Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Ms. Sunshine, I commission thee to having fun when you're here. I'm retired and have all day between sewing stints to nap and use up my daily limit of reps. On bad days, everything hurts, and I have to quit doing even that. Your time is limited. Don't worry about repping me, enjoy what little time you have here and play. You can catch up when you retire and get all that go-around-the-world-in-80-months stuff out of your system. After that, you can catch up if you want to. In the meantime, please play and have fun when you're not yoked into the responsibilities of uber 9-to-5 world medical tasking. Now, go forth and enjoy!

I got a second sewing machine yesterday. The last time I took mine in, it took 6 weeks to wait on a part to fix it. This time I have a suitable backup that will stand up to making 30 quilt tops in that short time in case it ever happens again. It is small and light enough that I can carry it, and is the same make as my embroidery machine that weighs 60 pounds and did not travel well when attending workshops and Bees sew-ins. This one will do fine at piecing 1/4" seams, but would only quilt the smallest of quilts with a 6" space between center needle position and the machine housing area to the right. It has a lot of really cute stitches, too, but I got it because it has several of my favorite quilt stitches on it. This afternoon, I have to put it through its paces before I forget everything the shop owner taught me yesterday morning. You know how memory is--you're lucky if you remember 1/4 of what you learned yesterday. It's a nice little machine, and I'm thrilled to have it as a backup and a straight stitcher. I might even consider using the embroidery machine for embroidering one of these days.

Stay well! And be good to yourself. You were plenty good to me when I was new here!

 

[Sunshine]

Ms. Sunshine, I commission thee to having fun when you're here. I'm retired and have all day between sewing stints to nap and use up my daily limit of reps. On bad days, everything hurts, and I have to quit doing even that. Your time is limited. Don't worry about repping me, enjoy what little time you have here and play. You can catch up when you retire and get all that go-around-the-world-in-80-months stuff out of your system. After that, you can catch up if you want to. In the meantime, please play and have fun when you're not yoked into the responsibilities of uber 9-to-5 world medical tasking. Now, go forth and enjoy!

I got a second sewing machine yesterday. The last time I took mine in, it took 6 weeks to wait on a part to fix it. This time I have a suitable backup that will stand up to making 30 quilt tops in that short time in case it ever happens again. It is small and light enough that I can carry it, and is the same make as my embroidery machine that weighs 60 pounds and did not travel well when attending workshops and Bees sew-ins. This one will do fine at piecing 1/4" seams, but would only quilt the smallest of quilts with a 6" space between center needle position and the machine housing area to the right. It has a lot of really cute stitches, too, but I got it because it has several of my favorite quilt stitches on it. This afternoon, I have to put it through its paces before I forget everything the shop owner taught me yesterday morning. You know how memory is--you're lucky if you remember 1/4 of what you learned yesterday. It's a nice little machine, and I'm thrilled to have it as a backup and a straight stitcher. I might even consider using the embroidery machine for embroidering one of these days.

Stay well! And be good to yourself. You were plenty good to me when I was new here!

Have you had your vitamin D level checked? I did for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was 13 on a reference range of 30 - 96. The sun is at the wrong angle to work for us, but we didn't really ever know that. And it isn't possible to eat enough dairy to make it up. My doctor started me on 50,000IU once a week for 8 weeks then we will recheck. After the first dose all my aches and pains went away. One of the docs at work said, 'so this means you're not retiring?' I told him to dream on! ~~ LOL

 

[freedombecki]

My doctor told me to do vitaminD, and every other week, I forgetaboutit. I'm headed to the hypochondriac counter for D3! Thanks for the reminder. I had an episode of swelling and am taking extra K too because the diuretic flushes potassium. It may be taking other minerals too, so I need to clean up my act prolly on Magnesium, too. Fibromyalgiacs are recommended that before it was known about D3. Me feeling better tomorrow is worth a hundred reps. Thanks!

 

[freedombecki]

Found some pretty blue quilts made by other quilters and saved them to my pictures.

Blue is a color that I just love.

 

[Gracie]

Pretty quilts, but blue is not my fav color. To wear, yes. For home decor, no.

 

[freedombecki]

Pretty quilts, but blue is not my fav color. To wear, yes. For home decor, no.

Blue seems to be our family color. It was my mother's favorite color, mine, both brothers, and one of two sisters. The other decided to go pink. She was the rebel. And oh how I love that rebel sister of mine. Moved back to Texas soon as I could when she got cancer. That was almost 4 years ago now. She went from having 6 weeks to live to ... well, here it is 6 years from the date of her diagnosis. It took me a couple of years to conclude our business and retire to the state of our high school graduations and my native state.

My one project got put aside. I can't figure out what happened to all the parts of the quilt... they'll hopefully show up soon.

So, I found a whole lot of log cabin squares put in a plastic bag entitled "pine tree," and began working the tops of 3 pine trees that will be the width, and they're so far 5 blocks tall plus a 9" base for the Tall pine trunks, then will add grass below, a lake if it isn't tall enough for a 12-to 14-year-old kid. Here are some of the parts I just scanned:

 

[freedombecki]

All that's left to do is to create two more tree trunk parts that measure 9x14", put some earth/grass below, put a border on it, and it will be ready for the Charity Bees closet. This one I'd like to go to a shelter kid, but if they decide to use it to raise money for batting, sobeit. I love our charity bees! They're the best ladies in the whole world.

 

[Sunshine]

Pretty quilts, but blue is not my fav color. To wear, yes. For home decor, no.

I can wear blue as well. But I can't really live with it on the walls, etc. I need warmer colors around me. I can live with a blue that is warm like aqua and green that is warm, but th cooler shades make me want to slit my throat.

 

[freedombecki]

The Tall Pines top is done. There are 3 tall pines that run the length of the quilt using 2 back-to-back log cabin squares in a panoply of deep greens and a similar amount of light blues in the upper sky area. In the sky below the fifth and lower tier of back to back log squares is a slightly deeper bluebonnet print, since bluebonnets grace the roadsides all over Texas in the very near spring that's right around the corner. We have had 2 years of severe drought, June of 2009 took out 5 pines on our property, and 120 rainless days in the summer of 2011. We only lost 2 more because I watered the ones nearest the house that my hose could reach. Since then, we had a dry fall in 2012, but not as severe as 2011 when half our pond dried up, and you could walk on it.

These 3 trees will be in honor of Texas loss of 5-10% of its Tall Pines. The city of Huntsville, in spite of parsing water, maintained most of its urban forest and is a joy to see the lovely green trees there. I had no idea we'd ever have to water wild trees that were established for a century, but we did lose 7 trees in the over-100 foot category, I think. They may not be centennial trees, but I could just cry to think of how if I had just bought a few dozen more hoses, we could have spared a little of the well water giving each tree 4 or 5 gallons a day.

Now I know; if it gets dry for more than 15 days, I will carry water out there if I have to, cup at a time if I can't carry a bucket. Watering after 8 pm would probably be smartest, even when it's very hot weather. That way, the water has plenty of time to soak in and takes less since there isn't the evaporation at night there is during the relentless daytime in hot dry weather here.

That will cost me 20 quilts due to the time and resources it will take to tend the trees we have left. We lost almost every tree in the back pasture. They were oaks, and only one or two branches is still alive on 2 of the trees. The rest of the tree on each of those is dead, and most of the branches have fallen down 1.5 years later.

However this quilt was therapeutic. Doing the quilt helped me recollect a plan for the future of caring for a large piece of land in marginal weather. It could be marginal for the duration, or it could return to its normal cycle of being home to the great piney woods. That summer was like nature's fire. It just burned trees up that were at risk by being in areas that couldn't bear them and only hosted them in times of rain, or smarter landowners than me who being seasoned Texans, knew when to water. My hiatus for 45 years to the Western USA took a toll in know-how my grandmother and grandfather, the horticulturalists, had in their lifetime spent solely in East Texas and Houston's semitropical plant heaven. 2011 was the worst year in the record books for Texas' driest. Nothing else was ever like it.

Oh, off on a tangent again! This and the next are two posts' worth of scans from the completed Tall Pines quilt top:

Scan 7 - Top and id placard of the 52x58" Tall Pine quilt top

Scan 8 - Lower First border, an avocado Jeff Gutcheon floral print and outer Hoffman gymnosperms print of green with gold spatter on golden tan

Scan 9 - Middle Tree trunk and weeds

 

[freedombecki]

And 3 more scans:

10 - another tall pine tree trunk and "weeds:"

11 - 5th tier just above the trunk of a tall pine tree

12 - 5th tier just above the trunk of another tall pine tree

 

[freedombecki]

Pretty quilts, but blue is not my fav color. To wear, yes. For home decor, no.

I can wear blue as well. But I can't really live with it on the walls, etc. I need warmer colors around me. I can live with a blue that is warm like aqua and green that is warm, but th cooler shades make me want to slit my throat.

I was trying to get up some steam for a blue quilt. A lot of people here love blue--it must be all our lakes, flat lands with lots of sky, denim ranchwear, etc.--not sure why, but everybody wants something blue who lives out in the country where blue abounds in nature. We have blue buntings, bluebirds, blue grosbeaks, and those all-colored birds (painted buntings, maybe) that have some blue on them. It's also so blooming hot in the summer, blue makes you think of those dips in the lake or pool, shade, respite of the day with shaded colors of eventide, of which blue is a major player, etc. needless to mention, our hunger for blue likely led to the choice of bluebonnets for the State Flower.

 

[Mr. H.]

Gee you even have nice handwriting.

 

[koshergrl]

Growing up, my mother would not allow us to wash any of our quilts. In the old days, they would get laid out in the sun during the summer to kill dust mites, and then folded up into cedar chests until winter..

She sounds like a very wise woman who taught her daughter some cool tricks about the care of quilts.

I thought she was crazy so I washed my quilt.

And it fell apart.

 

[freedombecki]

Gee you even have nice handwriting.

That's my homespun calligraphy, but thanks, Mr. H for kind words.

 

[freedombecki]

Growing up, my mother would not allow us to wash any of our quilts. In the old days, they would get laid out in the sun during the summer to kill dust mites, and then folded up into cedar chests until winter..

She sounds like a very wise woman who taught her daughter some cool tricks about the care of quilts.

I thought she was crazy so I washed my quilt.

And it fell apart.

Yep, I knew more than my mother too, so I didn't pay any attention to her expert sewing advice. Could've saved myself 20 years of learning to sew all by myself if I had given my dear, sainted mother and closet genius so much as a few minutes of attention instead of being such a contentious little army brat. Where are these moist eyes coming from? lol

Y'all have a nice evening. I have to think up another crazymaker quilt effort tonight. I truly need to get stuff done. I was a quilt behind in February, and now it's already the 12th, and there are only 3 quilts of the 11 that will make 30 by this month's end. Well, we'll see but now, I need to rest my tired brain.

3 yards of Northcott's Stonehenge (tm) material I can't get locally arrived today.

Edit: oh, and yes, I keep thinking about these Scrap quilts (added after fabric):

 

[freedombecki]

Here's about 5 hours of work from this early morning (This and next post):

 

[freedombecki]

It was a lot of work, a lot of fun.

3 more blocks. The finished postage stamps measure about 1.25" square.​

 

[Sunshine]

Well, Beckums, tonight I start my second to the last quilt block. The tablecloth has been on back order for a while, but scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. I'm ready for a little something different. It has, however, not ever been about the finished product, only about the one stitch I am doing in the 'now.' So utterly Zen.

 

[freedombecki]

Good luck on your completion, Sunshine.. Just hope you stop at intervals to rest and make sure no carpal tunnel issues hit you.

All I did today was cut 36x16=576 1.25" squares for quick sewing, then just kind of ran out of gas and only did a couple of squares of 36 blocks each. I was just zapped today with sleep issues. I have to constantly remind my husband to take his dementia meds, then I forget to take my prescriptions. Well, so much for my little footshoot. Think I will hit the sheets and wish everybody well for the evening. I haven't seen Dabs to check in on her progress, although she was nice enough to drop in a couple of weeks back with a picture of a lot of work she did with her beautiful bikini yarn.

Happy stitches everyone.

 

[freedombecki]

Many Trips went better in 2 hours this morning than all day yesterday.

Here are some of the junctures that come when you sew 8 blocks together. In the next couple of posts there will be some individual new blocks. There are the balance of the blocks cut out and waiting for their turn in the sun, at least until 24. Then there are set out colors for 3 more blocks. Next quilt? Who knows!