Daydreaming

     I am going off topic today  because I've been thinking of my youngest son, J.R.  He is 24 yers old and is serving a 10 year prison term.  I visit him once a week and he calls a couple times, but he sent me the following letter and even though it is a prison setting, I thought of all our servicemen and women, as well as anyone who is away from home.  Hope you enjoy it.

                                   A Letter
     You never will know what a letter can mean,
Until you've been where I've been and seen what I've seen
     I'm confined to a world behind four brick walls,
Where no one can see me and where no one can call
     Often I sleep but I awake alarmed,
Worried that my loved ones or friends have been harmed.
     Thank God it's just a dream, as I come to my senses,
I look out the window but still I see barbwire fences.
     Somehow I keep making it through the day
Awaiting the mail call, but nothing for me they always say
     Not a letter, a note, or even a card
When nobody writes times really seem hard
     Just a line or two to say everything is fine,
Just a few small words to ease my mind,
     Kind words, well wishes, knowing you're there,
Anything at all to show me you care.
     You never will know what a letter can mean,
Until you've been where I've been and seen what I've seen.
                                                   Joseph R. London
    

Sew it Faster

      I've never figured out why quiltmaker' s insisted on making the sewing more difficult than it had to be.  My favorite example of this is the Cheese Box.

The piecing instructions for this were given as follows:

If you lay a grid ove the pattern you will find a 5-patch block which can be easily pieced using squares and half square triangles.

The pattern Attic Window provides  real "duh" moment.  This is considered to be a very easy pattern to piece, but you must sew a set-in seam in the lower left corner.  Check it out with a grid laid over the pattern.

One more example.  This pattern is called Rainbow Flower. 
The original design is on the left,  Piecing it as shown means you have to set in that diagonal seam throughout the block.  But, if you piece it as you would a Log Cabin, you can have all straight seams.  Quilt it following the original design and the seams will fade into the background.







     I spent Mother's Day with my daughter in California.  Since I don't fly, I took the bus from Ohio to California.  What a nightmare.  Never again.  Cramped seating and rude drivers were only the beginning.  I didn't know you had to bring your own food if you wanted to eat.  The few terminals we stopped at had only vending machines with chips and candy bars.  Most stops there was nothing available.  One stop was at a country crossroads with only a barn in sight. 

     Anyway, the visit was pleasant.  My daughter has been trying to talk me into moving there, but I don't see that happening.  I really wasn't impressed with the L.A. area.  

     I was there over Mother's Day, and my grandson Nathan, who is 8, gave his mother a decorated bag filled with items he had made in school.  I thought the drawing was so cute, I decided to make a small wallhanging of it.  My daughter scanned it into her computer then e-mailed it to me.  I transferred it to my graphics program for resizing and  divided it into four sections, then printed it onto those Cotton sheets made for inkjet printing.  Ain't modern technology wonderful?  I think it turned out pretty well.  Since this one turned out to be pretty easy to do, I guess I'll start on the one for my oldest daughter.  Unfortunately, she wants one 5 foot by 5 foot.

Maggie Malone's Quick Quilts

     My favorite part of quilting is playing with patterns to make them easier to piece, as well as designing new patterns.  Below is my latest one which I called Rainbow.
                     

     My original design featured large white rectangles which provide a lot of room for quilting.  But since quilting is my least favorite part of the process so I opted to make colored strips to break up the plain white.  This let me do stitch in the ditch quilting.  This a a large 24" block so it works up quickly.

 

    

 I like a lot of color, but if you don't, you could use just one. 

     The next one I am really proud of.  I was so taken with the Wheel of Fortune design, but when I realized each block contained 32 pieces, I had to think about it.  

     By combining the pattern pieces, I was able to cut the number to 16, and they were strip pieced before cutting.  I completed 25 blocks in 12 hours.  Now that's a time saver.

     I am a packrat.  I find it very difficult to throw away anything that I might sometime in the distant future, find a use for.  This began with my children's clothing, from the time they were born up until they moved out.  Now you know that kids don't usually wear out clothing, they outgrow it.  This is all perfectly good fabric and how can I possibly throw it away?  After the clothes consumed a 3'x10' closet, and trash bags were all over the house, I knew it was time to do something with them.  So, I started a book I'm calling "101 Uses for Old Clothing".  I may not make it to one hundred, but I am up to 50.  Below is a sample rug I made from old sweatshirts.  Some of these do get raggedy, but there is still lots of good fabric to be had.

     I think this is a good use for old sweatshirts.

     My current downfall is the plastic bags every stores packs your purchases in.  I am again losing a closet, so I decided I needed another rug, this one crocheted.  I cut the bags into strips and used the strips as yarn.

     I used a contrasting color to lace through the mesh for four rows just to see how it would look.  I did one similar to this for the above mentioned book using yarn as the mesh, but then threaded fabric strips through the mesh running the strips lengthwise over the whole surface and leaving a fringe at each end.

     I am currently working on a shopping  bag from the plastic bags.  I'll post a picture when I complete it.