Quilt Show

This past weekend was the DVQ quilt show. My very first show was a lot of fun. I worked at the registration booth handing out the ballots for people to vote on their favorite quilts. I got to know two people form the guild who I hadn't ever met before. It was really neat because going to the show helped me realize how many people I've met going to quilt club. I even got to talk with a a lady who is friends with one of my friends and who goes to the same quilt group as my aunt which was really fun.

I had a lot of fun joking around with the different ladies in the group. They had hourly door prizes and I talked with the ladies who were doing the drawing. I told them to make sure they drew my name and that I would lick the piece of paper with my name on it. That way they could just feel for the wet one and know it was mine. I didn't actually do this, but my name was drawn. I won a a kit worth $76 dollars! I was not quite as impressive as I thought because the center part is actually just a pattern printed onto the fabric instead of piecing, but it's still neat. I put the top together. I think I will see if anyone would be willing to do the top quilting so it can be donated to community quilts. The quilting pattern was actually printed onto the fabric too. I'm not sure if this is done for the long arm person to follow if if it's intended for hand quilting...can any quilters answer this for me? Sewing this project, I learn A) what a mitered corner is and B) how to do them. The corners on the outside boarder of the fabric meat at 45 degree angles which allows the gold boarders to form the rectangle around the middle of the quilt. If I didn't do mitered corners, the gold lines would extend to the edges of the quilt because they angles would be 90 degree.

I also made Andy a new blanket. He has a bird blanket that has existed since he was a little boy. His mom made the first one. He eventually wore through the fabrics, so she had to make him another. She used part of the first one as stuffing for the second. Now he's worn through the second one. It was leaving bits of stuffing all around the bedroom which became enough motivation for me to make the third version of the blanket. The first photo is the second blanket. The first version was destroyed long before I met Andy. The second photo is the blanket I made. I top quilted straight lines on his old blanket and used the whole thing for the batting on the new blanket. So I basically just made a new coat for his blanket. He came with me to the fabric store to pick out the fabric. I think it looks pretty neat. He's a typicall guy and isn't very sentimental about things, so it was nice to be able to embrace one of the few things he's really emotionally attached to.

There were no guesses for name that tune, and I don't have any more videos. I'll wait one more post before I give away the answer.

SOOOOO Neat.

You’ll never guess what I made. That’s right, a muumuu!! Ok, no. A purse. Imagine that. Annette is doing jewelry shoes and agreed to try to sell my purses at her shows. She is going to have a table set up at Ceylon days this weekend. The last three purses I showed photos of (including the ones in this post) will be for sale at the show. I don’t know if anyone will be interested enough to pay for them, but it will be neat to see. My friend Catherine was asking about how big the purses were so I put a dollar bill in the picture for a size reference. This purse is a little different since it has the pockets on the front, but the inside is the same as the others I've made. I think it's one of my favorite color combination, but you have to be a careful person if you want to keep the white/cream clean.

I was in Fairmont for Annette’s 50^th birthday party last weekend. 50 is the new 30 in case you haven’t heard. It was a fun time. I ate several cookies and cheeseburgers. It was an all day grill out, and we hung out in the garage playing a bean bag toss game. I called it “toss across” and then got made fun of, but no one else came up with a neat name, so screw them. I decided to make Annette a bag for her b-day. She doesn’t know yet, so I hope she doesn’t read this first and ruin the surprise. It’s the same as the brown reusable bag I showed a few posts ago. For hers I put a piece of plastic stuff in the bottom to make it more sturdy. If my purses sell at all I might make more of the reusable bag things to try to sell too since they’d be something I could sell for a lot cheaper.

This weekend is the quilt show. I have never been to one, so I’m excited. I signed up to sit at the registration table for awhile to help out and then I’ll browse the show. I decided to skip on submitting anything for the show since it would be hard to make the drop off time and I kept forgetting to submit the form I was supposed to fill out and now it's basically too late. I guess I’m also nervous for people to see my stuff next to stuff made by people who knew what they were doing….

Someone finally guessed what the last name that tune was. Jack got it right with "Imagine" by John Lennon. This video is the last song I have recorded. If anyone says they want more, I'll keep doing it (if I can find more bits to learn), but otherwise I'm calling it quits. I think this one is easy so I"m not going to give any hints except for that it's another classic rock song. Good luck.

The PIT!

A few years ago my sister and her boyfriend moved in to a new house. Recently my sister learned that the house has a mysterious abyss in the basement. The place is really old and has an unfinished basement. In the corner of the basement is a mildly terrifying looking "door" which is actually just a wood slab covering a stairway. I found it odd that there was a second set of stairs in the basement that led "up" but "up" was really to nowhere.


When you go up the steps, there is a few feet of space and then the bottom of part of the house with a bunch of support beams. But the weird part is that the floor is broken up by a giant pit. It is about three feet wide and as long as the room (maybe 12-15 feet). It is maybe four or five feet deep and filled with a bunch of random stuff like pieces of mystery garbage and old tires. It is the perfect place to trap a small child for torturing and killing.

When Meg took me down there to show me, my first question was whether or not she was going to kill me. I tried to take some pictures to capture the terror factor. They look less scary then it was in person. My mom thinks that the pit might be an old coal storage area from back in the day when it was burned for heat. I'm still not entirely convinced that it isn't a torture chamber for children.

As far s name that tune. No one bothered to venture a guess as to the previous post, so I'm not going to tell you what it was or give you a new song. Jerks. I also only have one more video, so I want to wait a bit longer before I post it.

So Neat. Part three?

I finished my purse a little while ago, so I decided to post a couple pictures. I pulled out all the bells and whistles for this one. I have an inside zippered pocket, two small pockets on the sides on the inside, and a pocket on the front of the outside under the flap....Maybe the photo can make that one make sense. I don't know if the true color comes out in the photo, but the outside is a deep, olive green color. The inside color I think shows pretty well. I also added some velcro to this purse. Sometimes the wind would blow the flap up on my old purse and it was annoying. I'm hoping the velcro will eliminate this problem. The purse wasn't quite finished when I took the pictures, so ignore the end I needed to sew shut and the velcro that wasn't sewn on.

Joann Fabric is having a sale this weekend so I'm thinking about going out and getting a few sets of fabric, making some purses, and seeing if I can sell them on Ebay. Anyone want to buy a purse for 15 bucks plus material? You can pick the fabric.

Daniel got the last name that tune correct. It was Don't Let it Bring You Down by Neil Young. This new song was a solo effort from a guy who used to belong in a popular band from the sixties...? It should be another easy one. I biff a lot, so pretend not to notice. I think I only have two more videos left after this, so I'm either going to have to learn more song bits or abandon this game.

So Neat. Part Two.

I got the photos of the two purses I made for my friends. They are messenger style bags based on a vague idea of a pattern that i made about 6 years ago. It's pretty simple, but I like the purses and changing the fabric personalizes them a lot. I am working on my own purse now, but since I don't really carry one unless I don't have coat pockets to keep my stuff in, I haven't had much of a need and thus haven't gotten it finished. I'm thinking I should turn it into a business, but I don't figure anyone wants to pay me enough to worth it.

I've been greatly enjoying the nice weather we've been having, but it's kind of ruining my plans of going snowboarding one more time this seasons. I haven't been out since the lesson I wrote about earlier, and now the snow is probably melted away. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to focus on when I can get motorcycle out of storage.

I'm not adding a name that tune on this post. But I will say that Daniel correctly names the previous tune as "Don't Let it Bring You Down" by Neil Young.

So Neat.

Andy left on Wednesday to go to the cities to have a belly button hernia operated on. He is staying up there for a few days to rest, so I've been home alone. A friend from work wanted a new purse, so I said I'd make one for her which sparked my sewing side. Since Andy isn't here to be bothered by the noise, I brought my machine out of the dungeon room and into the somewhat warmer kitchen. I made two purses for friends, two pillow covers, a bag, and a coin purse sort of thing. I also bought fabric to make one more purse for myself.

I got the pattern for the bag from my aunt a long time ago, but never got around to making it. Turns out it's ridiculously easy and makes me think I should make more. Too bad it's not closer to X-mas, or I'd be set.

I forgot to take pictures of the two purses I made, but I might obtain them in the future, so if I do I will post them.

Andy will be coming home tomorrow or monday. He's not feeling great, but he is starting to feel a bit better and even got to shower today! He's not supposed to life more than 10 pounds for 6 weeks, so I guess I have to be the man when we get groceries.

I'm running out of songs for name that tune. I had to record this one tonight. This one is by an artist that has already appeared in name that tune, but I just learned the song, so I figured it would work. It came off an album released in 1970. That's about all I've got for hints. Good luck. Richard got the last one right again. It was "Nutshell" by Alice in Chains.

This past Sunday I went to Mount Kato for my second snowboarding lesson with Catherine. Her 6 year old nephew asked her to go snowboarding with him in Colorado. She's never snowboarded, so she wanted to take a lesson to see if she should even attempt it in Colorado. She asked me to come along. I've always wanted to learn, but have never tried so I was all for it. After our first lesson, we decided that we'd both like to go again. There is still a lot to learn about technique and stuff, but I think I've made decent progress. I had a blast and want to keep going....too bad lift tickets cost a million bucks. I'm not sure how often I'll get out there, but I'm hoping to go at least a few more time before the end of the season.


In the last post I showed a photo of my quilt challenge project. I made a new one that I think is neater. I found out that I could submit both. Here is a photo of the second project. It's an oven mitt. Since the project had to be submitted "in a pot, on a stick" I decided to go with cooking pot instead of flower pot which seems to be what most everyone else thought of first, and then I used the stick as a stirrer.


Andy loves to make hard boiled eggs. Last time he made them, he found a surprise. One of the eggs had two yolks. He was pretty excited because it meant TWIN CHICKENS! So we decided to take a photo. I thought it was pretty neat too, so I decided to share the anomaly. Let's play a game. Guess if the hands in the photo are mine or Andy's.

Last post's name that tune was correctly identified by Richard again. It was "Simple Man" by Lynard Skynard. For this post, I don't feel like looking up details, so I'll just say that it probably came out in the early nineties as part of the whole grunge thing.

Lastly, I would like to apologize for poor picture layout on this stupid blog. The preview function is really not accurate and the result is a stupid layout when I have photos. The end.