13 Weeks 2.0 (AKA "26 Weeks")

Soooo. My blog has been neglected this year. I want to change that. I've been thinking about doing a "26 week" thing and when I looked at the calendar this morning, I realized it's 26 weeks till I leave for my-next-great-adventure. How convenient!

In a nutshell, the original "13 weeks" was me deciding to lose 13 pounds, make 13 quilts, and try 13 new recipes - 1 of all of those, every week, for 13 weeks. It was pretty successful and I went on to lose a LOT more weight!  Now I'm ready to kick-start myself again, see if I can get the rest of this weight off, and get some more "finishes" on the list.

It helps to commit publicly, so my goal this time is: 1 pound a week (it's reasonable AND reachable), one "finish" every week (doesn't matter how big or small, as long as it's a finished project), one "declutter" every week (I am on a current roll of extreme decluttering), and writing at least one blog entry on my politics blog (so many things bugging me these days; writing helps. A lot.)  For the record, my extreme goal is 1.5 pounds per week, but I will be pleased with 1 pound. Keep the goals attainable. So off "we" go, counting down to the Great Road Trip 2014. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

I have not been idle, oh no sirree! I've taken up teaching again, so June found me frantically making samples to prepare for the 3rd quarter schedule. Here are some of the things going on:

 Classes have started already, and we're having a blast!

I've also finally delved back into my long-arm machine after a break of a couple of years. I miss the quilting part; I really enjoy it. So you see I should be able to get "finishes" done easily enough. Full disclosure: the last pic, above, is not yet finished - the binding needs to be sewn down. It's those kinds of things that have kept my UFO pile WAY too high.

On a closing note, I started a quilt today (another sample) that just might do me in. I made one block in about 5 hours. Yeow! Fortunately the quilt has only 9 blocks (24"), but still that is a lot of time! Stay tuned!

So let me get started with 26 Weeks and we'll all find out together how it goes. Thanks for stopping by!

Portland Quilt Market

It's been a busy two days. Thursday was Schoolhouse. 14 sessions over the course of the day. I saw great fabric, great quilts, heard great ideas, and got great advice. "Schooling" is indeed the right name for the day. It's surprising how exhausting that day was.

After an intense day of brain work, we found Thai Peacock for dinner and had a terrific meal. Again the prices were reasonable, even though again we included a few beers on our tab.

Today was the first actual market day, and also exhausting. I did not make it through the whole show, so will have plenty more first-go-round visits tomorrow before The Big Finish on Sunday. Dinner tonight was at a little bistro called Mothers. More good food, and a few very interesting adult beverages.

Our encounters with the locals have all been positive although it seems to be a lot like Florida in that there are a lot of locals but not too many natives. Downtown Portland is indeed its own type of place with many, many homeless that appear to be quite welcome to sleep on the sidewalks. They run the gamut from young and seemingly very healthy to old and infirm. It's a different homeless population than I have seen in other cities.

The public transportation here is quite good and there doesn't appear to be much need for a car, anyway. The cabs are mostly Priuses: very smart! Lots of bicycling. Even the metro that we ride to and from the Market venue each day has space to hang bikes. Cool, huh? I think I'll come back to Portland one day in the not too distant future and get an even bigger taste of my own version of Portlandia.

But for now, there are fabrics to ooh and aaaah over, new paterns to be discovered, and plenty of eye candy of the fabric persuasion to savor over the next two days. I'll keep you posted! And as soon as I can synch the photos, I'll post a few pics for you.

Thanks for stopping by.

And away I go

I'm at the airport (JAX), heading out on the first leg of my trip. First destination - Portland OR ( with stops in Atlanta and Salt Lake City.) Two new states for met today; Utah and Oregon. (Does a layover count as having "visited" a state?) I figured this was a good time to start blogging again since I've been so neglectful of this poor blog.

I'm headed to spring Quilt Market to see what's happening in the quilt world. Now that I've decided to do some more teaching, I need to stay up with what's hot and what's not. It should be fun and informative, so look for more posts in the next few days.

I leave Market on Monday, then head south for another visit to California. A short one, but California nevertheless. I've fallen in love with the Golden State. Stay tuned for upcoming adventures!

Thanks for stopping by.

Little Stuff

Gosh it's been a long time since I posted! I've gone to California (to attended classes at Empty Spools Seminars in beautiful Pacific Grove), Las Vegas, come home, planned my next few trips ... and not posted a thing.  I had visions of catching up, writing about all I'd done - nah, it's probably not gonna happen. So - I'll just pick up right here.

The Pacific was anything but peacful on this day. Very crashy waves!

Oh, Big Sur - you had me from hello!

I saw this mural on a wall in the Mission District in San Francisco. It screams "quilt" to me.

I've been playing with some small stuff. Here's my piece (not yet quilted) from Sue Benner's class. That class was great! If you like different stuff and have the opportunity, take a class from her.

Here's a bit of my improv piecing done in Rayna Gillman's class. More fun stuff! 

  No, not mug rugs - small art pieces. (OK mug rugs if you want, but why not small art to add just a dot of color to a dull spot on your wall?)

Here are a few more, waiting to be made whole

All of these are from the scrap pile.


I attended a weekend Retreat at Cinnamon's Quilt Shop. We did a quick (and I mean QUICK) make it-take it zip bag. I made these from uphostery samples. For context, the one on top has a 6" zipper.

And that's what I've been up to the last 3 months!  Thanks for stopping by!

Bordering on

Mondays are sit-and-sew days at Cinnamon's Quilt Shop. A fun time to get together with others of the fabrick-junkie persuasion.  I was able to get 6 more Scrapolator border blocks done.

It's really interesting to view pieces thru the camera's eye: the small pieces of white with black look lost - almost like there's a hole in the block. But there will be a lot of black in the sashing, so I think these will work fine in the full border.  I still have 28 more of these babies to go (and the 15 more "inside" blocks), so it'll be awhile before I'll know if I need to make a few spares.

I'm already starting to think of how to take a pic of the top once it's together because it's HUGE! Something like 91" x 108". That certainly won't fit on my design wall! Could be an "outside" pic - on the grass.

I know we just finished Christmas, but I also just found this cute little tree

 - made from more scraps. Here's the link to my pin on Pinterest. I see some of these in my future.

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Off to see what the sewing muse will surprise me with today.

Thanks for stopping by.

And still more blocks

Another day of strip sets, triangles, and ultimately Scrapolator blocks. Gosh they are such fun to make! Here's the latest batch:

Here's the close-up, featuring another Flamingo:

(Hello, everybodeeeeeeeeeeee)

This brings the total to 66 blocks, which means I only have 15 more to go for the first true-scrappy top. Of course, there are those border blocks to go yet .... But who knew these would get done as quickly as they did? I'll be ready to put together the "inside" soon.

Tomorrow I'll have a "finish" to post. I didn't get many finishes in 2012 but there are many things SO CLOSE that 2013 should be a very productive year. Of course, there will be 3 trips to California this year (only one driving, though), an anticipated trip to Hawaii (which will be part of my 3rd trip to CA), and hopefully another trip to Europe. I'll be away a total of about 4 months over the course of this year. That will elbow out some of the anticipated "finishes", I'm sure. Oh well. I'm doing it (traveling) while I can!

Off to the sewing machine! There are quilts to be made!

Thanks for stopping by.

The First of the Border Blocks

I'm not finished doing all the Scrapolator blocks yet, but was getting antsy to see what the border blocks would be like. They're pieced on a foundation ....

... then trimmed.

They go surprisingly fast, and finally I have scraps small enough to throw away AND I'm making a dent in the scrap pile.

Boy this has been, and is, really fun! I will do more from this book, for sure.

Thanks for stopping by.