Are you ready for some football ?!!

I love to sew during NFL football games. Tomorrow the Super Bowl. Then the last one for the season is the Pro Bowl.

When I was almost a teenager, my mom would let me use the sewing machine when she wasn't home. I just had to have the mess cleaned up by the time she got back. She was out shopping or visiting friends while my dad was watching Sunday football games. I taught myself to sew, and my dad taught me how to watch football.

I still seem to get lots of sewing done with an NFL football game on TV in the background. I think it is the crowd noise that pushes me on. Isn't there a football cheer that goes something like, "Make that block"? (Such a terrible pun!)

Later in life I got the opportunity to attend NFL games. Had access to season tickets for my hometown Cincinnati Bengals for two years. My neighbor in Virginia frequently offered me tickets to Washington Redskins games, but I was awfully busy doing other things. (Oh, how foolish!) Later had a fellow computer trainer (who didn't like football) give me her free tickets to Indianapolis Colts games.

So now I'm living in a town with no professional sports teams. Ho hum. TV it is!! Besides, going to the game means I'm not getting any sewing done.

Red and White and Blue All Over

You know what goes in the blank in the title, don't you!! :-)

A couple of years back, Carol Doak's Quilting Yahoo Group started making red-white-blue (RWB) blocks for Quilts of Valor (QOV). We sent our blocks to one of the group members, and she was to assemble them then send them off to a quilter. We've never heard back from her. I was disappointed that I had make my QOV blocks for nothing.

No one in the Reno/Sparks area seemed interested in making Quilts of Valor. I didn't have the skill to do much more than make blocks at that time in my still short quilting career.

I finally found quilter at the USENET newsgroup rec.crafts.textiles.quilting (RCTQ) whose guild in Virginia was making Quilts of Valor that year. So I started making blocks again. (RCTQ can also be accessed at Google Groups.) She finally didn't need any more blocks from me.

I started making red-white-blue blocks to make a quilt for myself. I decided to practice making blocks with half-square triangles (HST). Electric Quilt was my RWB HST buddy! All the blocks are 12". Try measuring a 7x7 patch into a 12" square! I paper-pieced the ones that didn't divide evenly. All my blocks are pictured above with larger single photos in my Webshots album.

The blocks are finished!! It's time to put some white sashing in and choose a layout. I think this might be it --


The blocks might not truly go in the order shown here, but I do like the border of little RWB squares repeating the fabrics in the 12" blocks.

I'm looking forward to using my quilt on Flag Day or 4th of July!

It's A NEW Day!!

"It's a New Day" is still the slogan for Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims and their The Quilt Show website. And now it has an additional meaning in quilting -- check out Debra Gabel’s 2009 Obama Quilt. And then there is the quilt at The Alliance for American Quilts.

I'll probably never make an art quilt or a landscape quilt. I'm a math person who loves geometry. I'm happy cutting and sewing squares, triangles, rectangles, half-square triangles, and half-rectangle triangles. I haven't cut or sewn circles yet!

Even though I'd never make one of these quilts, I do admire the workmanship and color sense that goes into art quilts. I think these presidential quilts are absolutely amazing!

Maybe there have been other presidential quilts in other years. I only started quilting about 4½ years ago, so I would have missed the earlier quilts of presidents. So maybe I'll search! I wonder what kinds of commemorative items quilters made even back in the day of George Washington?

[The black and white drawing of the White House came from Enchanted Learning.com.]

I love my coffee!!

I do love my coffee!! My favorite is Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Unfortunately, there is no Dunkin' Donuts shop in my town, so I buy bags of the coffee in the grocery or off the Dunkin' Donuts website. I've even thought of making a quilt with those pink-orange-white brown colors.

The first product I ever ordered from the Internet was coffee. I was a CompuServe subscriber and was able to find Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Back in the late 1990's when I was teaching a computer class in Washington DC, class members came from all over the United States. One session we had people from Vermont. They went home over the weekend and brought me a Green Mountain Coffee Roasters mug and brought the class some ground coffee! I still use that coffee mug!

Nowadays I order coffee from CoffeeAM. Love the Mistletoe Joe flavored decaf and regular all year round. Rainforest Crunch is the most mellow coffee I've tasted! Well, not really -- Jamaican Blue Mountain is THE BEST. At close to $40 per pound, I don't order that very often. But maybe it's time.

Remember December

I enjoy visiting The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. A challenge was issued to make a piece to Remember December. The item had to contain 80% fabric and could not be any larger than 24" on a side.

My neo-natal quiltie made it just under the size specifications! I made a smaller version of the free download pattern Midnight Mischief designed by Rochelle Martin for Clothworks. My little quiltie has Santa and the reindeer joyfully romping in the forest after completing yet another hard-night's Christmas Eve run.

I wish we could have submitted virtual quilts. Electric Quilt's January 2008 EQ Challenge was to Make It Seasonal. The December rainy season in Reno creates some beautiful cloud sets with magnificent sunrises and sunsets. My virtual quilt reminded me of sunrises and snowflakes on my early morning commutes to work. It was an opportunity to put a feathered star into a virtual quilt.

The Quilt Show's Stars for a New Day 2009 BOM has a feathered star center . The directions by Sue Garman are wonderful! I might be able to use her directions not only for the BOM but also for my Make It Seasonal wall hanging.

Happy New Year !Morning Has Broken . . . .

. . . . like the first morning of 2009! Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird of 2009. Happy New Year!

Actually, a couple of blackbirds have spoken to me lately. Regina Grewe's Electric Quilt Rabe has said, "Go buy fabric and make me into a beautiful wallhanging." I found her site through via a newsletter from Electric Quilt. In addition to the blackbird, she has flowers of the month available in EQ6. Follow the links from The Electric Quilt Company website from the top horizontal menu bar at Users | Fun Stuff | Project Sharing.

And by some strange coincidence, for the past two months, I have been waking up to Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken" recording on my CD clock radio. (You might have to refresh the link to hear the song.) Of course the song lyrics refer to the blackbird.

Some folks harken to the Bluebird of Happiness -- I have the Blackbird of Quilting! Regina, thank you!