Retreat Jelly Roll Races

 

This last weekend was our annual quilt retreat and this year we had a whopping 17 people there.  It was fantastic!  I think everyone had a great time, I know I did, and got quite a bit accomplished during this fast weekend.  Below are some pictures of the in progress quilts just from our end of the room.  I wish I had a picture of everyone's quilt tops.  There were some awesome, fun tops made.  The first one up is my center bit. For some reason I didn't get a picture of it with all the borders on, but I will try to do that tomorrow at school.  I used the Urbanicity line from Moda.

 

 

Next up is Jacki and she used Terrain.  She only got one border on before she and her sister Cathi, below, had to leave so Cathi could go to Dallas to meet her new grand baby.   

 

Cathi used a Batik jelly roll.  If my mother had been there, her quilt would have looked like this or she would have taken this one for her own.  It looks so much like what she would have done. 

 

 

 

Last, but not least is Kathy's.  She was the first to finish the race and get all of her borders on her quilt top.  This is a fun bright one, but doesn't look that bright in the picture. I am not sure what the name of this fabric line, but I do know that it had about 53 strips in the jelly roll.   I am missing Liz's quilt top.  She was the other person on our end of the room that did the jelly roll race and for some reason I don't have a picture of it.  I will have to go back and see if I can find it on my camera.  I thought I took the picture.  That is two pictures I owe you if I can find the one of Liz's top. 

 

 

New pic of me - QuiltCon Linky Party

I am linking up to QuiltCon's Linky party for those of us going to QuiltCon this year.  They asked for  us to post a picture so I quickly took one this morning, and they asked for us to tell 5 things you might not know about me.  Well, unless you are one of the 30 (actually I think the number is closer to 10) or so people that read my blog, most of you know nothing about me.  So, here it goes. 

 

 

1.  I have a BS degree in Vocational Home Economics Education.  In today's terminology (since I am ancient) I teach Culinary Arts in the Family and Consumer Science program in the Career and Technical Education department at my school.  Whew!!  The first one is much simpler to say, but may not be understood today.  This is my 28th year to teach and 23 of those have been in the high school.  I also have a certification to teach early childhood to 3rd grade and taught Kindergarten for 4 years and that last lone year (if you are doing the math)  I was transferred into teaching an 8th grade pilot program for the state - that was not the easiest year and I have vowed to be a manager at McDonald's (another thankless job) instead of teaching junior high ever again!!  As part of this conversation:  I am also the third generation in my family to graduate from College and  to have attended my Alma mater, Abilene Christian University.  Of course, it was Abilene Christian College when my parents and grandfather attended.  My cousin's son is the 4th generation in my family to attend. (I say attend, because my grandfather graduated from Texas Tech and not ACC - the rest of us graduated from ACC/ACU)  To me, that is something very special and rare. 

 

2.  I have a HUGE collection of fabric.  I have been fascinated with fabric since I was a young girl.  I remember being little - 3 or 4 maybe? - and going into the fabric store with my mother and touching all the fabric hanging off the bolt as we made our way through the store.  Mom had a hold of one hand, but that other one was working at trying to touch everything.  There are a few fabrics that I can't stand the touch of and even to this day, if I touch any of those I have to wipe my hand off on my pants leg.  yuck!  I still like to touch fabric and if someone has something on that calls for me to touch it, I just ask if I might, perhaps touch their garment.  I began collecting on my own when I would ride my bike down to the little mom and pop store that carried a selection of fabrics and use part of my allowance to buy fabric.  I still have a little bit of those fabrics in my stash and refuse to use them.  It just makes me smile to see them in there. 

 

3.  I have lived in Texas all my life.  I actually live in west Texas!!  Not the city West, but the area.  I have never lived further east than Abilene.  As a result, I can't stand humidity.  I know, that is a really weird thing, but I just have a really, really hard time acclimating when it is very humid outside.  It doesn't get that way here in west Texas but maybe once in a blue moon and usually it burns off by noon!  Even though I live in a desert, Odessa, I can't stand the heat.  I think last year we had 13 days in a row over 100.  I can't remember how many total we had.  Of course, the rest of the time was either 98 or 99 degrees so that is not much better.  AND we began early with our hot temps last year.  Since we have already had 80 degrees in January of this year, I am truly not looking forward to the summer months.  Here in west Texas, we almost all have great air conditioners in both our homes and cars.   We have learned to either walk quickly from our cars to our houses/places of work or to walk slowly and savor the warmth before going into another cold building - it's rarely too cold for me. 

 

4.   I have been making quilts since I made my first baby quilt as a project my sophomore year in high school.  My second quilt was designed by my mother and I made it my senior year, but didn't ever get it finished and quilted until about 10 years later.  That may have started my trend of making quilt tops and not quilts.  I have a HUGE (again, all in caps because it is so large) collection of quilt tops.  I haven't counted, but probably should, the number of tops I have in my studio, but I always say I have about 80 or so.  I don't know if that number is correct, but considering I have about 30 hanging in my closet, another 30 or 40 stacked on the floor and then a few more out and about around the sewing/quilting/computing area . . . now that I am thinking about it, that number may even be a little low.  Hmmm.  I might ought to clean off my grace frame a little faster than one item a month.  I do know I am behind 7 graduation quilts - tops made, just not quilted - for my family.  To me, the fun is in making the quilts, choosing the fabric, seeing how it all comes together and then, it's finished.  Thinking about a back is very hard for me to do since I really don't want to use my precious fabric on the back of a quilt - heaven forbid!!  LOL 

 

5.  Okay, I really have to hurry now,  I have spent too much time and become chatty with 1 - 4.   As a result, I have to let you know that contrary to what you read here, I am not much of a talker.  LOL I know - hard to believe.  I am pretty shy in person until I get to know you, but even then, I will let other people talk, for the most part.  So, when or if you see me at QuiltCon, I am not being super snooty or rude, I am just basically a shy, introverted person.  (weird, huh - might not have guessed that from reading my blog)  Feel free to come up and speak with me - I probably won't be doing that first.  I will try to be a little more extroverted while I am there, but that is hard for me in a crowd of people I don't know. 

What I have been working on

Here are a few things that I have worked on the last couple of weekends.  Below are my blocks for the Blogger's Block of the Month.  I have sashed them and set them on point.  Now to figure out how I want do some borders for these.  I actually did two sets of blocks when I was making them planning on putting them all in one quilt.  The others use the same fabrics except they have a green and white print background.  I thought I liked them better, but seeing this picture, I kind of like this quilt.  I may have to pull out some turquoise to add into the border since that is what is jumping out of this quilt at me.  Now that I look at it, I could have made my life easier by just adding the pink border last instead of adding it to each section as I went.  That was crazy!!  It also has a few areas where it isn't straight so I will even it up before I add the next border. 

 

 

I really like the picture of the flowers I have pinned to the design wall.  Someday I will make a quilt using those colors.  For now, it makes me happy to look at it.   Last weekend I worked on the above quilt, but since I was frustrated with the sashing deal, I mostly started working on the quilt below.  I really have never liked the trip around the world quilts.  They don't really do anything for me.  However, when I kept seeing everyone making these blocks and seeing how scrappy they were, I decided to join in.  I used Bonnie Hunter's tutorial, my box of 2 1/2" strips and just jumped in.  Eleven of the twelve blocks were finished on Sunday.  I made the twelfth one on Monday.  I guess I have realized that I don't like the precise placement of color.  I think that is why I haven't ever liked the trip around the world and the intricate lone star quilts.  Now that I have done a portion of both of these and done them scrappy, I may try some other quilts that I don't really enjoy.  No, one of those will NOT be a sunbonnet sue  quilt.  I still do not like that one. 

 

I have one fabric that is in there twice, but it's a pale, pale fabric so maybe it will be okay.  Who knows, I might have several fabrics in there more than once when it is totally finished.  I am hoping to make more of these blocks in the near future. 

 

The last thing I have worked on tonight is my challenge quilt for Ogallala.  I have known what I wanted to do since I got my fabric pack back in April of 2012, but haven't gotten around to working on it until now.  (Actually I printed out my patterns last weekend).  Below are the fabrics that were in this years pack.  There are 4 of them and as soon as I saw them, I knew what I wanted to make.  I have been collecting pictures all along and last weekend finally decided which one I wanted to turn into my pattern.  I can't show you anything, but I have some of it done and will continue to work on it in the coming weeks since I have to have a picture of the quilt (it will have to be just the top for now) and get the entry paperwork postmarked by February 22nd.  I am pushing to have everything done by the 19th - well, maybe except for the final quilting and binding.  I should say, I am pushing to have the top finished so I can mail off the paperwork by the 19th.   It will be fun to see what everyone does with these fabrics.  I have already added the minimum of what I had to add, now to see if I need to add any more fabrics.  (I can add up to 4 total)  My plan has shifted somewhat from my first thought, but it has shifted to add more to it than I had previously thought.  My first thought is still a major part of this quilt.  I know I am being cryptic and I can't wait to share with you all what I have done so far.  I guess I need to take pictures of the process for a later posting.  Yes, I think I will go do that now before I forget.   What are you working one? 

 

Feeling Old and out of date

Okay, computer problems, yet again.  When I was home sick on Monday, I must have done something horrible because I deleted my Internet Explorer.  I don't know what I did.  So, on Tuesday when I go into school, there is the tech guy and I tell him what I did (deleted Internet Explorer) and he just smiles and says, "you can't do that."   Okay.  "Just go back into your programs and re-check it and you will be all good."  Tuesday night, I go in, re-check that program and . . . I have no Internet.  I call my service provider to see if they can re-set and still no Internet.  He transfers me to an HP tech person, we go through all the steps and then he tells me he can no longer help me because my computer is "obsolete".  WHAT ???  It's not that old.  It should be able to be fixed.  Well, it probably is 5 or 6 years old, possibly a couple of years older, but it shouldn't be totally obsolete. 

thank goodness I have a laptop that I got last year when I was having problems with this computer (yes, I had done something else to my computer, yet again) So, I plug it in and charge up the battery - don't use it as much as I should - then I plug in my Internet - don't have the router hooked up - and start typing to tell you all about being obsolete and I hit something and erase it all.  So, I start all over telling about being obsolete and how I must be old because I can't figure out how to get back what I had accidentally erased earlier and . . . hit something and totally erased everything I had typed. 

UGGGG..  I must be the thing that is obsolete.....So, I guess I am going to look at desktop computers this weekend.  Maybe some young tech person at Best Buy can help this old geezer out with a new fangled contraption so I can keep communicating to the world. 

(by the way, I am on my school computer - I do know how to work it)