She's coming home

I am already reeling from the events of this week, and it's Tuesday. It's one thing if a week kicks your butt by Friday, but Tuesday??

You see, my step-daughter, the one I made Tetris for, was in town this weekend. That sounds innocent and normal enough, doesn't it? Except she was in town from Hawaii. And due to this great distance, we haven't seen her in 4 years. And, it gets better - she was here on a JOB INTERVIEW, as in, if she gets the job, she moves back here!! And guess what - she did!!

Meighan moved to Hawaii to study the Korean language right out of high school, but then she met a nice native, married him and had 2 babies. We haven't even met the youngest one (yet). We never did like her moving so very far away, and we've liked it even less since the birth of our daughter. One of Meighan's is a year older & one is 2 years younger than our daughter. How wonderful, we've said a thousand times, if we could raise them together, like cousins.

I married Meighan's father when she was 13, and she left us when she was 18. So I think it should tell you something about her that I decided she was one of my favorite people during what is arguably the least attractive phase of a person's life. I'm not saying she didn't have any typical teenage attitudes, but I could see it - the kindness, the gentleness, the acceptance of people different from herself, the strength. Then, and even more now, she's someone you really want to just spend time with, someone you want to talk to over a cup of coffee. I'm so very happy to know that I'll have that opportunity on a regular basis from now on. It was so nice to see her as an adult, calmer, and without all of the insecurities that plagued her as a teen.

So, that was the good of the weekend. The bad is that my daughter chose to celebrate all this by waking at 2 in the morning throwing up, and continuing to throw up for 16 hours. On Meighan's last day here, I was operating on 3 hours of sleep and just not good for anything. We had intended to take her to one of our family's favorite restaurants for dinner, but when we found out it was closed, I just didn't have it in me to plan or cook a celebration dinner. We ended up with Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I just had to laugh. This huge, life-altering event, and we're celebrating with KFC. I've promised her a proper dinner either when she gets back in a couple of weeks, or when her husband joins her in a couple of months.

For now, I have to find it in me to concentrate on life as normal, get my work done, and hopefully scout out some housing options for her.

The Salt Air Battle

Did you ever have a batch of fabric just wear you out? You bought it innocently enough, knowing you loved it, but when it came time to decide what to do with it, you met roadblocks at every turn. Salt Air has done that for me. The minute I saw it, I knew I had to have it, but other projects kept it on the shelf until just recently.

The whole time I've had it, my plan has been to make the pattern Wedding Bands by Judy Martin:

Salt Air has such beautiful shades of peach and what I call seafoam green that I could just picture the background in 4 shades of one of those colors with the stars made out of the other colors in the line. The day came for me to get serious about ordering some solids, but when I pulled out my Kona card I could only find one or two coordinating colors, finding 4 peaches or 4 greens (or blues, or grays, or reds, or creams, or golds) just wasn't going to happen. I tried googling to see what solids other people used, and that's when I learned that Moda Bella solids are designed to have matching solids for any Moda line. So I ordered a Moda Bella color card, but honestly, the Kona colors matched better. (Still glad I have the Bella card for future use.)

So, I abandoned that pattern completely and went off searching for another. Judy Martin has so many beautiful quilts in her book, Stellar Quilts, and I struggled with a few of those patterns, trying to make this fabric fit, but I finally accepted that it just didn't. Which left me absolutely at square one.

I googled obsessively, and saw some fabulous quilts, but most people treated this line "scrappy" and I just couldn't let go of the fact that I didn't want to do that. One aspect of this line is the huge range of value within each color. I seemed to prefer when the different fabrics of one color line were together to show that off, rather than all the colors mixed together. With all the colors, you just don't notice the shading as much.

(See - aren't they gorgeous?)

Based on that, it took an embarrassingly long time for me to decide to limit the color palate and let go of the idea of using all the fabrics in the bundle. Once I did that, I instantly thought of the hopscotch pattern I bought last year and very happily settled on the grays, blues, and greens for the triangles, and the reds for the diamonds that make up the stars. (The pattern uses blue & white for these diamonds, so the star is not readily visible.)

(By Camile if there's any way possible you did not already know that.)

So excited was I that I immediately settled on Kona peach for the center of the triangles and, wanting a little extra just in case, bought 2 1/2 yards instead of the 1-3/4 yard the pattern called for. Wait, did you notice the dash? Because I obviously didn't. The difference between 1-3/4 yard & 1 3/4 yard is a whole yard, because the first is telling you to buy one 3/4 yard piece of fabric and the other is telling you to buy one AND 3/4 yards of fabric. So, what I have is one AND 3/4 yards too much fabric. Good thing it's pretty.

And in case you think Salt Air is through kicking my butt, the seams come together at an angle rather than straight on, so they don't nestle. It's the same issue I had with the Pam Kitty Morning quilt - without nestled seams, getting perfect alignment is based on nothing other than your degree of accuracy in both cutting and sewing. My results with Pam Kitty Morning were pretty darn close, but since Hopscotch is all biased edges, it doesn't matter how careful or accurate I am, something is going to stretch or wobble and throw me off. I did starch my fabrics very well, but a biased edge is a biased edge. I spent several hours on this yesterday, and while I have some really decent blocks to show for it, it was too much work. There has to be a trick - some way to insure decently matching seams.

Lucky for us, well, for me anyway - maybe you're smart enough to not get caught in this position - there is a trick, called a positioning pin, and Connecting Threads cared enough about us to explain it in great detail.

All of that to say, I think I'm going to win the Salt Air battle after all.

Linking up to Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday. 

And soon, a pillow

I had quite a few scraps of Pam Kitty morning left, including a couple of kitties from the panel, and some nice edging that was on the panels. So, I'm making my daughter a rather large throw pillow. Here's the front:

And here's the back:

It was my first time for a mitered borders:

And my first time doing reverse applique:

I used the same process for the patchwork that I used in the bathmat I did last fall.

I'm loving all of it so far. I can't wait to get it quilted up and sewn together!

See what others are working on this week at Freshly Pieced.

Pam Kitty is finished!

I've been getting more & more frustrated with my limited quilting abilities, and this quilt put me over the edge. I very badly wanted to do something, anything, other than a simple cross hatch, but there we were. Me & my walking foot had to make do with all we knew. I have since picked up an embroidery foot for my machine, but do you know I haven't even taken it out of the package. Why is free motion quilting so nerve wracking? I'll push through at some point, because I'm getting more & more eager to have options when it comes to quilting.

The main reason it bothered me on this particular quilt was because I wanted to bring out the diamond shape arrangement of the kitties. So, instead of fancy quilting, you can see I added some blue trim to outline them. I'm very happy with that trim. My intent upon entering Hobby Lobby was red ric rac, but their red was too dark. Now that the quilt is finished, I think the smaller blue trim is better anyway. It seems to show up much better in person than in these photos.

The other thing that is very different in person is the color of the kitty blocks. They look almost yellow here, and when you're looking at the actual quilt, you don't at all notice they are not quite as white as the background. Maybe it's operator error on the part of the photographer?

The back is a pink tonal I picked up at Joann's. I didn't have a lot of options, oddly, as nothing seemed to go well with this. You would think with so many different colors going on, I'd have plenty of options.

 The binding was part of the Pam Kitty line.

My daughter has slept under it 3 nights now, and we both just love it.

Now that it's finished, I've been eyeing my bundle of Salt Air. That's what I really want to cut into next.

Edited to add: Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday

Break time is over

I've taken a little break from sewing. Life was getting busier, my daughter's recovery from her tonsillectomy was rougher than I expected, and sewing was beginning to feel more like a chore than something fun. Good time to take a break.

One very unpleasant daily task was helping my daughter with her homework. The teacher has been sending home different homework since the new year and we spend about a quarter of the time on it than we did before Christmas. This is a very welcome change! Between you and me, I wasn't expecting any homework in kindergarten anyway.

And my husband has come off overtime, so not only is he home on Saturdays, but he's home 2 hours earlier on weekdays. A very welcome change for time management, slightly less welcome on the budget.

And there's been one other pretty big change. I've been diagnosed as ADD. See, they didn't diagnose many kids as ADD when I was in school. And when they did, it was usually the boys that couldn't stay in their seat. There were signs that would be recognized today. One story I've told several times, just for it's humor value, is the time I simply would not stop talking in class. It didn't matter what the punishment was - if I was around other kids, I was going to talk. So my teacher, Mr. Hullender, moved my desk away from every other classmate's and butted it right up next to his. At the next parent teacher conference, my mother asked him how that was working for him. He said "now I talk to her." Like those boys not being able to sit still, I could not shut up.

ADD has been mentioned regarding my daughter, so almost any article about it catches my attention and last fall there was a news article describing an adult with ADD. The things I read in that article were enough for me to start conversations with my doctor, who sent me to another doctor. I don't think it's ever a short process, and they're still testing different doses of meds on me now, but I feel more stable than I have in years. More capable of actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Less overwhelmed by the same duties everyone else does naturally. Being able to focus on my work and get it done in a timely manner is enough to free up a couple of hours a day.

And so, with all this collective extra time I've had lately, I present the top to my daughter's next quilt:

It sure does look huge in contrast to that tiny little face on top, doesn't it? It's a pretty standard twin size, 63" x 81". The print fabrics are Pam Kitty Morning, the solid Kona white, and the pattern is a 9-patch with snowballs. I'm very happy with how this turned out - it's going to be an adorable quilt. Despite the gloomy expression on my daughter's face, she is tickled with it as well.

I wrote about another blogger putting all his fabrics in a bag and mixing them up when he was going for scrappy, so I tried that this time. I think I have identical fabrics next to each other only twice in the whole top. That actually worked much better for me than trying to keep them apart!

I did have some minor trouble with the seams lining up between the snowballs and the 9-patches:

Since the seam on the snowball is at an angle, the seams don't nestle. The best I could do was keep my 1/4" seam accurate and hope they lined up, which they did most of the time:

But if anyone has made one of these and can give me any tricks to lining them up, I sure would appreciate it. And it wasn't until I got done that I realized the white in the panels was slightly darker than white. I've decided this is part of the quilt's charm. Makes the kitty squares stand out more.

Edited to add: Linking up to Freshly Pieced for her WIP Wednesday.

Using time to motivate

I had said last year that I was going to post about time-saving techniques whenever the inspiration hit me. Today's post is less about saving time and more about motivation.

For years, I absolutely hated to unload the dishwasher. Just dozens of items that need to be put back in their home - it seemed so tedious, and actually, I think it overwhelmed me a little. So instead of taking care of it as soon as they were cool enough to handle, I'd let the full dishwasher sit there for a day or more while dishes piled up on top of it. I knew it wasn't smart, but I couldn't seem to overcome myself to handle it more efficiently.

And then one day I happened to notice the time on my stove before I started and when I was done. 2 minutes. Good grief. All those years of letting this very minor chore get on top of me, when it literally took 2 minutes to accomplish. I can't claim I never procrastinate anymore, but nothing like I used to. Anytime I feel like groaning looking at it, I just tell myself - 2 stinkin minutes. It doesn't matter if you like it or not because it's such a quick thing to do that makes a huge difference in the overall state of the house. Because, you know, if your dishwasher is full, you don't even see the logic of bringing your dirty coffee cup in from the living room.

Since then, I've discovered that many, many household tasks take a fraction of the time my mind built them up to be. So if you've got that thing you hate to do, and you procrastinate way too long in doing, just time yourself. Maybe, like me, when you realize just how little time it takes, you'll have a better attitude about it.

A humbling post

I decided to do one of those photo collections I see on other blogs of the projects I have completed this year.

Wow. And this doesn't include dozens of smaller projects - an unfinished table runner, lots of towels, and bags - I didn't even include my mini messenger bag that was pretty time consuming. I'm not sure whether to be impressed, or embarrassed. I work nearly full-time and have a young daughter. I think if I'm going to be honest with myself, what this reflects is misplaced priorities.

I've never been much of one to make New Year's resolutions, recognizing that it's usually just setting yourself up for failure, but nevertheless, I do resolve that next year will be very different from this. I will relegate my sewing to the position it belongs, that of a hobby. A hobby that fills my FREE time, not stealing time from other obligations.

The past few days have found us quite removed from life as normal. I have gotten a first in over 2 years week off work, and my husband is using the last of his vacation days as my daughter recovers from having her tonsils removed. Despite her pain, it's been very nice to take a break from life. To just snuggle on the couch for hours watching movies and have daytime naps. We're smelling the roses, so to speak, and we need to remember to do that after she recovers as well.