Wicked in Hollywood

My husband got tickets to the musical, Wicked for the family through work. It was an awesome performance. This was my second time seeing it but a first for the family. If you have the chance to see it, it's worth the eighty or so dollars it costs per ticket. If you don't happen to live in CA or plan on visiting but would like to see it, you should check the official site and see if it is playing in your area. They have a tour and it looks like it will be all over the place. :o)

We live about 30 miles from Hollywood so to give us plenty of time to get there, we left in the afternoon. Here's a pic of all of us having dinner at Mel's Drive-In. The food was yummy and the atmosphere was fun with movie posters and framed photos of the stars all over the place.

We went to a vintage clothing store any I bought 3 aprons and so did my middle daughter. She also bought a vintage quilt. I'll post pics of those later. Stay tuned....

Decisions, Decisions!!!

Now that my sewing room is cleaned up, I thought I would go through the bin where some of my quilt tops are stored. I don't know about you but I have the hardest time with the quilting part of well, quilting! lol My friend Sherrie has a longarm and I get to use it whenever I want. But in this day and age, where longarm quilters are artists and quilts are so heavily quilted, I feel like I do my poor little quilt tops an injustice by just meandering. Isn't that a pitiful statement? That I would rather have quilt tops in bins, rather then have them finished because I don't want them to all be meandered or stitched in the ditch? I decided to get over it!

I pulled out the first two quilt tops; my stack-n-whack and one called Sunshine & Blue Skies, a blue and yellow split nine patch. The nine patch will probably be first to get quilted. It'll be the easier of the two. Here's a picture of that one in my webshots folder, here. It doesn't look very complicated, does it? I kept thinking I wanted some wavy lines in the blue for water and some kind of sun thingie in the yellow. I'll probably meander it. lol But it'll be done, right?

But this darned stack-n-whack...well, that's a different story. I can figure out the stars. I'll just go around the designs in each block. But there is so much room around the outside edges. I didn't want to just meander it but I guess that's what I'll do so it's out of the bin! I'll just keep telling myself that "Meandering can be your friend!!"

30's Tablecloth

After having a nice clean room to play in, I decided to get out this tablecloth that I started at the retreat I went to. All I had to do was miter the borders but I haven't done it in a while. My sister was over and had a new magazine with a good description in the 'how-to' section in the back. Well, that's all I was waiting for! :o) Now to decide how to quilt it. I might just meander all over it to 'git er done'. :o) Maybe I can have it on the table while it's still summer!
I also worked on these blocks for a swap due 7/1. We're only using two colors, butter yellow and white and using this kaleidoscope block (paper pieced). I did the pattern up in EQ6 and it's going pretty quick. Yay! After this project is done, I have to get in the spare room where I put all my quilt tops and ufo's. I need to decide what is next on the agenda! Hope you are being productive too and sewing away too. :o)

Ahhhhh, clean at last

Worked all day and finally made some progress in my sewing room. Feels so good to have it cleaned up. Hung up this big shelf from Ikea to get some things up off the table. That should leave me room to spread out when I'm working on a project. I had to put some bigger projects in our spare bedroom. I can't believe I outgrew my sewing room. I have a couple of big bins with things like tops needing to be quilted, bags of blocks and fabric I don't have room for in my closet. I'll spend some time in that room next week and try to get things in order and reorganize that closet. All I can think of is there's a shop hop in July in So. California! lol Now I understand how people get to the point that they're hiding fabric in their bathtubs!!!!!! lol

Got my cutting table cleaned up too. Hung up two little racks from Ikea to put my Stampin' Up! punches. I usually stand and make cards anyway so this will be handy. I'm hoping all of these additions will help me to keep my room tidy. Time will tell.

Out of Focus

That's sort of how I feel lately, out of focus. But I'm getting back into the swing of things. I didn't mean to take a hiatus from the blog world. It just sort of happened. You know, back to back vacations, going back to work, yada, yada, yada. Life in general has a way of well, getting in the way. :o) I'm in the process of cleaning up my sewing room. It looked like this (shreek!!!) after vacation. I've made some progress but still have some sorting to do. And trying to find a place for everything....well, that will be an ongoing battle from now til the end of time.

I did squeeze in some sewing time. I got this 9 patch done. I started sewing the strips together on Saturday and finished sewing the top together last night. I'm not sure about a border or not. I'll leave it up on the design wall for a day or so and see how I'm feeling after staring at it a while. It's a nice size as it is so we'll see. I'll save this quilt for my grandbabies. I hope I have some before the fabric disintegrates and falls apart. LOL

I went retreatin'!

One of the Yahoo Groups I belong to, and help run, is Backporch Friends. It's a group of wonderful ladies from all over the world that play in swaps and chat about anything and everything. The former list owner, Angela, organized a retreat several years ago. I think the first one was 2003 and I've gone to every one of them since. Even though it's a long way from CA to IN, I always have a great time. The pillow with a raggedy was made by Deb Smith for a pincushion exchange that was held at the retreat.

One of the other activities at the retreat was a mini quilt exchange. Look at all those cute baby quilts!!! That's me on the far right. I got that adorable pinwheel mini from Michelle. It is just adorable and I can't wait to hang it up. Michelle was one of the new girls to go this year and she was a sweetie. It's so nice when you can put a name with a face when you've been chatting a while. This is the big quilty room we were sewing in. This picture was taken at 2:45 a.m. when all the little quilters had gone to bed! It's a three hour difference for us CA girls and we had to force ourselves to go to bed at night. (We also had to force ourselves to get up in the morning or NO BREAKFAST!!!) lol
This building housed us all. They have dorm style rooms for youth camps but for us old fogies, we got hotel-type rooms. Two double beds, sitting area with a love seat and chair, mini fridge, etc. It's not a 4 star hotel but very nice accomodations. And since all you do is sleep and shower in that room, they were a-ok. :o)
This cute table cloth project was a bit of a nightmare to make. It is what I worked most of the stinkin' weekend. I had real issues with this project. (It was definitely "operator error"in the reading of the pattern!) Don't you hate when that happens? Well, maybe it only happens to me! I was auditioning border fabrics in this photo. I got some cherry fabric for it but I didn't like the way it looked. These two pieces were in my project bag. I used the fabric at the bottom of the photo. I took a census from some of the girls standing around (like Carolyn) and we thought the larger scale looked better. I got all four borders on but ran out of time and didn't get to sew the mitered corners.

So now, I'm trying to play catch up at work for four days and then off I go again with my hubby, SIL & BIL for a cruise to Alaska. Man, I'm already tired and vacation season hasn't even hit yet! lol

Birthday and Packing

Happy Birthday Kelley. Our first born child turned 29 today. How can she be 29?? Seems like only yesterday she was riding her big wheel or swimming in the doughboy until her hands were all shriveled up. She also loved to read and draw and though the big wheel isn't around anymore, colored pencils and books still are. She is an avid reader and is our artistic child. We got her a very expensive Gocco printing machine thingy for her birthday so she can print her own cards and t-shirts? Maybe now I'll get some of her artwork. :o) It's true what they say about their toys getting more expensive when they grow up but I thought that only pertained to guys! Guess not. And here's some fabric I had been collecting to make this Table Cloth Quilt. I bought the hanky and some of the fabrics at Road last year. I pulled the rest from my stash. I'm trying to get some kits together for my upcoming retreat in Indiana. I made a mess in my room! Hopefully, I can do some sorting and cutting so I don't have to pack up everything. Fabric weighs a lot and we're flying so I have to make sure I leave room in the suitcase for clothes! lol Wish me luck! Remember when paper clothes were popular in the 60's? Oh good grief, are you too young to remember? lol Yeah, me too but I remember hearing about them. hehe Here, read this. I might have to bring them back in style. They're lighter. I can throw them away when I'm done wearing them. And they don't take up much room which is important because you "know" there will shopping happening in Indiana!! LOL