Think Tropical

Oh boy, it's been cold. Sweater and coat weather in Florida. Shoes, even. From what I've heard, Florida is the only state in the US without snow on the ground. Not fair. If it's going to be cold, give us some of that pretty white stuff. And ski slopes! Instead of freezing today, I thought about the tropics. Umbrella drinks, hot sand, warm surf, and pineapples.

I was reading blogs this morning and stumbled upon a little project I could fit in today. Karen at the Selvage Blog made a gigantic pineapple block on her Snow Day. She linked a great tutorial, so I gave it a try. I don't think I've made a pineapple block before. It was really fun and this technique was easy.

This potholder was supposed to be winter themed. I went with a wonky log cabin with Elvis on the back side. My partner collects Elvis memorabilia. I used both cotton batting and Insul-brite, which I've decided is too much bulk. The Insul-brite is so thin, so I thought adding cotton batting would help, but it made it too bulky and hard to machine quilt. Maybe a layer of cotton flannel next time?

Stay warm everyone. Enjoy those snow days. Mother Nature is giving everyone a workout this week.

It's Raining!

Sorry, central Florida. I wanted to grill tonight, so I brought on the rain. Nice though, isn't it? We've been dry. I love rain and storms. Tropical storms are my favorite, and we're kind of tropical here. And you can bet I'll be out there grilling in the downpour. I'll try to dodge the lightening.

I put a palm border on my little Florida mini quilt. Time to quilt it now. Saturday is Sew Day for the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild, so I'm gathering projects to work on.

The talented Sarah from House of Krom is having a Free Piecing Study. The first block was this fun Mondo Bird. I didn't quite get the beak pointy enough or get the proportions correct, but it is free piecing, right? I sure enjoyed the process and seeing all the other Mondo bird interpretations. My block measures about 8" x 12". I might try a flock of mini blocks using this technique. Next up is a log cabin house, which is right up my house alley! I love blogland.

I watched "Inception" this weekend and got this 1930s repro quilt bound. When the sun comes back out and it dries up, I'll get a full shot. I made this top in 2008, but it hung around in my tub o' tops until late last year. Eagle Mountain Quilting did the lovely quilting.

Apparently I was going to use it as a tablecloth. I forgot all about that. It fits my kitchen table perfectly. Oh well, it's a quilt now. I love looking at all the cute prints on those 1930s reproduction fabrics. I think we quilters should get food manufacturers back to using feed sacks. Free fabric with bags of flour, sugar, grits, pet food, etc. Wouldn't that be fun? I could just see all of us sorting through the merchandise looking for the prints we liked! Maybe that's why they stopped selling food in fabric bags.

Look at this NYC selvage quilt. My selvage buddy, Dotty has spoiled me again. She's so creative with these selvages. A true artiste. Speaking of being spoiled, my friend Yumi from Japan sent me a lovely package. More on that later.

A Pressing Situation

A dependable iron is a must-have for anyone who sews or quilts. I guess some people actually iron clothes too, but that's just silly. I've been through my share of irons since I started quilting. And a love of vintage linens before that required that I have a hot, working iron as well as a can of starch ready for ironing marathons.

Enter the "pressing situation." My ironing board is avocado green and I believe was my husband's. It creeks and groans, but works perfectly well. When we combined households, my harvest gold ironing board went to the poor kids (aka Goodwill). As you can tell by the retro colors, our ironing boards have been around a while, but I don't like to be wasteful if I can help it. I can't remember what iron I had back then, but I can tell you it's not around. You see, I am an iron killer.

This oldie, but goodie is the exact same type of iron my mom had when I was growing up. Our maid ironed bed linens with the thing. Really. She watched soap operas while she ironed and my mom let me stay home with her if I was sick, so she was a babysitter too. I hope my mother gave her extra for that little "task." This GE iron is a workhorse, but it started boiling water, making weird buzzing noises and sputtering. I haven't tossed it yet, but its days are numbered. I guess I'm waiting for it to shock me or set my laundry room on fire or something. What I love about this iron is the heft and the fact that there is no mamby pamby safety feature like auto shut-off.

This sleek and modern beauty was a free gift with vacuum cleaner purchase. My mom's husband loves to vacuum (crazy, I know) and bought an Oreck. I got the old vacuum cleaner and this brand new iron. It's pretty fancy and worked like a charm...for a while. It's not heating up like it used to and the Teflon coating on the sole plate is wearing.

Now look at this little cutie. Since my ironing board is in the laundry room, I thought I'd buy a little mini iron and ironing board so I could save myself all those trips (exercise, really) from the machine to the iron. I use it sometimes, but it doesn't hold much water and weighs about as much as a cotton ball. It's cute and all but truthfully, I could use the back and forth walk from my sewing machine to the iron.

Not pictured is a newer iron that I tossed in the trash last week. I couldn't get it to heat up at all and it weighed about as much as a Twinkie. It was my spare to the heir and when King Oreck of Sleekdom started failing I drug it out. Into the trash it went. It wasn't like I didn't have three other irons.

But you know, three half-working irons (and a fourth in the trash) aren't enough for a quilter. I purchased this retro throwback Black & Decker from Amazon and it came Monday. It worked great the first day. The second day it wouldn't get very hot. UGH! I had to run and get the box out of the trash before the trash dudes came in case I needed to return it.

But then something magical happened. I tripped the ground fault breaker for the umpteenth time. It's on the same electrical circuit as the outlet I plug my iron into. To reset the breaker, I have to go into the garage, climb into the boat to get to the other side of the garage, climb out of the boat and use the jet ski as a ladder to get to the ground. Then I unplug all the crap Inspector Gadget has plugged into the outlet and reset the breaker. Then I climb back the way I came. Now that's exercise!

Being the daughter of an electrical engineer, I have zero knowledge of electricity, but this ground fault breaker thingy made a weird noise all of a sudden. Like it's faulty or something. Of course it didn't buzz when my husband reset it. Same as my car headlight working when hubby is around. I have of course decided the problem is not with faulty irons, it's with the stupid outlet. Oh, and did I mention Inspector Gadget has about a zillion things plugged into this particular circuit out in the garage?

So until he replaces that breaker, I'm ironing in my studio. And guess what? All the irons are working. Somewhere in a landfill, there's probably a working iron that I tossed. If you made it through this tome, I applaud you. It was nice to blow off steam, excuse the pun. I'd send you an iron, but I think I'm a collector now.

Fun in Florida

January's Doll Quilt Swap has a theme to show where you live. Since I've always lived in Florida, a Florida quilt was a no-brainer. I've been collecting five-inch charm for an I Spy quilt, so I dug into those for inspiration. Oranges, bananas, strawberries, beach scenes, sand pails, flip flops, golf balls, blue crabs, bugs, Mickey Mouse and fish. All the things I love about Florida. Except the bugs. And oh yeah, the snakes.

January 2010 Florida Quilt

I had a great time last year creating the "Tacky Tourist." And I'm only teasing about our tourists being tacky. We love our tourists and appreciate not having to pay a state tax. Both kids work part time jobs at the theme parks so they get to enjoy the tourists even more. My son can say "fasten your seat belts" in seven different languages.

And here's I Spy Florida Mosaic ready for quilting! I may put a green palm frond border on it first. I got the idea for the mosaic from this cool Mod Mosaic Pillow tutorial from one of my very favorite quilters, Elizabeth Hartman.

I completed one of the blocks for the Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll mystery. I like it. Unfortunately, those little 2.5" half square red and tan triangles will be the death of this quilt. 600 of those boring suckers are needed. Ick. Yuck. Poo. I'm thinking of downsizing to lap quilt size and I'll have bonus extra pieces that I've already constructed. I suspect the pieced border is going to be over my head as well. Oh well, I tried and it was fun for a while. One day I'll have a better attention span!

Happy New Year!

It's a new year! As much as I try to get away from paper calendars and organizers, I'm still buying one each year. And I'm already missing my wall calendar. : ( This year I bought this hilarious Anne Taintor desk calendar. At least I graduated from corporate Daytimers. Or became less mature, which is most likely the case. Love the graphics for the first two weeks in this goofy calendar.

Goodness! Is this how the year is going to start?! Ha ha!

Check out my Swanky Bookkeeper from this tutorial. I'll be ready for a Kindle if I ever get one. Yeah right, I can't even handle electronic calendars. So much for technology around here.

Containing The Selvages

I have amazing quilting friends that keep me in fun selvages, not to mention my love of chopping selvages from my own stash. It's so exciting when a package (squishy) arrives in the mail and it's packed with selvages. I love seeing the fabrics everyone sews with and wonder what project or quilt they went into. I piled a bunch of selvages from one bag onto my cutting board and went to town making a tote the other day.

I'm in organization mode this week, so I decided to find a way to corral all the bags of selvages into one collection so I could go through them easier. That pile on the cutting table was bugging me. All my selvages fit into this queen-size comforter bag. It's clear and has a wide opening, so I can search for the perfect selvage for my projects. Maybe now I won't hoard selvages and use them more. Now to find a place to stow this 9 lb. bag. My son says it looks a lot like trash. Hmmphh!

Front and back of selvage sewing bag. I'm not sure why I made the handles so wide, but I've been in a wide handle mood lately. This tutorial by Skip to My Lou makes tote bag sewing a piece of cake. If you are intrigued by using selvages, check out the Selvage Blog and these projects on Flickr.

Look! My first name is on one of the selvages. And it's spelled correctly! We one "l" Micheles are big in the quilting world! ; )

There haven't been a lot of finishes around here, but I did complete this hot pad for casserole-size dishes. It measures 11" x 15" and was inspired by these amazing pieces created by Sarah at the House of Krom. Hot pads might make nice gifts next year along with a pretty casserole crock filled with goodies. Yeah, I'll get started on those right away. Someone remind me! Now this talented gal has hot pad fever big time. Love her use of Tonya's letters! Here's a cute tutorial that may have started the hot pad craze in blogland.

I'm still plugging away on the Quiltville mystery quilt. What was I thinking?! This baby is going to use all or most of the remaining "calm" fabrics in my stash. I may even have to throw in some of my normal wild stuff or buy more calm.

Sunday Stash #20

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We sure did. I ate, sewed and socialized my way through the entire holiday. Today it is cold and very windy, so I hope to stick inside and sew.

My Secret Quilt Angel sent me a half a yard of fabric for each of the 48 months I've been sewing. I've been having so much fun petting and playing with all these beauties.

 I needed the 1930's repro fabric to bind a quilt, but all these others were on sale. I better get sewing!