How Do You Use Your iPod Touch?

Dan gave me a 36GB iPod Touch this morning for Valentine's Day with the very cool hot pink cover! I've never used an iPod before (will probably need coaching from Destiny, the electronics queen!), but I can see possibilities with the amazing number of apps available for it.

Of course, I'll use the Starbucks app and some of the business travel apps, but have some questions for those of you who own either this or the iPhone. What apps do you find most useful? Should I buy a docking station if I want it to stream music from Pandora into my sewing room? Please share your thoughts on how I can integrate this into my sewing and travelling life.

Thank you! And big hugs (and hearts) to all of you on Valentine's Day!

Tinkerbell Quilt -- Piecing the Blocks

Here are 96 half-square triangles that sew up 1" finished -- I think I don't do small really well, but here goes!

Got 'em done -- here's the block layout, all on the mat that I can just take to the machine.

One finished block -- seven to go!

The pin marks the place where the diagonals don't match up; with a strong color like the yellow solid contrasting with the darker blue print, these "misses" really show up.

Obviously, just pinning where I think the seams will match up isn't working! I'm thinking that basting the seam first, then adjusting, then sewing might work. What have you tried to get your diagonals accurate? Do you have advice for me on piecing this type of seam?

Tinkerbell Quilt -- Getting Started

First, as with any activity, one must get in the mood! So a cup of tea in my Tinkerbell cup should do that quite nicely....



I laid out the seven fabrics used in the pieced blocks to see how everything was playing together and I wasn't crazy about the fabric on the right. It reads as a solid and so does the yellow that's going to be right next to it, so I swapped a batik out of my stash for the solid.



For several reasons, I like to use EZ International's EZ Angle tool* when I make half square triangles (HSTs). I get really accurate finished HSTs with a minimum of matching things up because they are cut just as you are going to sew them; in other words, from strips of each fabric facing right sides together on your cutting board.

When sewing HSTs from squares cut diagonally in half, we are used to adding 7/8" to the desired finished size, but when you use the EZ Angle, the strips are cut the desired finished size plus 1/2"; so for 2" finished HSTs, I cut my strips 2-1/2" and put them, right sides together, on my board.

I trim off the selvage edge and position my EZ Angle, notched edge of the tool to the top of the strips, to make my first cut.

Then I flip the tool over and align it so that the colored tip is on the bottom edge of the fabric to make my second cut.

Two units cut....



As I do the cutting, I toss them in piles of 10 (so I don't have to keep counting) on a fairly small (12"x18") mat. Once they are all cut, I use the mat to ferry them to the sewing machine.

We all know that when we are "chain piecing", the first piece is the one that gets all mangled in the feed dogs. To prevent this, I like to use a "leader", a small piece of fabric that is fed into the machine before the actual piecing. This helps the piecing feed freely and minimizes the chances of the pointy end of my HST getting caught. The leader above is just a couple of layers of selvage that had been trimmed off of my strips.

Here's one of the finished HSTs after pressing. Because of the notched side of the EZ Angle tool, there is only one little dog ear to remove from the square.

A square of yellow was sewn diagonally to the batik side of the HSTs, the excess trimmed off and the squares pressed.

Because these will be sewn to each other, I pressed half of them in one direction and half in the other so they will nest neatly when sewn.

I have a second small mat that I use to build my blocks on. As I finish each of the piecing elements, I stack them in their place on this mat. When all of the block components are finished, I take the mat to the sewing machine to start assembling the blocks.

There are a few things missing here -- namely 96 HSTs that measure 1" finished. They are yellow and blue and go all around the center square. Once I get those on the mat, I'll be ready to piece the blocks.

*For EZ International's official instructions on how to use this tool, click here. I noticed that they position the ruler a little differently than I do -- so I guess I've been getting great results while doing it wrong all these years!

Got the "Tinkerbell" Stuff -- Sort Of....

Dawna at Bolts in the Bathtub pretty much keeps me up to date on what's new and coming into the store. For a few weeks now, she has been telling me that there was Tinkerbell fabric on order and she would let me know when it arrived -- lots of little girls, and some little boys, like Tinkerbell, but I've just never seemed to grow out of my fascination with the conniving little pixie!

While Dawna is good at keeping me up to date, she rarely calls and says, "I know you're going to like this -- you'd better get in here and buy it while it's still here!" So when she does make that call, I get my butt into the store! I went in yesterday and looked at the Disney panels and coordinates; there are three -- Tinkerbell, Pinocchio and Snow White -- and a quilt pattern for each.

Of course, I had to be a major pain in Dawna's neck; I looked at the fabrics, but couldn't really decide what, if anything, I wanted to do. The problem was that I liked the Tinkerbell fabrics and the Snow White pattern, so I went home and thought about it, then called back this morning asking if she could make a kit for the piecing pattern I liked, utilizing the fabrics that coordinated with the Tinkerbell panel.

That meant that she had to substitute out each and every one of the coordinates for this 48"x56" quilt, keep track of them all and cut and label the correct amounts so that I could make exactly what I wanted! Is this good customer service, or what? I expect a major eye roll from Dawna when she reads this...

Here are the piecing fabrics that she chose...

Then when I came in this afternoon, I chose one of the fabrics for the backing and a blue and yellow stripe she had in stock for the binding.

Here's a picture of the pattern, "Snow White Discovers the Cottage" Quilt, from David Textiles, Inc. The patterns and fabrics for all three of the quilts are part of The Disney Dreams Collection with original art by Thomas Kinkade.

The pattern is labelled with a skill level of Intermediate, so I can handle that. I've read through the directions, which look pretty straightforward. The only adjustment that may be needed to the original pattern is that the four snowball blocks in the corners are cut 8-1/2" square. If I do that, I will lose Peter Pan's arms or feet in one snowball and either part of Wendy or part of her little brother Michael in another -- YIKES!

Some thought may have to be given to this dilemma.......

Found a Very Cool Blog Today!

If you are interested in art quilts, you might want to take a look at "Subversive Stitchers: Women Armed With Needles", a blog that I found when I was looking around on Facebook this morning. Some beautiful art quilts pictured.....

Link is subversivestitchers.blogspot.com, or click here.

Today -- Playing with Fabric and Books

Still ripping that darned stippling from that small section -- surprising how much time it takes! But, of course, the mind wanders to the pile of fabric sitting on my desk, so have to get up every so often and arrange and rearrange them as well as daydream about possible quilts.

I found some of the pinks as well as the pink/grey/off white floral at The Quilted Quail in Ridgecrest CA, one of the darks at Quilt 'n Home (also in Ridgecrest), pulled the greys and more pinks from my stash and then supplemented with a quick trip to Bolts in the Bathtub last week.

So this is what I have so far to work with....

While I was browsing at Bolts, I found a couple of books that I also thought would work in well with this plan -- LOVE the cover quilt on Jane Hardy Miller's French Braid Obsession book
and think that would be absolutely beautiful with my fabrics.

And, just in case there was leftover fabric, there were some really good ideas using this type of focus fabric in Louise L. Smith's A New Twist on Strips 'n Curves. I usually try to use up "leftovers" on the back of my quilts and then slice the rest into 2-1/2" strips so they are ready for another project that I would normally buy a jelly roll for. But there are so many good ideas in Louisa's book that I just may make the strips narrower and get another great quilt out of the fabrics I've pulled.

Question: What do you do with your "leftover" fabric? For purposes of this question, we will define leftovers as too big to be scraps, but not big enough to stick back on the shelf -- let's say, under 1/2 yard.....

LOVE Pillowcases -- HATE Ripping Out Stippling!

The "pillowcases for the freshman" project has been a lot of fun -- above is the one that I made for January and gave to Destiny when we got back home from Australia and New Zealand. We had seen penguins on a couple of occasions on the trip, so this will remind her of how much fun we had!

The February one was very fun because I got to use pink fabric with hearts -- two of my very favorite-est things in the whole world!

Destiny came by this afternoon and I gave her a pair of slippers and the Valentine's pillowcase. Big smile -- she liked it!

She had a great new haircut!

On the other hand, I got this brilliant idea yesterday that instead of attaching the magnifying lens to my sewing machine and then doing my stippling, I would just skip a step and try to stipple really small. Well, needless to say, that didn't work out very well -- you can see a big difference between the size of the stippling on the left hand side of the picture and what I have been ripping out on the right.

For the tutorial on how I should have done it, click here.

Have to do the ripping with a magnifying glass around my ne ck;it is taking forever because I stipple using the Bernina stitch regulator set at a 1.25 mm stitch length -- not a happy camper today!

Great Start to a Thursday

I'm not usually awake at 6:30 am anymore, but this morning I woke up freezing at quarter to 5. Grabbed another quilt, but the sleep spell was broken. Did Facebook, e-mail and a couple cups of coffee; then glanced outside. Wowie! What a beautiful start to a Thursday!

Waited until 8 and then made a birthday phone call to Mary Ponce, the wonderful dear friend who started me on this quilting journey 20 years ago. We had lost touch over the last few years and it was time to reconnect -- I'm so glad I made that call! Now we have dates set to get together for some sewing and catching up -- hooray!

Every beautiful day reminds me that this is all about the people who have helped make us who we are....

Finished Susan's Neutrals Quilt Today

This was Susan Moore's quilt when I was working on it and had the entire center done, but nothing marked or stitched in the borders. She had sent me a stencil for the centers of each block and I had "stitched in the ditch" for the rest.

I was looking for borders that would complement the amount of quilting in the main part of the quilt so that everything would lay flat. The inside "celtic" style border is SCO-014-2.5 from The Stencil Company; the narrower outer border is #608 from Quilting Creations by DJ, Inc. I was not able to obtain contact info for Quilting Creations through an internet search.

Here's a close-up of the two borders. I used Mettler 100% cotton silk finish 50 wt. thread, both top and bottom, for these designs.

Now I can box the quilt up and get it in the mail for Susan to bind!

Whole Lot of Pajamas Goin' On!

I went down the street to Dawna Harrison's house yesterday to make pajama bottoms. Not being much of a garment maker, I just did what I was told -- cut, press, and run elastic through waistbands -- while Dawna did all the sewing. We finished NINE PAIR in 7 hours....



The island in Dawna's kitchen was turned into a cutting area....

Dawna first serged the hems and waists of each piece, then handed them off to me to press in the hems. She serged the inner leg seams and then the crotch seams. The rest of the work was done on her Bernina 630 sewing machine.




Two of my pajama bottoms were made of Minkee -- not a good idea for Dawna to wear black!

These three pair are mine -- the bottom two are made of Minkee. LOVE the skulls and flowers! The ones that gave us the most trouble, though, were the top giraffe print PJ's. Satin is not fun to cut, sew OR press, but they sure are pretty!

SpongeBob and computer nerds PJ's for my husband, Dan....

Snowman and Boise State for Dawna's husband Robert, a Boise State alumni...



And matching snowman pajamas for Dawna as well as North Pole pajamas featuring igloos, Eskimos and a cart selling Fish-cicles!

We think next time we spend a Monday together (the only day that Dawna's shop, Bolts in the Bathtub, is closed), we may do machine embroidery!