A Giraffe Arrives!

When last we left our elephants, they were waiting for the elephant parade to begin.  It's been a long wait, and although they are well fed, well rested, and keeping entertained by each other's company, they are getting impatient.  Where are the rest of the animals that will be in the parade?

They were expecting an adult giraffe to join them, and were going to give him a stern lecture about keeping other people waiting, but what they saw instead stumbling across the savanna was a little wonky baby giraffe. Nobody knows what happened to her parents, but all the animals vowed to take care of the giraffe and let her join their family.

Hopefully the giraffe will keep them busy and entertained as they wait for the rest of the animals to arrive.

The Power of Generosity

It started out pretty simply:  I had a large entertainment stand in my family room.  It took up a lot of space, because it had to be placed diagonally to avoid covering up the windows.  It worked well for many, many years.

Then, my daughter recommended that I replace the entertainment stand with a smaller TV stand, and I thought it was a really good idea. I didn't know what to do with the old stand, so I decided to give it away.  I have a lot of downsizing to do, and I have decided that trying to figure out the right places to sell things will make it harder for me to downsize.  The local charity does not want furniture that large.  So I went back to trusty Freecycle to see if anyone wanted it.

Freecycle, if you don't know, is a newsgroup where people in your local area post things they want or are offering for free.  It is a great way to avoid putting so much in our landfills.  In the past, I have given away empty jars to someone who sold soy candles, magazines to a church group for crafts projects, etc.

I posted my ad, and while I was there, I decided to look at the other postings.  I saw a posting for free quilt magazines, and jumped on that offer.  The lady gave me three huge boxes of quilt magazines spanning many years.  I have gone through a very small amount, and am waiting for the opportunity to go through even more.

To pay it forward, I looked for the wanted ads.  I saw a post where someone wanted some perennial plants, namely peonies.  Well, I am trying to reduce my gardening space, so I happened to have them available.  It turns out that the lady who was getting the peonies was also a quilter, and gave me this big box of fat quarters.

The moral of the story is this: The more I try to give away, the more things that I want come back to me.

Winner! Winner!

March was National Quilt Month for me.  Not only did I find the time and the mojo to do a lot of quilting, and watching quilting shows, I also won two prizes!

I received two fat quarters for helping a quilter name one of her quilts. These are beautiful, versatile colors that will fit in any quilt.  I might even put them in a quilt I am working on now.

I also won two magazines and three pins from Quiltmaker's Rock the Blocks contest. There are so many ideas for future quilt projects. 

April, unfortunately, will not be able to have the same momentum.  I have received an offer to work, so my time will be more limited.  I was hoping to get some mad dash spring cleaning and quilt finishing done before the job started, but I then got an offer for jury duty.  To accommodate the jury duty, I was able to start working even earlier, which meant all my free time disappeared retroactively.  Don't worry, I will be able to sneak in both the cleaning and the quilting into my April.

On the first day of jury duty, I decided I did not want to sit alone, so I sat with two other jurors.  As we started talking, it turned out that all of us have dogs, which we thought was a nice coincidence. Then we realized that all of us are quilters!  Then, all three of us were called to get questioned to serve on the same jury.

I was called to be a juror on a trial, and since the other two women did not make that jury, I sat with another juror at lunch.  She is not a quilter, but she also studies her family history.

I will now try to consolidate two weeks of mad dash quilting and cleaning into one weekend.

The People Have Arrived For the Elephant Parade!

Excitement is building backstage as the people have arrived backstage (what do you call the part of the parade where people get ready?)!  And as everyone requested dancing people, they are doing just that!

I started out making this dancing woman. I started with the skirt, trying to keep all the dancers on the skirt intact.  But as you can see, she is too tall.  And since I had to give her some surgery anyway, I decided to make her a little bigger on the top. She looks disproportional, since her top is so much smaller than her bottom.

She turned into these two women.  Since there is a limit of three people in the parade, the one on the right is probably going to have to go on the back or have a special place in the orphan block quilt. She looks like a spinning top! Or maybe she has to go to the bathroom really badly!  Or maybe one of them will get a special place on the border.

The woman on the left came after I had seen some quilting shows.  I kept trying to figure out how to make people with straight lines, but after watching an episode of the Quilt Show where they were showing drunken path blocks, I remembered I know how to do curved piecing, so I did some curved piecing on her hips.  I really like her.  I thought about adding a sash on her to show her as Miss Parade, but I would like to keep showing off her pretty dress.

This is the dancing couple I showed on the last Elephant Parade post, but now in fabric!   He looks a little bit like Santa with his big waist.  People are fun to make, and addictive! I am having a hard time stopping.  Maybe when this one is done,  I will do another one with just people.

The animals and people are jostling for places as they get ready to start the parade. The people are practicing their dancing.  Right now they are armless, but don't worry, their arms will magically appear before the parade.  Unfortunately, the giraffe, leopard, and monkey are running late, and we will have to wait for them before we can get the parade on the road!

Linking to Free Motion by the River.

Life of Plenty Decision

That row of four blocks I showed you in my last post has been bothering me. They are the wrong color / mood.  I didn't like a long row next to the other long rows in that section and needed to think of a way to break it up.  I kept trying to think about what to put there.  Come on, what a life of plenty have?  Love, it is in there.  Nature, it is in there.  Friendship, it is in there.  Books, nah, they don't seem to fit with the other things in the quilt and may be hard to draw.  Money, no, you buy things with money and there are baskets in there for that.  I couldn't think of anything.

I think the reason the decisions are hard is because there is a limited amount of space left in the quilt for extra stuff.  I like all the other designs that are in the other quilt and it would be hard for me to give them up.

I considered making this quilt bigger, but have decided that it might be better just to start over with another quilt like this where I add things from the multitude of patterns I have collected over the years.

Then I got a notice from the library that I had a book that was about to become due to return.

Colorful Stitchery: 65 Embroidery Projects to Personalize Your Home by Kristin Nicholas was the only one that could not be renewed.  I looked through it to make sure I wasn't going to miss out on anything important. It has lots of cute little stitchery projects.  The patterns are all tiny, so you can enlarge them on your printer.  Then I  noticed the pattern for the vase that is sitting on the chair on the cover of the book.  My quilt is full of flowers in vases, and this one would fit in it perfectly.  That vase can take up the place of two blocks, and I can still piece two blocks to fill up the space. Decision made.

You know what a Life of Plenty needs?  Unlimited inspiration in the form of library books and the internet.

National Quilting Day

Happy belated National Quilting Day.  I hope you had plenty of time for quilting.

The Quilt Show is offering all of its older episodes for free this weekend, so I was able to find lots of inspiration. I was supposed to be making blocks for Elephant Parade, but  I wasn't able to think and machine sew, and also pay attention, so I did some handwork. I made two blocks for A Life of Plenty.

I had the hardest time fitting the flowers in this one until I realized I had cut the background too narrow, so I added another piece.  I really like the folk art nature of these tulips. I put a date on this one. Now I am obligated to finish it this year!

Here they are on the floor in a random manner. I'm still not sure about that row of pieced blocks in the center.  That pink and brown just seems to disappear, but it may be the wood background that is causing the problem.  I am going to think about what to do with those. Right now, I am thinking of making this section into two blocks instead of one.  Maybe Ohio stars and friendship stars, applique, or a combination of stars and applique.

Pieced Blocks for A Life of Plenty Finished

I finished all of the pieced blocks for A Life of Plenty.  I was supposed to make two basket blocks and one row of four blocks. I don't know the name of that block.  I didn't want to make two baskets that would be next to each other, so I searched for an applique pattern. Maybe a dog, a horse, a squirrel.  I spent a lot of time looking for something that would work, but didn't like any of my choices.  Finally, I decided to stop wasting my time and just trust Jeni. She had already done the work of choosing the blocks, and I needed to get the blocks done before work starts up again.

I started with the row of four blocks.  This one has partial seams, which I have done before.  This quilt is definitely not for beginners!  I enjoyed making the blocks. I made a mistake with the cutting, in that I didn't have both fabric facing the same way when I cut.  This meant that two of my blocks spin a different way than the other two, but I decided to make the blocks anyway. 

After making the row and putting them next to some of the blocks, I realized that the blocks are way too dark for the quilt. This is a low volume quilt with accents of color.  I needed to choose lighter medium colors. Since I enjoyed making the blocks, it wasn't any trouble to make another batch of blocks.  I really liked the layout, so I repeated my cutting mistake on this batch.  It looks like it might be too bright in the picture below, but I think that is because of the flash.  The first batch will be saved for another orphan quilt, or may wind up on the back.

I took a break to look at some blogs and saw someone who had made a low volume quilt with friendship stars. That's exactly what I needed for A Life of Plenty!  I realized that the reason I was having an issue with so many basket blocks was that baskets contain physical things.  With my goal of clarity for the year, I don't want to have a lot of physical things.  Friendship belongs in A Life of Plenty!  Both the friendship star block and the basket block went together quickly and easily.

The next step is to add applique to the basket blocks, and work on the remaining applique blocks.