Christmas Shopping Bag Tute now edited

I fixed the huge pics on the webpage for Christmas Shopping Bag --
anotherpat.com/fabricbagXmas.htm

Tomorrow (Monday) I will be blogging a tip on printing webpages that might help you save some paper.

Jason Quilts – Day Two

Another good day. Jason is now very good at getting the intersecting seams of a Four-Patch to match at the center. He practiced sewing patches at the machine. He said that he likes the “sewing of the seams”. Me, too.

After lunch of turkey sandwiches (what else?), we looked at some more quilting books for ideas.

Because of his school obligations, he didn’t have any time to do sewing at home this week. Nor time to look at quilts in the mags or books or internet. He still didn’t have an idea of what he wanted to do.

In “The Thimbleberries Guide for Weekend Quilters” by Lynnette Jensen, he found two quilts he liked. He liked the center of one quilt and the borders of another. And wondered if he could extend parts of the blocks from the center into the 2nd border! I think we have a quilter!

We took the book to the computer and in EQ6, we combined the components that he liked. He now has his “own design”. He really enjoyed coloring the quilt with the fabrics that he picked out.
I emailed him a line drawing of the quilt from EQ6. He is learning PhotoShop and he wanted to experiment with the line drawing. That should be nice practice.

While I was eating lunch, I was wondering what we were going to do next, seeing as how we had no plan. But, I think that when we talked about what kinds of fabric he liked (country colors) and types of quilt blocks he was drawn to (traditional), I was able to pull down some books that showed what he was interested in. While looking at the photos in the quilt books, we talked about layouts – straight set, diagonal set. And he commented on quilt layouts that he liked or colors that he was interested in.

All new creations are inspired by past observation. The design comes from asking oneself – what if … Jason did the “what if” today. And he came up with a knock-your-socks-off quilt! This is as much an experience for me – as it is for him.

Christmas Shopping Bag Tute

I have great respect for all of you quilting and crafting bloggers out there who write tutorials in their blogs! It sure takes time taking all those pics and then uploading them and having to deal with the quirks of the blog's program.

I got so frustrated yesterday with trying to put up over 30 pics, 5 at a time, and dealing with the white space that grew between pics & text whenever I did another upload of pics. I said nuts to the whole deal & made my tutorial on a webpage. Please excuse some of the big pics on the webpage as they were created to go on a blog page with a link to bigger image. Ahhhh well. I will fix those big pics when I get the chance. FIXED -- Sunday Nov. 30.

Here's the Christmas Shopping Bag, complete with tutorial & Paper Piecing templates.

anotherpat.com/fabricbagXmas.htm

I figured out how to make a "French Seam Squared Bottom" Step 30 in the tute.

If you spot any errors in the tute, please let me know anotherpat@gmail.com and I will correct them.

And, if you make one of these bags, I'd sure like to see a pic!

Don't know if I'll be posting anymore before Thanksgiving, so I'd like to send wishes to y'all for a good Thanksgiving Day. And I hereby decree that all food eaten on Thanksgiving Day is calorie-free! Now, wouldn't that be something to be thankful for!

Jason Quilts - Day One

I had the most delightful day today with the most delightful person - my grandson Jason. About a week ago I got an email from him asking if I’d have the time to teach him how to make a quilt. Would I? I couldn’t get my fingers to type fast enough to let him know how honored I would be to help him learn to quilt. He has always been artistic and very creative and is now taking a Graphic Arts course. He’s 20.

Not knowing what he had in mind, I had some pics of quilts showing different types of quilts and construction. Convergence quilts by Ricky Timms, the “Guy Quilts” from an Electric Quilt clubEQ challenge, Optical Illusion quilts. Showed him some quilts from recent books – “9-Patch Pizzazz” by Judy Sisneros, “Blending Photos with Fabric” by Mary Ellen Kranz & Cheryl Hayes. Wanted to see what struck his eye. We’ll see what he comes up with. He is now aware of how EQ6 can help in the quilt design.

After lunch, we went into the sewing room. He had never cut with a rotary cutter before, so he practiced rotary cutting until he got the feel for it. He had never stitched a line before so I had him sew together those cut up pieces with a 1/4" seam. Then, he chose 2 fabrics, cut them into 3-1/2” squares and sewed them into a 9patch block. His first three match points on the 9patch were “so-so”. The fourth match point was “right on”!

I sent him home with some fabric squares to practice match points. Gave him some mags and a book. Grandpa sent him home with his (Grandpa’s) homemade cookies! We’ll see him next Friday for more. Probably a turkey sandwich lunch, too!

See http://anotherpat.com/98jessq.html the day Jason's sister & I sewed.

Now to go do some more on the tutorial …

Life interrupts

Sometimes life’s interruptions get in the way of plans. I’m hoping for the tutorial to be up soon – hopefully by Monday.

I chatted with a gal while out fabric shopping yesterday and she said that she just got this great idea for a quilt for her daughter and she wanted to make it for Christmas. Yup, she’s a quilter – thrives on the last minute stuff! During the conversation, she said she was having the family over for Thanksgiving dinner and was making table favors for the grandkids. I wonder if she has more hours in the day than I do?

Something coming up!

Hi, I'm working on something that I will be sharing with y'all in a couple of days. I hope to do my first tutorial in my blog. But, first I have to see get all the pics and parts.

Joy from Peg

Every once in a while, my younger sister Peg sends me neat stuff. Here's a link to the latest one she sent -- http://www.thejoymovie.com/ I thought it was a good one. Sit back & relax with that one. It's good for some inspiration.

And, what struck me is that my other younger sister’s name is Joy! Lucky Joy, not everyone has a movie and a boat named after them!

Close to finishing

I’m thread painting on my current project. Getting close to finishing it and details will be posted then. I’m very happy with it and find myself walking by and admiring it!

I had bought the fabric on 9/25, but with interruptions for moving a couple of websites and creating this blog along with learning the stuff you can do with a blog, I haven’t had the chance to work on it as often as I would have liked to. A couple more Lifetime movies and I should be finished. Except maybe for the beading.

Today is Veteran's Day

Take time to remember

Find a cure

My DH saw this post pinned to the wall of the exam room at Doctor's office. I found the pic online. This pic just tears at my heartstrings. They've just got to find a cure for all the little girls (and big girls) in this world.

If you click on the pic, you'll get a bigger image and you'll see that on her shirt it says "Find a cure, before I grow boobs"

Quilting Community

Long ago, in a land far, far away there was a village of communities at America Online. The Quilting Community was one of the best. Its volunteers hosted chat rooms, manned the boards (forums), created projects & BOMs for quilters and put out a great newsletter – the NinePatchNews.

I was part of that community and was webmaster from June 1999 til June 2005 when AOL discontinued the Volunteer Community Leader program. When AOL did that, we no longer had access to any Quilting Community webpages and couldn’t edit any of those webpages, all of which were still online.

Then, on October 31, 2008, AOL stopped hosting all member webpages, after giving us a month’s notice. There were a lot of quilting projects on the Quilting Community webpages and when trying to access them you get a message “… AOL® Hometown has been shut down permanently. We sincerely apologize ...”

As webmaster, I had copies of all those projects saved on my computer. As time allows, I will be putting them online, again, as I get permission from the designers. Here’s the first one – just in time for Christmas – a Tree Skirt designed by my good ‘ole buddy, Tish! http://anotherpat.com/qt/notherpat.com/qt/ This project is tailor-made for beginners. Tish has a knack for writing that makes it easy for beginners to follow and gives them the confidence that they can do it. Experienced quilters will also enjoy her style and her projects. There is also a gallery of a few Tree Skirts that others have done -- http://anotherpat.com/qt/gallery9.htm


There is only 1 project on the list at this time, others will follow.

Blogging and shopping

Have now added some gadgets (widgets). What fun it is to do that kind of stuff. You know, if you have always wanted to have a blog – it’s not that difficult to do. This blog is on blogger.com/. You can have your blog be viewable to everyone or you can have it be private. Or you can have it be private with an option of sharing it with others who are on your list.

What is really nice about blogs is the organizing and the archiving that the blog does -- without any effort from the blogger. And those cute little widgets. All these new words I’m learning …

So, you could journal your stuff and have it private, just to be viewed and accessed by yourself. Once you do this little bit to the blog and then do that little bit to the blog – ya get hooked! And it’s not a bad addiction! I found it has put my writing skills back into practice. Remember how we used to write letters, put a stamp on them and drop them in a mailbox? The best part was getting the letter in your mailbox and then sit down in a quite corner and enjoy the letter that someone took time to write and send just to you. We all had good writing skills then.

I have gone green with my shopping. My house was getting overgrown with plastic bags, so I did some hunting on the Net and made some fabric shopping bags, using features I liked on various bags. I wrote up a webpage on what I did – anotherpat.com/fabricbags.htm

Are you using fabric bags for shopping? Have you made any fabric shopping bags?

It's a lovely day after the election

Yahoo!!! Yahoo! Nor more political ads on the TV! Two years of those political ads is just about 1 year and 10-1/2 months too long.

Finished watching my tape of Sunday nite’s “Army Wives” finale. Can’t the Army just let Joan stay with her baby ‘til she’s done breast feeding? How cruel to separate mom & baby now.

Dollars to donuts, Claudia Joy’s family won’t be going to Belgium any time soon. I can’t see them doing the show without her character in it.

Oh dear, Denise sure picked the wrong kind of guy for herself. He’s too young for her. Seems closer in age to her son.

Didn’t take Major Frank too long to start bed-hopping. Since when does “separation” mean “time to have an affair”? Goes for both Denise & Major Frank.

Oh yeah, I watch “All my Children” at lunchtime!

I await next year’s episodes. Did you know that Lifetime put out 19 episodes of Army Wives this year? That’s a whole lot more that what the networks are putting out now. And a much better show than most of the stuff that the networks are putting out.

Have you made any of those fabric baskets, yet? I found out about them at Pink Penguin’s site -- http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/05/tutorial-fabric-basket.html

Here’s a couple that I have done, without handles. I like the softness of the fabric, rather than the harshness of the wicker baskets I previously had the contents in. I made one little change in the construction. I found that if I cut the lining just 1/2” shorter than the length of the face fabric, the lining laid much tighter to the inside of the basket. For example: Face measures 7-3/4” x 11-1/2”cut the lining 7-3/4” x 11”.

Back as promised!

The turkey at the top of the page is from a panel print I bought at Joann's in 2004. It was a gift to my DD at Thanksgiving to thank her for hosting the big dinner. I still felt I had to stuff a turkey! LOL I had done a kabillion turkey dinners over the years and was so happy to pass the torch to someone else. I found out it was really nice to be a guest at Thanksgiving. Another thing to be thankful for.

I've had a website for a long time at America Online. AOL decided to stop hosting member websites and gave us a few weeks to get outa Dodge. I decided I still wanted a web presence. So, I bit the bullet and bought my own domain -- http://anotherpat.com/ Get it? My 2nd patch of the internet is this blog! I thought that to be very clever ..

My website is hosted by http://bluehost.com/ and I have been very happy with their service. They actually have tech help that answers phones in the USA, not outsourced! I think they're based in Utah. They have been so polite and so very helpful with all of my dumb questions. I'd recommend them to anyone. Got any questions about BlueHost? Ask me -- I'll let you know what I know.

Now, since I've had a website and this blog is a new thingy to me, I don't know how I'm gonna make it flow between the two. So, I am on another adventure. I'm beginning to think that the journeys in life are far more fun than the destinations. I've always loved planning the trip -- sometimes the trip turns out wonderful, sometimes not. But, the planning is always exciting. So begins my journey into blogdom.

This is the oddest sensation -- writing in a blog is not like writing to someone. It's like throwing your thoughts out there in hopes that someone will catch them.

For my first leg of the journey, if you'd like to accept it, I am doing a review. I got the Bendable Bright Light and attached it to my sewing machine. Let me tell you, I am very pleased with the pin-point of light that comes from that little light. It really lights up the needle area when doing thread painting -- which is my newest joy of quilting. I have sewn clothing for many years and loved to make Halloween costumes for the grands when they were young. So, believe me, I have lots of thread to use up. Thread is like beads -- the more you have, the more you want! LOL Yes, I embellish my wallhangings with beads. Let the journey begin ...

Here's a link to my webpage review on the Bendable Bright Light -- http://anotherpat.com/reviews.htm

My 2nd patch of the Internet!

Now what am I going to do with it? Oh yeah, I know! Gonna show some quilting projects that I've done, maybe tell you how I liked (or didn't like) some quilting tools & such. And maybe let you know of a good book or movie that I enjoyed.

I will be back, after I get some stuff together to put up in my next post. Blogging is a whole new concept for me.

This is my "anotherplace". My 1st patch of the Internet is my website -- http://anotherpat.com