Sewing up a Storm in Lompoc

No pictures, but I'm in Lompoc with Becky and we are having a wonderful time sewing, gabbing, shopping and munching. We have both accomplished quite a bit of sewing and we will head over to Ontario tomorrow to meet up with Kathy B. and Kat for the Road to California show.

The pieced blocks of the baby quilt are done as are nine of the redwork blocks. Three rows are sewed together and I'll probably make my goal of finishing the top by the end of of the month.

Becky is checking out "The Quilter's Path," a small publication that advertises all of the quilt shops in California and planning our route as we speak!!

Good fun!

Quilt Update

I've got two dogs and two cats completely embroidered for the quilt and all of the bows embroidered in the various colors. I just have five more dogs and four more cats to do.

I also got all of the pieces cut to take to Becky's this week so I can get as far as possible with the piecing. Since all embroidery is not finished, I'll only be able to go so far on that, but all of the other blocks will get done.

I pulled out my entire stash of 30's reproductions, pictured below, and was able to cut out the 52 pieces for the corners of the embroidery squares and the 96 pieces (8 per block X 12 blocks) for the pieced blocks without duplicating any fabrics and using mostly conversationals! That probably isn't something to be brag about, but I do love these sweet, colorful fabrics. I have a fabric that I just love for the border, in blue with bunnies that have red bows, but since puppies and kitties are the focus of the whole thing, I'll probably be on the lookout for something really perfect at Road to California next weekend.

I'm not sure about computer access, I may or may not take my laptop, so see ya in a week!

A Quilt for Alexander

I have been embroidering like a fiend trying to get the puppy and kitten blocks done for Alexander's quilt. I'm using DMC #8 and all of the dogs are blue and the cats green. Their bows are varying colors and I've finished all of the bows so I don't have so many spools of cotton to juggle in my project carrier (a Whitman's Sampler candy box, thankyouverymuch DesertSky).

I'm also working on getting the pieces cut out for the rest of the top, which will be all scrappy 1930's prints. As you can see from the picture at the left, I am rather fond of the 1930's prints. Hopefully, I will get all of the 96 rectangles and 52 squares cut before I leave on Monday morning. I'm hoping to be able to not have any repeats and if I do, that may or may not be a good thing. (Those with fabric addiction problems will know what I mean.)

Monday morning, hubby is taking me to Monterey where I will meet up with my buddy Becky, now of Lompoc and her family and ride south with them. Then I get to spend three glorious days sewing with Becky!!!
And as if that weren't enough, on Thursday we are driving to Ontario, CA to meet up with our pals Kathy and Kat to hang out at the Road to California Quilt Show. I CAN'T WAIT!! Hanging out with these three is the ultimate in quilty fun and we have such great synergy when we are together. The downside is missing my hubby, which always happens after I'm gone more than 48 hours.

Also on the downside is the fact that my baby Gator is suffering from bladder stones again and is scheduled for surgery to remove them when I get get back (her third such surgery). Oy Vey, it's always something, isn't it?

Another Quilting Meme

As seen on Julie's blog Floribunda.

THE ABC'S OF MY QUILTING STYLE

A- Artist? Probably not. I like to modify designs I see and have a wonderful time doing friendship blocks for friends that are of my own design, but I am not an art quilter.

B- Best Blogging Buddies? I read a lot of blogs in my blogring Quilting for Pleasure and lots of blogs referred from their blogs, but I've only met Nancy, NP, DesertSky and Ocean4Karrin in real life. Quiltgranny is on one of my email groups, and I've known Bonnie@Quiltville "virtually" forever!

C- Crazy or Sane Quilting? I've dabbled with CQ and do plan to do more in the future.

D- Dyeing or Stamping? Dyeing -- but I won't be doing it any time soon. I'll buy from the pros.

E- Essential Item? My rotary cutter and an Ott Lite

F- Favorite Fabrics? 1930's reproductions--slam dunk. I'm loving the Civil War era too and always batiks.

G- Great Quilt Design? I have to agree with Floribunda on Shakespeare in the Park by Judy Martin. She is a wonderful designer and her books are must-haves for quilt lovers.

H- Hand or Machine Quilt? I've been hand quilting since 1975. Am just learning to machine quilt.

I- Indispensable Notion? a good seam ripper (amen Julie)

J- Janome or Bernina? La Nina, my Bernina 440 QE at home and Gemma, myJanome Gem Platinum for the road

K- Kits or Original Designs? I'm learning that I am not a kit or all-blocks-the-same kind of person.

L- Life in the Studio is? Better than almost anything (and messy!) (amen again!)

M- Most Projects Made in One Year? Six or seven. Should switch to miniatures.

N- Number of Gadgets? HAHAHAHAHA. My nickname is Inspector Gadget!

O- OH, I wish I hadn’t. . . . .? Bought a PC Quilter!

P- Pet Peeves about Quilting? 1. Setting borders. 2. Piecing backings 3. Basting layers

Q- Quilt Show? Road to California (Next Week!!), Pacific International, the local show put on by Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County.

R- Reason to Rip Out? paper-piecing mistakes where the fabric doesn't quite cover the space; obviously mis-matched seams -- I'm not an obsessive perfectionist but my style is more precise than some of my friends! (Amen again)

S- Sewing or Knitting? I can knit, but mainly work on preemie caps for our guild. It's OK, but not really my gig.

T- Tag, You're It! consider yourself tagged

U- UFOs? Who would know?

V- Vexing Quilt Pattern? A Trudy Hughes intlerlocked tile pattern I made for my great niece 14 years ago. It was a one-seam-at-a-timer and I'll never do it again, though it was cute.

W- Wishlist Item? An electric lift for my sewing machine table.

X- Xtra Fabric you will never use? Tons, thanks, just need to tote it to guild for charity projects.

Y- Your Biggest Goof? Buying the PC Quilter--see "O"

Z- Zip! Only on tote bags, darling.

A Little Progress

I'm making baby steps on the goals right now, but have been busy getting things in order for the first guild meeting of the year, which was yesterday. I have Alexander's baby quilt desingned using a quilt that was in the January issue of Fons and Porter I found a quilt made in 1930's reproductions called Dot to Dot and I fell in love with it.

I decided to modify it by putting embroidered 1930's dogs and cats from a pattern book I got from our silent auction table at guild. This quilt will allow me to use just a few fabrics from my (ahem) extensive collection of 1930's reproductions. I have most of one puppy done and that was accomplished at guild during the business meeting!

I'm using a tip I got from my buddy Susan aka DesertSky back when we were doing a blue-work exchange of Wizard of Oz blocks, and marking the embroidery lines with matching Pigma pen. No show, no erasing, no worries!


I made a little trip to the Regal Rabbit in Windsor, a destination needlepoint/counted stitch embroidery shop in Windsor and picked up a collection of DMC #8 perle cotton in 30-ish colors for the embroidery. I'll be doing all of the dogs in blue and the cats in green with ribbons in varying colors.

I also got some quilting done on the Robot quilt and the templates printed out of EQ6 of a rocket for the large squares.

Fun, fun!

Goals and Resolutions

Quilt-wise that is.

For January:

• Finish machine quilting Benjamin's robot quilt
• Piece the top for Alexander's baby quilt
• Make myself 2 of the "Widdle Biddy" blocks that I didn't do last year
  

That is probably enough. I finished quilting the basic anchoring grid on the robot quilt yesterday. It is a "Just Can't Cut It" that daughter Kate made for her son and I'm the quilter. She found the cutest robot fabrics and mixed in few others and this quilt is darling. She's doing his big-boy room in a space theme and he already has the glow-in-the-dard stars on the ceiling. She found him a battery operated nighlight moon that hangs on the wall and is operated with a remote. The thing goes through the phases of the moon and he absolutely loves it because it has three of his favorite things.....moon, button, light.

The new Fons and Porter magazine supplied the pattern I needed to finally get going with Alex's quilt. It is the "dot" quilt and instead of dots in the snowball blocks, I'm either going to embroider nursery rhymes or applique '30's gingham dogs and calico cats. The piecing is easy, so I'll have plenty of time to applique.

Finally, Nancy, NP and I swapped the infernal 4 1/2 in 1930's sampler blocks for the last 2 years and I cut many of mine out, but didn't piece them. This month I will catch up on 2 of them!

Happy New Year!
May we all have
Health
Happiness
and
Peace on Earth
in
2007

Wild Water!

We took a drive to the coast yesterday to check out the high surf at Jenner and Bodega Bay. Jenner is about 30 miles from Santa Rosa, but the road through the Russian River Valley via Guerneville, Rio Nido and Monte Rio is tortuous and has at least 3 stoplights to allow for one-way traffic due to road damage from the floods of December, 2005.

We went to the Sonoma Coast State Beach, more precisely Goat Rock Beach. We'd never been down the long, winding road to Goat Rock and the jetty that leads to the rock and serves as a parking lot. We have been having 50 to 60 mph winds over the last few days and we wanted to see the "surf advisory," the newspeople were yakking about.

There is almost always a surf advisory on the Sonoma Coast. The area is loaded with seals and their natural predators Great White sharks like to hang out and occasionally harass the surfers. Not only the Great Whites are a problem; the area is rife with rip currents that pull unwary waders out to sea and sleeper waves that can do the same.

I've been a visitor to the California coast since childhood and my parents retired to the Central Coast town of Cayucos, CA. I've seen some wild tides on my visits to my parents, but nothing like these waves.

It was scary and amazing.

Outta Here in the Morning

We are leaving in the morning for Carmel, CA to see my mother and father-in-law. The kids are all with their in-laws or other parents.

Here are my children Kate, 2 years/8 months and Daniel at 2 months in 1980.

From my house to your house:

Merry Christmas
and
Peace on Earth

Who Needs No-Knead Bread?

You do, I do, we all do!

Sometime back, whilst doing a perusal of the blogs that I normally visit once or twice a day, I came upon this post at Hedgehog's Life's A Quilt blog showing a lovely loaf of bread and linking to a recipe in the New York Times for making a loaf of no-knead artisan style bread.

When I saw this recipe, I was completely intrigued, because as an artisanal bread baker, I am used to long, slow rises for my doughs and sometimes taking two days to complete the entire process. So, Tuesday evening in the middle of dinner prep, I decided to start a batch. Since we keep our home as cold as a meat locker (just ask the kids), I put the dough bowl in the oven that I'd warmed up for a few minutes.

I have been baking artisan Italian breads for years using Carol Field's The Italian Baker, in fact, when hubby and I honeymooned in the Napa Valley, he bought me a KitchenAid stand mixer and I was off to the races. Our favorite recipe is Pane Pugliese and I divide the dough into eight pieces instead of two. Each mini-loaf is just right for two people and two bread-loving miniature Schnauzers. =)

Following the instructions last night, I shaped the dough and gave it a second rise, also in the oven and then preheated my Le Cruset dutch oven at the required temperature. Upending the dough into the hot pan was tricky, and it stuck to the tea towel, obviously not enough flour for the wet, wet dough.

In spite of that, the bread came out beautifully with a thick crunchy crust and nice interior. The flavor that bread develops when the wheat is allowed to rise slowly and develop fully is out of this world! Last night we enjoyed it with some lovely linguine in a minimalist sauce consisting of garlic, leek, homemade sausage with pine nuts and basil, green beans, mushrooms and broccoli with a dash of red pepper. (My typical "clean out the 'fridge" kind of recipe.) We did restrain ourselves and saved half of the loaf for our Solstice Supper tonight.

Even people who don't fancy themselves bread bakers can enjoy this recipe, it really is easy, easy, easy.

All you need is patience.

Last one for this year--1956

This is the last one I'll post for this year and it is our card for 1956.

I love this picture and you may notice that it is the same one I chose for my blog. Hubby says that this picture sums me up more than any other out there.

I call it my "What, me worry?" pose. As always, I'm off to the side of the other two, doing my own thing, a trend that continues to this day.

Maybe I'll sew tomorrow......

1955

Here is 1955.

I'm on the left side with my beat up dolly. The bed was my grandmother's and this picture was taken upstairs in the room that became my bedroom when I was 12 until I got married at 19.

Today was the joint board meeting for our guild, held here. At this meeting, the past years' officers get together for lunch with the upcoming slate of officers to plan the next year and pass the baton.

Since many of the jobs just shuffle from person to person, most of the attendees are the same with a few new faces. We had a great time and got to wish each other a Happy Holiday season in a smaller, more intimate venue.

Now, back to quilting!!

One More Time

Here is 1954 with my baby sister included. My older sister is now eight and I'm two and a half. My younger sister is 10 months old.

Spotty got out of it this year.

The Ghost of Christmas Past, Part Two

Possibly boring, but here's another blast from the past, me and the family, circa 1953.

In this picture my Mom was almost 33, Dad was 39 and my sister was almost eight. I was eighteen months old and who knows how old Spotty was....the poor dear was born old, but she was the sweetest thing ever.

In six weeks time, my parents would move into the only house I remember living in and eight weeks after Christmas Day, my baby sister was born. Lots happening back in the day!

The Ghost of Christmas Past, Part One

My Dad was a newspaper reporter, then editor, managing editor and finally publisher of our local paper, the Visalia Times-Delta between 1949 and 1975 when he retired. Every year, he would use his camera and the darkroom at the office to make a Christmas card for family friends and relatives. This was not his first, but it was the first in which I appeared, 1952 when I was six months old.

Don't we look so '50s? Mom, me, Spotty Annabel, Dad and my older sister who will be sixty next week.

Happy Holidays!!!!