Sometimes Finished is Enough

The back of the quilt. Yeah, I uploaded the pictures backwards. Just keeping it real!

There is so much wrong with this quilt that the light from right will take 10,000 light years to reach it. I decided a few weeks ago that finished would be good enough. I started this quilt when my now sixteen year old was five. Many of the novelty fabrics are very representative of his childhood and tv addiction and the once WWF which is now the WWE. I think it's kind of cool that mixed in with Bob the Builder(which he never watched but I was in need of a few more squares) and SpongeBob are The Rock's and Stone Cold Steve Austin's logos.

Every block in this quilt was hand traced and cut out with scissors, the top was has handpieced. Yeah, eleven years ago I was terrified of the sewing machine and to this day I have a love/hate relationship with the beast. I happen to be one of those rare people that enjoys handsewing. I like the slow pace, I'm never in too much of a rush when it comes to sewing. I think that's why the slowness of cross stitch has never bothered me too much. I know a lot of people find building a picture with X after little X torture, but I don't. I also don't find building a quilt top one block at a time frustrating. I enjoy it. Along with my loathing of the sewing machine I also dislike the rotary cutter. I bought my first one twenty five years ago and just recently started to feel a little comfortable with it. I like tracing and scissors, the magic and fastness of the rotary cutter is only just now starting to impress me.

The binding is a mess and I decided to tie it so that I could call it done even faster. I'm not sure I did any of the tying right, and I know the binding is wrong, I just wanted it DONE. FINIS! So this weekend I sat down, figured out how to wind a bobbin on my sewing machine and grabbed my packages of Wright's quilt binding and went to work. It took me two days to get the binding handsewed to the back.

My intention had been for this to be a sort of I Spy quilt and one that he could drag out in the yard to play on, build a fort with, read a book under a tree with surrounded by his favorite cartoon peeps. The backing fabric is a fishing lure print I found at JoAnn's many, many years ago and is a reminder of how much he used to love fishing at our pier with his dad. When I bought this fabric they were fishing almost every weekend, then we had Hurricane Ivan, lost our pier and only over the last couple of years has it been rebuilt and reopened and is now the longest pier in Florida if I have my facts right. Now he's too cool to fish with dad so it's kind of sad thinking about those days so many years ago when they'd spend hours waiting for a bite and now he just doesn't have the patience and has better things to do. But that's ok. His dad doesn't make it to the fishing pier too often any more either.

The binding is awful! I'm not showing this because I'm proud of it, I'm showing because sometimes finished is enough. Finished is good, and even when finished poorly, it gives us permission to move on to the next project. To take the mess from the finished project, the knowledge gathered and mistakes made, to the next project and know that we can do better. To know where we need the most patience, to slow it down and do it right or more right. While sloppiness or poor workmanship is nothing to be celebrated, finishing something is and knowing that the finished product is not perfect, but knowing that next time, and yes there will be a next time the maker will take the time she needs to do it right. Or at the very least to be aware of what she previously did so very wrong is also something to celebrate. Each finished object is an educational experience. I have determined that I love piecing but hate with a passion the quilt sandwich and binding it! But they are part of the process. I have another very ugly quilt top, I pieced it twenty one years ago, all by hand, and my stars, is it fugly, but I plan to pull it out and use it for sandwich/binding practice before attempting to sandwich and bind the top I made for my oldest son.

So celebrate with me my finish knowing that I absolutely know it sucks! But yes, sometimes finished is enough.

Dispatch From the Land of Unfinished Projects

How's everybody doing? Getting ready for your holiday, Christmas, Festivus, etc. celebrations? Things here have been busy. I was recently inspired by this post:

Pleasant View Schoolhouse: Getting Started on a Scrap Quilt


And determined that maybe I let myself get too sucked into the perfection of quilting. If my seams don't match up I'm not worthy enough to quilt. If my layout sucks, I shouldn't have wasted my time. I had it in my head that any sewing or quilting I did must be perfect or I was doing nothing but wasting my time and money. So I read Anna's post and decided that some random scrap piecing was in order. I had been agonising for a while over the layout and colors for my oldest son's quilt. He likes green, he's loud and a true wild child. Over the last year or two I had been gathering the random green fat quarter, a bit of green yardage and then pulled some yellows and blues and an orange or two from the stash because all green seemed a little sad to me. I thought my wild child needed a kick of color outside of green. I took my time, tried to be as exact in my cutting as possible, at least as accurate as someone linearly like myself can hope to be.

I then sat around for a week or two trying to figure out how to match up squares and rows and what fabrics worked and what didn't and then banged my head on the table and screamed to the empty house, "It's a flippin' scrap quilt, don't think, sew, don't think, sew". And that's exactly what I did.

(if only my yard were ever as green as this quilt)

I took this picture this morning in the yard, a cloudy overcast 6:48a.m. shot, and I do believe some neighbors were peaking out their blinds wondering what the heck I was doing. I'm the weird, quirky, odd neighbor and I'm okay with that.



Here's another picture. I randomly sewed two squares together, then stacked them up in a pile, then I determined how many pairs of squares I'd need per row for a twin sized quilt, the number was 14 and then I started just sewing my pairs together. Once or twice I stopped and changed up a square or two but I didn't really think too hard about it. The top was going to be what it was going to be and I didn't want to plan it. I wanted a joyful, happy, scrappy mess--this means that no matter how I laid out the colors it would be a success, as long as it had the happy gene, the smile factor.

Last night when the spousal unit arrived home from a long day at work he saw the quilt top on the back of the couch and a huge smile spread across his face, "If the oldest son doesn't want it, I do". That right there is success.

This is the top stretched out on DS#1's bed, OMG, that room is a dark and scary place. But the top fits the bed and will be perfect when I add a border. I had been worried and so had the oldest son that this quilt had a girlie feel to it. I kept saying groovy, not girlie, GROOVY I tell ya.

The two fabrics above are the ones he finds most offensive, particularly the one on the bottom. I had yardage of that, whoops! The top fabric, yeah I knew it was girlie. I get it, but it sure made me happy to cut it up into those four inch squares. It's the one fabric that is me in the quilt, so I left it. We have named this quilt, The Girlie Man.

Next up is a quilt for the middle son which will be a mix of old jeans, plaid shorts, some cut up button down striped shirts, maybe some osnaburg fabric and a few blue prints thrown in. I plan to make it similar to this quilt:

Pleasant View Schoolhouse: Another Scrap Quilt: Someone Stop Me!

I like the 3x6 retangles a lot. It may end up being a hot mess trying to use denim but I'm going to try. Worse case scenario, I'll need to swap out the denim for some dark blue solid fabric.

Then a scrappy quilt with blue as the dominate color for DS #3.

If you have been wanting to try piecing but decided it's above your skill level or too fussy, or too hard, I beg you to just jump in and let go. The quilt doesn't have to be fancy, use stashed fabrics, try to do it right but don't fret if seams don't match up exactly or if there's a bit of puckering. I loved this project so much. I took my time cutting, I pinned it to death just before sewing, and I still got puckering, I still didn't sew perfectly straight but I tried, I tried so hard and that's all that matters. My biggest obsession was trying to keep matching fabrics from popping up next to each other. It was impossible, to let go of that control, to just jump in and sew strips of squares together and see what turned up where, it was fun and liberating.

This quilt couldn't be more basic:

4 inch squares

14 to a row

21 or 23 rows of squares

That's it.

From the Cross Stitch Pile:




Progress on La D Da's In the Garden. This is taking forever! I'm finally down to a bit of filling in and the border. Maybe I'll have this finished by the weekend.

Tonight's Post

Is brought to you by the colors red and white and the numbers 8 and 27. Red and white seem to be the theme for the past weekend. Months ago I cut out lots of red and white squares with the intention of making a quilt for my bed. I cut them out and left them to sit and sit and sit. I thought I could turn them into a quilt top by astral projection but apparently it doesn't work that way.

White iPod = 35 hours of Stephen King's Under the Dome. King rarely lets me down and I enjoyed Under the Dome, I have the sore ears to prove it.

Spaghetti with meat sauce, courtesy of Real Simple's Easy Delicious Meals special issue. White plate part of my original every day dishes set when I got married, Sears Federalist, if I'm not mistaken.

Why #8? Well this is the 8th day my kitchen table has been laundry free. My family is shocked and falling into the routine of looking for their clean clothes in their rooms. No more half asleep staggering into the kitchen searching for jeans or t-shirts or work clothes, no more drips of water creating a trail from the bathroom to the kitchen in search of underwear. We are almost a normal family.

The spousal unit wants to know when the Mothership will be beaming the real Missy home. (Yes if you're my friend on Facebook you've heard that one before but it's no less true.)


Why #27? Well that's how many quilt blocks I pieced over the weekend. Yes, it's true, and I would say that I was channeling Kwilty Kim but my piecing is quite naieve compared to the quilt tops she makes so I'll just say I pieced in the spirit of Kim.

These blocks were pieced courtesy of Stephen King. I wanted to listen to my book and when the sewing machine was humming no one talked to me, I could plug up my ears and disappear to the Dome in Maine and before I knew it I had pieced all the little squares I cut out so many months ago. Not all my corners matched, but in my defense more seams lined up than didn't, and I'm quite proud of that accomplishment. I ripped back a few blocks and resewed and others that weren't too far off the mark, I left as they were.

This quilt top is handmade, it's homemade, and well it's going to look it. It's taken me a very long time let go of my desire to piece perfect quilt tops. That's what was taking the joy out of the process for me. If it wasn't perfect it wasn't worth doing. Don't get me wrong, I don't want tacky ass quilt tops but at the same time I want to enjoy what I'm doing and how many people are going to look at my quilt top on my bed and say "OMFG did you see that five of those blocks had seams that didn't quite meet up?" Yeah, I don't think anyone will notice but me. Although if I'm honest there are two blocks that are probably not so good but still it's not that noticeable unless you are looking for flaws and if you are looking at my quilt on my bed and wanting to see flaws, well you will be rewarded.

So this is where I've been the last few days, virtually under the dome in Maine, physically in front of my sewing machine or stove depending on the time of day, and mentally in a very good place in regards to the never ending laundry.

I think I'm seriously going to shoot for 365 days of no laundry on my kitchen table in 2010. I think that is one goal that is seriously doable and this is from someone who hasn't seen the top of her kitchen table since last Thanksgiving.

Ye've Plundered My Heart(with apologies to Sue Hillis)

On Sunday I started cutting out all the different red fabrics I've been gathering up for the past year or so, one fat 1/4 here, one fat 1/4 there and I ended up with a pile of 4 inch squares and some 4 1/2 or 5 inch strips. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do with the strips. I'm thinking maybe a pillow or two. Or if I don't have enough squares I can cut them up for more. Yes I'm aware that some of the reds clash, I was just buying the odd red fat 1/4 not really paying attention to the reds actually matching, if they don't work in this quilt I'll find another use for them, really. The fabric will not go to waste! Once my wrist feels a little better after the hours of rotary cutting I'll tackle my white fabrics. I have some skull and cross bone fabrics in red, black and gray and the intention was to sneak the odd block in on the quilt, hence the quilt name, "Ye've Plundered My Heart" totally ripped off from the Sue Hillis cross stitch design of the same name. I may still add one sneaky skull block just to add some quirkiness to the top but I'm thinking that the skull and cross bone fabrics might be good for the back of the quilt. I can pick up more between now and when I get to that point so I might just have a patchwork work back of assorted skulls. Yeah, I'm 12, OK.

In the cross stitch department I started The Primitive Needle's Salem Remembered:

And from the Island of UFOs I picked up Sonne Spotte. Sorry the picture isn't any better. Next time I'll just focus on the area of stitching I'm focused on.

That's it from here. Next time maybe a quilt top, or not!

A Scattering of Projects

This post is completely random. Here is the beginnings of Jane Atkinson:


Here is a skirt I made over the summer, the waist band was a quickie so I could wear it out one night to hang out with some friends who were in town. Note to self--remember to always add a few inches to the back because babe you got one big butt. The hike up factor was a pain. I have a long way to go before I should actually consider wearing something I've made. But it worked out ok and my top covered the unfinished waistband. I am wishing now I had bought the patchwork fabric I saw at JoAnn's in August, would have made a great fall skirt in this simple pattern. Even my big butt would have been cute in it.

Here's my attempt at the buttonhole stitch in Blackbird Designs Beneath the Sunlit Sky. It's not properly executed and we all know what Nina Garcia says about execution but honestly, I was over the stupid stitch and just made it up.

Here are some strips for a completely winged table runner. The fabric was purchased at a yard sale, the yellow I'm pretty sure was at one time a sheet, the green some kind of decorator fabric. Kind of funky but hey so am I:

New kitchen bling:

Scored three of these skillets at TJ Maxx. I was in desperate need of new cookware and these were just too fun not to buy and they were cheap too!

A few years ago, the middle DS was whining about being bored. I told him to find something to do, he was obviously hungry too and created this painting of a pizza on a Pizza Hut pizza box. I love it and want to frame it.

What does one do when her feet are cold? Unravel the Sophie bag and crochet some slippers. I lost the pattern to the Sophie bag and it's no longer online as far as I can tell. It was a freebie I think.

And the current candy addiction, why Hershey's Hot Cocoa Kisses:

Thanks Y'all!

Thank you for all the notes and emails about my dad. They were all appreciated more than you know.



If you read my friend Sharon's Blog this little biscornu will look familiar. I went to my mailbox one day last week and found the frogs. I am deeply in love with these guys. They have beads on their toes. Frogs with bling. Sharon ROCKS! I am so honored to be the recipient of these guys. Thanks Sharon--for so many things but most of all for being my friend.



Here's the back:

It's overcast here, of course I post no pictures for ages and the first day we get rain I decide it's the perfect time for a photo shoot. The spousal unit is probably correct that I really don't need a Hasselblad camera. I'm kind of obsessing over one right now. Ashton Kutchner humping Nikon has really put me off wanting a D80 Nikon now. I know I'm weird.

Some stitching has been going on:

Above you see part of page 10 and part of page 11 of HAED Dark Waters based on the artwork of Selena Fenech. And below you see how the table looked right behind the stitching. Crystal will not move and she hisses when you try to move her yourself. I left her alone and just propped the Q-snaps on the cat. Whatever works right?

Chick With No Skilz

That would be me. I thought zigzaging around some wave borders for my Just Beachy quilt would be easy. Wrong. Even going S-L-O-W I messed it up in some spots. I need a little bit more control and some practice.

My library has started getting in books on Playaway. They are so freakin' cool. It's the convenience of an iPod without spending time loading the material on the computer and then loading it up on the iPod. I price checked these on Amazon and they are only a little more than a book on CD.

Haven't had a picture of my guys on here lately. Here they are at the hotel where my SILS were staying a few weeks ago. The youngest is refusing to cut his hair. I'm letting it go. Picking my battles. He keeps it clean so we'll see how long he can suffer with the Fabio look.

BTW-I conducted a taste test, McD's iced coffees vs. Burger King. If a Starbucks Frappe is no longer in the budget go with the Mocha Joe at Burger King. The McD's are awful. JMHO of course. But the Mocha Joe has a really rich taste and I've tried several at McD's different times of the day, different McD's and they all taste watery and why don't they have a mocha flavor? Vanilla, Hazelnut and Coffee are the choices around here. Don't they know people love mocha?

Hard Core

There are times when chocolate cake for breakfast is the only reason to get out of bed:

The craziness of the past week just dissolves into a gooey chocolate faint, faded, just on the tip of your tongue memory. The best place to hide the crazy:

One version of the recipe for the Texas Sheet Cake can be found here:

The Pioneer Woman Cooks!: The Best Chocolate Sheet Cake. Ever.

This cake has been a family favorite for years and it's truly the best chocolate cake ever!

Monday, a week ago, I got some bad family news. The phone call that my dad was in ICU. Prognosis was not good. (He's home now, so things weren't as bad as everyone thought). In the mailbox I found a package:

Inside was this very wicked cool pincushion from Kwilty Kim--Threadheads Unite! Does she rock or what? It really brightened a very dark couple of days. Thanks Kim, I am so honored! By the way Happy Birthday!

The new pincushion will get its maiden voyage on the Dresden Plate quilt I plan to start piecing pretty soon from the assorted fabrics you see below.

Here's my progress as of today on Blackbird Designs Beneath the Sunlit Sky:

I'm waiting on GAST Antique Rose and Grape Leaf.


Here's a Sonne Spotte update:

I'm truly, madly, deeply in love with this bit of needlework. It's joy, plain and simple. Yes, I'm a dork but I don't care. I tried to take some close up shots of the splashes of color but the sun was too bright and no matter where I stood my shadow seemed to cover it up. I gave up. Trust me it's unbelieveably beautiful.



This big guy has set up housekeeping in the tree outside my kitchen window. The web runs from tree to ground. Lives in a mansion of a web let me tell ya. There would have been a photo of the web but one morning at 4am while attempting to quietly chase the dog I ran right through it. I guess I'm lucky the critter doesn't now live in my hair. ICK!

It's All About the Tools

My Just Beachy quilt had been progressing nicely until I reached the point a week or so ago where I had to cut out 6 16 1/2" squares. No matter what combination of quilting rulers I used I could not get an exact 16 1/2" square. It seemed to me to be a pretty simple process. Make sure fabric is ironed, check, measure several times with rulers, check, secure ruler to fabric with tape, check, hold ruler extra secure with hand while cutting with rotary cutter, check. Sounds like I should have no problem getting a 16 1/2" square. Yeah, right, this is me we're talking about. Below you see my pile of 16 1/2" squares. How did I finally manage it after a week of throwing fabric all over the place and calling my friend Pam crying about how I'm too stupid to quilt because I can't use a ruler?

Well these guys here were no help. I tried every combination of the three and got every size square but 16 1/2". I tried calling several quilt shops in the area and they didn't have a large quilter's square. I called Keepsake Quilting and they had one in their catalog but I wanted one NOW. For the first time I was truly enjoying the quilting process except for the whole not being able to cut an exact 16 1/2" square. So yesterday while running errands I stopped in at the quilt shop in Ft Walton Beach, I had forgotten they were there. The real reason I turned in the parking lot was to check out the Goodwill for sheers for my kitchen windows, I wanted to play around with some dye and see what I could come up with and didn't want to use new sheers, but I saw the Quilting Shop Around the Block(I think that's the name) so I forget about Goodwill and walk in the store and they ask if they can help me and I said, "What are the odds of you having the largest quilter's square known to man in your shop?" They said, "Well if 20 1/2" is good enough for you very good." I hugged the lady at the quilt shop, seriously. While buying this most amazing of quilter's squares I explained to them that I was not really a quilter, I'm a cross stitcher, I can count but apparently measuring is not one of my skilz. Then the lady asked me if I had thought of folding the fabric and cutting it using my smaller quilter's square? I said, "That would require math wouldn't it?" She said, "Yes." I said, "No, I wanted a big square, no math, just painless cutting." She said, "I think we're going to be friends!"

Above you see my new bestfriend the 20 1/2" Quilter's Square.

While discussing what a good investment this square will be I pointed out that my 12" Quilter's square is close to 20 yrs old and so is my rotary cutter. I bought those when I took my very first quilt class when I was pregnant with the 19 yr old. But I'm not really a quilter so they are like new. Good investment indeed.

Three Songs

Right now three songs bring me a lot of joy when they come on the radio:

Pink-You and Your Hand

Justin Timberlake-Summer Love

Avril Lavigne-Girlfriend

These songs just scream summer to me. They make me want to roll the windows down in the car and sing at the top of my lungs.

Learning Curve

After having the quilt pattern for Karen Stone's Just Beachy for about 10 yrs I finally decided to get over my fear of sewing and give it a try. Here are a few of my blocks:
After looking over the assortment of colors I have been working with, I think I need to add some pink:

I wasn't paying attention when I started wonderundering the first few blocks and forgot about the whole 1/4 inch seam allowance. Fortunately it was only two blocks and not too much of each of the sunrays will be chopped off, like 1/16th of an inch if that much of one ray on each of the two sunbursts. Just enough to annoy me.

The block below is probably my favorite of all so far:

And this is what happens when one is trying to be too matchy-matchy. It doesn't work well for this quilt pattern. Part of the sunrays blend right into the background. I didn't notice it until I cut it out and saw how the blotches were disappearing right into the foundation block.

So far I've used fabric from the stash which is a good thing but now I have to look around for some fabrics in the pink family to add some balance. The only pinks have in the stash are calicoes. I thought I might have a pink polkadot that might blend in but no such luck.

I can't believe I put off trying to make this quilt for so long. I get so focused on what I don't know how to do and sewing scares me because I'm not that good at it all.

I'm always shocked when people tell me they don't cross stitch because it's so tedious. I find sewing very tedious. With cross stitch as long as I can count and pay attention to the chart it's not that tedious, of course a TW project can get overwhelming and I have to be in a TW mood to work on one of her designs but overall I find cross stitch relaxing. Sewing on the other hand, it's so precise. Everything has to be exactly the right dimensions or you and your project are screwed! Makes me so nervous.

Today is the youngest DS graduation from 5th grade. My baby will be in middle school next year. I can't believe it.

Something For Everybody

Here's the current state of Midsummer Night Designs Monkey Sampler: I tried taking the picture from a weird angle, you know to add interest to the shot? I think I really seriously need to read some books on photography because I so keep getting stuff wrong!

Here's one of the over 1 monkeys. How cute is he? The fabrics below are for this quilt-
Just Beachy Karen Stone:

I bought the pattern about 9 yrs ago. I decided to dig through the fabric bin and see if I had any that might work and I think this is a good start. I think I left one out, I had another light blue batik. The fabric to the far left really doesn't work at this time but I'm hoping to find a few fabrics to coordinate with it because I have a lot of it and I like it.

Remember this tree?

Yesterday we said good-bye to it thanks to our friend Steve who offered to take it down for us before it fell on a kid. Is he a good guy or what?

Steve was very patient with us when we asked dumb questions like, "If you have to chop it down from the back why are you notching it on the front?" The answer: So you can control where it falls and it doesn't hit the house. Good thing we didn't try to just figure it out ourselves or we're pretty sure we'd have a tree on our house and the oldest son would now have a skylight.

Yes it was one honkin' big pine tree.

The front yard sure looks empty now doesn't it? We're trying to decide what kind of tree to plant to replace it. Yes, our grass is dead. Two years of drought isn't a good thing for the grass. Our neighbors have been working hard to have a green yard and so far their's still looks a lot like ours. We tried grass seed and it's not growing. The fact our front yard is the neighborhood football field doesn't help.

Sue the Spousal Unit would love to live in No Cal. He's a huge Oakland Raiders fan. We've considered moving out there on several occaisions and then realize that five people living in a car might get kind of crowded! He's been out there several times for games and every time he gets home he starts planning a move.

Did you all hear about Laurie's book? Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The Tr

Head over there and show her the love! Can't wait to get a copy of this.

And yes, Earth Day was a few days ago, but hey, Sheryl Crow has some interesting tips on how to save the earth. Can you spare a square? How about a dinner sleeve instead of a paper napkin or better yet, how about the snot sleeve for the cold season, who needs tissue? I'm not making this up, read it for yourself. I find it interesting she's all about saving the earth but her song is the music on a commercial for a car that I don't believe is a hybrid. I could be wrong about that, need to investigate. I love Sheryl Crow but seriously, one square of toilet paper? No way!