Collection Addiction

After a frenzy of catching up on work, attending meetings, hosting gatherings and cleaning up, I took an hour last night to go upstairs and start cleaning my sewing room. The piles had gotten so bad that I had to take giant steps over them to get to my sewing machine, and the surface of my cutting table was no longer visible. My cleaning method is to put things neatly into boxes and bins to get them out of the way, and then go back through the boxes after I have cleared space for the contents.

I started folding and placing my recent fabric and notion purchases in a large box. The stack just kept growing and growing. I again have more fabric than I have a place to put it. My husband had pointed out to me, upon arrival of yet another carton of fabric by UPS yesterday, that I had told him I would stop buying 'stuff'. I immediately became defensive and made an excuse about having ordered sometime back and I lied about the contents of the box.

Gentle reader, I have fallen back into my Collection Addiction. Look at this quote from eHow.com: "A person will become irritable or defensive when a family member or friend wants to discuss a perceived addictive behavior." I've descended into full-blown addictive behavior.

Those fellow addicts will recognize one of the hallmark symptoms of addiction behavior: "shame for what they're doing and fear of the addiction being taken from them can force people to hide their addiction from friends and family." I'm coming clean on the record. My name is Kim and I'm addicted to collecting fabric.

100% Quilty

The above picture looks kind of quilty, doesn't it? It's the top layer of my ornament box after putting away my Christmas ornaments. I've used only purple ornaments for some years now. The purples shade from blue-violet to violet-red. This year I decided to widen the spectrum a little bit and add red, which you see represented in the top right corner with a red glitter ball. And, no, I'm not a member of the Red Hat Society.

Speaking of quilty, one of the things I love about making quilts and being a member of a quilt guild is how very supportive the world of quiltmaking is. I started thinking on this topic after having lunch today with my husband. We were listening to a political news story and arguing about the validity of the acts discussed. While not at polar opposites politically, we disagree about certain things. I was adamant in telling him that he was wrong and I was right. I am 100%, positively, absolutely sure of my rightness. As is he.

But in the world of quiltmaking, we all agree that there is no 100%, positively, absolutely right way to make a quilt. You can have a perfect quarter-inch seam or your personal quarter inch. You can hand-quilt, machine-quilt, tie, tack, button or fuse your quilts. You can use cotton, wool, polyester, bamboo, or silk batting, or no batting at all. You can sew twigs between two layers of plastic wrap and call it an art quilt if you so desire. And you are not wrong.

The world of quilting, at least in my guild, is all-encompassing, accepting and forgiving. We love your very first yarn-tied one-patch quilt and we love the blue-ribbon, award-winning, 3000 hours of hand stitching, whole-cloth quilt. We applaud your choice of muddy browns and grays and taupes and we cheer your rainbow in-your-face colors, too. We are just happy that you, too, decided to join us on our quilting venture. It's so good to have you.

Happy quilting, everybody.

All Kitted Out

I received the Winter 2010 Connecting Threads catalog in the mail yesterday. Browsing through the catalog and promising myself that I'm 'just looking', I'm struck by how popular complete quilt kits seem to be. When, and if, I buy a quilt kit that includes both pattern and the matching fabrics to complete the top, it's solely because I can't get those fabrics any other way. To me, understanding the mind of the quilter who enjoys putting together quilt kits is comparable to understanding the mind of the male species.

Don't misunderstand me - I love kit quilts. Just look at the two gorgeous kit quilts shown above (the left one is from Connecting Threads, the one on the right from EverythingQuilts.com) . My mom sent my sister a quilt for Christmas - one that was made by my great aunt Ida Belle Combs - and it is a rather well known iris applique pattern that was sold in kits during the 30s and 40s. I've put together lots of Block of the Month kits while I was teaching quilting, but somehow those blocks never actually made it into a quilt - no surprise there.

So what do I personally have against kitted quilts? I think it goes back a knee jerk, rebellious reaction to years of being a 'good girl' and doing what I was told, seeking everyone's approval. I'm not exactly tearing it up out here with my head-banging, hard-rockin' ways, but I certainly do resist being told what to do, and that includes in my quilting.

For example, for a Christmas gift exchange with my mini-group friends, I decided to use Martha Stewart's pattern for 'homegrown' tomato pincushions. I glanced through the pattern instructions, then ignored them and went my own way. I ignored the fact that you needed to cut the fabric on the bias, that you first needed to sew a tube before hand-stitching the bottom closed, and ignored the suggestion to use cotton batting. Luckily I had only cut out 1 of the 12 I had planned to make.

Back to the beginning - re-cut the fabric (on the bias), stitch one side only, turn, baste, stuff and close. The 'test' model I ended up keeping. I had stuffed it full of polyester fleece scraps and it's so hard you can barely poke a pin in it. Who knew polyester fleece was such tough stuff?

So my hard-headed mulishness got me one rock hard pincushion as a souvenir. Then my quick learning resulted in eleven lovely cushy 'homegrown' tomatoes to share with my friends. Would I ever make a kit quilt by following the instructions to the letter? Well, it's not likely. Would I appreciate it if someone made me a quilt from a kit? Oh, you betcha.

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen!

I finished a quilt! I finished a quilt! So what, you say? Well, it's been years since I actually completed a quilt project that wasn't small enough to hide in my purse. I had called myself Queen of the UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) but I now will have to relinquish the crown. Maybe now I'll call myself Queen of Everything (acknowledgment to Mary Engelbreit here.

When my mom offered to ship gifts to my sister and nephew if I had them ready by today, I thought about going shopping. However, I was inspired by my friend and neighbor who is making all of her Christmas gifts and getting them all finished prior to having surgery on the 17th. She inspires me often. So I dived into the crate of UFOs and came up with a sofa-sized one-block quilt top I made as sample for a class I taught years ago. It still needed borders, quilting and binding, but I was sure I could knock that out in a few hours.

Oh, how the proud are humbled. I managed to make the quilting more complicated than necessary by doing in-the-ditch quilting, 1/4 inch outline quilting and decorative stitching. Then, trying a time saving tip using white glue to baste together binding, I unintentionally used 'fusible' glue, making permanently fused stiff seams in my binding. I can promise you they'll never un-sew! I ended up spending about 12 hours total finishing this quilt.

On the plus side, I was lucky to have enough fabric for the borders in my unsold fat-quarter stash. And I got creative in my binding fabrics by using 2 1/2" wide strips from my recently cut strip stash. Rather than sew on a label on the back, I inked a Christmas greeting with a Micron .03 pen right on the front of the quilt. It's barely noticeable within the 1/4 inch outline quilting.

I'm so happy to have this project finished. It lays flat (mostly) and came out square (relatively) without my trying to hard. And the fleece fabric quilts beautifully, showing the quilting on the back in relief.

While searching for an image to use for Queen of UFOs, I encountered a lovely blog from a quilter from the Netherlands who makes the extra special effort to write in English. Brava for her! Take a look at her wonderful projects at Dutch Blue.

P.S. I promise to post a picture soon. I'm waiting for the sunlight to move across the living room floor so that I can take a picture without a bright spot in the middle.

Attention, please!

May I have your attention for an important annoucement! (drumroll please)...........
My scrap bin is EMPTY!

The cleaning-out process was inspired by my quilt buddy Cat and her daughter Beth who had come over to peruse the bin for scrap quilts they were making. Watching them have such fun going through the goodies reminded me of how much fun it was to collect all those scraps. So I decided to start going through them myself and breaking them down into workable parts.

I cut 10" and 9" squares out first for big block quilts. After that, I cut one each of a 5" and/or 6" square for my charm square collections. Then, from longer pieces, I cut strips 2 1/2" wide (jelly rolls) down to 1" wide. Narrower strips and selvages got thrown into a ziploc bag. All others scraps were set aside to die cut into 4" and 2" squares or equilateral triangles.

As I dug through the box, it was great fun to remember where the fabrics came from. "Ah, here's Cheo's Spiderman shorts." "These are left from the first block-of-the-month class that I taught with my friend Patti at Hancocks." "These are from the bag of scraps that I won at our guild's Chinese Auction." "Here's the leftovers from Laurel's Crazy Strip class." "Here's a big chunk from that pink, blue & purple Western shirt I bought for Pedro that he wouldn't wear." and "These are all from the Dollar Bag Day at the thrift shop."

One of the greatest pleasures of a scrap quilt or a charm quilt are just these; touching the fabrics and recalling the special memories that go along with each piece. It may be nothing more than, "Oh, this was a great deal at the quilt shop." or "I bought this on that Road Trip to Tampa." These are good memories to be sure; to me the even more special are "This hot pink print is from the dress I was wearing the first time I felt my baby Cheo move inside me" and "This Looney Tunes print is from the shorts and vest outfit Cheo wore on his first day of first grade."

Now my 32 gallon scrap box is empty, waiting to be filled with fresh new fabric or UFOs or orphaned blocks - who knows. I've enjoyed the pleasure of all the memories passing under my ruler and rotary cutter as they transformed into the building blocks of new projects. I look forward to the new memories yet to be formed.

Queen of UFOs

Let me be honest. I am the Queen of the UFOs. UFO (in quilt speak) stands for UnFinished Objects, just so you don't think I believe in extra-terrestrial aliens abducting people while they sleep.

In preparation for the garage sale, I pulled out three FULL 30 gallon bins from under my cutting table. Full of what, you might wonder? Full of UFOs, all in various stages of completion. Some projects consist of nothing more than folded fabric tied together with a ribbon, with a sticky note stuck on reminding me which project I have (had) planned for that particular bunch. Some of them actually reached the cutting stage; I have lovely stacks of squares, triangles or strips, waiting to be pieced together. Some of these actually have the instructions or book with them, which gives a greater clue as to their final composition.

What UFO collection would be complete without Orphaned Blocks? These are those completed pieced or appliqued blocks, lovely to look at, well constructed of course, but without a family. In other words, there's not enough of them to complete a quilt. Most of these come from classes I taught, classes I took and techniques I tried. I also have a 4" high stack of crazy-pieced blocks on 8 1/2 x 11 paper backing. Some of these orphans have recently found an adoptive home with the charitable quilt-making arm of my local quilt guild. I'm sure they'll be happier there than in my plastic bins.

Next, we get to the almost completed quilt tops - these are blocks put together with other blocks, but not quite ready for finish quilting. Some lack a border or have turned out to be too small or too large in some way. One small square quilt might be too big for a baby quilt, but not big enough for a twin sized bed. Some unfinished tops once had a border, but my color tastes changed and I ripped off the border with plans to choose something different and new. And there are also quilt tops that I inherited or purchased that I just don't love anymore.

Lastly, we have completed tops that are ready for quilting. Here's where I am the queen. I have a character flaw that resists finishing anything. I don't suppose that's news to anyone. I must be getting famous for being flaky. This is been bothering me a lot lately, like at the depths of my soul. Look at some of my older posts with projects that are started and ask me where are the pictures of the completed quilts. Take a guess.

You know, I started out writing this to put a humorous twist on my UFO's but the thing is, I'm not laughing anymore. I've got some serious thinking to do about this. I'll get back to you later.

Garage Sale Update

Once again, I covered our pool table with boxes of fat quarters, set up two folding tables and put out additional odds and ends, acid-free papers, rubber stamps, etc. I advertised on Craigs List and was fortunate enough to get a few quilters to come, which made up the largest part of my sales.

All in all, it was a lovely day for a garage sale. The temperature started out in the mid-70s, and gradually worked up to the mid-80s by the time I shut the garage door at 1:00 p.m. sharp. Traffic was a little slow, as the 1st weekend of November is the busiest garage sale weekend of the year around year and our neighborhood was competing with at least a dozen others holding subdivision-wide sales.

My next-door neighbor traded me a box of paperback books in exchange for fabric, so I grabbed an Alex Cross murder mystery and enjoyed a leisurely stretch on the sofa in the garage during breaks between customers. I still have lots of fabric to get rid of, so it's back to Ebay, 20 fat quarters at a time.

48 (Again)

Tomorrow is my birthday and I will be 48. Here's the weird thing - I've been telling people I'm 48 for months now, if not the whole year. Why? I can't really figure it out. Is it because 48 is a nice round number? Was 47 not good enough? Am I in a hurry to qualify for senior shopping days or a membership in AARP? Or is it because my mind is slipping and peri-menopause has me as scatterbrained as Gracie Allen? There are women older and wiser than I that tell me this mind-slippage will pass once I finish menopause. Looking at my elder female family members, I'm in some doubt about this.

I received a new book in the mail today. It's a thin volume, and I usually like a little more meat to my quilting books, but has everything one would want to know about easy cutting and piecing of freehand curves and numerous well-illustrated examples from the simplest 4-patch blocks to a more challenging fiber art version. I also like the suggestions on quilting designs and concise instructions for binding with mitered corners. There are no corners cut with this book. Now, if I can ever get finished preparing for this Saturday's garage sale, I can actually get some quilting done.

Yikes!

How did that happen - almost three weeks without a blog entry? I also haven't been reading many blogs or checking my email or the daily deals on Amazon.com or Woot.com, etc., etc. Why not?

Well, I had a last push to get everything ready for the Big Fabric Sale. A week ago Friday, everyone from our local quilter's guild was invited over to partake of the great deals on fat quarters from my selection. Many did come and, although the afternoon was unseasonably warm in my garage, shopped a good deal. I was able to condense the collection a fair amount and add some cash to my rainy-day fund, but still have many, many fat quarters left to sell. That means it's back to Ebay. I may try and sell more during our neighborhood garage sale on November 8, but since the majority of garage sale shoppers are not quilters, I don't expect too much turnover then.

I've also been super busy at work - actually working! By that I mean not playing, and catching everything up, going over the books to clean them up and get ready for year end, catch up on collecting monies owed and try to find ways to cut expenses. The business is getting hit hard by the recession, just squeaking by, and the squeaking would be a little easier if we could cut out some of the overhead. I offered to cut my hours, but nobody took me up on my offer!

Did I mention how much I love my Hello Kitty purse, shown at the right? It doesn't look like a Hello Kitty purse, but it is and I just love it! Here it's draped with a scarf I bought on my very first day in Paris. Apart from water and food, this was the first purchase I made in France. I took this pic after arriving home from the gala 15th birthday party we attended for my niece Yuriana where I wore my scarf and carried my purse for the first time.

Overkill

I spent a good part of this past weekend up in my sewing room. I sorted, cut, folded, filed and trashed. I brought down a stack of boxes full of folded fat quarters for the garage sale. By Sunday morning, I had come to the end of all the fabric sorting and had started organzing and packing up the keepers. What a great sense of accomplishment! I could even see the top of my cutting table for the first time in six months.

Newly motivated, I decided to tackle the stacks of plastic storage bins under the cutting table. As way of explanation, my cutting table fits into an alcove in the corner of my sewing room and is bracketed to the wall on three sides, with space for storage underneath. Normally, I keep unfinished projects, batting, and scraps in bins under there.

About six months ago, we re-carpeted my sewing room and the upstairs landing. While the re-carpeting was going on, the entire contents of my sewing room were shoved into the boys' bedroom, mostly on Petie's side of the room. Once the carpeting was finished, Petie could not wait to get my stuff out of his room and happily began pushing boxes and bins out of his room and back into mine. He even pushed bins back under the cutting table. What a sweet boy!

Now that's the background on this story. With my fresh zeal and readiness to tackle the bins under the cutting table, I started pulling them out. Then I see it. Oh no, it can't be. How could? When? What the....? Behind the large bins in front, there lay in wait more fabric. Not just a little more, but yards and yards and yards of fabric. And most of it purple! How could I have this much fabric, out of sight and forgotten, and not realize it was missing! We're not talking about a box of fat quarters here, we're talking two stacks 2 feet tall of flat-folded cotton fabric, no piece larger than 2 yards. And all this fabric needs to be sorted, cut, folded and packed.

I'm discouraged. (Big sigh.)

Keep Digging

I've decided to commit to a date to have my sewing room cleaned out and all my extra fabric ready for sale. However, I haven't told anyone of the date or published the date, so I've given myself some room to weasel out of it up until now. For the first time in print (drumroll, please) - Friday, October 17th.

I worked most of the weekend last night cutting, folding, stacking and sorting and managed to clear off all of one shelf. It's so discouraging. The only consolation is having the portable DVD player with me so I can watch movies while I work. And yes, I do get things done while I'm watching.

This weekend I saw the last 4 episodes of Season 1 of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer; Pretty Persuasion (a very, very dark and pessimistic movie which I didn't care for although I could tell it was well made, well-acted, blah, blah, blah); and Murderous Intent (originally released as Like Minds, which is a much better title). At least Buffy is optimistic, if a little silly. The other two movies were depressing. Hmmm, no wonder I'm in a pessimistic mood. Neither of the two movies will go into my "worth watching again" collection.

Sometimes I forget that I have kept back at least a 1/4 yards of each fabric for myself and I want to just put all the boxes back on the shelves and keep them. All the folded fabrics look so pretty lined up neatly in their boxes, folded to the exact same size and sorted by color. I love sorting by color. It soothes me.

Charm Squares

What's even better than new fabric? New fabric for FREE! Well, kinda sorta.

This morning was our monthly guild meeting (Rocket Quilters, Cocoa, Florida) and each month we swap 6" charm squares. This month's theme was Asian/Oriental fabrics. I had a yard of dark teal and gold Japanese-style print by Alexander Henry. The name on the selvage is "KOTOBUKI" which means Congratulations! The manufacture date on the fabric is 1997, so it's been sitting on my shelf for 10 years or more - time to get that baby circulated.

So, I cut 3/4 yard of my Kotobuki fabric into 6" squares and took them in to trade. I came home with all new (to me) 6" squares in a variety of colors and patterns and styles. So much fun! I also traded out 6 fat quarters from my "to sell" selection and brought home 'new' fat quarters. So much for getting rid of fabric.

I haven't posted any e-bay auctions for awhile. I want to get all the rest of the fabric cut up first, and then grouped by color. It will make it a lot easier to put together fat quarter bunces. Right now it's all piled willy-nilly in odds-and-ends boxes in the loft outside my sewing room.

To Dream....

the impossible dream! We all had dreams when we were young. When I was in first grade, I wanted to be a writer. Only I didn't call it that; I said I wanted to be an "author." I even wrote two little illustrated books that are in my mom's custody.

At some point in high school, I considered becoming a psychologist/psychiatrist until I found out medical school and clinical work was involved, so the heck with that. Then in the 70s I discovered the wonderful textile designs of Vera Neumann and Marimekko and Peter Max. I decided I wanted to be a textile designer when I "grew up."

Well, life happens, I dropped out of Fine Arts college and didn't become a textile designer. Buying other's fabric designs, cutting them up and piecing them back together has been my creative outlet. I know I can print small pieces of my own designs, but I've always found printing on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of computer-printable fabric somewhat disappointing.

But now there's the possibility for me - or you or anyone - to create and print 100% cotton fabric yardage of my very own design. A small company called Spoonflower now does just that - in beautiful color on Kona cotton. If you check out their YouTube videos here, you can see all the different designs that they've printed for their customers. Yeah, some of them will have you thinking that the designers had a little too much time and money on their hands, but to each his own.

So, the question is, do I or don't I.

Pink and Black on a Gray Day

Although the local news media and weather reporters are just aching for a nice, juicy hurricane to report, all they've gotten for the past four years are tropical storms and depressions. Lovely Tropical Storm Fay has decided to park herself right over our county and just sit here and drip rain on us for a few days.

So, what's better on a rainy, dreary day than some bright, new fabric. Yesterday the Fedex guy brought me my order from Hancock's of Paducah. The new fabrics for my Diamond challege quilt are spread out above in all their pink and black glory. Normally, I hate cutting into new fabric, but I can't wait with these babies.

Back To School

Even though they pushed the start of the school year back about 10 days, it still seems crazy to be sending Cheo back to school in August. School starts on Monday. Yesterday we went to registration, and tonight we have to go to a meeting about Cambridge AICE diploma qualification. The only good thing about that is I'll miss weigh-in at TOPS this week.

Why is that a good thing? I weighed this morning, and am at the same weight as last week. Add the days food and water consumption, and I will have gained weight by weigh-in at 6:30 p.m. Although I wouldn't have deliberately skipped a meeting, this gives me a chance to get back in the groove. Last nights Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese did not help me a bit. All-in-all, I'm eating better and less, so that's a plus.

I posted a few more auctions on e-bay today. All the other auctions had completed, although not all are paid and shipped. I shipped out three auctions today. I'm still cutting up fabric yardage into fat quarters and it's finally beginning to look like there's an end in sight. I plan on having a big garage sale in September, inviting quilt guild members for a preview sale, and opening to the public for Saturday.

A Real Challenge

I've returned to our local quilting guild after an absence of over a year. In anticipation of the guild's 5 year anniversary luncheon in October, a quilt challenge was issued. In this type of challenge, you purchase a kit that gives your specific parameters that the finished quilt must meet. As you can see above, I received an 8" square of fabric with the instructions to make a quilt no larger than 30" on a side, with a visible amount of the challenge fabric and at least two 'diamonds'.

I took the square with me to the local quilt shop, thinking to find black and white stripes, but instead found a lovely pink, black and white stripe. That's my inspiration. And since I love making 6 pointed stars out of 60 degree 'diamonds', my quilt idea is hatching. Here's my first completed diamond - it's about 8" across.

OMG, I just found the most amazing designer - her collection for Moda fabrics is fabulous. I am in love (in a very non-sexual way, of course)! Check out her blog at http://tulapink.com and see what I mean.

Now What?!?

Well, the e-bay auction has been moving along smoothly. I've shipped out 4 twenty-packs of fat quarters, which were lovely to look at and fun to put together.

Now, I have a repeat customer and she wants to combine shipping, and I don't know how! My buddy, Angela, from next door is an e-bay whiz and could surely help me out, but is on a two-week vacation. It would be rude to interrupt her trip because I'm too technologically challenged (read lazy) to go on e-bay and figure out how to do this. So I will give it my best try. Here are some of the pretty combinations I'm selling.

The market is up!

Fabulous news - one of my e-bay auctions is over $10.00 and one is almost there. I'm so happy! I'm ready to pull together more 20-packs and post more auctions.

Cutting Back

For a little over a week, I've been going through my fabric stash and thinning it out. I did a lot of thinking about who I am as a quilter and how I quilt and came to a few conclusions. In short, I love a little bit of lots of fabric. I decided to keep just one fat quarter of each fabric I have and sell or donate all the rest. The picture above shows a tiny portion of the fabric I'm getting rid of.

Here is a minuscule portion of what I'm keeping.

Originally, I wanted to give it all away. This agrees with my personal abundance philosophy AND I dread the idea of doing either a garage sale or selling on Ebay or, well, whatever. But Pedro encouraged me (very strongly) to try selling it to attempt to recover some of the cost. So, that's where I am. My first sale on Ebay was very, very disappointing, but it's all in how you look at it. I now have $1.25 (minus 8% commission, minus Paypal fees) that I wouldn't if I gave it away.