Organizing 01-26-23

I desperately need to re-roll and re-organize the 370+ quilts in the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection.  Some are small and live in acid free storage boxes, about a half dozen are 3-D and have their own storage box, and the majority are rolled around stuffies or covered pool noodles, covered with fabric and stored on shelves.  My friend Liz and I have tried to develop a storage order, but nothing we have tried has been successful.  The extra bedroom is honestly full of junk that I keep thinking I can donate somewhere and put all the quilts in the same room.  It is a massive undertaking that I have not had the strength or concentration  to do in the past year or two.  The fabric coverings are all discounted fabrics from years ago - all different prints of all different colors.  We use what fits.  It suddenly occurred to me, after all these years, that it would be helpful if multiple quilts by one artist were wrapped in the same fabric covering!  Brilliant.  So, when I was in SDiego at Rosie's Calico Quilt Shop a few weeks ago I looked through their sale fabric for a bolt with 15 or so yards to use for all the Ruth B. McDowell quilts, some of which are very large.  What was I looking for beside quantity?  Not dark, not red or black or white, unlike any of the covers I already have, and inexpensive.  Some of the fabrics I use came from years ago when discounted fabric was $1 or $2 a yard!   I found this print for $7 a yard and it fits the bill on all counts including 15.88yards on the bolt.  This picture is the width of the fabric on end and it is slightly more aqua than the computer will let me show.  Loops of fabric flags seem appropriate for Ruth's quilts.  So, I need to get busy and start this major project.  First to clean out the room, there are things that have been in there since moving into this house more than 30 years ago.  What will I do with my mother's cedar chest?  And what ever is inside of it?  And there are boxes of photos and boxes of unknown things.  Oh, dear, I'm tired just thinking about it!    Onward.  

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Sewing - discovered quilt top 07-01-21

There are boxes and baskets and bags of quilting stuff that I haven't looked at in decades.  But I need to keep digging through it all and find new homes for a lot of it.  Today I looked in a box and discovered a couple quilt tops and miscellaneous fabrics and some self made "kits" of quilts that I thought I would make.  I can tell the ages of some of them by the fabrics.  Mostly the prints, but also some fabrics that are cotton/poly and I don't remember when I last purchased cotton/poly.  The pale blue border on this quilt top is a flimsy cotton/poly.  I think this came from a workshop where one stacks different fabrics, cuts all the layers together, and then "mix and match" to make blocks.  Since I almost never work with pink it struck me how pale this is compared to the most recent bright "Pink Tree".  

Quilt top  52"L 39"W  There are eight blocks in the center cut from eight different fabrics.  The same fabrics are used for the pieced borders.  It is sort of a crazy quilt looking design and I think it is really ugly!  Maybe that is why it has languished in a box for at least 35 years. 

Close up showing two blocks and part of a border. 

I hope all those boxes, baskets, and bags turn up something more impressive than this.

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More discoveries 11-23-19

You know when you have something to do that doesn't excite you very much so you find a zillion other things to do instead?  I do a lot of that in my life and blame it on old age.  Today I was looking for something in the garage and noticed a box sitting on a shelf, sort of behind other things. 

When I thought about it I remembered that it was part of a donation from a lady who was moving and had to downsize her fabric library.   The yardage and a bunch of other stuff went to philanthropy projects, but I saved the triangles so I could "whip up" a quilt to donate.  And I never did.  The fabrics come from the 90s when I was still trying to get my life in some sort of order after my husband died in 1990.

Today I laid out the triangles to see what I have, some piles are just one of a fabric and some are 18 -20.  Only a half dozen reds which are badly needed to cheer things up.  I went through my scraps, but all the reds are bright cherry or tomato.  So, I got out my oldest box of reds to find something from the 1990s, sort of cranberry, I guess. 

If you have been quilting for 30 years or so, you will recognize some of these fabrics.  Quite a few from Jenny Beyer and, from the feel, some from JoAnn.  No green or brown!

I'll cut some triangles from these to mix in with what I have and sit down to sew them together two by two.  Since I didn't pick any colors except the reds I wonder what it will look like sewn together.  Might have to do some sashing or something. Another WIP.  

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Rediscovering UFOs 11-16-19

I have temporarily moved my sewing machine table into the family room to take advantage of a medium sized table I can back the machine table up to so I can work on a larger quilt than I usually make.  Normally the machine table backs up to the dining table, but it is so piled with stuff I can't work on a quilt there.  It has worked well with some slight shifting of my recliner and KoKo's chair.   

And it gave me access to a couple plastic boxes of stuff under the dining table that I can't get to with the machine table in place.  So, I pulled those boxes out and discovered some ancient UFOs.  Oh, my goodness, some of them I just vaguely remember.  And many are partially hand quilted.  I haven't been able to hand quilt for several decades, since the arthritis in my hands got worse and worse.   I have no memory of why I stopped working on any of them, except a few from classes that didn't engage me very much.  I don't know what I will do with most of them, but I do remember this one and will probably finish it with machine quilting.  A friendship group I belonged to at the time did a project where everyone brought a paper bag with a certain number of cut squares (1-3/4").  Looks like the color choices were red, beige, blue, and green, but I don't remember how those were chosen.  Then we put the bags around a table and everyone went around and took a certain number of squares from each bag.  At least that is how I remember it.  For some reason they were called Laundry Room quilts - maybe because if they turned out badly they could hang in the laundry room where nobody else could see them.  We were to sew them together into a quilt adding whatever we wanted to add.  I was very much into spiky borders then and sewed many by hand as a carry-around project.  Here is "Red Bird's Quilt" from 1991!!!!

"Red Bird's Quilt"  Del Thomas August 1991

21.5W x 23.75L

Cotton & metallic fabrics, cotton batt, cotton thread.

Machine and hand pieced, hand applique, pen work,

machine and hand quilted.

This is the only spike that is quilted and it is out of align. 

Red bird on the back, a 13.5" block.  I paper cut this bird and used her in a number of different applications. 

Here is the label written right on the back right corner. 

This really takes me back in time when I was much more productive than I am now.  Gosh, 28 years ago. 

I will look deeper into the box when I have more time. 

Who knows what treasures I might find?

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Testing 1,2,3 and more! 06-16-10

I sometimes worry about how senile I am getting to be. My doctor tells me to stop thinking about it and I have read the statement "If you think you have Alzheimer's - you don't." There are a number of sites where one can test oneself - and, I suppose, if I can test myself I must have enought little grey cells left to function in every day life. Here are some tests that I have received and enjoyed doing. I'm saving them to try again next time I start worrying!

http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/index.php

http://www.cramersweeney.com/smiq.html

If you guess wrong on these questions they give you the answer.

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Tolerance and Patience 04-19-10

Interesting stuff 04-12-10

Since I don't have children or grandchildren I don't have a very broad view of what is "in" these days. In many ways I lead a sheltered life. But once in a great while I browse about online and discover interesting things. Recently I followed an AOL shopping item and discovered Gelaskins. I suppose they may have been around for years, but I had never encountered them. They are 'protective' covers for electronic devices - laptops, phones, etc. - and some of the art is fascinating. I tried to upload an image, but it didn't work and I am too tired to figure out another way. So, you check out the site if you are interested...

http://tinyurl.com/y7f9maf AOL shopping article

http://www.gelaskins.com/index.php Website

http://blog.gelaskins.com/ Blog

Do you have experience with these Gelaskins or a similar product? I'm just curious.

Sometime ago I talked about the website "Scribbler" and showed a few images I had scribbled. Terry Grant posted on her blog about an even better scribbler which is fascinating. Check it out at:

http://www.zefrank.com/scribbler/scribblertoo/

You can see a couple of Terry's drawings on her blog: http://andsewitgoes.blogspot.com/