'm not sure what was used to keep the fabrics in place until it could be sewn down. Another technique I definitely want to do.

Miscellany is also a wonderful use of leftover fabric. Make little blocks - these look like they are probably paper pieced, and over time a new quilt is born.

There were a couple of portrait quilts. One was made of dotted fabric squares. There was also a portrait made of yoyos. The shading was then painted on. My mother thought this would be wonderful to do with her mother's clothing. She said she will ask her sister if the clothing is still available. She even said she would help make the yoyos.

Did you notice, all of my favorite quilts make it much harder to throw away even tiniest bits of fabric! I think all these ideas would work with my plan to use up the fabric when I make a quilt to storing avoid leftover scraps.