DWM: two finishes, more stash, and a meetup

Two finishes!

 Pinwheel Ninepatch  pieced in 2011, is now finished! It's 74 x 86 which is about as big as I can handle on my DSM.

 Quilting detail.  Loopy stars in the 9-patches, "almost feathers" in the border, serpentine in the sashes.

The paisley backing fabric is a thrift-shop cotton sheet. (The daisy print was another thrift-shop purchase -- I think it had been used for curtains.)

This wallhanging was the last flimsy I made in 2011. (The baskets are leftovers from the Orca Bay mystery.)    More loopy flowers and almost-feathers, with zig-zag in the sashes.     

This brings my count to 15 finishes in 2013!





Batiks



Stash builders



Earlier in the week Judy emailed the Magpies proposing a northern Illinois meetup at Pieceful Heart, a quilt shop in Lisle that is closing.   I picked up Julie on Saturday morning and we drove down (65 miles).  Judy, Cheryl, and daughter/granddaughter Chrissie joined us at the shop.   The place was mobbed!  It was filled with a tremendous variety of prints, from 30's to Kaffe to Civil War repros to "regular" prints.  The sale was just beginning so prices were  20% off. I indulged, as you can see.   We went out to lunch after our retail therapy.  What a great get-together!  

"We must do this more often!"



 I am itching to start a new project but I don't know what I want to try.  Instead I pulled out another flimsy, pieced the back, basted it, and began quilting it last evening.

See what other quiltmakers are doing on Design Wall Monday  at Judy's Patchwork Times.

AAUW-full -- and $500 for LAF!

The AAUW IL/MO state convention was May 3-5 at the Hilton at the Ballpark in downtown St. Louis. We had a joint convention in 2001 and it was high time to try it again.  I left home early Friday and picked up AAUW friend Kate at her house in a western suburb. Despite rain the entire length of I-55, we arrived in St. Louis at noon. 

[Note: to find out more about AAUW just click here:  www.aauw.org]

I always feel so "AAUW-full" after an AAUW convention -- that's "awe-full," not "awful"! -- because our collective efforts to empower women have accomplished so much since 1881 -- and there is still much to do.  AAUW members are interested, interesting, and dedicated.


The Cubs/Cardinals walk around Busch Stadium raised $2319 (Cubs) and $1285 (Cardinals) for a total of $3606 for  the Eleanor Roosevelt Fund which honors an individual, project, organization, or institution for outstanding contributions to equality and education for women and girls.

AAUW's  Legal Advocacy Fund  (LAF) works to challenge sex discrimination in higher education and the workplace. The speaker Saturday evening was a woman who was sexually harassed and abused while she was in the National Guard, starting with the recruiter who signed her up when she was a junior in high school. The harassment, ostracism, and loneliness she endured during her Guard service (including a deployment to Iraq) were horrible.  AAUW support for a class-action lawsuit has helped both financially and emotionally.  She is now 27 and working as a pediatric nurse in Indianapolis.

I don't always dress to match my quilts!

Every spring I donate a quilt to the Waukegan Area Branch  to raffle to raise funds for AAUW projects.  This year it was Easy Street, the most recent Quiltville mystery. Ticket sales at convention were great!  The net proceeds, $500, will go to LAF.  The LAF plaintiff pulled the winning ticket -- and the winner was delighted!

I took Kate and Shirley May home on Sunday afternoon.  No rain and good company made the drive easier.

See what other quiltmakers (who presumably were at home over the weekend) are working on at Judy's Patchwork Times.

Daffodils, salix discolor*, and bargains

 Daffy-down-dilly has come to town
In her white petticoat and her yellow gown.

Daffodils are my favorite spring flower. The blossoms finally opened sometime in the early, early hours on Friday. They're about two weeks behind last year.

After the  torrential rain on April 18 I couldn't even get to the parking lot at the Camp Logan unit of Illinois Beach State Park due to flooding.  This picture, taken April 27, shows the path that we often take when we walk in those woods -- there's still a lot of standing water.  



Salix discolor

(*Salix discolor is the Latin name for this plant. The common name has a word that which some filtering software excludes, as I found out when I looked at my blog on my iPhone.  You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salix_discolor )
   

As I've written before, if I can't not buy fabric, then I need to be sure to get it at a bargain price.  I went to an estate sale on Friday.  The fabric was crammed onto storage shelves in the basement.  The sign said, "$2 per piece." I grabbed anything that looked like quilting cotton, rejected some very flimsy stuff, and filled a box.  I bargained the guy down to $40.

Back home, washed and dried, ready to press, measure, and fold.



TG&Y label--that's an Oklahoma dimestore chain ("turtles, girdles, and yo-yo's").



The final count:  92 yards -- at $40, that's .43 per yard.

I have a modest collection of bandannas for a someday quilt --these were .50 each at the estate sale. 

I used some of the estate sale fabric for the sashing for this sailboat quilt. The green pindot was just right.   This is a gift for a library staff member who is having a baby in June. (It's the first baby in the library "family" since anyone can remember.)  The all-staff baby shower is May 14 so I need to get this finished!  (You can see the companion sailboat quilt in this post.)             

See what other quiltmakers are up to this Design Wall Monday at Judy's Patchwork Times.

Now you see 'em, now you don't

Button, button

Here's a lesson for us all.  Not only measure twice and cut once, but try on twice. 

but never the RIGHT button

I was determined to make new jacket this spring.  The process involves a lot of forethought. There's fabric selection.  This time, a nice collection at Joann's for $4.99/yd (good quality, too) came right to the fore.  I really like the lemon-and-gray palette.  Then there's pattern selection.  My body has, er, changed dimensions.  I really, really need to adapt ONE jacket pattern that I can use as a "canvas" for a variety of pieced designs.  

Now you see 'em

I finished the piecing and assembled the jacket.  I looked in my button stash for five matching gray or yellow buttons, 7/8" or larger.  Nothing.  I went back to Joann's and found lovely yellow buttons. They came two on a card, and since I needed five,  I had to buy three cards. At $4 per card. Yikes! With coupons the price dropped somewhat, so I paid just $10 for the three cards. But still.
Pfrieda, my Pfaff 1472, is wonderful sewing machine in nearly all respects -- except for buttonholes. I gritted my teeth and made adequate buttonholes. I attached those expensive buttons. I cut the buttonholes open.

Now you don't

I tried the jacket on. It was oddly tight across the bustline. What? I looked at the pattern -- it was designed for no buttons!  There was no allowance for the button/buttonhole overlap.  I slept on the matter and in the morning had the solution. I cut off the strips with the buttonholes, replaced them (which meant replacing the foundation to which the strips were pieced as well as replacing a strip of the lining). I reattached the binding. I closed the buttonhole in the yoke with a tight zigzag stitch that you wouldn't notice unless you were looking for it.   WHEW!

(There are now six 1-1/8" yellow buttons in my button stash. The jacket used five yards of fabric. I have lots of gray and lemon fabric left over. )

In other quilting news: here is bookshelf quilt #30, made for a library trustee who was elected to the Village board and thus has to resign from the library board.

Check out what other quiltmakers are up to on Design Wall Monday at Judy's Patchwork Times.

 P.S.  More buttons. The vintage Hawaiian buttons are pinned on my bulletin board. 

P.S. 2   First garage sale purchase of the season! These chairs were $3 each. They are in rough shape but they'll be great practice for decorative painting -- and as plant stands on the patio this summer.

Acquisitions!

I stopped at the Salvation Army in Zion on Friday to see if there was anything interesting.  I couldn't pass these up.
They are custard-cup or cream-soup sized bowls.  I googled Pine Lake Trout Farm and found only a reference from an eBay-watching site reporting on the sale of a Pine Lake Trout Farm platter, also by Walker China. 

My father's stepmother lived at the Alhambra home at the end of her (very long) life.  I looked it up -- the home is operated by a private company and is called Marguerite Gardens.  The P.E.O. flower is the marguerite, or daisy.  (I can't tell if California P.E.O. outsourced the management, or if they sold the property.)

The Illinois State Chapter also had a retirement home in Knoxville. It needed significant upgrades to conform to code. The ISC sold the property and used the proceeds to start the Illinois P.E.O. Home Fund.  "The purpose of this project is to provide assistance toward housing expenses that will enhance the lives and living conditions of Illinois senior women. Support is given to P.E.O. sisters and to non-P.E.O. ladies upon the recommendation of local P.E.O. chapters. The applicant must be at least 65 years of age and an Illinois resident."

The Colorado State Chapter still owns and operates the Colorado Chapter House.  The website explains, "....Several state P.E.O. Homes were established. They were all state projects. The houses in Mount Pleasant, Iowa; in San Jose, California; in Knoxville, Illinois; in Saint Joseph, Missouri; and in San Antonio, Texas are now closed.  Still open and fully operational are the homes in Beatrice, Nebraska; in Caldwell, Idaho; and in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The home in Alhambra, California is scheduled to undergo substantial modifications."

Alpha Gamma Delta envisioned a retirement home for its members. For many years chapters, clubs, and members contributed to the Billet.  It never opened, however.  Instead, the Billet funds were used to create the Founders Memorial Foundation established at the 1954 Golden Anniversary. 

Briefcases

This was the poem in The Writer's Almanac on April 2.

Briefcases*

by Stephen Dunn

  

Fifteen years ago I found my father's
in the family attic, so used
the shoemaker had to
repair it, and I kept it like love

until it couldn't be kept anymore.
Then my father-in-law died
and I got his, almost
identical, just the wrong initials

embossed in gold. It's forty years old,
falling apart, soon
there'll be nothing
that smells of father-love and that difficulty

of living with fathers, but I'd prefer
a paper bag to those
new briefcases
made for men living fast-forward

or those attaché cases that match
your raincoat and spring open
like a salute
and a click of heels. I'm going

to put an ad in the paper, "Wanted:
Old briefcase, accordion style,"
and I won't care
whose father it belonged to

if it's brown and the divider keeps
things on their proper side.
Like an adoption
it's sure to feel natural before long—

a son without a father, but with this
one briefcase carrying
a replica
comfortably into the future,

something for an empty hand, sentimental
the way keeping is
sentimental, for keep-
sake, with clarity and without tears. 

# # # #

Here's what I wrote to Mr. Dunn:   

Dear Mr. Dunn: 

Your poem “Briefcases” was the poem-of-the-day on the Writer’s Almanac yesterday.

My response was immediate – my dad had just that kind of briefcase, with his initials stamped in gold. It smelled like leather, ink, tobacco, and paper. (Actually he had several of them, because the handles did, eventually, break off to the point of no repair.) I can imagine him coming in the door (5:15 from Union Station, home at 6:00) and giving my sister and me the Chicago Daily News (“red stripe edition final markets”) so we could read the comics. Mother got home from her office sooner, so she had a drink poured and dinner almost ready. Ah, the 60’s….. Our parents passed away in 2002 and I believe my sister has Dad’s last briefcase, kept for the very reasons you describe.  

# # # #

He wrote back: 

Thanks for the wonderful response. My Dad died at 59 in the late 1960's. An old poem, therefore, which Keillor found and evidently liked.

Best,

Stephen

 

* "Briefcases" by Stephen Dunn, from New and Selected Poems 1974-1994. © Norton, 1994. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Design Wall Monday: swap blocks and postage stamps

  
 A week ago the path to Dead Dog Creek ravine was still snow-covered and slippery -- too slippery for me to walk down without a walking stick. Warm days have melted nearly all the snow so today I could easily go down the hill.  The alligator still lies in wait in the woods. 

The skunk cabbages have come up through last season's fallen leaves.




 Back in the studio:  here are my contributions for two of the five installments of the Progressive Swap.  Lori K wrote that she has a stack of pine tree blocks and wants houses and stars to go with them.  She provided three different gray/white prints for the backgrounds.   Cassandra is working on a design with different sizes of blocks, all batiks.  Once I pull out the boxes of batik FQs and scraps it's hard for me to stop!

 Here's how my latest postage stamp (1.5" squares) project has turned out. The blocks are 5.5" unfinished. The orientation is supposed to alternate (horizontal strips, vertical strips) but now that I look at it, there are a few that flipped. (How does that happen? LOL!)  The flimsy is 51 x 56. 

See what other quiltmakers are working on at Judy's Patchwork Times.