Quilting has definitely taken a back seat ever since my reading went digital. I’ve struggled with massive eye floaters for a few years, and came very close to giving up my other passion, reading. Enter Stage Left the Sony Reader. I’m in love!!! Font the size of a teleprompter, thousands and thousands of free titles from Google books and library databases, and the Sony E store for all the rest (at about $10 a book). I did manage to make another “Who shot the Couch bag”, and a Sears Catalogue focus fabric bag to carry the reader. Now ...

In purseland it's been Christmas in July ever since a dear friend surprised me with this lovely Christmas mat for my birthday. A chain reaction was set off, causing a dig through my Christmas stash and the fabrication of two new purses, but who knew my fascination with what I thought to be a "new fangled snapping mechanism" was at least 6 years old. Out of town company over the weekend set me straight on that one, then again they had no clue what the above contraption was. So, I guess all knowledge is relative.

"So how many of those are you going to make?" That you are smack dab in the middle of your next obsession.

But Seriously Sports Fans, this one even has a Tactile Snapping Satisfaction!

Who knew last week of school when Monica came down to show me the purse her friend made, and asked me to guess the closing mechanism that I would have the topic sentence for my August composition, "How I Spent My summer Vacation"

As I've indicated on a previous post: measure the circumference of the opening, cut metal measuring tape to that length, duck tape ...

Make a trop beau sac !! Merci mille fois encore Françoise for this beautiful thoughtful gift.

I tend to stay away from wearing prints of any kind. It all started about 16 years ago when my then comedic pre-teen age son remarked on one of my new flowered blouses with a, “Who Shot the Couch?” I think it’s time to accessorize all those solids with a few new purses. Here’s the first of hopefully many.
I found the following tutorial on line for a great closure mechanism.

“You can use a retractable metal tape measure as a closure for your purse! Pull out the full length of the tape and cut. Measure the width ...

I'd have to say it's a close second when the dang quilt you've been working on for over a year is finally finished,and hanging on the fence to be photographed. Don't you agree?

I started my Dear Jane as filler, a palate cleanser between other projects. I love to paper piece, so why not do a block once and a while. No one warned me how addicting they are. Okay I thought. I’d face the gorilla in the room, tackle a few triangles, know I was up for the challenge and surely she’d let go of me. I could stop whenever I wanted to, and go back to other projects.

I printed 13 triangles, but it wasn’t until I completed 5 of them that I realized the size discrepancy. The ...

in for a pound. Okay Jane, two rows done, I'm hooked. But really, I'm behind in my batik challenge, and I only have some feathering yet to do on the 6 inch oriental border so I really can't start another row just yet......but as we speak I'm printing out the patterns for the first row of triangles.....darn you Jane.

So I'm watching Fons and Porter, and one of them says, "CARDINAL RULE: You should make a habit of only ripping a block three times and if the points still don’t match up...."
Here's where I finish the sentence in my head with a...."Just run with it, life's too short."

WRONG, their advice "after three times make the entire block over or it will be stretched out of shape beyond recognition.." I guess that's why they have a TV show and I line blocks up on my rug to post on my blog.

But ...

I‘ve been apprehensive about sending freezer paper through my printer, but with the daunting task of piecing an entire Dear Jane, I thought what the heck. What’s the worst thing that could happen? A major paper jam…
I even planned on purchasing precut sheets. (30 sheets for $8.95). When I brought them up to the counter to pay, I asked the woman cutting my fabric if she had used them. With a big sigh, and slight hesitation she said, “No, but she’d been told they would work if you ironed a regular piece of 8.5 ...

A tad off I was on some of my DJs. A friend noticing A7 in progress on my last post remarked, “Those pins are big, maybe too big to line the seams up correctly!” Hmmmm I thought…. PINS. I literally have thousands of them,… thousands. I’ve got two large cookie tins of bent safeties for sandwiching, and then there are my clover flat heads and Bohin short appliqué plus the two overflowing magnet dishes of pearl heads and THE TIN, the tin, my mom’s tin. My parents are buried 600 miles away in New York State and I ...

How did you do it without freezer paper? (Because even with it, and an "add a 1/4 ruler" I am still off a tad.)

So after all the busy wallpaper of 19 years came down,and the entire interior of our house was painted Benjamin Moore Putnam Ivory I started seeing places to put little quilts like this adaptation of a free pattern for an appliqué matryoshka doll at http://www.ottobredesign.com/

Piercing Question of the Day
Exactly what machine is finessing your latest creation? I’m a relative newbie to quilting, it became my salvation back in 2003 when my first, second and third loves, cross stitch, crochet and needlework became too painful because of hand problems. I joined a quilting guild, and it just seems more and more people either have longarms, or send their work out to be longarmed. As you can see, I don’t even have a computerized machine. Somewhere deep in my psyche I have an aversion to them. Sure I use computers for everything. I ...

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Many of my friends and coworkers are rambling around in warmer climates; some are even wandering Parisian streets in search of the perfect macaroon.

But let’s face it,

I’ll wager not a ONE of them have completed their April Block yet.

First, second and Third line of Defense

Have you tried a product called Color Catchers by Johnson and Johnson? I was given material from France. I washed it once with Vinegar, then again with Retayne and it still bled a little. When the quilt was completed with white borders no less, I threw caution to the wind and put it on warm /cold with a sheet of Color Catchers. The quilt came out beautifully, the Color Catcher sheet turned red, but the quilt was fine. Hope that helps someone.

I have always loved the colors and patterns in the fabrics from the south of France, but I never really owned any until a dear French friend came to my home this fall with a gift, an incredible bundle of almost 100 remnant pieces of Provencal fabric, and a history lesson.


I didn't know that "le tissu Indienne" as it was called started coming into Europe from the Port of Marseille around the 1600’s. It became so popular with the ladies that it ...

but luckily life just got a whole lot easier. After 50 years I’ve given up using my sister’s toy draw a cartoon from the 1960’s and purchased a real light box. With my trusty Morgan Soapstone and washable graphite markers and a good fabric eraser transferring sunflowers to the provincial quilt was a snap. Now on to the King Oriental…..

The March Block




Living Dangerously
First project with batiks using colors outside my comfort zone... and horrors of horrors I didn't even prewash!!!!