Life Takes Over

I am in FL for a fast trip this week due to my mother-in-law's illness. She is in a Ft. Lauderdale heart unit in very bad shape. The doctor says there can be improvement but it will be improvement just to go into a nursing home here--no traveling, and no move to Erie to be near the other son. It's pretty heartbreaking--89 1/2 years old, about 75 pounds, a ventilator now transferred to a tracheotomy, on a feeding tube, a purple foot, big skin tears in her very fragile skin, and two large stapled incisions, from one defibrilator coming out, and a new one coming in. Then there is the raging staph infection. This is the consequence of modern medicine.

So this week, I am crocheting on a long scarf for my tactile "fix," and reading new quilt magazines. I did get to have lunch with my dear quilting friend, Judie, whom I haven't seen since March. That was a great thing. And I went to an art store to get more wonderful Schminke soft pastels for when I get home and back to my art.

Everything here is green, green, green from all the rain they got with Trop. Storm Fay. Now there are two hurricanes coming, but we'll be gone by then.

Two Tops Done!

Well, the blue quilt got done by Friday--no pic yet! But it is very pretty and I really like how easy it was to put together. I've made the binding out of lots of strips of the blue fabrics.

The Civil War fabric quilt ("A Touch of Pink") also has gotten the two side borders it needed.

Now there are two quilts needing to be basted and marked (my new intention to put more planned designs on my quilts). I'm back to the red and green log cabin to make the final 9 green strip blocks for the outside border.

I also have been frantically working this weekend to sort and re-organize my genealogy materials, which have been untouched for a few years. Lately, I joined ancestry.com and have been fascinated by what's on there! So stacks of family records (like censuses) have grown amidst my quiltmaking in the past month.

Some of the records I have accumulated along the way have actually proved out in light of all the new info on the Internet. My W.A. McCartney 1850 Census record actually proved out to be my W.A. McCartney. That was exciting! And my Bible page from my Aunt Linnie from 1933 helped prove a connection to the right Solomon Cates recently. That was a yippee!

This morning I cleaned out and reorganized a file cabinet in the garage that has been untouched for about six years. I'm on a mission! Full steam ahead!

The New Blue Quilt Project

I spotted an easy blue quilt recently (at top) in American Patchwork and Quilting (June 2007), one I could put together quickly with the oodles of blues I have. I liked the geometric and modern look of it. In my usual excitement for starting quilts, I plunged in by gathering lots of blues and preparing them to take to the shop for cutting into squares, along with the neutrals for the corner squares. (Mine is going to be a little brighter than this one, with more dark teals and some brighter blues here and there for pop.)

So far it's easy and simple! I did go to the trouble of putting a pencil line across the middle of the neutral squares for straighter sewing lines. In the second picture you see the neutral squares stitched on and not pressed up yet. At the bottom you see how it looks when the square has been pressed up to the right corner. This top might actually get together this week!

AND here's the good part--I trimmed the back two triangles (one blue, one neutral) away to get rid of the extra bulk, so now I have a bunch of new blue and neutral triangles for another project. Saving more of that green stuff. . . $!

How Much Money Are Your Scraps Worth?

Fabric is expensive! Since most fabrics are now at least $9.50 per yard, those bits and pieces we pitch are literally money we're throwing in the garbage can. That's why I've been working on "reclaiming" scraps that I have saved but not "organized."

At the top, you'll see my finished stack and the bottom picture shows the pieces I started with on the left. I used Judy Martin's Scrapmaster to cut the triangles--it worked really great.

Now here's what that finished stack of about 180 triangles is worth--$3.25! I calculated the square inches of the triangle; used the number of 1512 sq. in. in a yard of fabric and divided it by the triangle area, giving me the number of 536 triangles per yard. Then I divided $9.50 by 536 to get the value of each triangle--1.8 cents.

Plus I have the beginning of a "snowball" quilt because all these triangles will be perfect to sew on the corners of squares. 180 will do 45 squares. I'm working on more green scraps. . . and saving my "green" while I'm at it.