Towanda

Well, the secret project I was hinting at in my last message was that I made a sample wedding dress out of muslin. I mailed it to Jenny last week so she could try it on and see if it fits. And I am still waiting to hear from her about it.

According to the tracking number, it was delivered last Friday, so I kind of expected to hear from her some time over the weekend. I didn’t so I called a couple times and got voice mail and left a message. We kind of chatted via instant messenger on Monday and again on Tuesday. First she said it hadn’t been delivered, then James remembered a package was delivered but no one knew what happened to it and they would look for it.

So while waiting to hear if the dress is found and if it fits, I dug out these heart blocks from my guild’s block of the month drawing. I sashed them with a darker red and used white for the cornerstones, then I added a narrow black border and a wider red one. All that’s left is to quilt it and put on the binding. 

If it turns out ok, I will give it to my mother-in-law, Iola. She loves red. It is just about the right size for a lap quilt. I wish I could figure out why my camera takes such fuzzy pictures.

Well, I don’t have news or pictures of anything quilty to share with you. That doesn’t mean I am not working on things, but the things I am working on are kind of secret and it is possible that someone who is reading this might have their surprise spoiled.

Instead, I will show you a cool thing we got the cats a week or so ago at Target for about $35.  It is called a Kitty Skyscraper and Max and Zeena love it.  They climb on it, chase each other up and down it and take naps on it. They also like sitting at the top and watching the birds and bugs outside.  Raymond made them a scratching post and you can see it inside the skyscraper at the bottom. They like the scratching post too.

Well, I better get back to my secret sewing.

I don’t have any quilty or sewing pictures for you but here is one of Max and Zeena. They are getting so big.

Well, I said a few days ago that I would try to get pictures of the in-progress bits of Jenny’s wedding dress and here they are. They are a little bigger than the scanner, so the edges are missing, but you can get the idea.

    I have put down some basic embroideries and am now in the process of adding beads and sequins and more stitches to fancy them up a little.

      This one with the brown looking threads is not really that dark. The thread is really more tannish. The scanner is just not so good at figuring out white on white contrast. I also used the auto correct function on the photo editor so you could see the stitches at all. They are not so sharply defined in real life, but then you can see the dimension in real life and that makes it look better.

 I have borders on now. I think that hot pink really sets off the rest of the pinks. I don’t like the way the corners look though, so I will probably replace them with all white squares. After that, I may add a two or three inch border of white and then quilt it and bind it with white. I may skip the white border because I think it is big enough - depends on how long it takes me to find some more white that matches.

 Here is Max.

  And here is Zeena. Aren’t they cute!

 Look what the UPS guy brought me today!  It’s so beautiful. I wonder how long I can keep this one alive?

Just a quick entry.  The weed whacker blocks are all sewn together and one side of the saw-tooth border is on. I love it. Raymond is not so sure yet, but I think he will like it once all the borders are on.

Update on the kitchen items (placemats, napkins, pot holders etc.: I am disappointed even further with the pot holders. The first time I washed them, a small bit of fabric just disintigrated. That is sad since this was fancy schmancy gradation fabric. Another negative: I used a potholder to take a dish out of the oven at 475 degrees, and almost got burnt — the heat went right through two layers of cotton batting, a layer of insulbrite and the silver ironing board stuff as well as the cotton outside fabric. Lower heat seems to be ok though.

I made a nice little valance out of some of the gradation fabric. It looks great on the kitchen window. I am hoping to find a ready made curtain to go with it because the afternoon sun comes in just when we sit down to dinner. I took one picture, but the light wasn’t right.

I have also been making progress on the embellishment on Jenny’s wedding dress. Pictures to follow eventually.

Finally, I took a tarot card test and this is my card:

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Pretty cool.

Here are the blocks for the weed whacker quilt. I have been putting them together off and on over the last week or so and just finished the 12th one today. Now, I am deciding whether I want sashing between them or not before I go any further. Sashing would make it a little bigger quilt which would be nice, but I would have to go out and buy some kind of pink for the sashing, and I don’t know if I want to do that.  I think it might just be big enough as it is. 

The whole idea is to work with what I have on hand. I have enough of a hot pink solid to make a nice narrow border around the blocks once they are together.  And then I could sew together all the half’square triangle blocks that I cut off when I made the points on the ends of the sub units. I could trim them up and maybe have enough for a second border and then finish it with a white border.

I wrote all that yesterday and saved the entry instead of posting it. Today, I have decided to skip the sashing and have started sewing the blocks together. I will use the hot pink as a narrow border and then make the second border with the half square triangles and then add some plain white on the outside.

This little quilt will go on the daybed. That will make two pink quilts I have for the daybed which is perfect. One can go on the top mattress and the other on the trundle bed.

Look at the new members of the household. We got these little darlings today. They had been born and taken up residence in an outbuilding of a local hospital. There were five kittens all together and I would have loved taking all of them, but I know that would be too much to handle even in this big house. The dark one is calico and female (of course). Raymond named her Zeena. The tan one is a boy, and I am still thinking of a name for him.  

I have gotten into a routine lately where I read a little before bed. While I drink a cup of tea and sometimes have a piece of chocolate, I journal a bit and then read a bit. First, I write in my gratitude journal. My intention is to write five things from the day that I am grateful for. Some days it is a challenge to pick just five. I am using a wonderful little Journal book that my friend Irene Watson gave me.

Then I read a few pages or sections in these books:

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle http://www.amazon.com/New-Earth-Awakening-Lifes-Purpose/dp/0525948023 I am on my second read trying to keep up with Oprah’s online weekly classes. http://www.oprah.com/obc_classic/webcast/ane_marketing.html It is a wonderful book and really is life-changing. The classes are great too.

Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das  http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Buddha-Within-Tibetan-Western/dp/0767901576 I don’t remember exactly when I got this book or even why I picked it out. I think it was through one of those book of the month clubs where you get so many books for a dollar each or something like that to start and then you pay a lot for the other books and shipping and handling that you want to quit as soon as your agreement is over. Then you (or at least I do) get enticed by the ‘almost free” books to join again. Anyway, I have had this one for a few years, and recently it spoke to me that it was ready for me or I was ready for it, so I read a section every night after A New Earth. I am really enjoying it an learning about Buddhism and meditation. I particularly like how much my nightly reads of this book seem to compliment what I am reading in A New Earth. Sometimes I forget which book is which.

Altars by Deinse Linn http://www.amazon.com/Altars-Bringing-Sacred-Shrines-Everyday/dp/0345434463/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207848723&sr=1-1 This book was mentioned in one of the blogs I have been reading, and I remembered that I have this book. I probably got it the same way as Awakening the Buddha.. So I dug Altars out of the piles of books that now are in residence in our dining room awaiting bookcases, and am perusing it. It is giving me ideas for creating an altar in my bedroom and perhaps other places in the house.

The Eternity Artifact by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Artifact-L-E-Modesitt/dp/0765353458/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207849028&sr=1-1 I just got this yesterday from the library and started it last night. We finally got our driver’s licenses switched over from Florida to Tennessee. The first thing we did after that was get library cards, then Raymond got a fishing license and spent the rest of the day at the lake ( http://www.tva.gov/sites/chickamauga.htm ). He’s out fishing again today - probably till dark - so I did my basic housework and am reading a little more of this book. I have not read this author before, but he has a ton of other books listed inside the title page. What a great discovery! This is my favorite kind of science fiction story. And it is a big. fat book too. It will take a long time to finish. It kinda jumped into my hand at the library, so I had to bring it home.

Go here to read the inside flap: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0765353458/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link 

Enough typing. I’m gonna go read some more.

For the last week or so, I have had these pink scraps on the design wall. I started this a little while before we left Florida and then packed it away.

It’s a pattern by Bonnie Hunter from http://quiltville.com/weedwhacker.shtml. She has many wonderful designs for scrap quilts and I fell in love with this particular one. I cut up all my pink scraps and sewed them together into these units. What is on the wall will go together into seven blocks. I’m still working on adding the white triangles to the rest. Once that is done I will have enough units to make twelve weed whacker blocks, which should be enough for a nice little quilt. Maybe it will go on the daybed in the guest room.

I also have a drawer full of strips for more weed whacker blocks that I cut from almost all my smaller scraps. That one will be really scrappy. I am still deciding on what to use for the corner bits.