Fabric Sorting

I was very randomly pulling out the 2" squares to be pieced, but as you can see, I kept finding more and more whites and off-whites that should have been pieced into the center. So I stopped and did what I logically should have done from the get-go - I started sorting my squares by value (since when have I ever done things logically?) Here are some of the medium value purples, laid out on the piano bench, waiting to be sorted by value. Quite a challenge, huh?

Work in Progress

Whenever we go to visit family, or someplace where I might have long periods without distraction, I take some hand piecing along. I had been taking 9-patch block kits to complete for the Rocket Quilters guild, but then I realized I had plenty of my own projects to work on. Here are the approximately 14 rows of my Year 2000 quilt done so far and mentioned in a previous blog.

Sam's Club

Last night we went grocery shopping at Sam's Club. Since we hadn't been in many months, we had to take a complete tour of the store, from electronics to automotive. You never know what you'll find at Sam's, and that's why I love it.

I've always purchased certain scrapbooking supplies there: gel pens, photo paper, inks, etc. Now they have real scrapbooking items - sets with paper and embellishments, carrier bags with goodies to go - but the real temptation was a huge chunk of printed cardstock. 320 sheets for $19.95! What a steal, right? Pedro kept saying, "How much paper do you already have?" over and over while my eyes glazed and I started to salivate. In the end, I put it back, after calculating that there were probably 16 sheets of each same design. However.....if three friends and I each put in 5 bucks, we would each get four sheets apiece, which are reversible, so that makes two sheets of each design, which is just perfect.....

Oh, how devious is the paper collector's mind!

Ruellia

On the first of June, Cheo (my 16 year old son), borrowed my camera and took shots of about every green or flowering thing in our yard. I've been scrapbooking his photos a few at a time and ran out of creative ideas for pages with plants on them. Here's one that's a blow up of our favorite flowering weed - ruellia or Mexican petunia.

Virtual Sunflowers

Idea Generator (Just for Fun)

Need an idea. Check out this Automatic Idea Generator.
http://www.tdbspecialprojects.com/

Me

This is me about three inches of hair ago. I now have a good three inches of white and brown hair growth that I'm working on. No photos for a while, please!

I begin

I am anonymous here in blog world and expect it will take some time for my blog to 'matter'. I visited the blog of a quilting world acquaintance - http://www.pamelamostek.com/ - and was blown away by the ease of navigation of her site, her blog, and her quilts. I am inspired.

I've finally gotten around (seven years after the fact) to begin piecing on my Year 2000 quilt. It is simple - 2000 two-inch squares cut from 2000 different fabrics. I humbly, and somewhat abashedly, note that those 2000 squares do not represent the entirety of my fabric 'collection'. Such is the life of a fabric collector.

My plan for the quilt, such that it is, is to start from the center with the white-on-white fabrics, and work outward, adding rows of colors sorted by value as I work outward. Of course, it's already veered away from the original plan as I find squares that should have been pieced in earlier rows. So, it's more like adding chunks of color value, rather than rows. The one consistent (I hope) feature will be a diagonal row of true black-and-white prints, beginning with mostly white and transitioning to all black.

In my scrapbook life, I'm doing a little bit of virtual, a little bit of hands-on and loving every minute of it. As soon as I figure out how to use this blog, I'll post my latest. By the way, did you know that scrapbooking is not considered a verb by Blogspot's spell checker?! Someone needs to get on the ball!