Sunday Sundry 5-6-18

Spring has finally arrived, all of a sudden it seems.  Hard to believe that this was the backyard view just two and a half weeks ago.

Now the landscape has transformed into a sea of green, dotted with golden daffodils, dandelions, hyacinths, tulips, etc. 

(Mallards enjoying the new greenery and mud puddles at the park.)

I've done a little raking, some mulching, but no digging in the dirt quite yet (it's been pretty wet).  Looking forward to it, though.

Went for a walk and gained 10 pounds...
 
One glorious spring morning this week, as I hiked through the neighborhood enjoying the bird songs on the warm breeze, I noticed it must also be that time of year when the city crews pick up random household items, the stuff that doesn't go in the usual trash bin.  There were various piles sitting at the curb as I passed through the blocks.  Broken bed frames, pet-ravaged furniture, damaged dressers, ancient plastic flowerpots, etc.

Coming up on my walk in one such pile were a couple of hard-used Coleman coolers and shattered shelving unit.  As I got closer, however, something else caught the corner of my eye.

Sitting on the ground in an open cardboard box were two crocks, a smaller brown one nested inside a larger light colored one.  I stopped and removed the smaller crock so I could hoist the larger crock out of the box, because it looked like it could be—why, yes indeed it was—a Red Wing!

If I had been thrifting in a store, this would have been a "Start the car!" moment—when you find something too good to be true.  Your insides are jumping up and down, but you keep a poker face, play it cool, and make a beeline for the checkout and the safety of your getaway vehicle.

Back at the curb, it was 10 seconds, tops, and I was scuttling back down the sidewalk on my way home, now 10 pounds heavier, cradling a dirty, paint spattered crock.

A quick bath and a couple minutes with a razor blade to remove the red paint (talking about the crock here), it was spiffed up and ready for some "after" shots. 

I was expecting to discover at least a hairline crack or a chip or two, but it was pristine!  Now it's ready for some spring flowers—if I can bring myself to fill it with dirt, that is.  Maybe I'll find a pot that will fit inside.

What I couldn't quite throw away...

I was tidying up in the sewing room the other night when I grabbed what remained of Dad's three ties and took a couple steps toward the garbage can with them.  But then I stopped and laid the silky fabric back down.  Just toss it already and move on.  But am I really done with it?  There isn't much there to do anything with.  It was late, I was tired, so decided to sleep on it.

The next morning, I was still on the fence, but I started playing with the pieces on the table, like a jigsaw puzzle.  I laid out what could be sewn together into a slab of "made fabric" and then started doing just that.  Thinking this was probably an exercise in futility, but at least I'd spend a few more minutes playing with it, and mentally processing, before tossing it out, and maybe that's all I needed to do.

Eventually I had two slabs, each a little smaller than a sheet of paper.  I happened to have a 6.5-inch square ruler on the table and put that down on top of the slabs in various ways, looking through it like a camera lens for an interesting vignette.  

Finally, I cut a square from each slab.  The center of a wonky star, perhaps?  Maybe I could even squeak out some of the star points from the leftover bits from the slabs?

So that's what I did, using Dad's shirt scraps for the blue background and red star points.

And today I made a second one with the other center square from ties, the rest from shirts.  My thought is to make two 18-inch pillows from these big blocks.  I've got a large piece of denim from one of Dad's shirts that will make a great pillow back for one of them.  I'll rustle up something else for the other.

I guess reconsidering the fate of the ties was a good move after all.

There's a chain a-coming...

I also started cutting strips for a Carolina Chain quilt, a Bonnie Hunter/Quiltville free pattern, which can be found HERE. 

Started sewing a couple of these together, just to see how it might go.  Sometimes I have doubts about whether my "lights" and "darks" are going to work together overall.  That ever happen to you?

You wonder, will it be okay or just a beautiful mess?  After putting a few together, I'm ready to trust the process and let things take their course.  So we'll see.

Housekeeping and a boo-boo...

I checked my email subscription list for this blog last week and was surprised to find that during the time I had not been blogging much during the first part of 2018, over 1,000 new email subscriptions had been added.  Why all the sudden interest in this small, semi-neglected corner of the blogosphere, I wondered? 

Turns out, on closer analysis, these seemed to be bogus email addresses all ending in @outlook.com, likely planted by a bot of some sort.  A little maintenance/housekeeping was going to be required to remove these.  The bummer was, I was going to have to delete each and every one of the bogus addresses by hand, all 1,000-something of them.

But I did that over the course of a few days, a few hundred at a time.  Unfortunately, at one point I got a little carried away in the rhythm of it (click delete, enter okay...click delete, enter okay), and I accidentally removed a handful (maybe about 4) legitimate email subscribers.  If you have received this blog post in your email, you were not one of them, so no worries.

However, if you subscribed to the blog by email between February 19 and the third week of April, and you aren't seeing this post in your email, I sincerely apologize and ask that you kindly take a moment to re-subscribe. 

The bogus email subscriptions have no effect whatsoever on legitimate subscribers.  It's just something I need to be aware of and handle on my end if it comes up again.

As always, thank you all so much for reading!

Thrifting and Stash Enhancement

One day a few weeks ago, I met up with my sister in a neighboring town.  We planned to go for a walk and then have lunch and catch up.  We agreed to meet up in the parking lot of the True Value hardware store, but since I got there first, I went into the store to look around.  It'd been quite a while, maybe 10 years, since I'd been in there and I remembered there used to be a fabric section tucked back in the corner of the store when it shared space with Ben Franklin.  

Ben Franklin was a "dime store" kind of place, back before the big box stores were popular (and everywhere).  Little towns might have a Ben Franklin, where they sold all sorts of household items and other stuff.

I don't know what happened to Ben Franklin stores, but this True Value store still had the fabric section back along two short walls, and, oh my gosh, you guys, it was great!

By that I mean, not a huge selection, but what WAS there was some pretty nice stuff!  And they were having a sale where everything was 30% off—which might not sound like such a big deal, but when most of the original bolt prices are $5.99 to $7.99 a yard for popular brand fabric, that is fabulous!

Not pictured are some blender type fabrics, and I also found a 108" wide backing at $8.99 a yard, minus 30% off—plus I signed up for the True Value rewards card at the checkout counter, and they gave me another 10% off my total purchase.

(This was a thrift store find - I thought it looked like brains, at first, but it's raspberries!)

I've also been doing a little thrift store shopping here and there.  Trying not to get carried away, just looking for more useful things like fabric, thread, zippers, drinking glasses, etc.  I've driven loads TO the thrift store since the first of the year, in sorting out Dad's effects, and in general, my desire is to keep more stuff going out than coming in.

However...when your husband helpfully points out two matching pieces of mid-century vintage Royal Haeger pottery you just so happen to collect, what are you going to do?

(Vintage Royal Haeger)

That's right.  You are going to take them home.

On a different thrift store stop, I found some pretty iced tea glasses to replace the ones we've lost over the past year (let's just say "Don't break my dishes" has become a popular refrain when Somebody is loading and unloading the dishwasher). 

So I went up to the cash register to pay for the glasses, which were going to set me back a whopping two dollars, and the lady said, "Did you draw a paddle?"  

Huh? I blinked.  "Uh...no?" I finally replied.

She reached for a pail of paint stirrers ("paddles") and told me to pick one.  The one I chose had the number 75 written in black marker on the far end of it.

"Oh, 75 percent off!" she clucked.  "That's a good one!  Do you want to shop some more?"

She did not have to ask me twice.  I dashed back to the "art department" of the store and pulled a large, professionally framed and matted original watercolor off the wall.  It had a price tag of $39.99, which seemed completely reasonable for that kind of work, but it wasn't something I really needed.  Until that moment.

"You found something!" the lady said as I strode back to the register a few minutes later.

I did, indeed.  

It's signed by "Dick Greene."  I don't know anything about the artist, but I think he did a brilliant job.  (Pardon the reflection of my door window on the glass.)

It's now hanging on the wall in my entryway.  He's watching you!

A Flimsy and a Finish

Behind the scenes of this somewhat quiet little blog space, I've been sewing on a few things during the past couple weeks.  Let's catch up!

(The crocuses are popping up!)

I've been following along on Sarah's Nifty-Nines Quilt Along and was inspired to start a nine-patch quilt of my own.  I hit up the stash and pulled a few color combinations that spoke to me in a scrappy kind of way.

Pretty soon I had a design wall of nine-patches.  (That subtle checkerboard pattern is my design wall, which is the fuzzy side of a vinyl tablecloth pinned to the wall.)

Then it was time for some snowball blocks in between those nines, and again I turned to the shelf of stash for a background for those snowballs.  Nothing really spoke to me there, so I started looking in some more out of the way spots in my sewing room, eventually opening a thrift store bag to find this.

A vintage but never used muslin sheet I'd scored at Goodwill sometime in the past couple years.  It's more of a robin-egg blue than the above picture suggests.

I washed it up and cut 9.5-inch squares for the snowball blocks.  A day or two later, I had them all done, and a few days after that, the top was together.  And I had enough sheet left for a pieced backing!

This will be a quilt for Hands2Help, the annual charity quilt drive Sarah coordinates.  I look forward to making something for it every year.  Head over to Confessions of a Fabric Addict to read about this year's H2H Challenge and join in!  It's fun, it feels good to give, and there are prizes!

Recently, Sandy, my local long-arm quilter, brought back two of my quilts.  It is said that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," and I think that's true for quilts.  Especially when they come back beautifully quilted!

This was my living room a few days ago, with WIPs on the floor and furniture.  We manage to navigate along the edge in that narrow walk space—balance training, you know! 

[Aside:  That little corduroy and flannel HST quilt on the left is actually not a WIP; I finished it last year.  The chair is holding a recent thrift store find, one of those "start the car!" moments when I snapped up a piece of salt-glazed Rowe Pottery from the employee cart at Goodwill before it even made it to the display shelf.]

Yesterday, I finished the binding on one of the two quilts that came back from the long-armer.  I had started this 16-patch and X-block quilt last year about this time.  It was one of two 16-patch quilts I made, the other one being donated to last year's Hands2Help charity quilt drive.

This one will stay with me (at least for a while).  I used some gorgeous hand-dyed fabrics by Vicki Welsh in this quilt, on a background of dove gray.

I made two backs for this quilt—which is what happens when you can't remember you've already made the first one.  I gave the second backing to the quilter, and then about six weeks later found the first underneath something in the sewing room!  

I called Sandy to say, "Stop the presses!"  Fortunately, she hadn't started quilting it yet, so I was able to take her the first one, which was my favorite.

That's a little of what's been happening around here.  What have you been up to?

Two and a Half and Some Change

In the past couple weeks, I finished two more kennel quilts, Nos. 14 and 15, and have No. 16 in the flimsy stage.  

(Kennel Quilts No. 15 and 14)

(No. 14)

(Back of No. 14)

(No. 16 flimsy)

In between those things, I also managed to baste a UFO that has been sitting around for quite a while, the Tea Towel Challenge 2014 quilt.

I attended to this task mainly because I had to open a brand new, king-sized package of batting but only needed a smallish piece for No. 15 kennel quilt.  Figured I may as well cut the batting for two things at once for economy's sake, rather than just chop a chunk out.

I think the fall colors may have had something to do with wanting to work on it, too, though.  As I spread out the backing (above) on the floor and taped it down, I fell in love with it all over again.  It's been out of sight and mind for nine months.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as the saying goes.  Hopefully, it won't take me that long to quilt it, but you never know.

No. 16 kennel quilt has an interesting backing too (below).  I was using the scraps of a butterfly print scrubs fabric to make HSTs and then assembled those flying geese style.  I had an odd number, though and needed one more to make the last set.  That is where the pile of scraps/trimmings came in handy.  I poked around and found just enough to create some "made" fabric for the last triangle.

Can you tell which is the "made" piece?  It's the one on the lower right.

I've had some fun thrifting recently, too.  I had a 25% off deal at Goodwill to use during the month August.  It slipped my mind until the very last day of the month, when I ventured in to see what treasures may be waiting.

How 'bout some mid-century California pottery?  Why yes, that will do, thank you.

Call them wings, paisleys, or a yin-yang dish.  Or be functionally descriptive and call them chip-and-dip trays or a lazy susan.  It's all good. Really good!

I was captivated by the color of this creamer.  Another mid-century era piece in the Rhythm pattern by Homer Laughlin. 

The code stamped on the bottom indicates this creamer was made in 1956.

A couple sweet books came home with me that day as well.

Last week, a friend of mine called to say he had found me a "Rembrandt" at a yard sale.  

Of course, he and I know that means a vintage paint-by-number, and that's a-okay with me!

What's in those baskets, do you think?  Flowers?  Bunches of radishes?  Berries or beets?  Maybe some things are meant to be a mystery!

Little Monkeys

"Five little monkeys jumping on the bed..."  

If monkey wrench blocks count, we've got five of those little guys on this quilt, along with some pinwheel drunkard's path blocks.  Hey, there's a quilt name in there somewhere:

Drunkard Monkeys? Drunken Monkeys?

Well, okay.  Maybe not appropriate for a baby quilt, but it makes me giggle, though this quilt was made in a teetotaling state.

Pretty sweet for something that started from leftovers, if I do say.  Norm likes it too.  He has nothing against pink in the right setting, apparently.

Speaking of pink, I picked up a vintage pink blossom milk glass square casserole at Goodwill a couple weekends ago (that may be a personal record for adjective-to-noun ratio in a sentence...you word geeks are counting them now, aren't you?  I gave up trying to figure out where or whether to put commas). 

I was going to give it to my sister, but forgot she only collects the fruit motif.  These pieces are often known as Gay Fad, which was the name of the studio founded in 1945 by Fran Taylor that hand decorated blanks by various glass makers such as Anchor Hocking, Hazel Atlas, and others.  I believe this one is Fire King.  Sometimes this design is known as peach blossom or dogwood.

It has been really cold lately with highs in the teens, and I was in a warm coat, scarf, gloves, and hat when I took the quilt pictures yesterday.  Today the ground is covered in a layer of white.  And so it begins.

Happy 4th!

We are back from our getaway "up north," and had a great time in the Wisconsin north woods.  The weather was absolutely perfect!

We enjoyed being right on the lake, although we didn't boat or fish.  It was wonderful to hear the loons in the early morning and the water lapping the shore, spot eagles, and watch playful chipmunks and squirrels.  I loved sitting on the deck in the afternoon or evening and working on English paper piecing.
 

The place we were staying had a "quiet time" policy after 10:00 p.m., so when the people below us started cutting loose and belting out "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," we only had to bide our time before knowing they would have to move the party to one of the bars downtown.

We did some trail walking every day, and shopping and sightseeing.  And eating, of course.  One favorite restaurant had great food and offered gluten-free toast instead of buns for their burgers and sandwiches.  Such a simple thing, but that and a very friendly waitress who was happy to check ingredients on other menu items, made all the difference in the world to me.

Things I could not resist:

Thrift shopping, stores that have the word "Antique" in them...

Pretty pottery, whether vintage, like this one...

Or new and locally made, like these.

I was very happy to sew on my hand-piecing project.  It was so relaxing and fun to see it take shape once I started whip-stitching the pieces together.  I ran short by four pieces, but I finished those last night when we got home.

I will probably be appliqueing this onto a background to make a wall hanging. On the drive home yesterday, we stopped at a quilt shop along the way and I bought some batiks.  One or all (!) of these may become the background for the hand-pieced tumbling blocks.

The staff at Antoinette's was very helpful and friendly.  I would have been content to wander the store on my own, but a staff member offered assistance within a minute or two, and as it turned out, I was happy she did.  She pulled some things I might not have considered.

I had also found another nice shop where we vacationed and picked up a few stash builder type things.

Check out the cute valance of strips on the shop window.  What a great idea.

One of the highlights of our trip was visiting a recreated Ojibwe Indian village and hearing about Native culture.  

Entrance to Waswagoning.

 

It was fascinating.  More on that in another post.

You'd be smiling, too, if you just made fire by rubbing sticks together.  This guy did it in about a minute!