Online Quiltfest!

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Barb

I’m learning all kinds of new things about blogging.  Yesterday I discovered an online Quilt Show just for bloggers!  Prizes and everything.  So of course, I have to enter.  And because I am – you all get to enjoy the show too!  As of right now, there are 390 entries to the Show.  (Update: I am entry #392)  Here’s the link….


My entry is “Starring Buckwheat.”  Many of you have seen this quilt and know the story.  But for those of you who have not, today’s post is all about this quilt.

Buckwheat was a very special kitty in my life.  But then again, in my life, all kitties are special!  I got him as a tiny kitten in 1986, before Boo was even a twinkle in his Daddy’s eye.  Probably before Boo’s Daddy was a twinkle in his Grandpa’s eye or even before his G’pa was…… well, you get the idea.    In 2003 as I headed off to the Houston Quilt Festival, Buckwheat was not doing very well.  He was 17 years old and that’s quite old in cat years!  So Dear Hubby took him to the vet as I headed off to Houston to see the quilts.  2 days later while in Houston, I received a call from the vet, saying that Buckwheat was doing quite poorly.  Hubby told me to hop on a plane and come home, so I did.  This cat was my baby, after all.  We went straight to the vet when Hubby picked me up at the airport.  I won’t go into the details of that visit.  It was a very tough day for me!  The next morning Dear Hubby insisted that I go back to the quilt show!  I know it was just because he didn’t want to watch me cry the rest of the week.  Thought I’d be better off crying with all my friends.  It was a good distraction and Hubby was right in sending me back. 

While at Quiltfest, I saw the pattern for this quilt.  It was a Block of the Month.  I kept going back and looking at it again and again, thinking that if I signed up to do this, each month when the block came I’d be able to see how well I was progressing in my grief for my little guy.  It was my first BOM by mail.  Well, the first month, I dutifully did my block when it arrived.  And the second.  And then the third block sat until the fourth block arrived.  And as always happens in my life, other quilts took priority and this quilt got set aside.  So the blocks piled up (see my previous postings about “piles”) and this quilt became my Go To Project for Retreat.  “Starring Buckwheat” went with me to every Bee Retreat between 2004 and 2009!  I wanted to change up the border at one point from what the pattern was.  So I took a poll from everyone in my Bee (those at the retreat that year and those at home following via email) on 4 separate border ideas.  Then I promptly threw all those out and went with something totally different.  That’s just the kind of gal I am.  I told them up front that I reserved the right to change my mind.

This is also the quilt where I learned how to do piping. 

See the little lime green edge between the border and binding?  Piping….. and I love it.  This was recommended to me by the longarm quilter who quilted it for me and I will definitely use it again and again for a little extra touch to special quilts.

I finished this quilt just in time to enter it in my local Quilt Show in 2009.  I didn’t tell the gals from my Bee that I’d finished it after retreat that year.  One of them immediately asked what I’d work on at retreat now.  And one actually walked into the Quilt Show, saw the quilt and turned to me and said, “Who finished it for ya?”  The nerve!

The quilter, Sheri Mecom, quilted faces on all the kitties.  Here are some up close pics of the quilt so you can see the fabulous quilting:

And even closer of the face….

Each of the black kitties are a different black on black print.  And with the faces in the quilting on each kitty, it is quite spectacular in person!

My sister informed me at the quilt show that I have the dates wrong on the label.  That Buckwheat was born in 1986 and died in 2003 and she is right!  I haven’t yet changed the label, but I think it’s going to be a simple “cross off the old dates and write the new dates above” fix.  It, too, has become a funny story about the quilt!  How could I have gotten the dates wrong?  Senior moment, I guess.  I just noticed that means the “Began Jan 2005” is wrong too and needs to be 2004……sigh…..

I hope you’ve enjoyed “Starring Buckwheat” and a trip down memory lane with me.  And my first online entry in a Blogger’s Quilt Show!  I can’t help but wonder what other blogging surprises await us in this new internet world.

Happy Quilting!
Barb

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Piles, Part 2

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Barb

Today was Quilt Guild Day and lunch afterwards with the girls.  We had a nice discussion at lunch about piles.  Apparently my post yesterday really started people thinking about their own  piles.  So after much careful research, I have learned a few things and would like to share these lessons with you.

  1.  We all have piles.

  2.  It’s not having them that’s the problem, it’s managing them.

  3.  When managing them, you should touch each piece of paper only one time.

  4.  Time is a relative term.  For example, you can touch things one time this morning, one time this afternoon and one time this evening.  In other words, it can be an ongoing thing.

  5.  Having piles makes you a pilot.  (See Cindy’s comments on yesterday’s pile post.  Hubby will be glad to know this about me.)

  6.  It is physically impossible to leave the second half of your sandwich on your plate to take home for leftovers.  Several of us tried it today and proved it impossible to do.  I think it has something to do with our deep desire to eliminate piles.

  7.  It is much easier to share lessons learned about anything after an afternoon nap with a snuggly kitty on the couch.  (Wish I had a picture.  Man, was he snuggly today!)

OK – maybe those last two have nothing to do with piles.  But I learned them today and wanted to share them anyway.

Also, yesterday I went to visit my friend, Lani, and learned that she has very different piles in her house.  So I got some pictures to share.

These are Lani’s sewing room piles.  All of a sudden my piles don’t look so bad.  Lani, as you can tell, is in the process of moving…..twice.  She is about to set off on a big 2 year adventure in New York City!  We had “Blog Training” yesterday.  You can now officially start hounding her to start a blog.  (Psssst….. I think she’s ready.)

These are the piles in Lani’s kitchen.  See?  Very different from my piles.  These are a result of Lani’s move #1 that does not involve NYC.  (And if you were to get technical this is really move #2 and NYC will be move #3)  Lani is a very busy girl.  I doubt if she had time to have an afternoon nap on the couch with a kitty.  Well, that would be kind of hard anyway since she doesn’t have a kitty.  Instead…….

She has Wilson.  “Hi, Wilson!”  Wilson is the overseer of Lani’s piles.  He was quite happy to follow us from room to room when I was there to make sure we didn’t disturb any piles.  And if she took a nap on the couch with him, there would not be any room for her.  Just sayin’.  Boo is a big cat, but he could never take up as much room on the couch as Wilson.

So thanks for all your wonderful tips on what to do about piles.  Oh, wait.  You didn’t send any tips!  But you did make me feel like I was not alone in pile making.  Perhaps we should start a club.  Pile Makers Unite!  Now I’m on a mission to find better ways to contain the piles.  And display them proudly!

Any ideas?

Hugs,
Barb

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Piles

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Barb

What’s up with the piles around here?  And why is it that they just seem to get moved around and never seem to go away?  Am I the only person with this problem?  But maybe I should show you a few pictures and you’ll better understand. 

First there are piles of quilts……some finished, some not.

There are piles of books —- ooooo, that reminds me – that library book is due back!  I better get it off the pile!

And more books.  They’re everywhere!   Just in case one might have time to read in any room in the house, I suppose.  And the binoculars on top – to catch a glimpse of any rare, exotic bird that shows up at the back yard feeder.  Or anything else outside the window.

 Then there are fabric piles.  Fabric and incomplete projects it appears.  So that’s where that pinwheel quilt top is!  I wondered where that one was.  Sometimes a camera can really reveal things.

This appears to be a miscellaneous pile of all kinds of things.  Books, a calendar (probably from 1990), papers, CDs, magazines.    Looks like there could be some patterns in there too.  Who can find anything when it all ends up in a pile?

There is fabric on shelves in piles……..

Some organized.


….and some not so organized.  Actually that looks like a big mess!

There are even some piles of batting.  Doesn’t every quilter have a pile of batting?  Oh, probably not.  But you’ll need it if you’re going to do a Cotton Theory quilt!  I promise you need it.  Looks like some miscellaneous stuff under that batting too.  How does this happen?

So here’s the problem…… I’m in the middle of a quilting project.  And I need to use the iron on my latest seams.  So I go to the ironing board and here’s what I find……

Aaaaaackkkk!  Is there an iron in there somewhere?  Can I squeeze 6 inches of open space to press this little 5 inch square I just pieced?  So you know what happens, right?  I move the piles.

Ahhhhhhh…..  Now some serious pressing can be done!  But no sooner do I finish that than I need to do some cutting on the cutting table.  And you guessed it!  At least I think you probably guessed it.  This is what the cuttting table now looks like.

Somehow cutting out strips of fabric is not going to work here.  So the piles are moved again.  And then I need to sew…..

OK, OK….. so you’re way ahead of me and you knew exactly what the sewing table was going to look like.  But that’s because you have this problem too, don’t you?  I’m not the only one, am I?  Your sewing rooms look just like mine, don’t they?  No, I don’t have any insecurity issues at all.  Why do you ask?

There are also these piles……

And these……

But that’s another story for another day.

So I have declared today “Organize the Piles Day!”  There just has to be some way to keep the stuff in its place and off the work surfaces.  Do I need more shelves?  More closets?  An extra room on the house?  Less fabric and books?  (Horrors!  Who said that?)  An organizing guru?  My friend, Judy?  Help!  It’s impossible to work in this mess.  And I’m using that as my excuse for not getting enough projects completed around here.  Something must be done!

So let me know if you have some great organizing tip for how to treat piles.  Leave it in the comments for all to read.  Maybe I should send a spare pile as a prize for the best tip?  I suppose that would be one way to get rid of my piles, wouldn’t it?  In the meantime, I’m off to make sure Boo didn’t get buried in a pile.  “Here, Boo…..  Where are you, Boo?”

Unpiling,
Barb

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Behind the scenes

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Barb

Remember this picture the other day?  That Boo obviously took of himself.  Good cat that he is and all.  And he is really getting into this blogging thing.  Of course, he can run a camera and take his own picture!

 

Well, just for grins I thought you might get a kick out of the picture behind the picture…….

Isn’t cropping a wonderful thing?  Boo is getting less and less patient with the camera these days.  He thinks Mom is taking entirely too many pictures!  So drastic measures must be taken.  For the sake of the blog and all.

And before you ask, I promise I am not squeezing his little neck.  Just holding him gently.  For the sake of the blog and all.  Boo is learning to hide when the camera comes out of the bag.  And I’m not even using a flash.  It would give him “red eye” anyway.  We’re looking into finding a Cat Whisperer.  And helping him with his “cameraphobia.”  For the sake of the blog and all.  Boo and I are here for ya!  Well, I am anyway.  The jury is still out on how Boo really feels.  Maybe you can read it in his eyes.  Personally I think it’s the “not again” look.  Or maybe “ah, Mom, do I hafta?”  I’m seeing that look more and more these days.

You friendly cat lover – quite possibly the biggest cat lover of all time – and Boo’s biggest fan,
Barb

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A Tribute to Chris

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Barb

Today I’m posting a serious post.  So if you’re in the mood for humor, you’d better read no further.  I just have the need to write this today.  We’ll get back to the humor tomorrow.

Last week, the son of dear friends was killed in an auto accident.  26 years old.  A lot of life left to live.  Chris Kuykendall was a beautiful young man.  I don’t think I ever saw him without a smile on his face.  He was a great friend to many, always with an uplifting word of encouragement for all.  He was a good man with good moral values.  His death seems so senseless to me.  But as I was reminded at his memorial service on Monday, whether we live to be 26 or 126, in light of eternity, it is but a blip on the radar.  Hundreds of people were at that service.  Lives touched by Chris.  By his laughter, his encouragment and his friendship.  He made good use of those 26 years.

His friends set up an “In Loving Memory of Chris Kuykendall” page on Facebook.  It’s incredible to read what all his friends have to say about him.  He’s described with words like “genuine, welcoming, overwhelmingly kind, a gentle giant, a blessing, encourager, compassionate, man of truth.”  One person even said, “He was never in a bad mood.”  How many of us could have those things said about us?  He leaves behind a great legacy for his short 26 years.  I can’t help but wonder how much more he could have done if he’d had 60 more.

He also leaves behind a lot of grieving people.  I’ve thought a lot about his mother this past week.  This is not the natural order of things.  Parents are not supposed to outlive their children.  His grandparents would say the same.  But they are also celebrating the blessing of having Chris here for those 26 years!

 Chris on the day he went flying with my dear hubby.  He couldn’t stop smiling!

The news report said he was driving just a bit too fast for the curve in the road.  His jeep couldn’t handle the turn and it rolled.  Nobody got to him in time to save him.  I think of my own nephew who is about the same age.  He always drives too fast.  I’m sure he thinks he’s infallible, but Chris’ death proves that nothing is certain.

Any one of us could find out tomorrow that we have cancer.  Or worse.  And our lives would be forever changed.  Would we do anything different today if we knew what tomorrow holds?  Would Chris have done anything different if he’d known it would be his last day on earth?  I have a feeling he would not.  He was working at a ranch near Bryan, Texas – a place that’s described as being a “home for boys and girls who might not have any place else to go.”  Chris was described by a worker there as “really good with the kids on the ranch.  He would take time to listen to them and help them with any issues they were having.”  Chris was there because he had a passion to help change children’s lives.  Does it get any better than that kind of service?  He wrote in his journal just days before that this job was just exactly where he was supposed to be.  He was being a servant to others by faithfully being obedient to his God.

I salute you, Chris.  Heaven is a better place now that you’ve arrived there.  Oh, that we all could make as big an impact on the world as you have.  And may your death be a reminder to us all of just how fragile our lives really are.

We miss you, Chris.
Barb

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