Auuughhh!

Sometimes you find yourself being Maverick when you DON'T WANT TO BE!

I had some time this afternoon so I was digging through some projects trying to decide what to take on retreat with my guild over Martin Luther King Weekend (Jan 12-16. Low and behold, I found this pile of string blocks...4 quarters make the block with 4 sashings and one cornerstone in the mddle. 11 blocks were done, and there were block quarters done and trimmed and ready to be set into the remaining 9 blocks. So I get a lightbulb moment to start these this afternoon, telling myself it won't take long at all to put them together, add sashings between the big blocks, and border the thing and call it good.

I've been working on it the past few hours...I just sewed all the rows together...and found out AUUGHHH! There is a huge giant problem with the direction of about 1/2 the blocks! The first set of blocks I did, the diagonals of the string pieced sections were set so they made an "O" and the last 9 I did I unintentionally set the diagonals in the string pieced units so the 4 of them made an "X"!!!!!! Here I thought I was making all the same block..but I guess I wasn't. SUPRISE!!

I laid the blocks on the floor, laid the sashings with them..and I didn't even SEE this problem until they were all sewn together and sashed! Now..there is NO WAY I am going to unpick half of this quilt. It can just be X's and O's and tough beans! Can you see in the pic where the blocks change direction somewhere in the middle of the quilt? :c/ Yes I'm tired, Yes I'm distracted! I'm calling it a night, I'll deal with borders tomorrow...*rolling eyes at myself for being So blind"

Ps..the colors aren't very "true" in this pic. They are a lot brighter in person!

Bonnie

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One Down, On To The Next!

I finished quilting on my ohio stars quilt last night....right in the middle of watching CSI! I didn't want to miss the episode to start on the binding, so I picked up the next basted quilt I was going to work on, and started stitching away. I've got a few fans done down one side of the border on the "shoofly" quilt....So far so good.

You can see I've marked the fans with regular old white blackboard chalk. It's cheap, you can sharpen it in a pencil sharpener if you want (the big sized hand sharpener kind) and the marks stay long enough to see them, but brush away pretty easily if you need them to!

I've discovered something though....I just went from quilting with WOOL batting on the ohio stars, to quilting with hobbs 80/20 in the shooflies, and there is a DEFINATE DIFFERENCE in how it needles! Quilting the wool was like quilting through butter. It is loftier than the cotton, but it needles SO easy. It was a dream to hand quilt.

I love hobbs 80/20 for machine quilting. I think it can't be beat for the look that it gives, but for hand quilting? I think I'm preferential to wool, or the 100% organic cotton from hobbs, or quilter's dream cotton. It's just more hand quilting friendly than the 80/20 is.

I'll finish this quilt, and the amish one that is layered with hobbs 80/20 black (because I needed a black batting in it) but for future hand quilting jobs, I'm sticking to wool or 100% cotton that is easier to needle!

Today I'm going to attach the binding and the hanging sleeve to the ohio stars quilt and start the hand work on that tonight. I'll post a pic of the finished quilt as soon as it is bound and washed to get the markings out!

Bonnie

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She's Got A Ticket To Ride.....

I'm going to Haarlem to see Lucy!

I am SO excited...I bought my tickets and booked my flight today. A week with Lucy in The Netherlands!

I will go on April 22nd....it's an overnight flight that gets me into Amsterdam at 7am Lucy's time. *yawn* Do you think I'll be able to sleep while on the plane? I'll sure try! I don't want to miss a thing being tired while I am there!

My trip is planned to end with a special holiday called "Queen's Day". I guess it is a huge celebration and there are lots of flea-market type sales..people selling things, it sounds so fun! All the bulbs should be out in April, so we are hoping for some good weather to see the beautiful flowers.

I'm coming home on May 1st.

After booking my flight and realizing that yes, this is REAL....I found the form online to fill out to get my new passport. The last time I used my passport was when I went to Japan in 1989! Passports are only good for 10 years..so I need to get the new one. I do have the old one and along with my birth certificate and other forms of ID I think I can prove that I am me, and they will give me a new updated passport.

My job in the next couple days is to go get passport photos taken.

Haarlem! Here I Come!
Bonnie

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Happy New Year!

Yes, now it is officially 2006 and I wonder how long it will take us to get used to writing it! As well as having to remember it's a new month, it's also a new year. It usually takes me a couple weeks to get it right :c)

I've spent the last couple of days working on a project with Tonya..getting her instructions for free style pieced letters onto some pages on my website so she can direct people there more easily. They are buried in her archives now and it's hard to find which one you are looking for, so I had this brain storm....and some pages were born! Now she can direct link them in her side bar on her blog, as well as have an easy place to send people to come looking. I'm hoping this will be something that grows with other instructions to other fun things she is doing!

You can check out what we've done so far Here!

There are 6 pages with instructions for letters, the sidebar tells you which letters are on which page. It isn't alphabetical because they are on pages by degree of difficulty. Each page of letter instructions has other pics of quilts with pieced letters for inspiration...(and pictures of kitties with letters too!) There is a gallery page for her other letter quilts and a bio page too :c)

I'm still quilting on the stars quilt. I probably won't finish it tonight like I want to...fingers are feeling pretty much like hamburger! But I know I am close, so I'll work on it a bit....

Bonnie

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