Quilting, Painting, and Quilting Some More

Back before the days of technology, there were books.  I used to try reading books at the table, when I was little.  It flew just fine, so long as Daddy was reading a book, too.  He was usually studying.  Come to think of it, sometimes I was, too.  Mama didn’t mind; I imagine she liked the rare peace and quiet.

Here’s a funny story on that subject, coming from Bobby’s house, when he was little:

Bobby and his siblings loved to read.  (So is it any wonder Bobby and Hannah’s children have their noses in books a good deal of the time?)  The children often brought books to the table – and there were six of them.  So Bobby’s mother Bethany announced one day when something got spilled on account of a book bumping it, and nobody seemed capable of conversing with another, “Okay, that does it!  No more books at the table!”

The children came to the table, bookless.  

But conversation lagged.  Bethany looked around – and found her children ... reading.  No, not books.  But... the back of cereal boxes, the ketchup bottle, the milk jug...  Haha!

The children will read!

Last week, a man stopped by Amy’s house to ask for directions.  He was a construction worker, driving a dump truck, and wearing work clothes.  As Amy was trying to help figure out the address, little Grant walked up.  He stood there staring at the man’s knee, and piped up in his little voice, “YOU HAVE A HOLE IN THERE!!”  

Yep, sho’ ’nuff, there was a gaping hole in the man’s jeans.

This reminded me of the time we called for the plumber, as there was an emergency of watery proportions somewhere in the house.  He arrived at the door at suppertime.  Hester, age 4, ran to the screen door, peered out, and then, assuming, as most 4-year-olds do, that sound waves travel away from the person about whom they’re talking, she shouted at the tip-top of her voice, “MR. ROOTER TOOTER’S HERE!”  (Another fairly common phenomenon:  the smallest child in the house often has the biggest voice pipes.)

I went to the door and let the man in.  He followed me through the kitchen, gawking around unabashedly.  (We afterwards found ourselves a more refined Rooter Tooter.)  Eight children sat around the table (the ninth had not yet made her appearance earthside).  Mr. R.T.’s eyes and mouth simultaneously opened wide. 

Then, “Are all these yours?!” he breathed in astonishment.

“No, we just rent them for suppertime,” I told him and pointed him in the direction of the clogged commode.

Victoria has been thinking about redoing her room, including painting, and changing some furniture.  She asked if I’d like to go to Nebraska Furniture Mart with her one of these days to look for nightstands, a settee, etc.  I like exploring in Nebraska Furniture Mart, looking at all the beautiful (and sometimes odd) things.  Victoria and I once saw a small boy going methodically through a wall of decorative pillows in square cubbyholes, telling his mother each and every color of pillow, to her great exasperation.  She kept trying in vain to get him to come along.

It was funny, really... but I always wonder why parents don’t just join in the fun.  She could’ve started telling him colors of pillows up above his head, giving them funny names (we always call it ‘petunia’, if a color name escapes us) ... mulberry, plum, avocado, sapphire, indigo, ----- and on and on.  And then, when she was done, she could announce, “Okay, that’s enough,” and a well-behaved child should stop and come when bidden.  Children behave much better, if they are well loved and well entertained and, of course, disciplined properly!

Okay, that little sermonette was free.  No charge.

I used to have all sorts of fun taking the kiddos shopping.

Tuesday, Norma told us that the doctor had called with Lawrence’s test results, which showed that he has prostate cancer.  They are waiting now to see a specialist.  The cure rate for prostate cancer is generally high, but Lawrence is 87, and doesn’t feel well at all, so we are concerned about him.

That evening I saw a news video where people were driving through a burning forest to escape their home in California.  They had just about waited too long. 

I listened to another man telling how he and his family, along with their neighbors, had cars packed and ready to go, if need be.  They suddenly saw the fire come over the near mountaintop, so they gathered children and pets, ran to their cars, and took off. 

Too late.

The fire seemed to pour down the mountainside.  It jumped the road and stayed there, a wall of roaring flames, so they couldn’t get through.  They whirled around, sped back to their house, and, just as the fire lit up the house, leaped into their swimming pool, animals and all.

They spent the next 15 minutes in the water with only their noses sticking out, while the fire raged and howled over them.

“It was hot,” the man said.  “That was the longest 15 minutes I ever spent in my life.”

Everything around them was burnt to a crisp – including their cars in which they’d packed the things they most wanted to save.

But they were alive, and unhurt.

I’ve always thought I’d love to live in the mountains, but when I see and hear things like that, I am thankful I live here.  We’ve had prairie fires nearby, and that’s scary enough!

When Loren got back from his recent little trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, his young bunnies were almost all AWOL.  He suspects his crabby old widowed neighbor lady had her son shoot them.  They’ve been known to shoot the birds, too.

He loves the animals and the birds, just as I do.  It distresses us when people are mean to them – and, have you ever noticed, people who are cruel to animals are without fail also cruel to other people?  He’s only seen a couple of small bunnies – and there had been a dozen or more.  Makes him feel bad; he enjoyed them, and they seemed to know he wouldn’t hurt them.

And yes, I know all about the Rabbit-Versus-Garden Problem.  I also know that Menards sells short garden fencing that keeps the bunnies out quite nicely, if it’s installed properly – and it doesn’t cost so very much more than ammunition.

For supper that night, we had baked Tilapia fillets, sweet peas, little whole wheat buns, and watermelon/strawberry/red grape salad.

Wednesday morning, I was looking up ‘stumpwork’ (3D embroidery), and found a book, Elizabethan Needlework Accessories, with a variety of projects in it.

Wouldn’t a little granddaughter just love this little drawstring purse?  I searched around and found the book – only $13 at www.abebooks.com, instead of $21 at Amazon – and bought it.  I’ll put ribbon embroidery on that little purse, instead of the embroidery shown – just because it’s so fast, and because I have all sizes of silk ribbon and the Promarker dye pens, too.

The author of the book, Sheila Marshall, has other beautiful embroidery books, too.  Her reviews are good, other than one remark by a person who had never sewn or embroidered before, who wrote, “This was a little too ambitious for a newbie.”

I recently got several books by another author, because I had seen pictures of her ‘Quiltagami’ – fabric folding in quilting – and thought it lovely.  Well, I have not yet actually tried any of her patterns and instructions, but I’ve read through the books, and ... well, maybe I’ve become unusually dense, but the instructions just plain don’t make much sense to me, and the diagrams are less than helpful.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure... something... out, when I decide to try one of these designs.  Too bad I got half a dozen books in one fell swoop, without actually looking at one of them first!

Ah, well.  Maybe I’ll smarten up. 

It was a pretty, sunshiny day, 86°.  A bit windy, but that was okay – the clothes on the line would dry faster.  Even though I have a new dryer, I still like to dry clothes on the line.  Shortly after noon, I finished scrubbing the bathroom, washed the dishes, folded a load of clothes, hung another load on the line, and started the third load in the washer.  I placed an online order for a bunch of necessities and Christmas gifts.  Then I tucked the leftover printed Iris Appliqué Patterns into envelopes and addressed them to the ladies on the online quilting groups who had asked for one; I would mail them after church.  I had just enough to fill requests from everyone who asked.  You can still download the pattern and tutorial here:  Iris Appliqué

Then I headed downstairs to work on my great-niece Jamie’s wedding gift – a table runner and placemat set.  Every other square has five pleats in it.  I continued working on it Thursday, and finished it Friday.

After church that night, we were having a late-night snack, when I remarked, “When I’m done quilting my customer’s quilts, I’m going to make a Christmas tree skirt, and use my smocker/pleater.”

Larry queried (in his best ‘Archie’ voice, from Old Time Radio), “What if it’s a boy tree, and he doesn’t want a skoit?  

Friday, Hester and Andrew left on their vacation – to Ireland!  That’s where my ancestors came from – and some distant cousins still live there.

Are you as tired as I am of politicians?  There are foul-mouths, celebrities, people who are hungry for fame, people whose ideas of right and wrong are totally wrong, people who, instead of telling us what they think, tell me why the other guy is an idiot...  Ugh, ugh, ugh.  What some of those ginkheads* need is a gigantic dose of integrity and humility, and enough courage to stand against evil.

*ginkhead:  a person with an empty weatherball for a head

I went to Hobby Lobby that afternoon to get another half yard of fabric in order to finish the table runner/placemat set.  Wouldn’t you know, that particular half yard had a flaw in the fabric – and I didn’t find it until after I had cut it.  There wasn’t enough fabric to avoid it, but I tried my best to line it up with some stitching on the back of a placemat, so it won’t show.

Dorcas called to tell me that they’ve learned the baby will be a boy.  So now they know not to paint the nursery pink.

Speaking of painting, Victoria started painting her room that afternoon, and a couple of friends came to help her.  She painted the ceiling and all the walls except one a pale gray, and the accent wall is a rosy mauve with a whole lot of sparkles mixed into the paint.

After several hours of painting, the girls went off to Pawnee Park to play ball with friends.  I went upstairs and looked at the room; it was about half done.  But play must come first!  (Mustn’t it?)

Joanna, too, went to the park to play ball.  We wondered if we should pad the child with pillows, since she’s quite a lot smaller than the older kids, and it hasn’t been very long since she broke her arm rollerblading; but Victoria said they all toned down their game and treated her with care. 

Victoria generally takes a 2 ½-gallon water dispenser, along with disposable cups.  So there stood Joanna, empty cup in hand, holding it up to her ear.  Then she said, said she, “Due to copyright reasons, all sounds of the seashore have been removed from seashells.”

We had a big chef salad for supper, and strawberry/blueberry/peach pie for dessert, with Schwan’s Butter Pecan ice cream to go on it.

After I quit sewing for the night, I looked at flights to Florida for next February.  The cheapest round trip for the three of us is $1,064. 

I thought, Well, good grief, for that price, we could go somewhere we all really want to go! – Alaska!  So I checked on airfare to Anchorage.

And I discovered, Oops, I was wrong about that.  It costs lots more to fly to Anchorage than it costs to fly to Daytona Beach.

If we were going to fly, I needed to make reservations sometime soon.  Already, choices are limited, with cottages and rooms reserved well into 2017.  My finger hesitated over the ‘Continue’ button for a while... and then I pulled up more websites and looked around at hotels, motels, cottages, bed-and-breakfasts... I looked at the price of rental cars... and then I suddenly slammed my laptop shut and hied me to the hay.  Flew me to the feathers.  Went to bed! 

That’s too much money.

Larry and I would actually prefer to drive.  There are so many things to see and places to explore on the way, you know!  Victoria, however, dislikes riding very far, as she sometimes gets carsick.

The next day, I did a bit of figuring.  Hmmm... it would only cost about $600 for gas to drive there.  And there would be no rental car fees.

Does the seating in a plane give you claustrophobia?  I feel a bit claustrophobic just looking at the pictures of the inside of a plane in the economy section!  But pictures can be deceiving; perhaps it’s not as bad as it looks.

We discussed the matter, and now we’ve decided:  we will drive.  As for Victoria getting carsick... we’ll just make sure she takes some Dramamine before we start.

I gave her the news:  “We’re driving.  So here’s the deal:  you decide if you want to go or not.  If yes, then you cannot complain about the drive!  At all.”  

She considered.  ”Well, I want to go.”  (...pause...)  Then, “What if I decide, after we’ve been driving a while, that I don’t like it much, and need to whine just a little?” 

I said, “Nope.  No deal.”

Victoria:  long, noisy sigh

hee hee  She’s funny.

We’ll let her drive sometimes – she never gets sick when she is driving, and she likes to, and is a good driver.  We’ll take a cooler so we can get some of our food at grocery stores instead of restaurants, and save some money.  We used to do that all the time, when the kids were little.  We packed a cooktop ­– sometimes kerosene, sometimes electric, depending on the destination – and a big pot.  We even did that on our honeymoon – bought food in grocery stores, that is, out in the Tetons and Yellowstone.

Here’s a funny about that honeymoon:  we stopped at a little old-fashioned country store in the Tetons, and went in for some food.  We were in a hurry, because we’d stayed too long in Yellowstone, and I had to be back to play the piano at church on Sunday.  So Larry dashed to the left side of the store while I dashed to the right, and we planned to meet up in the middle.

I like prunes.  And...  to put it as delicately as possible, I needed prunes.  I grabbed a large bag and rushed on.

We met at the checkout stand.  I put an armload of stuff on the counter... including a large bag of prunes.

Larry put an armload of stuff on the counter... including a tall bottle of prune juice.

hahaha

That night, I finished the table runner and placemat set for Mark and Jamie, and Saturday I began preparing a customer’s flannel quilt to load on my frame.

When Larry got home from work, he put Freon in Victoria’s car air conditioner.  “Just in time for cooler weather,” sighed Victoria.  It hasn’t blown cold air all summer long.

I took Loren some supper that evening – ancient grain-encrusted cod, California mix vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots), banana bread (fresh out of the oven), and apple/fruit salad.  When he learned Larry was working on his garage, he ate quickly, and was soon at our house helping Larry.  Some of the time, he ran the scissor lift while Larry put the wood siding up... sometimes he held the siding while Larry nailed it down.  The work is faster and easier, with a couple more hands to help!

I got my customer’s quilt loaded and launched into a border filled with curved feathers.  The quilt is made of the softest flannel you can imagine, with colorful rows of French Braid.  It’s a woodsy design, made for a man – and whoever she made it for is really going to like it.

Some time ago, someone asked me to do the quilting on a large quilt made up of rows of 45° triangles.  First problem:  the back was only 2” longer than the top --- in spots.  Near as I could tell, that piece of backing was a dodecahedron.  Maybe even an icosahedron!  There were multiple seams in it (none pressed), and there were tails of excess fabric everywhere.  Threads everywhere, too.

I began squaring it up.  That is, I tried to square it up.

Since the backing was plenty wide, I decided to load it lengthwise so I would run less risk of running short, lengthwise.  Also, since the rows ran lengthwise, I would be able to put feathers into the entire length of the design without having to stop, roll forward, and try to match up feathers.

Someone suggested I send it back – but my customer lived over 1,600 miles away.  She was a sweet elderly lady who had physical ailments (and indeed I think she has now passed away).  She always paid me generously in advance, and told me to do whatever I wished, adjusting my quilting according to the amount of money she’d given me, deducting whatever was necessary – such as the cost of all that squaring up and ironing.  But still! --- Aaarrrggghhh.

I threw a little tantrum to anyone who would listen, and then got on with it.

And then...  Oh, help.  It was worse than I’d thought.  There were multiple tucks and pleats between borders, sashing, and triangles.  There were places where, instead of 90° angles where borders intersected sashing, it was as far off as 60° on one side, 120° on the other.

I decided to fix the really bad areas, and then close my eyes and quilt lickety-split over the rest.  

But I kept finding more problems.  “What we have here,” I ranted and raved to my family, “is an example of strip-quilting and haphazard joining of seams at its worst!” 

There had been no measuring, I’d venture to guess.  I removed 20” of a border and trimmed the badly-angled quilt five inches, mind you, tapering it up to the middle of the side.  When I started to sew it back on, I found a seam that had unraveled 5 or 6 inches.  Some seams were over two inches deep.  This raveled-out one had been less than 1/16”. 

I redid it.  I fixed the pleats and tucks in another row.  I came back to the quilting frame... laid it across the top in preparation to connecting it to a leader (I use Red Snappers) – and discovered a seam that had been sewn with such a curve in it, you’d think it had set out to be the bodice in an XL fitted blouse.  

I took it back to the sewing machine and fixed that seam, too.  Quilting over it would have been a calamity.  When I began loading it at last, I found at least four other tucks and pleats – but decided to quilt right over them.  Positively the very last booboo was fixed.  I would load that thing.  Every other rumple, tuck, raveled seam, pleat, mismatched seam, or crooked corner would get quilted without mercy.

Still, ...  you know, there comes a time when a person just plain can’t quilt something, even out of the sheer goodness of her heart!

Sigggghhhhhhhhh...

As I rolled that quilt onto my frame, I measured some of the rows of triangles:  there was one that was 6 ½” wide.  At the other end of the same row, it was 9 ¾” wide.  

The backing consisted of two large and three small pieces sewn together – with part of it on the lengthwise grain and part of it on the crosswise grain.  So even though I carefully squared it up, as it hung from the backing bar, one side stretched and was soon hanging 4 ½” longer than the other side.

I trimmed it, then went upstairs and consoled myself with a snack, all the while fussing and fulminating to husband and daughter, who gazed at me vacantly and nodded at what they thought were appropriate intervals.

In the end, the quilt turned out much better than I had feared, and the lady was pleased as punch with it.  I was glad I had done it.  Now, I guarantee you, I would feel differently if it was just somebody taking advantage, trying to get a whole lot of work for nothing!  ;-)

As I worked on the border of the French Braid quilt Saturday night, Tabby, the little cat with the big purr, was curled up happily underneath the frame.  Anytime my feet got close enough that he feared I would bump him, he purred like a small diesel engine.

Shortly after midnight, I got the first border done.

Victoria spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights sleeping in the living room on the loveseat, since her room smelled like paint and the bed was covered in plastic.  She got her accent wall painted Saturday night; all that was left was the trim.

Sunday, I got a note from Hester:  “Hello!!!!  We just wanted to let you know that we made it to Ireland!!!!!   I’m not sure what the time is in Nebraska....So I thought I would email so I don’t wake anyone up Lololol! :-)”  (She must be excited, judging from all those exclamation marks.) 

I responded, “Glad you made it safely, without getting lost over the Indian Ocean, or the North Atlantic, or somewhere.  You are 6 hours ahead of us – it’s 1:20 p.m. here, 7:20 p.m. there.  Ireland is on Greenwich Mean Time.  And it’s 57° in Dublin and in Cork, with a light drizzle in Cork.  Have an enjoyable time, and don’t join in any protests against the gubmint! :-D”

That evening as we were getting ready for church, Victoria asked, “Would it be appropriate for me to wear my new fall outfit?  Autumn begins on Wednesday!” 

“You can wear fall colors when fall is about to start,” I told her, “but you shouldn’t wear fabrics inappropriate to the weather.  What’s it made of?”  I looked to see what the temperature is just as she informed me carelessly, “Oh, it’s just suede.”

‘Just suede.’  And it was 80°.  Ha!

“Save it for later,” I advised.

And so we proceed on to the next dilemma...

After church, we went upstairs with Bobby & Hannah & Co., invited by Nathanael to come and see the makeshift classrooms that have been partitioned and put together in the area that will someday be our balcony over the sanctuary.  The classrooms are up there because we’ve torn down the Fellowship Hall and the elementary school and are building a new two-story school and Fellowship Hall.  It may take a year before it’s done.  Right now there’s been a bit of a pause in construction, as we are waiting on precast cement walls and framing for the building; it’s being done by a company in Lincoln.  Walkers could have done it, but there was some concern about safety, because of the height of the walls, and the fact that the cement pump truck has now and again had the big hose clog up – and then when the cement breaks loose, it has sometimes jerked so hard it has knocked a man off the wall.  One of the workers once wound up with a broken arm from getting knocked off.  So it was decided to go with precast.

Anyway, we don’t need the balcony yet, so it was the perfect solution for our schoolrooms.  There are three big rooms up there, and they look very nice.

So there we stood, looking at the children’s work that had been fastened up on the walls.  One wall had pictures drawn by the first-graders, depicting their summer vacation.  Joanna looked at one child’s, which was obviously supposed to be a boat with people on it.  Underneath the title, My Summer Vacation, there were colorful scribbles – the sky and sunset – and in the middle of that, a bunch of multi-colored smiley faces.

Joanna, with that deadpan face of hers, remarked, “It looks like his summer vacation consisted of people sitting in cereal bowls, with disembodied heads floating above them.”

That description was so exactly and precisely what it looked like, I just couldn’t quit laughing.  “I shouldn’t be laughing!” I exclaimed.  “After all, when I was that age, I’d draw an animal – and nobody could tell if it was a giraffe or a pig!”

And that’s no exaggeration.  Or at least not much.

I was talking to Caleb and Maria... Levi came along, started to say something, then, at a gesture from Joanna, fell silent, smiled, and waited for my conversation to end.  Directly, I glanced at Joanna, and she told me, “Levi has a Chat Request.”  hee hee

Not quite done talking with Caleb, and because he and Maria were heading out the door, I put both hands in front of Levi’s face and said, “Ignore!” – which made him and Joanna giggle.

But soon I finished, and then had a little discussion with Levi.

Hannah started telling me something... couldn’t think of a certain word... made a face... and said, “My dictionary just slapped shut.”

I must remember that; it certainly happens to me often enough.  ‘My dictionary has slapped shut.’

We are planning to make a three-day trip to the Sandhills next week.  I love to plan trips out, step by step, so we can see as much, do as much, as possible.  Larry would rather blunder along happily with no set goal in mind, taking one goose chase after another.  He fretted about me wanting to make reservations for the first night of our trip to Florida, because he remembers a time or two when I chose a spot that was farther than we could comfortably go, and we wound up driving later than expected, and he got too, too tired.  

But oh, the stories I could tell about fruitless hunts for motels/lakes/campgrounds/fill in the blank.  I like to know where I’m going and when!

I went to town this afternoon to help my blind friend Linda with her computer.  She’s living in a new location now, one side of a duplex, with my blind friend Rita on the other side.  It’s so much nicer than her previous house.

On my way home, I picked up the mail, and was totally surprised to find a nice thank-you card from a lady with the Fat Quarters Quilt Guild (the group to whom I gave the trunk show last Monday evening) --- and it had a check inside! 

There was a really nice note inside the card, too:

“Thank you so much, Sarah.  You did a wonderful job with your trunk show!  Your quilts were really beautiful, and your sense of humor very entertaining!  Thanks again! 

- Fat Quarters Quilt Guild”

So I don’t know if the check is for my quilt show, or my stand-up-comedy routine. 

I called my former teacher to thank her, and now I need to write a thank-you note to the guild and the lady who sent the card.  I certainly didn’t expect any such thing!

My teacher, Margie Sergent, said they were surprised that I’d printed a full-color tutorial and drawn up an appliqué pattern for them.  “So you deserve every penny we gave you!” she told me.

I thought it wouldn’t be quite polite to say right then, “So!  When do you want me to come back?!”  heh

I’m thinking I should draw up more patterns... put them together for an entire quilt... and sell them on some of the hand-crafting/sewing websites.  If a person has enough patterns for sale, one could maybe have a little trickle of income.

Little trickles are better than droughts!

Victoria painted the white trim in her room today, and Larry just helped her move her bed back into place.  It’s late, and he’s too tired to put the rest of the furniture back.  He promised to help her tomorrow.  She made her bed, and was delighted to see that the paint she chose did indeed match her new bedspread, contrary to what she’d feared when she finished the accent wall Saturday night.

“Now you can paint my room,” I suggested, which made her eyebrows fly up until they were hovering several inches about her forehead.

“I’m done painting for a good long while!” she informed me adamantly.

And now...  We thank you for listening, and we now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

,,,>^..^<,,,     Sarah Lynn     ,,,>^..^<,,,