March 28, 2012

Announcing the Halloween See Saw Swap!

By    7:53 AM // 11 comments
I'm hosting another project so soon? Yup. Why, you ask? Well because I thunk up this idea and I want to receive my quilt back in time so it can decorate my great room for the season.

I hinted in an earlier post that this project will be themed for my favorite holiday and now you know what that holiday is. Besides collecting Asian fabrics for my kidlets Asian quilts (another project on the back burner), I collect Halloween prints. I'm a sucker for them and the owner of my LQS actually calls me when the new ones arrive. She makes sure I get my share of the goodies.

What in tarnation is a "See Saw Swap"? It is basically another Mini Round Robin except the quilt will only get passed back and forth between you and one other partner. Total time period: 6 months.

The basics are similar as my Modern Mini Mystery Round Robin but this one will be totally Halloween themed prints/colors:

*You make a center block to send to your partner to add to, but this time it will be 10 1/2" unfinished (bigger to showcase the fun Halloween prints better).
*Your partner will add 1 to 2 1/2" of finished border (a smidgen bit bigger limit this time) in any sort of fashion/style she (or he of course) wants to. She will then send it back to you. As last time, it can be (1) 2 1/2" border, 2 or more skinnier borders, as long as the total added is no more than 2 1/2" finished.
*You will add another 1 to 2 1/2" finished border and then send it back to her.
*Rinse and repeat until the last month when she will send the final version back to you for finishing and enjoying. Finished size of the quilt will be between "20 - 35".

Since you'll only be working with one other person on this mini project, I couldn't call it a Round Robin now could I? So what more accurately describes this one? A back and forth amongst 2 people?

A See Saw of course!

*Your center needs to be in the mail to your partner by the end of Apr (you See).
*She adds to it and send it back (the Saw part) in May.
*You See in June.
*She Saws in July.
*You See in August.
*And finally she Saws in September. You get it back and finish it any which ole way you want.

Sign ups are open until 5pm EST Sunday April 15th. Please email me your full name and address (if you are participating in the Modern Mini Mystery Round Robin I already have it). Partner matches will be emailed to you sometime during that following week. As before, you don't have to wait until the 15th to make your center block. Go ahead and do it earlier if you want so it is ready to go in the mail when I send you your partner's info.

Again this is a mystery-ish thing.You won't provide the fabrics you want your partner to use...she is free to use whatever Halloween fabrics she wants (prints or solids).  

International players are most welcome and I'll likely keep folks from certain areas matched up to keep the postage costs to a minimum. If you want to See Saw with someone farther away from you, just let me know. There is no limit to the number of players, there just needs to be an even number for pairing up. Pictures of pieces in progress (once each addition has been completed and it has been received by the other person) and quilts finished can be added to my Flickr page.

So who is into a new Halloween project with me? Don't forget to grab my button and pass the word far and wide. The more the merrier!



March 27, 2012

Wonky Rainbow

By    12:13 PM // 9 comments
Don't you just love it when something turns out exactly the way you envisioned it?
This is my center for the Modern Mini Mystery Round Robin. I pondered a ton about how I wanted this to look and although I considered a bunch of different block designs, I knew from the beginning that I wanted it rainbow colors.

I wanted this block to say something about me as a person and I think I achieved that. You see, for the most part I am a happy gal and I do my best to enjoy life. Yes there are times when I get like this
or like this, but it isn't often. It takes a huge ton of nasty stuff to get me really boiling hot mad.
And since I love things in the colors of the rainbow (a very prevalent theme in quilt blog land thankfully) this mini had to be done in that color scheme. No other options existed for me.

On the other hand, I am not a straight and rigid person. I admit there are times when that is necessary, I am an accountant after all, but if I can be just a bit off kilter I will. I like to keep things unpredictable, outside the box. So that is why the bars of this of this are a little askew, just like me.

When I finished this center last week, I wasn't exactly sure if I was 100% happy with it so I put it on my design wall so I could gauge the way I feel about it every day. Obviously since I am posting about it here and it is now on its way to the 1st person in my group, I decided that I love it. I found that I like the way it looks like it is on the straight and narrow if you just glance at it quickly but if you stop and really look at it, you see the wonkiness in it. I think that sums me up pretty well.

Who knows if my group mates will add uneven borders to try and bring this visually back in line but that is the fun part of this Round Robin. It doesn't matter to me and since each person gets to do what they want with it, what happens will remain a mystery to me until I get it back in October.

I'm not telling which one of the group ladies gets the torture honor of being the first to add to this, she'll know soon enough when it arrives at her door but I'm willing to bet that all the members of my group are contemplating the options when it becomes their turn to add their spin on my Wonky Rainbow.

March 26, 2012

Minutia About Me - Socks

By    12:01 AM // 6 comments
So today another brilliant idea came to mind....to every so often tell my readers something about myself. I find that I like reading quilters non-quilty things about other quilters on occasion too. What did I decide to blog about for my first topic?

Socks

You see, my BFF and I give each other fun socks. For special occasions like birthdays or holidays or sometimes for no reason at all. It is just this thing we started to do years ago when we first met and have continued ever since.

Besides I typically wear 2 pairs of socks every day from Oct through April (I have very cold feet), so more socks are never a bad thing to me and if they are fun ones, all the better.

I have a couple of pairs of Halloween socks.
Lobster (and Christmas Lobsters at that) and Crab socks. I LOVE lobster (and king crab too) and she finds me all sorts of lobster shaped things.
Bunches of Christmas socks.
She gave me the gingerbread men and pink snowman ones with the individual toes this year. Those feel interesting to wear. I'm just saying.
I even have quilting socks, though I bought these for myself when I bought the sames ones for her.

(No clue why Blogger insists on uploading this picture sideways)
And these are the socks I wore today. Tells you a bit about where my mind has been all day, doesn't it.
There are more, trust me, but they are the shorty type that are still packed with the summer clothes. Sorry I wasn't up to digging them out today to photograph them. I love my silly socks and I think of my BFF every single time I put a pair on.
Life is short. Ya gotta have fun where ever you can. Why not include your socks in that? I see no reason not to. Do you?

March 25, 2012

Lookie what my girl did today!

By    11:21 PM // 5 comments
While dinner was baking in the oven, I was upstairs in my studio working on the teacher quilt blocks. My little missy wandered up to check out what I was doing (something they do a lot when I'm in there). I glanced up at my machine and saw her attempting to "sew" a scrap of fabric on the old Singer. She learns so much just by watching.

I can't tell you how the sight made my crafting momma heart sing.

Back to work I was going to go but I thought the heck with it. I'm going to take a few minutes and REALLY sew with my girl! I grabbed the 6 charms she was given a few weeks ago when we were at a LQS, hastily cut 3 more that coordinated and off we went.
She wanted "I do-d it" but I convinced her to let me help.
Let me tell you, it was really hard to take these pictures with her sitting on my lap, me guiding her with one hand and holding the camera with the other.

She was very serious about holding the fabric, so much in fact that she wasn't letting it advance. I didn't care one bit how it came out. She was having a blast.
I had her wait the couple of minutes while I ironed the seams, turned around to hand it to her and she exclaimed "I yuv it"! That gigantic smile says it all.
She ran downstairs to show Daddy her "quilt" and kept saying "I zo, Daddy I zo". At a mere 3 years old, I think she has caught the bug.

P.S. I will take this little mini one day this week while she is at preschool, add the batting and backing and do some simple quilting, plus the binding of course. I just can't let her first quilt" remain a UFO.

OMG! OMG! OMG!

By    9:32 AM // 4 comments
The Ghastlies are arriving!
Corrie over at Quilt Taffy has some of the new Ghastlie fabrics in stock!

Mere words cannot describe how excited I am. I love, love, love this line and I want all of it. Every single print in every single colorway.

But sadly the budget won't allow that so I will have to work out which ones I can get and how much. One of my dreamy wishes would be to have enough fabric budget that I would never have to scrimp on my purchases. Oh well, that is certainly not my reality.

No matter, I will most definitely be adding the newest ones to my stash and creating some fabulous Ghastlie projects in the coming months. I'm still hoping Madame Samm will have another Ghastlie Blog Hop in the fall and this time I want in on the fun.

In other anticipated news.....my next hosting project post is almost ready to release. I just need to finish the button and decide when to make the announcement. Will it be today? Not sure yet. I may just keep you hanging for a couple of more days. I sure don't want to be predictable, now do I?
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