Journal: Tsunamis and Hanging Sleeves and Hibiscus

 

As mentioned in last week’s letter, I discovered last Monday that any quilts entered at the Hill City Quilt Show must have hanging sleeves or some way of hanging them.  Hanging sleeves are not used at Nebraska State Fair, so those five quilts and the one I finished Tuesday needed hanging sleeves.  The thing is, we are planning to pick up my things at the State Fair on Labor Day and immediately head north toward the Black Hills.  We will stay overnight Monday night at Calamus Reservoir, most likely.  Sooo... I needed to get those hanging sleeves ready and sewn to two quilts, and then hand-sew five more to the quilts enroute.  Accordingly,  I added needle case, thread, thimble, pins, and snips to my Supplies list.

Every time I use this needle case, I’m glad I gave it to me, instead of giving it away, like I do most things I make.  ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

Tuesday afternoon, I went to Wal-Mart to pick up an order of groceries, then to Hester’s house to take her a couple of boxes that were mistakenly delivered to my house.  

Wal-Mart was doling out granola fruit bars to people who were picking up orders, so I gave mine to Keira and Oliver.  Keira, 5, ate the lion’s share, since it was a little too hard for Oliver, 1 ½, to chew.  I admired some little ceramic animals Keira had painted... helped Oliver get the right wooden shapes into the correct holes in a little wooden box... petted the cats (I’m privileged – they rarely let others pet them!)... and then hurried off before the Oui yogurt and the cottage cheese got too warm on that hot, hot day.

On the way home, I spotted a Daniels Produce truck in the Ace parking lot, and wheeled in.  The Daniels Farm is about seven miles to our west, and they grow all kinds of the most wonderful produce.  They have everything set up so neat at their roadside stands in town, like miniature stores, with pretty baskets of produce, and a little stand of jars of salsa, picanté sauce, pickled beets, and suchlike.  I was hungry, and wanted everything!

I got a couple of peaches, a watermelon, a big green and a big red sweet pepper, a purple onion, two romaine tomatoes, a big slicing tomato, and a large summer squash, all for only $18.  I could hardly wait ’til I got all the groceries put away before eating a peach.

Mmmmmm.  It was every bit as good as it looked, and I was sorry I hadn’t gotten all of them.  I told the young man working there, “You know peaches are just the right ripeness, when they drip down to your elbows with every bite!”  He laughed and agreed.

I filled my thermal Yeti cup full of ice and kiwi watermelon juice, then went upstairs to sew the pearls on Keira’s quilt.

For supper, I cooked the big summer squash in my new Instant Pot, and it was done, tender and tasty, in seven minutes of cooking time.  Seven minutes!!!  Wow.  I slathered it with butter and brown sugar, and it was like eating Thanksgiving pie, right in the middle of the summer.

Giving up on getting an answer from the quilt show coordinators in Hill City, South Dakota, regarding whether or not out-of-staters could enter the quilt show, and how many quilts a person can enter, I filled out the entry forms, then drove to town and mailed them. 

It was still hot out that night.  When I walked outside, the treefrogs were singing up a storm, sounding a lot like souped-up crickets.

The Cope’s gray treefrog gets its name from normally being gray in color, but it can also be bright green, tan or light brown.  This is Nebraska’s only true arboreal or tree-living frog species.  It spends daylight hours sleeping on tree leaves or in holes in trunks and branches.

A year or two ago, I posted a picture on Facebook of a treefrog on the glass of our front door, and some woman told me, “That’s a toad.  You should look it up.”

I gave a link to a herpetology page on treefrogs and wrote, “It’s a Cope’s gray treefrog.  Look it up.”  (Yeah, I sounded testy, didn’t I?)  Then I added, “Toads don’t stick to the glass on front doors and windows with those suction cups they call ‘feet’.”

Know-It-Alls don’t often answer once proven wrong, ever notice that?

Arriving home 15 minutes later after mailing my entry forms, I found that the lady who coordinates the show had answered.  Isn’t that just the way?  I wait 24 hours, give up and mail the entries despite not knowing for sure if I could enter – and receive my answer while I’m gone.

And the answer?  Anyone can enter, and there’s no limit on the number of quilts one can enter.  I entered seven.

I got about half done sewing the pearls on Keira’s quilt Tuesday night, and finished them the next day.

I did not realize the petals were going to overlap until I had several sewn together.  I consider turning them on point, but then four flowers would not have fit between the blocks, and I already had 16 flowers made.  So... the points got overlapped.  I decided I liked it that way.

There’s a pretty lady on one of the online quilting groups whose name is Hester.  We have not often met others (beside my mother and daughter) who are named Hester.  The lady told me she was named after her great-grandmother.  I sent the lady’s picture to our Hester.

“I needed her picture when I worked at First National Bank,” remarked Hester, “and some customer told me I didn’t look like a Hester.  I could’ve shown it to her and asked, ‘Does this person look like a Hester?’”  haha

Back when Hester was born, it felt sort of odd and disrespectful to be calling my new baby by my mother’s name, so for a little while, we called her ‘Baby’ – but when she was about three weeks old, and I realized she was reacting to ‘Baby’ but not to ‘Hester’, I changed that habit, posthaste.  Didn’t want Baby to have an identity crisis!

I got part of the hanging sleeve sewn to the ‘Puppies & Kittens in the Flowers’ quilt, and then it was time for our midweek church service.

This quilt measures 67 ½” x 75 ½”.  The batting is some sort of polyester of unknown origin; I’m trying to use up batting scraps.  Frankenbatting!  I tucked an extra layer of it under the letters of Keira’s name.

The top thread is white 40-wt. Omni, the bobbin thread is white 60-wt. Bottom Line, both from Superior Threads.

I successfully used up the pale green fat quarter Keira herself picked out for one of my birthday gifts a couple of years ago.  She chose it because of the kitty/squirrel/fox/owl print.  I’ve been planning to use it in a quilt for her, somehow, ever since.  See it in the diamond shapes of two of the big blocks, in the pinwheels at the bottom, and in the small diamonds of the top left corner.  

The puppies and kittens blocks and strips were all one piece of fabric that I found in one of my late sister-in-law Janice’s bins of fabrics that she gave me at Christmas time 2014, a few months before she passed away.  She’d hemmed the sides of the piece to make a ‘fake sham’ for laying atop pillows.  When I took the hem out, it left a faded crease.  An asparagus-colored Crayola color covered the lighter green fabric, and a forest green Crayola color covered the darker green.  A touch of the iron (using a pressing cloth) set the colors.  Two or three of the other fabrics came from Janice’s stash, too, as did the backing.  

And now I decided that I just must fancy up Carolyn’s and Violet’s Split-Blade Pinwheel quilts.  Can’t have one little granddaughter’s quilt so much fancier than another’s.  I decided to appliqué big cats on theirs.  I typed ‘cat line drawing’ into Google and soon had a gazillion (give or take a million) from which to choose.

I might appliqué a teddy bear on Willie’s quilt, so Oliver’s won’t be so much cuter than his.  Reckon I’ll be doing this through the next 22 quilts, too??!

“Help, my name is Sarah Lynn, and I need an intervention!”

A lady asked me, “Does stitching this much make the quilt more crisp or stiff, compared to fewer quilt lines?”

That’s a commonly held opinion that isn’t quite accurate.  But no, this quilt is soft as can be.  It is not the quilting that makes a quilt stiff, but a combination of fabrics, and especially batting.  Intense quilting can contribute, particularly if the batting is thick and prone to getting stiff with that stitching.  

This quilt has a thin, soft backing that I’m pretty sure has some polyester in it.  The batting is a somewhat thin poly, and I only tucked in an extra layer where the lettering is at the side.  Omni thread is poly-wrapped poly, and Bottom Line is polyester.  All that makes for a quilt that’s sooo soft and cuddly.  I’m pleased as can be with its silky drape.

By 12:30 a.m. Thursday, the seven hanging sleeves were done, and two were sewn onto the quilts that are still here at home.  The other five are folded with those quilts and the paperwork I need to take along with us next Monday – and I duly added them to my Supplies list.

I pulled out a few pieces of dark browns and dark grays for the appliquéd cats.  I laid the fabrics on Carolyn’s Turquoise Split-Blade Pinwheel quilt – and didn’t like it.  The color just wasn’t right on that quilt.  It needed black, and I had none at all.  The next day I would go to my favorite LQS, Sew What, owned by my high school friend, Jo Johansen.

Jo’s maiden name was Will.  We had home ec together in 7^th grade.  She was shy, and so was I.  But one day when the teacher asked for a volunteer for something or other, I couldn’t help myself.  I said, “Jo will!” – and Jo laughed.

I knew it, I just knew she had a sense of humor!  I’d seen the twinkle in her dark eyes.  We’ve been friends ever since, even though we had very few classes together.

Since I couldn’t do anything further on Carolyn’s quilt, I retreated downstairs to my recliner and did some work (or play) in EQ8 on Malinda’s quilt, Cross-Stitched Teddies.  Malinda is 6.

Those are actual photos of the cross-stitched blocks in the design (the background color is wrong; it should be white).  Amy found the blocks at a secondhand store.  All 12 cross-stitched teddies are on one piece of fabric; I will cut them into 10” blocks.

I discovered several things in the Block Worktable in EQ8 that I had never used before amongst the Create Serendipity tools.  Just look what Kaleidoscope does with my original block: 

And then if I add that block to the Sketchbook and then use it in Kaleidoscope — Wow!

I knew I was mostly skimming along with EQ8, and that there was a whole lot more the program can do, but I don’t often take the time to just play with it.  Gotta do that more! Imagine a king-sized quilt with just one, or several, of blocks like these!

Friday afternoon, the results from Nebraska State Fair were finally posted:

Birds of Colorwash Patch Quilt: 1^st place in Mixed Technique

Little Darlings (Eva’s):  5^th place

Little Sweethearts (Brooklyn’s):  3^rd place

In the Textile Arts, the names of projects are not listed, so I don’t know which has what award, but I got 4^th, 3^rd, and 1^st-place ribbons.

That afternoon, I had a little text chat with Levi.  He wrote, “Ĥî!  Ĥøŵ ąřê ŷøü ŧøðàŷ?”

I responded, “Ï’ɱ ʌɘʁƛ ʄîñé‽ ♫” which made him laugh, as expected.

After a few more exchanges, I headed to Sew What, where I got two yards of black batik with a bit of indigo blue in it for the cat appliqués for Carolyn’s and Violet’s quilts.

It was thundering, and the weatherman on the radio announced that we were having a downpour – but only a raindrop fell now and then, and nothing more.

When I got home, I printed the line drawings I wanted, cut the cat shapes, and appliquéd two of them to Carolyn’s quilt.  It’s not ideal, sewing on appliqués after a quilt is finished, but I pulled out my invisible charcoal thread for the top and invisible clear thread for the bobbin.  The thread is very fine, .004 mm, and hardly shows.  I attached a pink bow to one kitty’s neck, and called it done.  

The cats for Violet’s pink quilt are prepared and ready to be sewn on to her quilt.  I’ll put a turquoise bow on one of her cats.

Saturday, I went to visit Loren.  I took him two more National Geographic magazines.  He went paging through one of them – and came to a stop at a picture showing a hefty man in a red t-shirt leaping from a high cliff over a blue, blue harbor full of boats.  Every boat held a good half-dozen people.  It wasn’t a very big picture, so the diving man only took up two or three millimeters on the page, but it immediately caught Loren’s attention.  He held the magazine over to me, grinning, pointing out the diver.

“Hmmm,” I mused.  “Those people in the boats have no idea that in a matter of seconds there’s going to be a whole lot of water displacement.  Tsunami!!!”

Loren burst out laughing.

I chattered on about interesting pictures in the other magazine, but Loren was totally fixated on that one picture.  After a bit, we traded magazines.  He paged through it, then handed it back to me, and I returned the one he’d had first.  He turned pages – and came to the harbor-dive photo again.  He treated it like a brand-new photo that he’d never seen before.

Again he held the magazine over so I could see it better, and pointed out the red-shirted man diving off the cliff.

“When that guy hits the water,” I remarked, “the ensuing tidal wave is going to pitch all those boats upside down, and every one of those people is going to be in the water.”

As before, Loren burst out laughing.  It was exactly his kind of a joke.

We repeated this scenario four or five times until it was time for Loren to go to the dining room.  It was a good thing I walked with him to the dining room door, because he forgot where he was going and why, bypassed the door, and headed off down the hallway toward the far reaches of the nursing home.  But I called his name, and directed him back to the dining hall, and then walked with him to find a table.  He was one of the first ones into the room, so he had his choice of tables.  That can be confusing in itself, so I pointed out a nearby table and said, “How’s this one?”

“It’s fine,” said Loren agreeably, and pulled out a chair to sit down. 

There were vases of fresh flowers on all the tables, a fairly common occurrence there.  Everything looked so pretty, and the delicious aromas of the food they were cooking were wafting through.

“They’ll bring your food in a minute or two,” I said, then bade Loren adieu.

It never troubles him in the slightest when I leave; I’m very glad for that.

Leaving Prairie Meadows, I headed for Lincoln and the Sunken Gardens, driving past the Capitol Building on the way.  

Set on thoroughly exploring the Gardens, I found several pathways on the hillsides that I had never walked before.  The sun was lowering, there was a lot of shade and a slight breeze, and the flowers smelled so good.

Next year, I hope to visit this garden in the springtime, when all the daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, striped squill, and tulips are blooming. 

How does this work:  I can trek around Omaha and Lincoln half the day without coming to harm.  I get home, take off my shoes, collect a buffalo burr nightshade specimen on the heel of one sock, then prop that same heel on top of the other foot — AAAaiiiiyiiiyiiiieee!  Yeah, thanks, Larry.  😂

After laying Carolyn’s quilt on the twin bed upstairs in the little library, it acquired smudges of dirt on the white part of the backing.  Always the white part, right?  This happened when it brushed against the heavy plastic covering in which a giant roll of Quilters’ Dream wool had arrived.  Most of it brushed off with a dry microfiber cleaning cloth, but not all.  And yes, this is one of the quilts I am entering in the Hill City Quilt Show.

Many times I’ve tried to spot-clean something like this, and wound up with not just a small smudge, but a large mess with a ring around it.  Ugh.  Maybe I can just put a sticky note on it, reading, “Don’t look here.”

Siggghhhh...  Sometimes a hard-bristled brush (like one of those old-fashioned bristle hairbrushes) will do the trick.  That’s what I’m going to try.  If it’s not too awfully noticeable, I’m going to leave it.  If I wash it, it’ll change the entire character of the quilt, because the fabric was not previously washed.  (And even it was previously washed, washing it again after completion just... changes it, somehow.)  I don’t mind this change when the quilt is ready to be used, or already used; it just makes it softer and cuddlier.  But I don’t want that, right before showtime!  It gets more limp; not what I want.

I looked up ‘getting dirt out of fabric without washing it’, and got this for an answer:

“Using a dull knife, scrape away dried mud.”

Haha  That must be written especially for cowboys, huh?  snicker

I once laid one of my quilts (thank heavens it wasn’t a customer’s quilt) on my back deck for photo purposes.  I’d swept it – but didn’t realize there was orange-tan pollen-like stuff from nearby trees all over the boards, and the broom had not gotten rid of it.  Guess what color the quilt backing was?

Yep.  White.  That is, it used to be white.  Now it was smudged orange-tan.

I groaned and moaned... and then, after brushing off what I could using a microfiber cloth with not a whole lot of success, I gathered a couple of big bath towels, got them good and wet, and then threw the quilt and the towels into the dryer on ‘steam refresh’ in my fancy-schmancy dryer, on low heat. 

I was so happy when I pulled that quilt out of the dryer about ten minutes later and found the backing white as snow again.  The towels had faint traces of that pollen on them.

When I had to wash a quilt once before taking it to a fair or show, I steam-pressed it after it was dry and then gave it a quick mist of spray starch.  That made it feel pretty much like it had in the beginning, before the needed wash.  I don’t remember what happened that time.  Seems like someone (not me, surely!) spilled something on it.  Probably grape juice, ha!

Hannah wrote that evening to tell me of an incident with her female Australian shepherd:

“Willow just requested food (via the buttons I have recorded), and I said ‘Yes, I’ll get you some food.’  I decided to stir my sourdough before going across to the dogs’ feeding area.  After a few seconds of that, Willow went back to the buttons and pressed ‘Now.’ 😅”

Haha, what a dog.

Whoever thought up those buttons doubtless knew dogs (and cats) are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for, and was determined to prove it.  And he did.

Jeremy and Lydia and the children got home from Maui late Wednesday night.  We gave them gifts for their 15^th wedding anniversary after our morning church service yesterday and chatted with them so long, we were the last to leave the church.  

They lost a lot more things than the wet clothes and Jeremy’s new pair of shoes that I previously told you about.  Those shoes were $85 shoes that Lydia just gave him for his birthday, and he also lost a pair of nice pants that Lydia had given him.  

They had made a trip to the grocery store earlier that afternoon and purchased almost enough groceries for their entire three-week stay.  Lydia had gotten it all put away in cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer.  All of that was lost.  Lydia was particularly sad about two big containers of powdered digestive enzymes that she takes each day.  Each one cost $45.

Jacob, their oldest at 14, lost a good pair of shoes and some new pants, too.

It wasn’t the fire department or policemen who told them to leave, either; that wasn’t happening.  It was the homeowner’s handyman who came rushing over to remove some large branches that had blown down on their lane from 80-mph wind gusts, blocking their exit.  The homeowner, whose own home was nearby (and did not burn down) had texted Lydia 15 minutes earlier, telling her they needed to leave; but Lydia had lain down to take a nap, and didn’t hear her phone.  Suddenly she awoke to the handyman calling out that they had to grab things and go, and she realized that every gust of wind was hitting with smothering heat.  Tiny embers were falling, and some of them burned her eyes.

They were running madly from cabin to vehicle, trying to grab whatever they really had to have (Jonathan’s asthma medication, for instance), so that they were ready to drive out the minute the lane was clear.

They found another place farther south where they stayed for the next three days, until they could find a larger place.  It was nice, but only had one room – illegal for that many people (six of them); but the owner let them, under the circumstances.  They’d been there for just a little while, maybe half an hour, and Jeremy had taken the kids to a nearby pool to help them calm down, when someone knocked at the door.  Lydia opened it, and a man who lived nearby and managed the complex brought in an armload of bottled water, a pineapple, bananas, pears, granola bars, etc.  He arranged them prettily on the counter, wished her a good day and his apologies (in heavily accented English) for their sudden evacuation and loss of their things, and exited.

And then, as Lydia put it, “I proceeded to bawl my eyes out, just because he was so kind.”

The homeowner of the cabin that burned down gave Jeremy and Lydia back all their money.  She would not have had to do that.  Then she wrote a lovely review online, telling about their family.

I’m so glad they are home again, safe and sound.  Groceries and clothes can be replaced, even if they are expensive.

There was a car show in Arlington on Saturday.  If Larry had’ve been with me, perhaps I could’ve convinced him we should stop and see these classic old cars.  But people were leaving the park about the time I was approaching the town, and if Larry had’ve been with me, we’d’ve no doubt been later, so... I guess that wouldn’t have worked, after all.  😏

Kurt and Victoria invited us over last night after church for homemade croissants with various sliced sausage, pumpkin chiffon pie, and cherry granola bars. 

Supper tonight was sweet and sour chicken and rice, carrots and broccoli, and watermelon from Daniels Produce.

Larry brought the camper home tonight.  In the next few days, I’ll clean it and load our things.

But first, I’m going to sew these cat silhouettes to Violet’s quilt.

Upon seeing the design of the quilt I plan to make Malinda, a friend wrote, “That’s very cute!!  Looks complicated to me!! 🫣🤔  ”

I thanked her and remarked, “You know my motto has always been, ‘Make all things complex!’ or ‘Why take a walk, if you can turn it into a marathon?’”

But the truth is, it won’t be as complicated as it looks.  A bit time-consuming, with all those pieces; but not too difficult.  And for once, I remembered to check the sizes of the pieces and adjust the size of the block so I can use the rotary cutter to cut 1 ¼” or 2 ½” strips, and not have to paper-piece it because I’ve designed it with 2.13926” squares.  🙄

It will look different than the EQ8 design, because I do not have all those pinks and blues.  It will be scrappy, with lots of different fabrics and colors, and the background will be pure white, as are the cross-stitched blocks.

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