A New Trick

Yes, this old dog has learned a new trick. That t-shirt quilt I bound on Tuesday was finished so quickly because I finally tried machine-binding.

Back 30 years ago, or thereabouts, when I was a very inexperienced quilter, I tried machine binding using wide bias tape that I'd purchased. What a mess! It was a total disaster. And in all these intervening years, never ever did I consider trying it again. But lately, I've been hearing other quilters swear by it;  I've inspected their work and it looks good, so I decided it was time I gave it another try. Ha! If you go really slow, and if you don't cut corners, it can turn out pretty darn good! *smiles*

I cut the binding at 2.5-inches, pressed it, and wound it around my hand. Then I slipped it over this spindle that holds my thread cones. The base of this thread holder is heavy cast iron, so it had enough heft to adequately hold the binding while it slowly unwound as I sewed it on.

In the picture above, you can see how I set up my little operation. I have my walking foot on the machine. That is a must, for sure.

I sewed the binding to the quilt with a seam allowance of about 3/8" and I was very careful when I turned the corners. I really did take my time. So far, though, I have done everything as I've always done it. It's this next part that I was nervous about. I girded my apprehensions, though, and forged ahead.

I had the good sense to use blue thread in both the upper and lower feeds. That was a smart move, as my occasional slight dips and tangents are less obvious. If I'd kept my neutral top and bottom threads in the machine, I am sure I would not have been as happy with my results.

The binding tacked down like a dream! I am so thrilled to have made myself do this. Think of the time savings! I will definitely consider this method on future quilts.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Welcome, October

Some years I am just fine with the changing of the seasons, and I look forward to different Ohio weather. For some reason this year, I am rather ambivalent about leaving summer behind and moving into fall. Maybe it's because I have had such a fantastic summer, with a wedding, a big fraternity party, and 2 beach vacations. So, even though I love the cooler weather, and the chance to wear jeans and sweaters and socks and shoes (as opposed to sandals which I've had on every day since mid-April!), I just hate waving bye-bye to all that sunny, carefree fun.

Get a grip, Jayne!

Enough! I will welcome fall. I have already pulled out my meager few fall decorations and placed them around the house. I have dug out my favorite pumpkin coffee cake recipe, and look forward to making it this weekend. I am full-throttle into football season, as I watch the Buckeyes and Browns try to make successes out of their off-season headlines (Braxton Miller's injury for the Bucks; Johnny Football mania for the Browns).

Well, let's quit with the whining and opining, and get to some quilting news, shall we? Before Hilton Head, you may recall, I took the t-shirt quilt I'd been working on to Terry for quilting. On Monday evening I picked it up and spent Tuesday (yesterday) binding it. I finished it, and it is ready to be delivered to the customer. She has seen a picture of the finish and is quite pleased, I am happy to report. Have a look for yourself.

This t-shirt quilt is the 5th or 6th I have made, and I am becoming more and more fond of doing them. I am happy that people contact me to ask about making one for them. T-shirts represent memories and go back years and years, in many cases. The events in our lives that are represented by those t-shirts come back to us just the same way as memories do when we look at photo albums or yearbooks. I think that is why they are so popular. They are a tangible and useful memory of happy days gone by. But here's the catch - because they are made of t-shirts, there's little need to worry about using the quilt. Go ahead and take it on a picnic, or to a football game! It can take the abuse!

T-shirt quilts are perfect for those who love to recycle and reuse. This is a great alternative to shipping old shirts off to Goodwill or a clothing bank, or using them as rags in the workshop or garage. Give them new life in a quilt that will be cuddled and loved and used and appreciated for many years to come. It's gratifying to see customers who are pleased with their decision to do this.

Now, they do cost, have no doubt about that! I don't do them for free, and I try to make it clear before starting that my time is valuable. So far, I've not had anyone who has objected to paying the price I quote for making a quilt. Thankfully. It is a one-of-a-kind memento, after all. Even if it is made of old t-shirts, the time they take to make - and make well, I might add - has to be considered.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Country Living Fair

Two weeks ago, before leaving for Hilton Head, I spent a day with my mother and DD1 in Columbus at the Country Living Fair. It was a really fun experience, and I knew I wanted to blog about it at the time, but with the impending week-long trip, I knew it would have to be put off.

Well, put off no longer! I SHALL recap, regardless of how far after the fact!

I used to subscribe to Country Living Magazine, and kept every issue. I suppose at one time I had about 15 years worth of back issues stacked up in closets and on shelves. About the time we had our 3rd child (who is now 22), I ended my subscription. And I think it  has been in these last 22 years that the Country Living Fair has been established and has really taken off. In just passing conversations with different friends and acquaintances, I knew of it when it came to Columbus, but for whatever reason it never really took hold on my radar.

And then serendipity stepped in. Within about 24 hours, both my mom and my older daughter mentioned that they wondered if I'd like to go. Weird! So we three got together and made an afternoon of it. What fun. There were crowds aplenty, but we managed just fine. I wasn't shopping for anything in particular, and judging from the little that we three purchased, I don't think Mom or Erin were either. My focus, mostly, was to see what was "hot" or "trending" these days in home dec, crafting, upcycling and repurposing. I don't do a lot of this stuff myself, but  I do enjoy seeing the creative ways people use things.

So with that introduction, let me just show you my pictures. I snapped such random shots that there's really no way to explain what motivated me to take the pictures I took. It was a cool fall day, mostly overcast, but pleasant - perfect sweater weather!

Rustic surrounding; straw seating; shady lawns.

Quilts for sale!

Rustic fall scene. Very cool juxtaposition of truck and 'punkins.'

The other half of the quilt booth pictured above.

An early booth we visited; loved the quilt and the vintage dishes.

This old fireplace mantel caught my eye.

Quirkiness had a definite role in the displays.

Quirky skirt; simple construction; high price.

Patchwork tablecloth covered with lace trimmed cloth.

A Texas Star quilt and transferware pottery.

Loved this display of linens with French stenciling.

This little sewing machine looked so sweet; I hope it found a good home.

The shop where the little machine was for sale.

I spent a good bit of time visiting with the shop owner of Salmon Alley, pictured above. Debbie is in the center of the picture, and her shop was just fantastic. I wish I'd had more life in my cell battery, for I definitely would have taken more pictures. Here is the link to her blog, and the precious little sewing machine is pictured there! Cool! She also has a website that you will enjoy perusing. She is located in Cincinnati, so I do hope that locals will make the effort to check her out. It was really cool talking to her, and she had such energy and enthusiasm about bringing her products to guests of the Fair. All the shops I visited seemed to carry that same enthusiasm; there were lots of positive vibes, for sure.

The afternoon was wonderful, in every respect. As I said, I went with the mindset that I was just looking, and both the people watching and the window shopping were excellent. The first image I can conjure up is of a couple we saw in the parking lot when we first arrived and were trying to find a place to park. They had purchased two metal porch chairs and were trying to get them loaded into a small sporty convertible. I don't know how both people and both chairs were ever going to fit in that car. It was surely a sight!

Another little side note: I was no more through the gate and visiting my first booth than who do I run into but quilter friend Mary Harwood, who opens up her little barn for quilting. You've read about her here on this blog. Click here for one of those posts, if you need your memory refreshed. Great seeing you, Mary!!

I think I will go again to the Country Living Fair, and maybe I will take a shopping list with me next time!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Sharon's Update

In the last post I was reviewing the sewing and quilting that several of us did while on our Hilton Head vacation. Sharon has sent me pictures of her pretty little project, so let me share them now. She says she has continued working on it this week at  home and has reached the borders.

Sharon confirmed that the fabric is, indeed, Aviary by Moda. She is doing the big-stitch quilting method, and I believe hers is also free-hand, like what I am doing on my current project.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Stitching

I think I would need a whole lot of beach time before I would be ready to spend a lot of time stitching or quilting at a resort like ours at Hilton Head last week. The pull of the beach, the ocean, the waves, the sunshine, the breeze -- all of it was too much for me to devote much time to my quilting projects. I took my little box of 2.5-inch squares, and did nothing with those. I also took my cheddar and crackers quilt in the frame, and only did minimal work on it.

I'm not entirely sure I am liking this "freehand" method of quilting, but I suppose I will keep on with it. It may look a bit primitive by the end, and maybe that will be okay. We shall see.

My vacation cohorts did do some more significant stitching than I did. You may remember seeing Kay hand quilting a gorgeous 9-patch quilt at quilt camp back in June. Well, she's still plugging away at it, and even though she feels like she will never get it finished, her steady work on it will surely get her to the end-of-the-year deadline she set for herself.

Sherrie took a cross stitch project to work on instead of a quilting project. She says this is the 4th of a 4-part design. The other three are made, and this one has been a long-time UFO. When she started the week, she just had little more than his head finished, so she did make some very significant progress toward finishing.

Sharon P. took a hand quilting project, and I'm sorry to say I never bothered to get a picture of it. She had taken leftover scraps from an old Aviary (or some similar beautiful Moda feminine line) project and just randomly sewed them together to make a mini-quilt. I suppose it could be either a table topper or a wall hanging. Anyway, she was using the big-stitch method of hand quilting, and was making very good progress on it. She said she would send a picture, so you might get a look at it soon.

One afternoon, when the weather forecast called for rain, we decided that we'd search out a quilt shop we'd heard about. It turns out that weather forecasts on Hilton Head Island are simply meaningless; we had great weather for the most part, even on days when there was an 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms!

But I digress.

We did find Island Quilters, a small shop filled with modern fabrics and lots of shop samples and kits. I was remiss in taking pictures of the shop, but I did make a small purchase, and I took pics of 2 pillows that I thought would appeal to my younger daughter who just bought a new sofa for her apartment.

Bright, modern fabrics on nice big pillow forms. I think they'd look great in a college kid's apartment.

There was a little display of remnant fabrics tied into little rolls like you see above. These were marked way, way down, so I pulled out three that I thought I would use. If nothing else, I will cut them into 2.5-inch squares and use them in those endless 9-patch and 16-patch blocks I love to make!

That was all the stitching and related activity I can report from our vacation. Sherrie and Kay were very dedicated to their projects; Sharon did more each evening than I did; I think I am sure I was the least productive of the bunch. Oh well.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Home Again, Home Again

Jiggety-Jig.

I used to say that little nursery rhyme phrase to my little ones when we'd pull into the driveway. And I still say it today, sometimes, nearly 30 years later!

It's good to be home, and I am ever so grateful to have had the break from things for a week in a dreamy paradise. I'd never before been to Hilton Head. What a fantastic resort! A vacation in September is also something I'd never done before, so I really reaped some experiences, didn't I?

Here's a little diary of the week's highlights, heavy on pictures, light on words.

These 3 condo complexes are where we stayed. Our specific condo was on the 4th floor of the middle building. That lop-sided canopy on the beach is ours; we had some wind issues and dropped the legs on one side to prevent our canopy from sailing off down the beach.

We got up every morning to watch the sunrise. Every morning had clouds, but that doesn't ruin the effect. We still had great views. While watching the sunrises, we had our coffee and tea.

Then a few of us donned our walking shoes and headed down to the beach. We walked every morning, and I used the walking app on my phone to measure distances. Most mornings we walked 2-2.5 miles. The picture above is a cloudy morning walking northeast.

And this picture is a brighter morning walking southwest.

We observed dolphins just offshore, lazily swimming to some unknown destination. They appear to be waving when they lift up out of the water.

We had fantastic dinners each night in the condo. This is the menu from our last night: fresh steamed shrimp, leftover quiche, fresh tuna steak, apples, pears, and other leftovers from the fridge. We had to clean out everything before leaving.

We also had delicious lunches out at local restaurants. This is my lunch from Redfish, a restaurant we all loved. I had a Cuban panini, sweet potato fries, and jicama slaw. Redfish got good reviews from all of us.

The last beach day, Friday, was exceptionally windy and overcast, but it didn't deter us from our time by the ocean! Here are five Frienzes with a high tide, wind and sand in our faces, making the most of our final afternoon.

Hopefully all 8 of us will be able to take a vacation together someday.

It was wonderful! I will report on our sewing progress soon.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

A Beach Vacation

Oh the perks of being retired!

A September vacation that includes sand!!

Yes, gentle readers, yours truly has bugged out of Ohio (where this a.m. it's 39-degrees F), and have high-tailed it to Hilton Head Island with a few of the Frienzies! Yay!

Kay, Sharon P., Sherrie and Lyn are here with me and the giggles and gabbing have been nonstop. It'll be a fantastic week, even if the forecast is for more clouds than sun.

I brought some stitching, and so did a couple of others, so you might hear from me again before the week is out.

Happy Quilting, Friends!