Really Random: Everything from a giveaway winner, to a tutorial, to a racy picture!

First of all, I would like to thank the very gracious and generous Tammy from Marmalade Fabrics for offering a fat quarter pack of Citron and Gray fabrics when she played the Name Game on Monday.

The winner of this giveaway is #30, Mimi, who said:

I love the combination of gray and yellow, but pale blue is a close second. Thanks for the chance!!

October 3, 2011 8:42 AM

Congratulations, Mimi!

You people love your gray, that's for sure! And you love it with lots of colors: yellow, pink, aqua, purple, turquoise, orange (yay!), blue, deep mustard, deep maroon, fuschia, raspberry, burgundy, green, red, brown, teal. I have a solution for that too. Tammy stocks Kona cotton solids in 143 colors!  There is definitely the perfect shade, no matter what your preference is, to pair with gray. So go shopping!

My friend, Valerie, who now lives in Texas, sent me this picture the other day, a coffee sleeve I made for her hot coffee, which she had to put on her cold coffee because of all the condensation at her local Starbucks. The weather is muggy there, y'all!

I mentioned a while back that I am not a mathlete. Given that information, if I really wanted to "exercise" my math skills, where would I go?? Well, here of course. Ha! A gym for my brain...

We had "Midwest" weather today. My perfect kind of day. Rain. Pure bliss. Someone (and you know who you are...) actually called me "weird" because of that.  I am someone who gets bored with sunny weather here in central California, really--days and days of sun with no break. Monotonous...so I had to take pictures. Although it had been raining most of the morning, about 12:30 a gusty storm really blew through.

The house across the street. You can't tell (mostly because this isn't a video...) but the wind was really blowing!! See there on the right--it even blew over the garbage can.

Our backyard (fast shutter speed).

Same picture, slow shutter speed. (You'll have to indulge me--I'm still taking an online photography class...)

Half an hour later. Back to sun. (See the steam on top of the roof?)

I have gotten to spend some fun times with Levi this week. All boy. A boy who loves to stomp on things and in things. Give him a "stomp rocket"...

or a puddle of water:

And then he gives me this smile and says, "Grandma, I love you more than chocolate pudding."

Here comes the tutorial. (I bet you were secretly hoping you had made it to the "racy" picture...It's coming. Don't worry. I'll warn you in plenty of time.)

So the other day I spent a good hour working on my 1/4 inch seam. I really thought it fine, there was a piece of tape on my sewing machine marking the spot and things seemed to be fitting together pretty well. Most of the time, at least.  But I've been spending a lot of time with Farmer's Wife blocks, and some of those suckers have way too many little pieces. And then a new book by Judy Martin arrived in the mail and there was a tricky block in there that I really want to try. She had a paragraph on checking to make sure you have an accurate 1/4 inch seam, because "the right seam allowance makes everything fall into place." Hah, I thought. I'll follow her instructions and move on because I'm pretty confident of my 1/4 inch seam.

It turned out to be like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Her instructions are as follows:

Rotary cut nine 1 1/2" squares and a 1 1/2" x 9 1/2" rectangle. Join the squares end to end. Press seams to one side. Place the rectangle and squares face to face. If the rectangle turns out larger than the seamed squares, your seams are too deep.

Bummer. Too large--I know it doesn't look like much, but the difference multiplies with each seam you take. (Hey, that almost made me sound like a mathlete or something...)

If the rectangle is smaller, your seams are too shallow.

 Too small.

Measure. Adjust. Move tape. Try once more.

Cool gadget that has holes. You put your sewing needle down through the hole and then you can lay down your tape in the proper place. Forgot I had it--glad I found it because it turned out to be accurate.

Ah. Just right...

 Perfect. 

WARNING: Okay, if you do NOT want to see the "racy" picture, then now is the time to move on to a different blog. Actually, Mark, my driveby-shooting husband, who tends to take pictures of assorted interesting things, usually while driving (ahem....), sent this picture to my iPhone not too long ago. He was just driving through the parking lot of the shopping center, turned the corner, and these were all lined up outside the Chico's store!

Alrighty, then. That's about as random as I can get this week....