Friday, January 26, 2007

Those annoying personality tests

I don't quite agree with a lot of this but ... I like the part about being "creative" ... and especially (LOL) "living in my own inner world!!!" (Something about being the middle child?)


***You Are An INFP***


The Idealist

You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world. Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships. It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close. But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop.

You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist.


What's Your Personality Type?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyourpersonalitytypequiz/

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Orphaned 9-Patches


These lovely orphans came home with me last August, during a special Guild get-together, where we planned to use stash, leftovers, donations, etc. The rule was, “Whatever goes home with you, MUST be used and then donated somewhere.” At the end of the session, these blocks were still left on the table, and somehow, they jumped into my tote.

There were 65 blocks, all different, both in style and size. They ranged from 5 ½ to 6 3/4 so I trimmed every one 5 ½. For time reasons, I wasn’t too particular with trimming exactly to the seam lines. That meant a connecting block had to be forgiving – i.e., no matching seams, please. (A snowball connector block would have meant matching seams lines that no longer were accurate.)

Most of the blocks were medium or dark – I eliminated about 8 pale florals. There was no rhyme or reason to the positive/negative rule (5/4 or 4/5).

The hourglass connector block is usually successful. I used a dark floral blue and a pale floral green because that’s what I had. It’s kind of ‘static’, but with all those different blocks, pieced with white, I felt the strong blue/pale green combination was the best I could do. I’ll get it quilted in the next few months, hopefully.

It’s an ordinary quilt, but you know, you just cannot let those 9-patches go to waste!

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Better than what I expected


Can you believe that my motley collection of scrap fabrics turned into this? At first, I was somewhat hesitant to finish this project. Up close, it's just that -- a motley collection of scraps, but last week, a viewer, gave the name of "chocolate" to my ordinary "brown" diagonal strip, and I looked at the project with new insight! LOL -- thank you as always, to all the bloggers and/or quilters out there with vision and encouragement! (Oh yes, I PLANNED that single hot pink strip where it ended.)

The border was giving me some grief - I had considered making another border of crazy patches, ala strings in smaller sizes, but frankly, that was going to take too long. I think this almost-plain version of mottled (like motley?) brown and hot pink is better anyway.

These strings are addictive - but the stash of scraps does not diminish much with the creation of just one quilt, amazingly enough! The blocks DO work up quickly - this is only a week of work. I tried to stay away from anything 'theme-y' or 'cutsies.'

I have a whole box of REAL 40's scraps from a little old lady who passed away years ago. I didn't even know her, but always felt those scraps should be made up into a quilt to honor her as a fabric lover. This may be the perfect project for them.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Not quite what I expected

Since I 'kinda' joined an Internet string quilting project, it was time to attack some of those leftovers under the bed - this is what I dragged out to get started.


Making one was fun, fast, and certainly graphic when finished. As is my usual style, I simply refuse to follow instructions (sorry, Mom - I'm as stubborn as ever!) and decided I would use a light side and dark side, so those were the strings I pulled. And since I figured I'd make the entire quilt myself, I didn't follow the suggestion that we use red or blue down the center. Oh mercy, and I couldn't stay consistent with the size of my center strip. (BTW, it DOES help to be consistent in that center strip color, to give the whole project some measure of continuity.)

mmm, maybe I LOVE it after all ... The turquoise and brown are so pretty together. I'm going to play with rearranging. Don't you just hate it when this happens - you can't decide it you like it or not! It looks a lot better on this BLOG than is does on my living room carpet.

If/when I get this finished, it goes to Heartland String Quilt Project.

Next time I may use softer colors. It works up so fast and it's totally EASY.

Building Boats on the Other Side of our Studio




From time to time, I post photos of my DH's projects. We share a small studio in which we both work. Space is tight, but amazingly, we can both work at the same time in the same space -- it's kinda cozy.

He would LOVE to own a huge working boat - but remember, we are in the western part of Nebraska. Even the bass boat is seldom used because of drought conditions.

So, this is what he does while I am quilting. Instead of actually HAVING a real boat, he builds them, to scale. This particular project has over 300 hours in it. It's built from scratch, no kit, and he had to purchase the full plans from a boat building firm in St. Michaels, Maryland. He was also required to sign a waiver that he would not actually build a REAL boat. When the plans arrived, some of them were for a 52 ft. foot, and some were for a 56 ft. boat, so additional calculations had to be worked out. It's getting close to being finished.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Have I seen that before?



Hey, that looks like something I’ve seen before! Yep, this cute little pink string quilt (yet unquilted) is made from leftovers from this larger version (below) that I posted last year. The blocks were all similar in color, and all the same size HSTs, but look how different they appear.

I had 57 blocks left over from the original project, and used 48 for the second. This is one of my Telephone Book Quilts, named because I pieced them on phone book pages – it tears off really well, and the paper is always FREE. And, ta tahhhh ..., with the leftovers from the second quilt, I actually threw out the leftover 8, and kept one for the label. And I’m promising myself I will NOT retrieve them from the trash.