WIP Wednesday #33: What I am and what I am not

What I am: a quilter. I love cutting fabric into little pieces and then sewing it all back together again.

(My second Supernova block--could have used a better pressing--sorry, Lee. I LOVE these blocks!)

What I am not: a bag lady.

That being said, the Amy Butler Weekender Bag is finally done. Finished. Complete. Never to be done again. At least not by me.

It looks like it is ready for a tropical vacation.

 I know I sure am ready for a vacation after making this bag.
Alternatively, I'll just take one of these.

(NOTE: I cut the tulip fabric straight. The crookedness at the bottom happened during the construction. At this point, I don't know how it happened, nor do I care. And it's not because I had ordered one of those special cafe mochas.)

What I love: The fabric. Jessica Jones' Outside Oslo is gorgeous. You can see the Weekender that her mother sewed here. She was my one-person texting support group throughout the whole process. Hers turned out perfectly. And here is why. She is not a quilter. She is a bag lady. In fact, she just finished this bag. See what I mean? She also knows who she is. Plus she has the perfect little model for her bag.

But I digress. I had one-yard cuts of the entire line (you can order from Marmalade Fabrics) so I ended up using four different fabrics--three for the outside and a different one for the lining.

What I wish I had done differently: other than not starting it in the first place (oops, did I really just say that?), I wish I had made the straps longer so I could use it as a shoulder bag.

I also wish I had done the piping differently. Rather than going to my dad's house and using his industrial sewing machine (he used to do upholstery), I would have used fusible interfacing to fuse the raw edges together, as someone suggested. Ultimately you end up with three lines of stitching, each one getting closer and closer to the cording. Because his machine sewed so closely to the cording itself the first time, it was really hard to cover up that stitching when I assembled the bag.

I previously posted pictures of binder clips needed to hold all the many layers together. Also be prepared for a pile of these totally misshapen pins.

The fun little "surprises" I added: In the picture on the front of the pattern, the bag has an Amy Butler tag. So I decided to do a little "branding" of my own. That's what selvages are for, right?

So, once again, just to be clear:

What I am: a quilter.
What I am not: a bag lady.

I think it's important to know these things about yourself.

Now go see what everyone else has accomplished this week!

Signs of the Times

Do you ever feel like this?

Or this? (If you have little ones around, start banking some extra money in your ATM. Seriously.)

This was in my fortune cookie yesterday. I think it's telling me that I will have a great time in Minnesota next week when I finally meet some of my friends in person at a quilting retreat in St. Cloud.

And The Weekender keeps taunting me. I should finish it. Then we'll both be happy.

The Name Game: During Quiet Time

I am so thrilled to have Amy from During Quiet Time here today playing The Name Game. She does the most amazing linocut designs, and then prints them onto fabric. I have enough of her wonderful designs that I consider myself an official collector. This will be a picture-heavy post, but you will soon understand why. Not only does she do amazing things with fabric, you will love her photography skills as well.

1. How did you choose During Quiet Time?

(wouldn't you just love to spend a little quiet time here, reading a book?)

I started my blog at my husband's insistence. I was pregnant with my now 2-year-old Penelope and was spending too much time analyzing my every twinge and pain of the first trimester and worrying about losing her. My husband thought I needed something to pour my energy into besides worry. He sat down at the computer and said, "OK, what do you want to call it?" During Quiet Time was the first thing that came to mind simply because I find time for my creative endeavors while my children rest in the afternoon and once they are asleep.

2. Were there other names you considered, and can you share any of them with us?

I am really terrible at catchy names. While I would have happily considered other names, none came to mind and this one wasn't taken so we went with it!

3. Now that you are recognized by During Quiet Time, are you happy with it, or do you wish you could change it to something else?

I have mixed feelings about this one. Right now,"quiet time" in our household equals naptime but once my children are grown, I will still have a need for my own quiet time and I will continue to fill that time with sewing and printing fabric and making art. What I don't like about the name is that I feel like it labels me as a mother first because the name choice is so closely tied to the nature of my days while raising children. Honestly, in my day-to-day existence, my role as mother does come first. But I like to think that my blog is my place, someplace where I am not a mother of three but a creative person with a need to make things! I didn't pick up sewing as a hobby once I was home with my children. Rather, I found time to continue to nurture my creative side once I became a mother.

Thanks so much, Amy!

Be sure you take time to go to During Quiet Time and say hi.

Also head over to her etsy shop, so you can "look and see" what she has available. I bought this fabric to make something for my son, who is an optometrist. Perfect, isn't it?

I probably have never mentioned this before, but one place I have always wanted to visit is Ireland. I love Irish music and step dancing, have nearly ever CD recorded by the Chieftains, have seen Riverdance live twice and listened to my Riverdance CD so many times it's almost worn out. Unfortunately, actually visiting Ireland is not in my near travel plans. Instead, I have the next best thing--Sarah from  FairyFace Designs will be here next week, all the way from Cork, Ireland! You won't want to miss it.

Farmer's Wife Friday: Living in God's Open Air

When Carla from Lollyquiltz and I decided to do the Farmer's Wife quiltalong together, we tossed around a couple of different ideas on what would work the best for each of us. We finally landed on the idea of just starting with the first letter in the book and go through the book sequentially, doing the two blocks pictured with each letter. I had started reading the letters and found them fascinating so it seemed like a good idea, and the blocks would essentially already be chosen for us.

6" blocks. I thought, "how tough could it be?" I've been making quilt blocks for over fifteen years. I started with Cut Glass Dish. Wow. 51 pieces in a 6" block.

I looked at all those 1" HSTs and tried to decide the best way to achieve some accuracy. I finally decided to make them oversize and cut them down to 1 1/2 inches unfinished. That turned out to be a good idea, for me at least.

The second block, Kitchen Woodbox, looked like a snap compared to Cut Glass Dish. But I'm here at Lakeview with a computer but no printer, and for some dumb reason, I didn't print out the template before coming up here. So I kind of had to wing it. And the sun had gone down so the picture is taken in a cabin with really bad light. (Hey,  Lakeview Cottages has an electrical system from about c. 1917 so we use 60w bulbs). Now that I think of it, these cottages are nearly the same age as the Farmer's Wife challenge.

I'll be making all my blocks using Kona snow and Kaffe Fassett shot cottons.

The first letter, "Living in God's Open Air," really resonated with me, because this was the view from my porch as I thought about the letter written all those years ago.

I chose the colors for my first two blocks based on the colors I saw today in God's open air, the blue of the water, the green and  brown of all the beautiful trees surrounding the cabins, and even the brown and green of the cabins themselves. It is all so beautiful. To answer the question, "Would you have your daughter marry a farmer," the writer says," I would have her marry a farmer because there she has the chance of living in God's open air, of living a pure life, away from the meanness of a rural town..."  That's what I was feeling today, the beauty of living in God's open air.

Check out Lollyquiltz and see how Carla interpreted these same two blocks.

The Name Game: verykerryberry

I'm thrilled to have Kerry with verykerryberry here on the Name Game today. Kerry is from the UK, and if you haven't seen some of her work yet, you are in for a big treat!. Seriously. I'll start with a picture before we even get to the questions.

1. How did you choose the name for your blog?

I wish I had a more interesting answer but it came from my user name on Flickr. Originally I wanted kerryberry--my husband calls me that and I thought it was cute and easy for me to remember, but what do you know, someone already had it so I put "very" in front and that name was available--when I started my blog it seemed logical to stick with the same name. I knew I wanted my blog name and the blog address to be the same, and verykerryberry wasn't too long or too short and I like all the e, r and y letters--is that weird? I have since found that when I print the name using stamps it is hard to have enough e's, r's and y's. I have always blogged really closely along with being active in Flickr so it made sense that my Flickr name led to my blog name.

2.   Were there other names you considered, and if so, are there any you can share with us?

I did start with these things I like...these things I make...as a sort of secondary title and I used things I liked and things I had made as a way of structuring my early posts. I just had a look at the first few entries--they are rather sparse!

3. Now that you are known by verykerryberry, are you happy with the name you chose or do you wish you could change it?

When I first registered with etsy, I didn't realise that user names were so fixed so my first etsy account was Kerry R. Green--hmmm, imaginative! So I knew that I had to find something that I was comfortable with. It is personal and it provides a persona too, which makes blogging easier. I know who I am as verykerryberry, it is my inner sewing and vintage obsessed self.

 
Thanks, Kerry! I hope you all go over to verykerryberry, say hi and have a look around.

Next week, I'm thrilled to have Amy from During Quiet Time. You won't want to miss it!

Philosphy Friday: Lightbulb Moment

One of my favorite friends ended her blog the other day. She called her post "Expiration Date."  I totally understand her reasons. Blogging takes a lot of thought and a lot of time, time that could be spent doing other things: family, friends, sewing. Ah, sewing. As much time as I spend thinking and dreaming about color, fabric, and quilting, and actually doing some sewing,  I spend nearly as much time dreaming about writing about it: blog titles, content, pictures. And time "staging" pictures, taking pictures, downloading pictures. Wow, it all takes a lot of time. And that time is such a precious commodity.

Reading Anne's post has made me do more thinking, thinking about why I blog in the first place. I know a lot of people have written about this topic. There is even a button for "blogging without obligation." And I understand all that. But why, I asked myself, do I blog?

There are times when I consider stopping the blogging treadmill myself. When it all just gets to be too much--when what I really want to do is just sew, not think about sewing, not think about what to write about sewing. And not share it with anyone else.

But then I had one of those lightbulb moments, one of those moments when something just "clicks."

I used to be a scrapbooker. I have invested lots of $$$$ in scrapbooking supplies. Printing out pictures. Documenting those pictures. Then a couple of years ago I realized I didn't have the time, or the desire, to devote to traditional scrapbooking anymore. My passion was quilting.

I wondered: Will Aaron, our son,  even care to have the scrapbooks of the cruises Mark and I took? Maybe.... probably not...Maybe Charlotte and Levi will think it's cool to look through some of them. And a lot of what I was scrapbooking were the same things that our daughter-in-law Christa is scrapbooking--the kids growing up, shared family events. It seemed a bit redundant.

That paragraph might sound like I just digressed. But I didn't really. My point is that blogging is my way of "scrapbooking" the passions in my life, quilting, my family, Lakeview Cottages.It's a place where I can record the creative journey I'm on. I don't mean this to sound self-centered but maybe it's really about me, for me. It's my diary--the "live out loud" version. And then by extension, it's for Charlotte and Levi, and the new baby coming in September.

We live in such a techie age now. My grandchildren have absolutely no fear of technology. It's all they have ever known.

I hope they will look at this blog in the years to come, scroll through the blog posts, kind of like I turned the pages of my grandmother's scrapbook, and learn a little something new about me.And that is my lightbulb moment.

So tell me. Why do you blog?

Quilting in the Cabin: Year 11!

Last weekend was our 11th Annual Quilting in the Cabin. Eleven years of spending time with good friends, fabric, and food in Dotty's cabin,just outside Yosemite National Park.
This was the view of the inside. We have sewing station set-up down to a science. Seriously. We had stuff unloaded from the car, food into the refrigerator and our sewing gear set up in about thirty minutes.

Years ago we decided that three meals a day was way too much food. So we cut it down to two meals a day, and a midday snack. Breakfast was typically nice and hearty: bacon, eggs, and fruit. For dinner we would have something like this: lettuce wedge all dressed up with cherry tomatoes, bacon and bleu cheese, cheesy potatoes and steak, a nice bottle of wine. And traditionally, Dotty makes the most amazing lemon pie in a meringue crust (and next year maybe I'll remember to take a picture of it...). Last year we nearly forgot it. We drove back to her house to get it--it is that good!

So no lunch. Just a nice light midday snack:

We hate to overeat. Which is why we stopped having lunch and went instead with a midday boatload of food light snack instead. Because it takes nourishment to do all that sewing...

It is always a cause for celebration when someone completes a quilt top. We stop whatever we're doing and take pictures.

It has taken us eleven years to figure out that we can take our completed projects outside and hang them over the deck railing. We may be a little slow on figuring out good photo-ops but we are not slow when it comes to having things to photograph!

And then one of Dotty's neighbors wandered by and agreed to take a picture of us. I wish I would have taken a picture of him, holding four digital cameras! Have we not figured out yet that one picture could be emailed among the four of us? Um. Guess not.

(Dotty, me, Maggie, Ruth)

I even surprised Ruth with this little pincushion made with selvages everyone contributed (Dotty contributed the one called Cozy Cabin Flannels--perfect!!)

I snatched a piece of this uber-cute batik that Ruth was working with and used it for the back of the pincushion (it's much brighter than the picture--bright limey green with purple, hot pink and blue, and the cutest little stick people).

During the weekend, whenever we finish anything, we hang it over the staircase railing. Such a pretty site by the end of the weekend. So sad when we have to pack things away to leave.

Thanks, Dotty, for one of the best weekends of the year!

And for those of you who have been following along with our efforts to get the cabins open at Lakeview Cottages: I think we have become, thanks to Mother Nature, a nonprofit organization this year (boo!).  The first two rental weeks were canceled and we are still waiting for water (which seems ironic since we have had record amounts of snow, but one is not related to the other). We're hoping all the problems will be fixed and the water will be running by Saturday so our third-week guests can arrive.

We're trying to maintain a positive outlook, but here is a picture of Mark last Saturday:

*sigh*