Sunday, November 29, 2009

"Artist" or "Engineer"

Yup - gonna love these books (see previous post). The ABCs of Longarm Quilting starts off with a definition of two different types of quilters: artists and engineers. So which are you?

Artists: pattern directions are merely suggestions; there are no such things as "perfect points"; and unscripted and spontaneous methods provide inspirations.

Engineers: accuracy is everything; measuring and pre-planning lead to perfection; and knowing exactly how the machine works is important.

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I'll not be judgemental toward anyone else, but I spent a lot of today putting together some unscripted and spontaneous gifty things for some special people. :)

Back to "real work" tomorrow. Have a great week!

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Socks and Books

Christmas socks done! I will put a few beads and names or initials on them as time permits. They are the same, but different. The cuffs are all different - experimenting with configurations. And the second from the left has one of the wonky trees in it. I did use the other trees - one's on the backside cuff of another sock - and one (oops!) I managed to get upside down - so it's an upside down tree on the other side of a cuff.
Here are the backs - Plain Jane, but they will go against the fireplace or wall where they get hung (and I actually remembered to put hanging loops - an important feature!).
I used Harley to quilt the fronts, more for practice than anything - it would have been faster to just do these little things on the regular machine. But - I'm learning with each thing I do, so not a wasted exercise.

I ordered a few more books from Amazon last week - surprisingly (given that I just had them sent regular post and it's getting to Xmas season), they arrived yesterday while we were at work so I picked them up this morning at the post office. I ordered them sight unseen, but after a quick look, think they all look good. They are all for longarm quilting:

1) The Ultimate Guide to Longarm Machine Quilting by Linda V. Taylor

2) ABCs of Longarm Quilting by Patricia C. Barry (smart ass Joe asks - "so what happens when you want to do the D, E, Fs......?") and
3) Mindful Meandering - 132 Original Continuous-Line Quilting Designs by Laura Lee Fritz
I'm looking forward to being able to spend some quality time with these - and all my other - new books. The opportunity cost of sewing is not reading and vice versa. I need several of me - one for work, one for sewing, one for reading, etc.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Straight On

I asked Joe, me darlin' hubby, to hold Elaine's Place up for me so I could get a straight on pix. I don't like it much better. This will be the last of it on the blog, unless I get to Denver and Elaine herself models it. It was a good idea, the execution just needed a bit more thought.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Elaine's Place is finished

Well - for better or worse, here it is. Elaine's Place - her house, imaginary picket fence, garden path, blue birds, flowers and birdhouses.





I went looking for my embroidery floss to use for stitching the buttons on. This is the rats nest of floss.
Why do I have so much? At one point I decided I should try cross stitch. I started a set of four pictures. The macaw was finished in about a year when Craig was a baby - so about 28 years ago. It took me another 8 or 9 years to finish the butterflies. I started the third one - I haven't looked at it for so long, I can't remember what it is! No need to rush these things! Somewhere around year 10 I figured I should frame the ones that I had done. They are up in the "guest bedroom."


Thursday, November 19, 2009

Christmas Socks

Moving right along here... on to the seasonal stuff. There won't be much of it. Not enough time. But I did promise the sons that I would make their girls Christmas socks. And it turns out Carol needs one, too. And now she has a new special friend, so I may find it in my heart to make an extra one for him. Due to time constraints, I'm going for simple but effective.




At the last quilt show we were at, we saw a quilt of "wonky trees" that looked pretty simple, so thought as an experiment I'd try a few. The result is above. I think they're OK. I stacked three blocks, one of each colour, sliced them up, rearranged, stitched, then squared up again. They are 5 inch blocks so will end up 4 1/2 inches when stitched into the socks.

I did get Elaine's Place finished, but it's up on the bed and I'm down here, so I'll do a pix for a future post before I "post" it. I still don't like it - but I guess we all have to have a least favorite, lessons learned kind of project once in awhile.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Conclusion of Canada Scramble

Well here it is - Canada Scramble all finished. Nothing fancy on the quilting - just swirly things - keeping control of the machine is my main challenge at the moment. I'll work my way up to complicated quilting designs!




We dropped it off to Margaret this morning, so here she is modelling Canada Scramble.


And here is a bonus "weather pix" - we had a Chinook blow in this morning. Here is the edge of the Chinook Arch. If you're not familiar with this - a Chinook wind is a warm wind that blows down from the mountains. We get them here fairly regularly in the winter. The City relies on Chinook wind to keep the roads clear of snow. In years like last year when it was really cold for a long time - the snow didn't melt and people got pretty cranky about the roads not getting plowed as much as they should have!