Easter Vacation

We haven't done much so far this vacation, at least after Sakura-Con.  We went to visit with Avelyn & family for a few hours on Monday.  We spent a couple hours at the orthodontist on Tuesday.  Karate today. Woo.  Exciting times.

I have a couple of quilts done for Quilts of Valor.  The tops were sewn by a group of ladies in Wisconsin and I've been quilting them up.  I got one quilted up with loops and stars and the second one I did in a wobbly concentric circular pattern that I call Topography.  It looks like a topographic map.  Hopefully the quilt will make it to a soldier who likes maps. :)

I have been reading a bunch over the last couple of days.  There was a book from Nicholas Sparks that sounded interesting, so I downloaded it on Kindle (I love that I have the app on my phone!).  I blazed through it in just a couple days and it was so good, I downloaded another one and ripped through in less than 36 hours.  So I downloaded a third book (none of which have been made into movies, as far as I'm aware, so they were not "the Notebook", "the Lucky One", "Message in a Bottle", "Dear John" or "A Walk to Remember".  Although I might want to read them someday, I already know how they end.  So I selected "The Guardian", "Safe Haven" and "A Bend in the Road", the last of which I am just starting.

We will be doing some visiting in the next couple of days while we have some time available, and hopefully we'll be well rested when the school opens up for business again.

So for a little entertainment, here's a couple pictures.

Emma, reading Full Metal Alchemy.  The main character, Edward, is voiced (in English) by Vic Mignogna.

Ben wearing his new Sgt. Frog hat that Kelly picked up at the convention.  Sgt. Frog is a children's cartoon in Japan that was recently featured on Netflix.  I'm thinking about getting him the first couple of seasons of the show for his birthday.  The theme song is hilarious...you have to read the translation at the top of the video.

I'm hoping we can get some Geocaching done in the next few days.  I'm up to 56 finds now.  Apparently there are a few people who are up over 50,000.  I assume they're the types who travel a lot and make an effort to find a few every day, and have been doing this for 10 years.  5000 in a year at 14 a day.  That's a lot.  I've been a member for about 160 days and found 56...that's 1/3 of a find a day.  I'm  a little off the pace.  Maybe we can get a bunch more this summer.  There's a business district a few miles south with a half-dozen or so hidden around the buildings and rockery.  This will have to be investigated on a weekend when there are fewer people (and more parking spots)!

Making Merry!

If a seam a day keeps the blues away, then I'm positively giddy!

Better photo of Laura's quilt--this was made by Lauri as a gift to her live-in MIL.  The nice thing about the flannel design wall is that even something as heavy as this quilt can be put up with just a couple of pins and smoothed out to lay nice and flat for photographing.  I'll be delivering this back up to Lauri in a couple weeks when I go up to the next guild meeting.  Laura has been living with them off and on for the last couple of years.  She's a great lady and is an amazing help to the family as both "kids" work; she's there to help with laundry, cooking, cleaning and watching her grandson when he comes home from school.  It's hard to believe that just a couple generations ago, extended families living together was not the anomaly as it is now.

Here's a better photo of Kathy's sampler quilt.  She's the mother of my best friend from high school, who lived next door.  Kathy has been quilting for decades longer than I, having done quite a bit of professional quilting herself back in the day, but has started hiring out her quilting to longarmers.  I believe that this was a sample from a class that she taught a couple years ago.  I hope she's not going to mind that I used a different backing fabric--I couldn't find the one she gave me (initially), so I substituted a lovely tan floral with some green overtones that go well with the darker green on this top.

I was on such a roll, I put another quilt top on the frame and started quilting this one as well.  This is one of two quilts that will be given as baby gifts.  The pattern is called "Arrowhead" and can be made using two squares of fabric cut in particular ways and re-assembled.  Unfortunately, this technique creates bias edges on the blocks, which I wasn't keen on, so I redrafted it to use squares and strips and it leaves straight-of-grain on the edges.  It quilted up very quickly and I know that I will be able to do the other baby quilt just as quickly, although the deadline for the second one is a few months off.

You may be able to see a peek at the next quilt to go on the frame--yes, it's upside down--which is a top made by my MIL, presumably for Nate, my nephew.  It's got penguins on it!  The backing fabric is loaded up...just waiting for batting and to pin on the top.  After that one, I have two more in line, besides the second baby quilt, and I will be all caught up with hired projects...at least for the moment.  These things always arrive in waves, don't they?

Yesterday I made another 20 blocks for the 9-patch project.  I'm getting down to the bottom of this pile of squares and the variety of lights is declining sharply, so I spent a bit of time today cutting up some light colored fabrics from the scrap bin. I know I have another baggie of them...probably within a few feet of where I'm sitting, but I need to unearth them.  Gimmie 10 minutes and I'll probably find them, making all the cutting and sorting today completely unnecessary.  (Searches for several minutes.)  No results.  Found some 5" squares but not 3 1/2".  Ah well.

Tomorrow is going to be a hectic day--have to buy some supplies for the Girl Scout meeting, will be racing around picking up and dropping off, orthodontist appointments, and, if I have the enthusiasm, an SCA meeting in the evening.  I really should encourage the Baronial folks to sign up for the Ithra that's happening in a couple weeks.  We're nearing the break-even numbers...if we triple the numbers who have signed up.  Sigh.

Quiltapalooza!

I've been getting a lot done in the quilting world here...lots of tops getting finished (OK, two in a day, but that's a lot for me!)...

One for Kitty/Kathy (I don't know what I'm supposed to call her).  She gave this one to me quite a while back and now I finally got it done.  I covered it with the usual Dr. Seuss feathers/swirls, which goes well with the paisleys in the red fabrics and feathery swirls in the light green.  I am supposed to get together with Jean and her parents sometime this week since they're visiting the coast, so I can hand it over when I see her.  I have a couple more little things she gave me--Christmasy panels--but I can't remember what I was supposed to do with them...which backing goes with which top...?  They got scrambled up and now I just don't know what I'm doing.  The backing to this I pulled from my stash because I couldn't find the piece that was supposed to go with it...I think I found it later amongst the stash, but I'm not quite sure.

And one for Laura, Lauri's mother-in-law who loves green and lavender.  I came up with a hearts and loops alternating design that worked really well.  I hope she likes it!

Clearly my camera phone doesn't take good pictures in low light...for some reason the flash didn't go off.  I also need a better place to display quilts...I have an idea...I'll have to work on something...more details as I think them up!  I'm actually thinking of some of the hanging systems from the quilt show Linda and I went to in Covington.  They used pants hangers!  Seriously!  Lots and lots of pants hangers.  And fishing line.

Emma's cake was pretty cool.  I had to go to two different bakeries to get the cake made.  They did a fine job, spelled things correctly, although they got a little squished at the end.  Still legible and spelled correctly, so I'll give them a solid B+ on the execution.  It was chocolate with vanilla custard filling (yum!).  The second bakery had the edible art photocopier (which the first one lacked), so I had to go there to get it done, and cost an extra $6.  Unfortunately, when you put the art thing on, first you have to trim it to size, and you probably need to put it on when the frosting is still really wet so it melts into the cake a bit.  I put it on when it was still somewhat chilled and after putting it in the fridge overnight, the art stuff peeled off a bit and didn't cut well.  It also seemed really thick; almost like a fondant.  In the end, it wasn't all that edible and made cutting the cake difficult.

I found these candles for Emma--she loves everything black and white and patterned.  These candles cost more than twice as much as the cheap Betty Crocker candles, and they only came in packs of 12, so I had to supplement a few candles to make the correct number for the traditional confectionery bonfire.  This year, totaling 15 mini flaming torches!

After the teenagers had snarfed down pizza, chicken wings and cake, and they had scurried upstairs for the requisite hours of giggling, I got to work making 9-patches.  OK, after I had gotten Ben medicated and sent to bed--so really it was between 10 pm and midnight when my eyes were getting all sticky and I couldn't see straight anymore.  Just so you know, it's not the 9-patches that are crooked; they're just hanging crooked on the flannel.  OK, so they also need some ironing.  So what's my plan with these delightful scraps?  If I make 81 blocks, I should be able to make a king size quilt top with sashing and borders.  I may be able to do with the squares I have cut right now, and I know I have another baggie of 3 1/2" squares sitting around here somewhere.

I found a pattern that uses 5" charm squares to make square in a square blocks, although I may try to alter it for 6" squares since I have quite a lot of them.  It's from Me and My Sister Designs and is called "Bertha".  Every 36 squares makes a quilt about 24 x 27.  324 of them should make a bed quilt about 72 x 81--twin size.  But that's a few more projects down the road.  I'll just keep making 9-patches.