The Newest Family Member

This is our new kitty we picked up on Friday. Her name is Griffin (a.k.a Kitty Griffin) after the comedian Kathy Griffin who we love. She is supposedly Siamese but I think she is a blend of Siamese and Ragdoll. She is a complete love and she already sleeps with us! I am sure in due time there will be pictures of her on quilts; if I can ever get one finished.

Top Left: Her sleeping on the way home, Top Right: Her trying to attack my IPhone camera, Bottom Left: Kitty Burrito, Bottom Right: Her Glamour Shots pose.

Single Girl Part Tres...

Well, here we are again with curves and curves and more curves. this quilt has more curves than I do! So I finished the first two of many blocks and they came out pretty alright! I had a few tiny puckers but nothing major and for my first quilt with curved pieces, I am really not going to make a fuss about it. Thankfully my sewing of clothing came in handy and I tried to remember all the tricks for sewing curved pieces of fabric together, but there is ALOT of pinning and massaging going on. It take a long time to prepare the piece(s) for sewing but once they are together the sewing takes a mere seconds to do. Kind of like Disneyland; you wait in line for hours and the ride is only a few minutes long. Here is a pic of the first block:

I am bound and determined to work on this more today, but between schoolwork, work-work, and my grading papers, not sure how much I will get done. I will keep posting as I go though; for those that are following along.

It's a Mod, Mod, World...

So at the last meeting of the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild, we were blessed with a tutorial by Cola on how to do the Mod Mosaic Pillows that she had made. While her efforts were great in helping us get started, I had a bit of a creative meltdown from the beginning. I am so used to following a pattern or sticking to exact measurements, that I found it difficult just to 'let go' and do something without a plan per se. Cola helped me gather some fabics, since I had not come prepared with scraps for the project, and here are the selections we came up with.

Some of them are from Michael Miller's Sweet Meadow collection and I believe the others are from Poppy Parade. It started out pretty alright, but I have decided to leave it for now until I at least finish a few more sections of my Single Girl Quilt. Here is what I have so far, and I am really working hard on just 'going with the flow' and not being too concerned about being meticulous with my cutting and measuring.

For further ideas you can check out the Mod Mosaic on Flickr. My husband is just wondering when I will actually FINISH one project. Back to sewing.

South Pacific Single Girl

Well I haven't even finished the first one, and I am already planning the next one. I have decided on my next Single Girl to be themed South Pacific, sort of tropical, vintage, and colorful. Here are my fabrics that I have been collecting...not sure if I will add more or not.

I am planning on an off-white background to match the background of some of the fabrics. Since I am quilting my first quilt in a dark gray Perle 8 cotton, this one will be in a salmon color Perle 8. I can't wait to get started on it. This is nuts, since I haven't even finished the first one. Oh well, I could have worse addictions.

Single Girl Part Deux...

Well, I am making progress. Slowly, but making progress. I have all my A-H quarters sewn and only saw a few pieces not lined up so well. I have to say that the posts I have read are very helpful, but have also made me very nervous to make this quilt. Once person even said that you have to measure just perfectly or the whole thing will be off. Great. I have decided that it will be what it will be.

I bought some pieces of dark gray poster board from JoAnn's to see how the circle would look against my not yet purchase Kona Charcoal fabric. So far so good. Now, I did cut two of the pieces upside down, so I had to re-cut them, but otherwise, it went pretty well. After once again consulting all posts for the Single Girl Quilt Along on Ginger Monkey's blog, I cut, and cut, and cut out all my templates. I have already started planning another single girl with what I am calling some South Pacific themed fabric and an off white background. This time I will actually trace the templates as shown on the blog, and also make copies of the templates rather than transferring them to plastic sheets. I feel that I made some errors in transferring them over. We will see.

Oh so many templates. Each one has twelve pieces to make twelve rings. In the meantime I ordered my Kona fabric for the front, back and binding. However, they only had 5.8 yards so now I am short for the back. With the suggestion of my stepdaughter, I may make the back from a fabric that is soft and/or fuzzy. We will see what I can find.

Here is my yummy charcoal fabric. It is even richer than I thought it would be (as you can see by the faded gray color of my background paper that I thought would match perfectly). The only pieces that I am not too sure about are the gray with ferns fabric, but I'm not changing it now!
So one of the posts explained that you cannot line up the pieces like at the top and the bottom like you would normally, but rather where they intersect. What? After much deliberation with myself, I decided to go old school and draw a 1/4" seam allowance on the back of the pieces (which later reduced itself to x's in each corner) and then put two pins through each corner where they intersect like you would for hand piecing. Granted I am sure there is an easier and/or fastest way to do this, but this is all I came up with.

After lining them up, I pinned a couple more in for good measure and sewed away.

After all 12 of these quarters were done, I will move onto the next quarter. I might get his done by summer if I'm lucky. Like I said, so far they are coming out alright, but I am concerned about matching them up with their charcoal cousins later on and it still coming out in the shape of a square. I might call on you experts that I know to help me "make it work" if needed. I will say that I have learned not only what worked, but what I will not do the next time on my South Pacific quilt. For the quilting, Denyse Schmidt includes a pattern to follow, which I will, but I have decided to do it with size 8 perle cotton. I can't wait! Keep posted to view the progress. I think I might also count how many cups of coffee it takes to make this quilt as well.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

I bought a vanity from Craigslist not too long ago, and decided that it needed to be refinished and some TLC. I noticed right away that it was indeed antique and had bakelite handles so I grabbed it up quick! I then started my on-line research of how to refinish with Danish Oil and how to clean bakelite. Coincidentally, I don't think I have sanded that much in my life! Here is a pic of the handles, before and after cleaning.

They were very stained and I was actually pretty shocked when they came up such a light color. You can see them sitting on the original color of the vanity, which was a dark brown 70's sort of shade (not attractive) and there was some mending needed. This is a picture of it with all the drawers pulled out. I did start with the drawers to see how much work it was going to take to get it to the color I wanted. I have some modern danish furniture and was shooting for something more in the link of that caramel, warmness that only danish modern can bring.

So, the trick to working with Danish Oil, I found, was the right kind of sanding, putting on enough oil, then waiting long enough for it to "dry", then wiping just the right amount off, deciding how much sanding to do between coats, and then when to stop putting on oil. Then when you are done sanding, coating, sanding, and coating, you then have to put a wax polish on it, which also takes more then one coat. You also have to "wax on, wax off". So needless to say my arms got quite the workout, but the outcome was so worth it.

I borrowed an old metal chair from my mom which needed a recovered seat. After buying some foam from JoAnn's and a $2.00 piece of clearance fabric for furniture, I had a chair! Now I have a great place to sit and put my make up on, or do my hair. I just love it, and love that I saved it. I don't know if I will ever refinish another piece of furniture again (especially with Danish Oil), but I can say that I did it at least once.

New quilting store in Henderson...

This weekend I went to visit the new quilting store in Henderson, on Water Street and it was great! It is called Sew Obsessed, and just opened a month ago. It has many fabrics that the other stores don't carry and many patterns that I hadn't seen before. It is Modern style and also has this great enclosed area for kids with little chairs, books and a TV. Here is a pic from their site:

I highly suggest that you take a visit when you get a chance. They are going to be expanding soon as well to accommodate a space for classes too. Water street is really cute, and you can also visit the homemade soap shop next door when you're there!