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Quilts Up!

Last night I joined my Modern Quilt Guild at the Alicia Ashman Library to help put up our first annual quilt show!  It was a blast.  I use the term “help” for what I did loosely because my feet were having a bad day, but I did offer some moral support.
Check out the picture on the ad, it’s of one of mine.  🙂
We first piled them up roughly by size.  There are so many beautiful quilts in the show.  At first we didn’t think there would be room for all of them.
After some measuring and figgering we realized we had the room but just barely.  Which is perfect, really.  One doesn’t wish for blank spaces when hanging a show.
There were two basic hanging areas, here by the magazines.
Check out the Mrs’s Courageous Pantses:
They were calmly and coolly hanging stuff up so high that looking at them from the ground made me dizzy.
Up goes the denim quilt I made for the Project Quilting Challenge.
I have to say I feel like mine kinda stick out in that they are the only really heavy, not made out of quilting cotton ones there.  No judgement of either kind of quilt there (I’ve made lighter ones before), just an observation.
How cool is that.  Giant book quilt in a library.
Please indulge my abuse of the panoramic feature.  It’s just fun to do.
This one’s by the bathroom  
And so it this one.  It’s my corduroy quilt.  I almost didn’t get to hang it.  In my mad rush to get out the door, I drilled too wide of a hole on the hanging pole thing for one of the eyehooks.  I threw some wood glue in the hole but there was no time for it to dry and honestly, the glue wouldn’t have done the job for the two months this monster is slated to hang.  It really was unhangable.  It’s just heavy as hell and really needed all the support it could get.  
I brought it along anyway.  I mentioned to one woman there that I need some wire or something to secure the eyehook to the pole and she pulled a short length of wire right out of her pocket.  Quilter to the rescue!  
Who carries wire in their pocket?  I may from now on.  You never know.
The rest are all hanging in the children’s room.
They put all of the most colorful ones there.
There were some improvisational hanging techniques going on since we had more quilts than they had hanging apparatuses. 
This is my favorite one there. (Am I allowed to have a favorite?)  It’s so simple but colorful and I love the layout.
Love it.
How cool is that?
This one matches the wood and the wall so well, it’s like it was made for that space.
Finally, another library appropriate one that fut just right under a spotlight, like it was made to be put there.  
The quilts will be up through the end of June.  I hope you can stop by and see them!  
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That’s Better

I’ll never finish this by the Project QUILTING deadline: Sunday at noon. I’m having too much fun. It’s very meditative and I can’t help but wonder if I shouldn’t be doing this on a single layer of fabric instead of a thick quilt.
OMG!  Boobs!  It shouldn’t look like that when I’m done.
There, that’s better

Check out my caddy. I found it at the thrift shop yesterday. I was there stocking up on kitchen items to decorate during my next Fearless Crafters program.
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One Good Thing

About giving up on the Project QUILTING challenge is that I get to add new colors.
I’m not going to add too many colors, I think just a couple of neutral colors will work.

I added an additional circle, too. To, ya know, play down the boob thing.
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It’s Better, Right?

On the quilt, the rays don’t look like they did in my head.  They add a whole level of chaos that I don’t really like.  I also envisioned the circles as being tighter.  
That’s because I was going to machine sew them.  I still could have, I do  have other sewing machines, but they’re in the cold basement. 
So I tried making tighter circles and I think I prefer it.  
It’s odd but it’s easier for me decide about something if I look at pictures of it.  
Even if the thing is right in front of me
 Side by side shot.  It’s better, right?
Also, it was so cold yesterday that an egg froze in the coop.  It was only out there for a couple of hours.  Poor cluckers.
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I Don’t Know How To Sew

I totally forgot how.
OK.  That’s not really true but that was my first thought when trying to sew a bunch of circles on my machine. It didn’t work at all.  The bobbin fell out twice.  After a night’s sleep, I now think it was the sewing machine.  It’s a fabulous straight stitching machine but doesn’t like sewing in circles.  Does that sound reasonable?  I haven’t fully abandoned my first theory.
On to hand stitching.  I rounded up all my blues and whites and pulled out my new pin cushion.
Isn’t that hilarious?  My friend gave it to me.  She called it a hillbilly wine glass.  I added the pin cushion lid.  The only plus about actually drinking wine from it is that I could drink a whole bottle but claim to only having two glasses.  Maybe that’s not a plus.  Anyway, it’s a perfect place for all of my safety pins.
I had lots of fun making my circles. They don’t exactly match what I envisioned but I like them anyway.
Here’s the back after I added another circle.  I really like this side.  I used some old blue linen left over from another project. 
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What Could Go Wrong?

It’s another Project QUILTING quilt!
I didn’t think they would have another challenge that would tempt me but…
Here I go again.  I got a strong image of what I wanted to do as soon as I read the challenge rules.  I’ll only do them when that happens.
So the theme is favorite color and the idea is that you pick only one color plus white and that includes thread color.  As you can imagine, I’m picking blue…denim.  Surprise!  So I pulled out my denim pile plus some pants and started putting them together; very much inspired by all the string quilts I looked at on Pinterest today.
I’m thrilled to have my Grandma’s sewing machine working again!
I intend to use white only in my thread choice.  I plan to quilt big circles with rays coming out from the middle of the circles with both the machine and by hand using different whites and blues.  Cool, huh? 
And I got this far before deciding what it would all end up as:  A project bag!  So now, with one hour before I have to go pick up a kid, I’m ironing and blogging at the same time.  What could go wrong?
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Thanks To The Hand Holders Of The World!

Smack in the middle of making the Project QUILTING quilt, I was lucky enough to have a yearly mom’s retreat happen.  Woohoo!  If you don’t have a bunch of friends who like to get together for a weekend to eat, drink and be treat each other well, I highly recommend you find one.  
It meant that I would need to bring a sewing machine with me if I was going to finish the quilt in time. The only portable machine I have right now is my Grandmother’s Featherweight which, as you may remember, is haunted and therefore was in need of repair.  
I don’t know about you, but I fear electricity.  It can mess you up. So I needed a fair amount of hand holding for this project.  On the other hand, no way was I going to pay to have someone fix it.  I mean, it was obviously a simple fix, you just had to know what to do.  
First I googled around and found this very inspiring blog: Mysewingmachineobsession.blogspot.com.  I emailed the woman whose blog it is and asked pointless questions that basically added up to “Tell me I can do this please!”  She got back to me very promptly and told me I could do it. I stopped at the local hardware store and bought an plug thingy and was ready-ish to rumble.
I also cornered a friend at the retreat who fixes up vintage machines and she was a huge help.  Go buy things from her etsy shop here.  🙂
Hand-holding powers engaged, I started.  The hardest part was prying the inside of the plug out of the cover.
It fought me all the way.
Then I stuck the wires through.
We cut off the insulation with scissors (By the way, don’t try this at home.  Surely there’s a safer, better way but we were at a retreat center and had slim pickin’s for tools.  We twisted each of those two little sets of wires clockwise.  This is so that when we screwed them in, they stayed bundled together.   Then, we just wrapped them around the screws and screwed them in snugly.  I wish I’d taken a picture at that point.  Sorry, I was too into it, I guess.
It went back on way easier than it came off.  I picked this huge plug because it’s easy to grab and I won’t be tempted to pull it out of the outlet by just the wire again.
Check it!  Light is on.  Motor is running and the quilt got finished. All I needed was hand holding and people telling me I could handle it.  
Thanks to the hand holders of the world! 
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DONE!!!!

Finished it!! Woot woot!!

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Feeling That Time Crunch

I’m done with the stitching!!! It felt like it took forever but really, it was pretty fast. I’m feeling that time crunch though.

It’s not perfect but it’ll do. 
Little bit of detail.  I sewed one wonky square, cuz, ya know; I’m me. 

All that’s left to do is put on the binding and then I’m done!
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Thimble Search

Here’s what I found while searching for my missing thimble.
This was all in one bag:
Two hole punchers
Many fabric scraps
Ridiculously sized rubber band
My first stuffed animal
Cross stitch paraphernalia
Cook book

That denim thread I looked everywhere for but could not find

Plastic baggies

The missing gingher scissors

Mail art
2 full sized hardcover books
Art by my daughter
Stamp making supplies
3 unfinished knitting projects
Many circular knitting needles
The camera!

Embroidery hoop

Stitch markers
Erasers
Pens
Papers

No thimble

It showed up later in my sewing machine cleaning supply basket. 
QUILTING TIME!!!!