BELIEVE

Can you hear it ring? I have a wonderful WAV file of jingling sleigh bells. Now if only I could figure out how to embed it here.

Have you seen the movie The Polar Express?

I've watched it before -- in the background while I'm quilting or cruising the Internet. I won't watch it that way again.

I had the great privilege of watching it with my 5th Graders on the last day of school before Winter Break. You have to see this movie with children and watch the expressions on their faces! Who would have thought that even 5th Graders would be entralled!

I've ordered the soundtrack. First I listened again to some of the music before I decided. My clock radio has a feature where I can wake up to programmed tracks on a CD. How much fun would it be to wake up on a cold winter morning to the tune Hot Chocolate.

I even found a fantastic applique of a sleighbell by Sindy Rodenmayer at FatCat Patterns. Follow the links from the homepage menu on the right with Holidays | Christmas Blocks. Then you'll find the Jingle Bells pattern. Looks like a sleigh bell. . . .

So did Santa give me the sleigh bell? Well, actually I bought a box of them at JoAnn's when I was shopping for fabric for Microsoft Office's Christmas Trees!

Microsoft Office's Christmas Trees

Aren't these tress beautiful!! They came straight from Microsoft Office's Clipart.

Seems like I could turn these trees into paper-piecing patterns. Looks like there are only four different shapes. I think it's the "fabric" that makes these trees. Aren't the stripes just perfect!

How could I put the stars on top? Maybe a small raw-edge applique cut from silver or gold or white. Or maybe a bead or star-shaped charm that could be sewn on.

Looks like I could use a trip to JoAnn's or Michael's to look for tree-topper decorations. The size of the trees would probably have to depend on the size of the topper I could buy.

This could be a scrappy project! It wouldn't take much fabric for the tree part. I have the perfect white-on-white background with snowflakes -- well, they look more like asterisks.

These trees remind me of my drive to work years ago. Along Route 29 in Gainesville, Virginia, there used to be (and maybe still is) The Christmas Shop, open all year. Inside the shop were all sorts of decorations and trees decorated in themes.

By next year at this time, I could have my own little Christmas tree lot immortalized in a wall hanging! Or a lap quilt to bundle up in during cold holiday weather.

A piece of trash found on the floor . . . .

Cruising through my 5th grade classroom, checking work on students' desks. Stepped over a giant piece of paper. Had second thoughts and decided to pick it up and look at it. Tim had been experimenting with the Geometry template and looking at the compass rose on a map.

Wouldn't this make a wonderful quilt block? One of my quilting friends has already put it into Electric Quilt. She left out the sunglasses and smile. Also put a center octagon rather than a hexagon within an octagon.

I can picture the block on the back of a sweatshirt cardigan. Then maybe take some of the kite and triangle shapes and string then down the front of the sweatshirt. If I split the triangles for paper-piecing, I can make one side a darker shade for the 3-D effect.

Batiks? Yellows, greens, and browns for a sunflower? Pink, cranberry, and Valentine red -- the two kite shapes side-by-side make a heart.

Oooooh, the possibilities!

Arizona Challenge

About a month ago, Janet Wickell at About.com issued her Arizona Challenge. A few days after that, she provided Through the Windows, a pattern she had created based on inspiration from a carpet! The photo here to the left is my version of her pattern and my entry into the challenge. You can see other entries in the Arizona Challenge Gallery.

I had been collecting southwestern-themed fabrics for quite a while. I wanted a quilt with Kokopelli. The border next to the black has Kokopellis marching along it. And I just love the turquoise! And I have even more southwest and Kokopelli fabrics!

Luckily I was on a four-week break, so I was able to start and finish the top. I think it's the best quilt top I've made so far in my short 4-year quilting career. The top is enough to meet the challenge's January 15 deadline. I think this may be my first quilt that I send out to a professional longarm quilter.

Why don't you join the challenge too?!

Lone Star Quilt Blocks

Well, it all started off very innocently. I was early to a meeting in the school library, so I headed for the electronic card catalogue and typed in “quilt.” I’ve been on break for three weeks, so my brain wasn’t totally in gear: I decided I’d just take a look at the easy picture books. I found this beautiful Eagle Star Quilt in the book Shota and the Star Quilt. [Authors: Christine Fowler, Margaret Bateson-Hill, Gloria Runs Close to Lodge, Philomine Lakota; Copyright: Zero to Ten Ltd 1998]

Got home, scoured my quilt book shelf, and found Easy & Elegant Lone Star Quilts by Shirley Stutz. Her stars seem to be mostly the stack-n-whack style. Beautiful! I also have the book and DVD Lone Star Quilts & Beyond by Jan Krentz. These quilts have all those rhombi (rhombuses?) and even some spikey corners. Also beautiful! An online friend recommended Eleanor Burns’ Radiant Star directions. Her booklet and DVD are available, so I’ll have to go online shopping today.

LeMoyne Star, Lone Star, Sawtooth Star – they all seem to have the same outline shape. But the innards are magnificently different.

And then comes my love of Feathered Stars. I have one in the works. I was in the quilt shop The Uncommon Thread in Fallon, Nevada last winter. Saw a beautiful feathered star sample hanging on the wall. I asked the owner if I could buy the pattern. She said she didn’t have one, but she did say it was OK for me to take a photo and try to copy it into Electric Quilt. My version will end up about 22” square. I’ve got two of the inset seams done, and I’m not brave enough yet to do the last two! And I managed to find real fabrics similar to the ones I found in EQ6.

Do I have a Lakota Star Quilt started? Only in my dreams!!

Paisleys

Isn’t this beautiful? It’s from the side of a Kleenex tissue box. I love paisleys! I have fond memories of a navy blue and maroon paisley shirt from the 70’s. I wore it with a wool skirt. On second thought, that must have been in the 60’s.

Hummm, took a close look at that tissue box. There was a website listed. And you can make your own Kleenex box! Can you imagine a Kleenex box with your own quilt on the side? Wonder if there is a way to refill the box . . . .



I’ve been collecting paisleys. How about a scrappy paisley quilt? That pink one looks more like Jacobean than paisley, doesn’t it. And I absolutely must have that brown/green paisley for the Hoffman Challenge 2009.

Only once a year?

So will I remember to update this blog only once a year? Maybe I'll try for once a week!

This is the wackiest little quiltie I have ever made! It measured out at 28" x 28" -- a size that just fits the requirements of being between 21" and 30" square. The block is Sky Rocket, a paper-pieced pattern from eQuiltPatterns.com.

So how did I happen to choose these colors? Well, I really just wanted some inexpensive fabric that I could experiment with. I truly want to use the pattern with Jackie Robinson's Fushia fabric. The fabric I really wanted was in the Ben Franklin in Sparks. I decided to try the sale table in Hancock's, the fabric shop next door.

My friend Koyya works at that Hancock's, and she provided wonderful customer service that evening! We were downright silly and chose these wacky-colored fabrics. What looks like a solid is a variegated fabric. (Not on the sale table!) I even went back another time to buy more of the stringy background fabric.

I learned something important about paper-piecing while doing these 4 blocks. I had been told not to take the paper off the back of the block until all the blocks were sewn together. Now I know why -- I had a hard time getting the points to meet at the middle of the quiltie. I think I did a great job with the points in the middle of each block though.

Now I'm off to do some more sewing. I decided to do Janet Wickell's Arizona Challenge at About.com. My version is almost finished. I'm adapting Janet's Through the Window pattern.