Lola -- L O L A -- Lola!

Can you hear the music in your head?

I'm thrilled to say that Lola moved in with us in early October. She is a HandiQuilter Avante with no fancy computers -- just tolerant of my learning curve and a great temperament. I am living my dream with my own long arm. I never thought I would have one and so this is the best ever.

I have been so fortunate in my quilting world. I first had LogCabinQuilter who trusted me enough to train me on her Gammill and then rent the machine to me. At that point, I could only do loops and those weren't very good. I could not fathom pantographs and how to line them up so I frequently paid her to finish some quilts that were important to me.  Particularly when wonky loops weren't right.

I then was lucky enough that MacQuilts gave me complete access to her home (when she was there and when she wasn't) and I used her Gammill (Sadie). I was able to make progress in my quilting and learn to do more things. After moving to Kentucky, I went back frequently for quilting marathons and to see friends. I have been known to quilt six quilts in 2.5 days. Yikes - did my shoulders and knees hurt for a few days - plus I had a 7.5 hour drive to and from! But again - more generosity and trust.

After getting settled in Kentucky, MonkeyMamaQuilts opened her doors and gave me free rein on her HQ16 (Ethel -- she also has a more sophisticated Fusion with a computer who is named Loosey). I was able to start working on my backlog of tops and get back to a more regular schedule of long arming.

Fast forward to August or September when Mr Iquiltforfun and I were talking about how wonderful it would to have my own long arm so I could improve my skills. When you are invading someone else's home, there is a bit of pressure to get in, get it done, and let them get back to their lives. That was completely internal and my issue. Not theirs. They couldn't have been more accommodating for those times when I had to leave a quilt on their machine and come back later.

The other complication here is that it meant the machine would have to go in the living room. I love my living room. It has great morning light. It is separate from the family room and kitchen and there is a bit of privacy. And, the idea of taking over our "parlor" was a stumbling block for me. Never mind that EVERY single member of my family told me I should make the living room my studio before we ever moved in the house. But I couldn't. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I realized last summer that we had not entertained in there once in the two years we had been in the house!  Not once!

So -- Lola is in the living room and having a couch is quite convenient when I need to ponder next steps. Am I getting better? Not yet. Am I trying new threads and new techniques and playing when I want to? I sure am! I have no intention of starting a business and taking on the pressure of showing good faith in making a profit nor working on someone else's masterpiece. MacQuilts said it best when she told me one time that I would go nuts trying to fix someone else's mistakes and would hate every minute of it. And she's right. I'm happy to do charity quilts for a few people. I'm happy to share Lola with friends and family who might want to use her. I'm happy to learn about tension and know that the world won't come to an end if I mess it up!

This was a challenge quilt from fabric that MacQuilts bought for Mom22smartchix and me about two years ago. I love this fabric by Andover Fabrics. And I had enough to make two quilts. This is the first one and the quilting is called "continuous curves" (or CC). This quilt is symbolic of what it means to have my own long arm. This took forever!  It looks easy and it should be.  But it is not easy for me to be consistent so most of these were done with a template and very carefully for a number of reasons. I would never ever have been able to do this on someone else's machine. I sometimes worked for 10 minutes before church. I sometimes work for three hours. I sometimes didn't work at all if I wasn't on my "A" game since I'm a bit intimidated by ruler work. But, it's finished! I often would go into the living room and just look at it.  The texture when the light was right made me ever so happy.

And Lola makes me ever so happy!  Now when I want to see my friends, I can "visit" and not engage in a quilting marathon.  That also makes me ever so happy!

I hope there is something in your life that is making you ever so happy!

Jan

AND -- as an aside -- here's something to make you ever so happy!

Have you heard?  Keepsake Quilting is giving away fabric for 20 years to one quilter!  How about that?

All you have to do is click on this link to enter.  It's simple. It's fast. And it could mean fabric for the rest of your life -- or at least 20 years!  Give it a go….and enjoy!

http://ck.upickem.net/r/4aV3RJQyx5v?r=734125

Quilting Olympics!

Seriously -- I feel like I'm in a marathon--a quilting marathon.

I'm happy to say that I have one more Lollypop block appliquéd!  I'm not quite as happy to say that I have no more in the pipeline that are ready to start stitching.

What I do have is a huge mess in my playroom.  I have fabric all over the floor which is actually working better than when I tried to sort by color.  This quilt has 16 lollypop blocks and 32 smaller border blocks.  I have a total of five quilt blocks and two border blocks done.  Completely done!

I have spent the last 2-3 weeks working on laying out the remaining 11 quilt blocks.  It is a slow slow process for me and I have six blocks with fabrics selected and the components cut out and completely prepped.  They are ready to spot glue to the polka-dot fabric.  My goal is to get all 11 quilt blocks (and border blocks) prepped and then have a gluing marathon.  I do think there is some "economy of scale" in the assembly line approach as I remember my "tricks of the trade" and don't have to refresh and re-learn each time I start.

Either way -- it's slow.  The fabrics are beautiful.  It's a little overwhelming.  And it's rewarding to finish one and see the pile get a little smaller (of course, another pile is getting larger at the same time).  I'm beginning to miss it which is a good thing.  But right now, I can barely get to it for fabric all over the place!  You can see here what "fussy cutting" does to a quarter yard cut.  It took me a while to reconcile my need to save fabric with the obvious design requirements for this particular quilt!

I hope you are having a rewarding time creating something wonderful!

Jan

PS -- thanks to all for your comments and spontaneous prayers for the young couple I mentioned in my last post.  As I understand it, Ethiopian adoptions will continue and they remain somewhere on the list to increase their family one of these days.  Very exciting!

Right Turns

We've all had them along the way. You are pretty sure you know where you are going, you have a plan (formal or in your head), and things are good. And then life gets in the way and we're faced with a new piece of information that is like a sharp right turn.

It could be a diagnosis (or prognosis).
It could be a relationship change that you didn't see coming.
It could be a job offer that you didn't expect but requires some risk -- and promise.
It could be a betrayal by someone you counted on.
It could be anything…

And when we are faced with an unexpected right turn -- we have to adjust. It's hard to stay on the same path when an obstacle or opportunity has jumped in front of you.

That's the case with this quilt.  I posted here about making this (or possibly up to four!) quilts for a young couple who is well into the process of adopting one (or more) children from Ethiopia. They have been presented with a right turn. Apparently there is some support for stopping all Ethiopian adoptions due to the success of the program over the years. As I understand it, they are no longer in a crisis situation with so many children in need of parents. That is  a good thing in many ways. But it's a right turn for this young couple.

Besides the financial investment, there is great emotional investment that I can't even begin to imagine. I have no idea where this stands and what this means for them. My teeny-tiny right turn when I heard this was that I should just put this project away and wait. So, I finished the blocks and decided on the layout, and put all the blocks and fabrics away until more is known.

I suspect we have all had "right turns" in our quilting lives that makes us stop and think about fabric, color, process, and creating.

It could be a health condition that forces us to do things differently.
It could be a financial situation that requires us to sell some of our quilts, fabric, or change jobs.
It could be the birth of a baby that makes everything else secondary.
It could be a loss of mojo that just won't come back and our passion is gone.
It could be anything.

So I've had the smallest of right turns with this project while this couple is dealing with the largest of right turns and what it could mean to their family. I can wait and repurpose. They can only wait and begin to wonder and think about what if….

I hope your quilting right turns are small ones like this -- whatever they may be.

Jan

Unexpected...

What to do?  My Christmas quilts are done.  My baby quilts for the hospital are done.  I don't have any deadlines that I need to meet. My 500+ HSTs for a swap are done and bagged.  I have three quilts cut out…

• My wonderful Cherrywoods in a tote 
• A One Block Wonder waiting.
• Bonnie Hunter's mystery has all the parts done -- although I have no desire to work on it.

I wandered into the guest room where my Lollypop Tree blocks sit and unexpectedly decided that kind of color and process was just what I needed! I can't rush.  I can cover up with a quilt if I'm chilly.  I can stop whenever I need to.  Each element is a "completion".  I can work for five minutes or five hours if I want to.  And -- the Australian Open was starting last weekend and this makes for a "quiet" way to watch tennis (or at least replays).

It was the right decision.  It's been a good week and I have once again been reminded why I ordered this pattern within a week of happening upon it.  Many of you have read about this journey in other posts and I'll spare you the details again.  For those who are not familiar with Kim McLean and her marvelous patterns, here's a link to some eye candy that can take your breath away.

This quilt requires 16 blocks and each block takes me days to prep.  I am not fast.  The process I am using is not fast. I don't want to rush.  I want to enjoy the process of choosing all the different fabrics, cutting them, prepping them, and gluing them.  The color is just what the doctor ordered on a  gloomy winter's day.

I have four stitched and one more prepped.  Period.  That's it.   Right now it seems reasonable to think that I will spend a few days later this week prepping another block or two. Who knows what will seem reasonable later this week but for now, that's my plan and I'm sticking to it.  

I hope you are working on something that has wonderful colors and the process is as much fun as the completion!  

Jan

Special K!

I am happy (sort of) to say that we are back from a wonderful week in Toronto and were lucky to be delayed only one day due to Mother Nature.  I will spare you the details of the drive back earlier this week but suffice it to say - the roads could have used a bit more attention.  Leaving is hard.  Always hard.  Our son.  Our daughter-in-law.  And, our "perfect" grandson -- and if you are a grammie, you know that all grandchildren are perfect.  So is ours!

What helped with leaving this week was the anticipation of meeting our new great-nephew who put in is appearance on Sunday!  Special K!  Loved him from the minute I heard my niece-the-athlete's voice informing me that I was now "officially" Grand Aunt Jan (GAJ for short).  I love my nieces to death and being a "great aunt" seemed like underachieving so I told them I wanted to be Grand Aunt Jan (and if you say that in with a Downton Abbey affectation, it sort of rhymes).  Nevertheless, I was anxious to meet another "perfect" grandchild.

This is the quilt that I made for my sister (the new grammie) for Christmas.  It is from strings that my niece-the-quilter gave me last year when she was cleaning out some of her scraps.  Most are about 1" wide and from various bright pre-cuts she used in making quilts for children in her life.  I had made a few blocks with them by actually piecing the string onto a pre-cut square.  I'm not sure I really like this method but it does provide stabilization and makes it easy to trim them down.

So -- this particular quilt is from my niece-the-quilter (altho she didn't know about it), mr iquiltforfun, and me.  And I have mentioned it on the blog a time or two but was unable to show the blocks because it was a Christmas secret.

The backing (and this is a dreadful picture) is from a cut of fabric (beautiful pink fuchsias on a vibrant blue background in real life) that I bought in Hawaii when the new mommy and daddy got married two years ago.  The binding is a bright pink (yes, I know it's a boy!) Indian batik that the new parents gave me for a birthday.  And the strings are all from the new aunt -- along with some that I added to increase the significance of the quilt.

Besides a piece of Christmas fabric from my mother's fabrics (it's really not very pretty but it needed to be in there!), I have added at least one strip from every fabric that I received for my 60th birthday.  I have written about that quilt here if you want more detail.  This remains one of the (if not the) most special quilts I have because of the significance of each piece of fabric.

So baby K's grammie has a quilt for when he comes to visit.  Can't wait to see him in his stroller in the neighborhood this spring or laying on the quilt on his little belly in a few months.  New babies bring us so much joy!  And so does sharing our love of quilting with those who appreciate it.  Life is good.

I hope you are starting 2014 off with lots of joy in your life!

Jan

Perhaps an Intervention?

Seriously -- what is happening here?

1.  All the Christmas gifts are finished -- no wait!  I have one more pillowcase to do out of dino fabric but have until New Years Eve to get that done.  Oh  -- and I forgot -- I haven't finished binding the dino quilt and that has to be done by New Years Eve, too.

2.  I am knee deep in Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt and determined to stay on top of every clue -- otherwise it will end up in a tote and become a chore to finish at some point. You can see how others are progressing at by clicking here.

3.  I have joined a HST swap using Edyta Sitar's piecing papers and that's due the end of January.

4.  And -- here's the kicker and the need for possible outside help -- I have decided to make a baby quilt (or slightly bigger) out of my African fabrics.  That's not too hard, right.  You only have to cut a bazillion logs and then start assembling them.

Like many of you, I don't really have yardage of African fabrics -- I have scraps that have been given to me or a scrap bag that I picked up from a vendor at a quilt show (usually from the garment district in NYC which means it pieces of clothing or leftovers from clothing).  These pieces are highly irregular - they may be a pocket, a shirt sleeve that was miscut, something that was disassembled and the button cut off.  They really are perfect for logs but each piece has to be individually cut.

For the first time ever, I know that I haven't over cut my logs.  I usually get really focused on cutting and I end up with too many of one size or one fabric.  The design wall is a life saver.  While this is a terrible picture -- you get the idea.  They are sorted by size and right beside my machine.  I can grab and go and make sure that no blocks have duplicate logs. I am hopeful the time spent doing this will save time (and order) on the backend when I start assembling.

This quilt will be 49"x 49" (7 x 7 of 7" blocks).  I say "this quilt" because there could be more.  Not because I have more scraps of African fabrics.  Those have been depleted.  But because I just found out that the young couple that I'm making this for may be adopting more than one child.

I knew they were well on their way to adopting a baby up to 18 months old from Ethiopia.  What I found out this weekend is that if the baby has siblings, they will take up to 3-4 children.  I am ashamed to say that "Oh how wonderful" was my second thought.  My selfish first thought was "holy cow, that could be four quilts -- I don't have enough fabric".  I am guessing my Australian fabrics will have to suffice along with a number of other African reproductions (you can see some of those in the logs I have already cut -- I think I have stayed away from the Australian ones thus far).

Obviously, the quilts could be out of anything but my initial thought was to have a bright baby quilt out of fabrics from the same continent (I doubt any of these scraps are purely Ethiopian).  My second thought is to try to make the appropriate number of quilts out of ethnic fabrics and that may change, depending on how this goes! So, I will make the first one and have it ready and see what blessings they are able to adopt.  They will be in Ethiopia for a few weeks and then come back without their baby(children).  That will give me some time to figure this out.

But -- if I agree to any more swaps, mysteries, gift quilts -- I may need an intervention.  I am on sabbatical from my two hospital quilts a month until March.  I need to use that free time wisely I think.

I hope there are people in your life that are full of the generosity and love that exist in this young couple!

Jan

Scrap Happy!!

Seriously -- I am so scrap happy!

I do love finishing things. And I really love finishing things when I have fallen out of love with them. That's the case with this little top. These blocks were a "leader/ender" project and have a lot of my quilting history in the fabrics. And I got tired of it….and needed to get it out of a tin and functional. I haven't touched it in over a year.  That's a clue that I'm ready to move on!

It's small -- 40" x 52"-- and needs an inner and outer border to be functional - so, technically, it's not finished. Nevertheless, I can put the "remains" back in my scraps and consider the piecing done. I'm thinking this needs a bright border and then I will probably donate it to Quilts Beyond Borders.  I've posted about this great organization before and love them!  I think if I get the borders on, it will be large enough and can keep some sweet child warm and even entertained with the different fabrics.  That makes me scrap happy!

I'm also happy to be using up scraps with the Quiltville Mystery Quilt.  I mentioned last week that I was able to use a green fabric that was 33 years old.  This week I used some yellow fabric that was left over from a dress my mother made for me when I was in my teens or early 20's.  Yep -- I'm guessing that lovely "hip" floral was 40+ years old!  That makes me scrap happy!

If you are interested in getting scrap happy with Bonnie Hunter's mystery, you can link here.  And if you want to see what others are doing, she will have a link-up party on Monday.  I'm hoping we get back to blues soon -- I've about depleted my orange stash and my creams/blues need to be whittled down as well.

I hope you are finding time to create amidst the holiday commitments of gifts, parties, and baking; and if you are a lover of scraps -- I really hope you are scrap happy!

Jan