crockpotcauldron

Went to the December quilt guild sale! I made out like a bandit. Here's what I got for $22:

1) an actual antique quilt (I know!!!) in white and double pink, with a double t block pattern and very nice quilted wreaths in the plain blocks. It's throw sized, and does have a strip of fading from where it was undoubtedly folded to display, but that's okay. It is a bit dusty smelling, so I'm going to find some Orvus soap and give it a soak before I let it touch any textiles I own.

2) an absolute shitton of white and unbleached muslin. The bundles were absurdly cheap, and I do like and use muslin, so I'm very happy to have it. It will be years before I need to buy muslin again.

3) three yards of an absurd Alexander Henry Halloween print with Universal monsters all over it. It's good quality fabric, too!

4) various bundles of cloth - found a lot of red, which I desperately need, some vintage-colored Nile green and pink solids, and even a bit of orange! That will keep me going for a while!

5) a full set of quilt clips, for securing a rolled up quilt while you feed it through a machine. I was just about to buy some!

6) some decent thimbles, specialty needles, and odds and ends. I am always up for new thimbles. I don't collect them or anything - I use them. It's surprisingly hard to find a good dimpled thimble these days! Everyone's selling the dumb gridded ones or the jelly or leather ones. Brass and nickel are the way to go.

7) an entire mason jar's worth of absolutely top notch buttons. I love buttons so much. They're like treasure to me. There are metal ones and old ones and colorful ones and weird ones and I am in hog heaven here.

8) a book and a bunch of loose patterns I am excited about

9) scraps for paper piecing

10) two cute quilting-themed puzzles

Seriously, it was absurdly cheap and I am so thrilled to have so much raw material for my projects, and such cute and useful things. I filled up a box and a massive tote bag, and I had to ask them to keep my stuff for a while as I pulled up the car (I like to park further away because the older guild members prefer a shorter walk to the building). I am very pleased with my haul.

Mitzi has returned my paper piecing books in the nick of time - I have a couple patterns I am planning for Christmas gifts. Did I mention she is making stained glass with the patterns? I've seen one piece already, from a Maaike Bakker pattern of a witch silhouette flying in front of a fire orange background, and it was very cool. Linda has asked for my help reverse engineering a paper piecing pattern - it was printed in two issues of a magazine, but Linda only has one. I told her it was no problem. I don't consider it a great ethical dilemma, and I'm not gonna make an eighty year old try to hunt old magazines on eBay. I have helped Francis find a sewing bee. All around, a great meeting!

I currently have an entire day of work ahead of me, hemming raw edges and putting my fabric through the wash. I've discarded all papers and plastic bags I got, because they had a funny stale smell to them. I'm not particularly sentimental about the papers buttons come attached to. The puzzles are going to get a sunlight and mild cleaner, which does help and doesn't damage them. The metal things got washed.

I will tell you later about the dwarves - I'm all the way up to Bombur! Gotta put them aside to do Christmas presents, though.

I have been trying very hard to whittle my unread dime cart bounty down to one shelf section - about twenty books, give or take. I've come close! I have dutifully read Pickpockets, Beggars, and Ratcatchers: Life in the Victorian Underworld. I have scornfully read The Blue Sapphire. I have plowed through untold mediocre Cadfael books to reach The Rose Rent. I have happily read The Bondwoman's Narrative and all its appendices. I'm currently on The Illustrated History of Surgery and also English Country House Murders. I was within a book of achieving my goal! And then I went to the library again, and couldn't resist the ten cent temptations offered to me.

A current list of my unread dime cart books:

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
A Walk in Wolf Woods by Mary Stewart
Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
Irish Curses, Mystic Charms, & Superstitions by Lady Wilde
The Aliens by Murray Leinster
English Country House Murders edited by Thomas Godfrey
Short Novels by John Steinbeck
Irish Folk Tales by Henry Glassic
Story of the Irish Race by Seumas MacManus
Applied Foodservice Sanitation: a Certification Coursebook edited by Beverly Sorkin
The Illustrated History of Surgery by Knut Hæger
After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World by A.N. Wilson
Jonson and Elizabethan Comedy by L.A. Beaurline
A Coffin for King Charles by C.V. Wedgwood
The Crime of Galileo by Giorgio de Santillan
Disraeli by Andre Maurois
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
The Nature of Alexander by Mary Renault
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Rita: The Life of Rita Hayworth by Edward Z. Epstein and Jospeh Morella
The Elements of Editing by Arthur Plotnik
The Elements of Grammar by Margaret Shertzer
Knots and Splices by Percy Blandford

I'm currently about four thick books away from my goal of filling just one section, and of course I would need to have a bit of space free in that section in case I happen to go to the library and buy six books on a whim, which sometimes happens.

I've actually kept more than half of the books I got (not counting quilt books, of which I kept an extremely high proportion). And I've read a number of fascinating books I wouldn't have encountered otherwise, especially the nonfiction ones. So this is working out pretty well for me, as long as I keep actually reading these books instead of merely stockpiling them. The other sections of my shelf have gotten to that ominous "stacking books sideways on top of the regular books" stage that means a reorganizing might be coming...

I have made an Instagram! I am very tired of wrestling with dreamwidth's picture hosting, and also I want to socialize with quilters. You can check it out - my screen name there is quarteryarrrd. I decorated a spool of quilting thread with a skull and crossbones for my avatar!

Speaking of socializing with quilters, I attended a modern quilt guild meeting. There was a lot going on, but I'm kinda on the fence. On the one hand, I want to try to befriend the two or three quilters my age there. On the other hand, I'm still not sold on modern quilting as an artistic movement, though they did like Smaug and my alien quilt.

Did I show you guys my alien quilt? I started it by hand because Otto's lightbulb blew but I still wanted to quilt, and then things got out of hand once the lightbulb arrived.

I hope this link works...

https://www.instagram.com/p/B32sRSwnWF3/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet

I'm very pleased with how it turned out with just scraps. I think the background was left over from a friend's Star Wars quilt years ago, and I see leftovers from at least six quilts of mine. I've doodled more alien designs, including a cow alien and an alien donut race, but we shall see how many of them make their way into fabric. Some things are better on paper - I was noodling around with a labyrinth design, and I tested it out on paper before committing to cutting and sewing several hundred squares of cloth. Turns out, not only is cutting squares awful, the pattern is extremely high contrast and busy and I would not like it on my bed. I don't even want it hanging in my direct line of sight - I stuck it to the back of my door, and enjoy seeing it occasionally. My mind won't stop following the paths, and while I enjoy that sometimes, I have other stuff to do!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B32z3iInISp/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

The guild meeting went well! I managed to win the fat quarter raffle! The theme was "jewel tones" and I hazarded a marbled blue that I deemed "sapphire enough," which I won back with the pot. I now have a handful of sorely-needed purples, a nice yellow, a solid navy blue, and a speckled green. I am delighted with my winnings, and am already making plans. I am not particularly motivated to try the more overt gambling the guild sponsors, though Mitzi won forty seven dollars today.

The guild is headhunting me for a position on the board - Programs Chair is opening up. All positions are volunteer positions, of course. But this might be interesting. I'm gonna go to the next board meeting and have lunch with the current Programs Chair. I have a few more takers for the paper piecing lesson - Linda and Mitzi showed off their new nametags, and at least one sewing bee wants me to visit them.

This guild has been a lesson in how to make friends with people who do not have much in common with me, demographically speaking. You gotta really put yourself out there, because people will not naturally gravitate towards you. It's very easy to float through a group like a lonely cloud. That's why I picked up the bears, and why I am offering to teach workshops, and why I'm considering the board position. It's working.

I might try to branch out. Other guilds let you attend their meetings for five bucks. I might shop around a bit, see what's up. I heard there are Young People in the modern quilt guild, though I have my reservations about the modern palette, which is alarmingly neon and gray. Although a member of the modern guild did compliment Smaug and say he was a great Modern Quilt, so who knows I may be stereotyping their style. Smaug got a lot of compliments, and so did my little alien quilt. A lot of people stopped me for a closer look. That feels great, after the amount of sweat I put into them.

Found out at the last minute that a hangout I was looking forward to wasn't gonna work out, so I hit up the comic shop instead. My rule is, I have to do something fun when plans with a friend fall through, so I don't mope. Got myself another copy of an excellent Riddler comic (it is a crime and a tragedy that there were so few issues of The Batman Adventures). Stopped at the vending machines on the way out, and wound up with a $5 coupon to the comic shop and a tiny hollow tiger big enough to keep painkillers in, which I have named Tiger Pudding.

On the way home, I stopped at the fabric store. Guess who owns fusible webbing again? It's me. Gonna get up to some dragon-related nonsense, if all proceeds according to plan. I also bought a couple Halloween magazines I had been looking at longingly for a while and was glad to stumble across in the store. The selection of orange is really bad here, though. There are literally two bolts of orange quilting cotton prints in the store - a flat orange with black polka dots, and a violently bright marbled print. I had thought Halloween would provide more orange, but apparently the polka dot one is all we get. It's just not in fashion right now, I guess, despite the variety of really cute orange prints in those Halloween magazines. I did pick up a nice orange fat quarter with a constellation print, though.

The fire alarm went off while I was browsing. I dutifully headed out the door, taking my purse and leaving my cart behind. A few people went out as well, but when the fire failed to manifest itself, they went back in and continued shopping. That poor cashier. The firefighters came and went, and electricians came and went. They had tripped the alarm doing construction next door. It took about half an hour before the piercing shrieks stopped. I seriously can't believe people went back in there.

If anyone ever wonders where I got my dime cart proclivities, my parents stumbled across 21 quilt books on the dime cart and bought them for me. Most of them are really good, actually! I enjoy traditional quilt blocks and historical books and scrap quilts. This was a delightful treasure trove for me.

I'm currently at two paper pieced dwarves - I'm refining my design, and figure I might as well do it using Tolkien colors, so that's Dwalin and Balin done. I've streamlined the piecing and changed little details like the pointiness of the hood, the width of the belt, and the size of the beard. Might get all the way to Thorin before I'm satisfied with it. I'm using the wrong scale and background fabric for this to be the mountain dwarf quilt I had planned, and I've overshot the Balin solo quilt design I was noodling around with, so I guess we will just see what happens.

Did I forget to show you guys Smaug?



Here he is! He's about 16x16 inches, and mostly made of scraps. The red stripe and the yellow/black spikes are a Ghanaian batik, and the rest is whatever I had laying around.



I put in some actual effort quilting this!



The back is a bunch of leftover bits. Didn't want to cut into fresh yardage, and it's easier this way if I ever want to cut open the back and stuff Smaug a bit fluffier. There's a hanging sleeve on top, and a label on the bottom.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this. Tried some new stuff (using prints instead of piecing to make pattern details, double quilting, improv piecing, fandominstitches pattern, fancy improv quilting, multiple borders), learned some lessons (fuckin check that all of your pieces make it to a seam allowance). This is not a perfect quilt, but I like it and I feel like I am growing as a quilter. Gonna impress the heck out of some seventy year olds at the next meeting.

I have been teaching people how to paper piece, too! I got to chatting with Linda at the meeting, and she mentioned wanting the official paper pieced guild nametag like I had. I attended the free workshop years ago and made one, and it was a great experience for me that got me over being intimidated by paper piecing. So I offered to run a workshop for the new members! It's only fair to pay it forward.

I talked with guild leadership, and there's no room on the official schedule for a while, but Linda wanted to learn so I offered to come to her house and teach her. Her friend Mitzi, who is also in the guild, was interested too, so the three of us spent a few hours working. I didn't actually sew anything, since I was hopping around making sure things were on track. We all had a good time, and their nametags came out cute. I left them with spare copies of the pattern, and showed them a few of my paper piecing books, which were all far easier than that dang tiny palm tree pattern.

I'm thinking of making an offer to the guild at large at the next meeting - whoever is interested can trade numbers with me, and I can run small batches of workshops at other people's houses. It's a good way to get to know people. Of course, I should probably update my own nametag, since I'm much better at quilting now, and have more scraps.

I am not allowing myself to buy more fabric just yet - I just reorganized my stash, and now that I've separated out the ugly stuff, the yardage, and the browns, it just barely fits in my green boxes. Gonna keep nibbling away at what I have. It feels both thrifty and creative to make do.

Hurricane Dorian put the Bahamas through a wood chipper, and then gently brushed past my house with barely a wuther. It was a close fucking call. We were packed and ready to evacuate, of course, but this has still been a horribly stressful ordeal. Nobody likes a Cat 5 hovering in front of them for days. I am looking forward to a full night's sleep and no more muscle cramps or stomachaches.

The entire sky is still that milky gray color Florida only really gets during hurricanes. You know, that thin, luminous layer of clouds all over the sky. I am looking forward to seeing blue again, but it might be a bit of a wait.

God, this was so fucking close. I am so grateful this wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been.

I have been far too busy, and all it has produced is tiredness and Hobbit doodles. I'm busy coming up with individual designs for each of them, based on their canonical descriptions I am lovingly hunting down. I love dwarf beards, and I'm having fun. The beard designs this time around are entirely different from the ones I came up with last time - less variety, but more focus on family ties, status, and age. I will provide pictures once I have something worth sharing, of course.

I am also working on paper piecing patterns! For The Hobbit, of course. I have not put needle to cloth yet, but that's just a matter of time and energy. There are also some very nice patterns on Fandom In Stiches, which I may try!

I am back home! The trip was a lot. I'm glad I went, and a lot of good stuff happened, but also I am so tired. The jetlag is starting to wear off, which means I'm waking up at dawn instead of four o'clock. I feel like dawn is best appreciated at a reasonable hour via other people's photos.

I haven't wanted to work on anything I started, so of course I've begun new projects. I noodled around with a Delectable Mountains design (the strip version, not the half square triangle version), trying to make one whose strips finished at a quarter inch across. I don't recommend doing that, incidentally. It's a massive pain in the ass, since at that size two thirds of the fabric is gobbled up by seam allowances, so if you make the blocks the easy way from half square triangles you wind up with hilariously elongated blocks. I would need to do Seminole patchwork strip cutting to get anything reasonable. I made a few sample blocks with garbage fabric. Then I fell down a rabbit hole and drew about eighty geometric quilt blocks in my graph paper notebook. Who knows if a sampler quilt will come of it? It is currently just fun to play with the designs.

It's nice to have a variety of hobbies. I kinda regret that I don't have the... energy? brain space? for pursuing more than one at a time. Changing channels is hard, so whatever creative pursuit has hooked me gets to keep me until it is done. I'm currently in a quilting groove. When that wears off, I ought to get back to transcribing, or maybe finish my dang laundry hamper or wait, the quilt I need to finish patching up and mail off is the most time sensitive, because I have candy to put in the mail with it. But I have been banned from working on the quilt until I have finished my laundry hamper, so I guess laundry hamper it is. Ah well.

Still paper piecing. It's a very fiddly type of patchwork, but I like being able to use up even the smallest leftover scraps. These gnomes are made with small enough pieces that I can use ridiculously tiny scraps to make em. We are talking smaller than a postage stamp. It's very satisfying to see the pile of offcuts shrink to shreds and threads.

The butterflies and tulips are done, and I'm working on the gnome clothing. Ought to have the blocks finished and trimmed by tonight. Then it's just a matter of spacing em out with a few strips (thank god I bought extra blue), possibly piecing a sun for the garden scene (I love yellow and orange), and then quilting and assembling the purse. I should probably have started this project significantly earlier, but ah well, inspiration strikes when it strikes. It will be done in time. My only regret is that I won't be able to show this to my quilt guild before I give it away.