It's Friday, Dahlinks!

I had a blast yesterday sewing with Mary. She is SO fun to be around. I had the stuff from retreat last weekend still in it's bins down here in the studio, so it was really easy to load my car and hit the road. That is....AFTER I could find my CAR KEYS!

I used to lose my keys a lot. I don't know why or how...but I guess I am scatter-brained enough that I tend to set things down, and other things get set on top of them, and I go in circles trying to find things. My solution has been to have a clip on my key-ring, and I routinely clip my keys to the strap of my purse. No digging in the purse for keys...no lost keys because they are attached and I know where they are.

But since Jeff's car is broken (:c( ) We've been car sharing. 2 cars for 3 people. It's not warm enough for scooters or motorcycles, so that is out. Needless to say, keys don't get clipped back to my purse, and then I am in a frenzy. I really NEED a beeper on my keys. Like a pager? Do they have those? You could dial a number and the thing would beep and you could find them. Kind of like using the house phone to call the cell phone when I can't find where it is buried either. But that's a different adventure for a different day!

Anyhow...found keys...and off I went. My project for the day? My little pineapple blocks! They've been a start/stop project for a long while....mostly because each one has some ridiculous number like 45 pieces crammed into a 5" square. It takes over an hour for each block, but I think they are worth it. Could I do bigger blocks? Yes...but they wouldn't work with the pieces I've saved to make them with.

See these little numbers? Those little triangles in the bin are the "trimmings" from making a border for a quilt just like this leftover piece shown here. The squares I sewed on the diagonal were only 2"...so I don't usually double sew anything that small, and I save them for paper piecing mini things. The problem with my mini things, is that I usually end up wanting to make a full sized quilt out of infinitesimally small blocks. :c) I've also got the triangles I've trimmed when joining binding strips on the diagonal, and other odds and ends triangles in a box, and this is the perfect project to find a home for these precious bits. Throw in a couple hand fulls of fabric crumbs and strings, and Voila!

The GOOD thing about a project this size? It is VERY portable. A featherweight (but yes, I can't wait for that Janome 6500p to come with it's THREAD CUTTER!)and a small shoe box of scraps, and I can piece for days. It's good for a grab and go, and easy to piece away with good conversation with a friend.

As far as my fabrics go? It's anything and EVERYTHING Babes! In a conversation with Tonya the other day she said she would love me to write more about my "Garbage Can Approach" to quilt making!! *howling with laughter* I never thought about it much that way, but it is true! This is what I need...a drive up drop off recycling place....that silver one on the end is for all the pieces to come to ME! :cD

At retreat last weekend, I had a lid to a bin that was a "catch all" place for anyone's scraps to go. Mrs. Goodneedle was working on a string quilt, with all novelties and her trim offs were quickly grabbed by me to be worked in! There IS EVERYTHING her in novelties...banddaids, bugs, food items, animals, everything. Can I mix those with my civil wars and 30's and batiks and old VIP 1980's prints? Sure! Because by the time pieces are this small, it really isn't about the print of the fabric that matters. It's the color, the contrast, or the value placement. It's just light/dark with a red square in the center of the block.

Those "weird" fabrics really make the quilt FUN to look at..and you have to look close to see the funnies and know they are there. I sewed a piece of Pittsburg Steelers fabric into one block on Superbowl Sunday. Could that be why they won? Maybe! Who knows! But it's in there!

As I'm sewing along, I look at the block in progress, and in choosing the next piece I look for something interesting...maybe a color that I haven't already used yet in that block, maybe something that almost clashes with what I put it next to. I know it's a strange way to quilt, but I love working this way.

Mary had quilt trimmings from trimming up a quilt to put a binding on yesterday, and she was going to designate it to the "rat bedding" pile. I snagged that too! :cD

We sewed all day, with stopping for a yummy soup lunch. I got a whole of FIVE blocks made! See why this is a long term project? But I don't mind. How many blocks will I make? I don't know. I'll make them until I am sick of them, and see what I can do with that many :c) That's usually how projects cement themselves around here!

We left to go meet up with some of Mary's guild friends at a Chinese Wok place. Yummy. And I always eat too much even if I tell myself not to. I can't get enough of Chinese food. Much laughter over fortune cookie messages! And off to guild meeting.

One of the gals at her guild was selling these quilt racks! OH! I needed one. I had a place in the guest room I knew it would go, and it was only $45 made by a friend of the lady who was promoting them. I won't show you the "BEFORE" picture, but suffice it to say that all the quilts were stacked in a pile on the floor, and it had become a cat futon. :c| NO MORE!

All in all it was a super day. I'm off in a bit to go meet with a gal from my local guild to go over our calendars to see when my OWN guild can schedule some workshops in! Needless to say, they'll have to catch me on the fly.... ;c)