November 2019 – Chopin – A Passionate Quilter From Texas

November 30, 2019November 30, 2019

OMG – Alexander Bean Pot and The Gopher Story

Well, I am just too much the Optimistic Quilter and need to remember that!!!

I did finish all 64 blocks for Alexander Bean Pot quilt for part of my OMG. (See previous post).

I started on the sashing yesterday and of course I made boo boo’s in cutting decisions. What else? I knew I would be making small 9 patches at 2 3/4″ for the cornerstones and strip pieces of red/white/red at 5 x 2 3/4″.

BUT when Ms. Know-It-All added her favorite 1/8″ extra in the strip cuttings – 20 strips of Red and 15 strips of the Lights, it became a BIG BIG MISTAKE. I tried to make the work out but now I have some 9 patches that will not be used in this quilt.

I put it aside yesterday and this morning started correcting the dumb thing I had done. I quickly trimmed the strips to 1 1/4″ BUT when testing them I found out the Light fabric was flaring when I was sewing the strip together making the 9 patches not square correctly.

To correct this issue I cut the 42″ strips in 10 1/2″ segments and checked each one individually. OH THE FUN OF BEING A PERFECTIONIST!!! (Note: I cut strips WOF and then sub cut to 20″ to prevent problems with curved strips).

Here are the steps I took to get back on track!

And here is how the sashing and blocks will look like:

So I did complete my OMG of completing all 64 blocks this month! BUT this will not be a flimsy for a few more days.

I made 64 blocks instead of the 20 blocks in the pattern so I assume I will make about 90 9 patches and over 130 5″ Red/Light/Red strips (above picture).

A lot more work to do on this one!

GOPHER STORY: One good thing for Clay today. He got the Gopher that has been evading gopher traps and gopher bombs and a shotgun blast for the last 3 weeks. At one point he took a chair by the hole with a shot gun and was determined to blow it away.

Note the gun barrel on his leg! That did not work!

So Clay, the retired Lt in the SAFD, became the Engineer and took 3 weeks of his life to do Research and Development (R&D) and designed and built his own Gopher Gun! This morning he was able to test it when his favorite gopher had a fresh hole dug!

He set it in the opening of the hole before breakfast and just as we sat down to eat we heard the gun go off! Bye bye 👋 Gopher

Have a great weekend! Linking to OMG

Nanette

Linking To: My Quilt Infatuation; Confessions of a Fabric Addict; Finished or Not Friday ; Em’s Scrap Bag; BOM’s Away; Sew Fresh Quilts; Crazy Mom Quilts; Oh Scrap; Scrap Happy Saturday; Slow Sunday Stitching Quilt Fabrication Mid Week Makers; Peacock Party; Design Wall Monday. OMG

November 30, 2019

Celebrating Mary Brown

Greetings. I have been able to finish only 2 of the 8 blocks I had hoped to have completed.

I am making the others a priority this month for sure and now I am behind 2 more. Looking like an applique month after I finish Alexander Bean Pot.

Ms Jan did a beautiful job on her 2nd set of 4 blocks for the top right hand corner!

She did A beautiful job on her Sunflower.

Have a great weekend!

Nanette

This September Karen and Cathy selected Celebrating Mary Brown as their next project and invited anyone to join in the fun! The following quilters are participating. We will be showing completed blocks on the 30th of each month! Take the time to visit them to see their completed monthly blocks! If interested let Karen know you are interested in joining the group.

Karen – Log Cabin Quilter (Lead)

Cathy – Biglakequilter

Jennie – Overthehillandrunning

Julie K – Juliekquilts

Robin – solsticestudio

Nanette – Doitrightquilter

Jan – I will post her pictures with mine

November 29, 2019

Post Number 365! – Alexander Bean Pot Status

Greetings and hoping that all had a great Thanksgiving Day with family, friends, or just doing what you wanted to do!

I finished all 64 blocks for my Alexander Bean Pot quilt by Carol Hopkins! Today I will make the sashings and hopefully by Saturday or Sunday it will be a quilt top. Being the optimist, I will see if I can accomplish my goals!

Notice a stack of the blocks (20 of them) in the lower right corner! I have a total of 64 blocks – ready to go!

I was too busy yesterday to work on my Celebrating Mary Brown and Sweet Stitches – maybe this evening.

Have a great day and either enjoy Black Friday spending $$$ or stitching!

Hugs

Nanette

November 26, 2019November 26, 2019

One Monthly Goal (OMG) Week 25 – 30 November 2019

I need something to get me kick started on catching up on UFOs and current projects, so I am going to do the OMG Weekly Goal! I had designated November OMG to complete or catch up on 3 projects. Celebrating Mary Brown (applique), Sweet Stitches (embroidery), and finish 24 blocks for Alexander Bean Pot quilt! Current progress is:

1. Celebrating Mary Brown. Corner Blocks Top and Bottom

Order additional fabrics – done

Wash, Iron, and Organize all fabric – done

Prepare 16 blocks for applique – done

Complete 8 blocks – Only 2 completed

2. Sweet Stitches

Complete Block 7 – done

Block 8 – Almost done – 10.5 leaves and 3 Cherries to do!

3. Alexander Bean Pot

Cut out 24 additional blocks to have a total of 64 blocks – done

Sew 24 blocks – Only 14 left to sew – I had originally made 4 blocks of each colorway, then when I picked up the project again I only made 2 of each colorway. Decision made to make the 24 blocks to have 4 blocks of each colorway (make sense – LOL).

The blocks are 4 1/2″ finished – the pesky 2″ Square in a Square corners can be tricky! So it takes a little more time to sew the blocks – about an hour or so to make 2 blocks. This does not count the time to cut them out! Just sewing time.

I am hoping that documenting my goals for each week will help challenge me to make the most of the time I do have to work on projects. It is the Unforeseen Requirements that drive me nuts – Interruptions!

Have a great day and will see how I do by Saturday!

Nanette

November 24, 2019

Slow Sunday Stitching and a Computer Retreat!

Good morning! I would like to apologize for not responding to all the lovely comments that I received on my last posts. Want to know how the week went? OK I know you did not ask, but you must hear this.

I started Sunday afternoon and Monday morning cleaning the house – the company I had hired decided to quit cleaning in my area so I am back to doing that! I wanted to get my “to do” list done before Tuesday!

BUT being in an upbeat mood from gifting Enduring Legacy, I just knew that Tuesday through Thursday life would allow me to do what I wanted to do – keep up with the idiots in DC and do hand work or sew on Alexander Bean Pot quilt and Celebrating Mary Brown. What, you say, how could I want to watch that mess? I spent 33 years with some of those idiots (Federal Govt and in the intelligence world) as to how nasty and dirty they can be to those individuals who against the grain of their rules. This is the worst I have ever seen them and I wanted to evaluate the situation myself! WHAT A DREAMER I WAS!

That goal was not in the cards for me this week – I chipped a tooth first thing Tuesday morning (got that fixed), had to go to the grocery store, and then received notification that Clay’s SSN had been hacked! That took up a lot of time Tuesday and Wednesday and some Thursday morning. By Thursday and Friday I was worn out! I also was so upset that I had lost another week of doing what I wanted to do. I can add that to the last 3 months that I lost (but at least that was for a good reason)!

Getting back to the hacking! If you have ever experienced someone stealing your identity I feel for you. We subscribe to a theft prevention service who alerted us. To protect Clay’s identify a fraud alert was attached to Clays SSN and to protect our credit, we had to contact all 3 Credit Bureau’s (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) and put a freeze on our credit and SS numbers. This means that no one – not even Clay or I can just go in and apply for credit without a special code! I also had to spend time checking on a few cards that we had but knew they were expired. Then yesterday I spent the entire documenting all that happened, and all the information such as all the new accounts to sign in to and special codes to remember! NO, the information is not stored on any device – Just paper copies are saved.

Today is the beginning of a new week. Maybe the Cowboys will win today, no house work needs to be done, the MacBook Pro is up to date and being backed up every day in addition to my PC. That will be another issue in January – what do I do about Windows 7 support going away and do I upgrade to Windows 10 operating system – which I have heard is an absolute nightmare! Apple really screwed up with their lovely IOS 13 which shocked me – I am not a beta tester for either Microsoft or Apple and I am frustrated when these companies throw out an upgrade and wait for the User to complain before it is fixed!!! At least I do not have to make an upgrade decision on my PC now!

I am so blessed that I have been around computers since 1966 and am computer literate, otherwise I would be out of luck as far as being able to take care of this mess.

But let me add some positive to this lovely post: I did work on Sweet Stitches Block 8 (I believe) and Block 2 (I should be on Block 9) of Celebrating Mary Brown. I DO PLAN on a very very quiet week of sewing on Alexander Bean Pot quilt. We do not have family so there will be plenty of quiet time for both Clay and I. I have a Gopher story to tell, but that is for another post! Clay and I just want a peaceful and quiet Thanksgiving week – one where he is on a Gopher Trap Design, and I will be on my own personal Quilt Retreat in my Studio! Karma is just not welcome anymore! LOL

Here is what I have accomplished this week! TA DA!

Just a few more leaves and this block will be one – I love to embroidery when I am so stressed out or when the stress is over with!

I only have 3 leaves and will move on to Block 3 and 4 and then I need to start on the other 4 blocks for the Blue Bird. I would love to have them all done by the 30th – Any Bets? Oops, I see a leaf that needs some adjusting! Hummm! Did anyone realize that stress affects our quilting – well it can!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving with their families and friends and enjoy your Thanksgiving Dinner.

Hugs to all, Nanette

November 17, 2019

Slow Sunday Stitching – 17 Nov 2019 – Accomplishments

Hello again from South Texas and this time a more positive post! YEA!

I have been working on Alexander Bean Pot quilt by Carol Hopkins in her book Civil War Legacies. I have done an additional 4 blocks, with 20 more remaining. They are 5” unfinished and when I finish the 20 I will have 4 blocks of each color with a total of 64 blocks. I finished 2 of the red and beige and 2 of the black and white.

In getting back to my applique work, I finished one block for Jacobean Holiday. I have 2 other small blocks to finish and then 3 large blocks and then it will be time to put the blocks together! This one has been in the making probably 9 years due to the lack of interest. I found the other finished blocks in my UFO bin.

I have started on Mary Brown after purchasing tons of new reproduction fabrics. They will all be used in this quilt. I have the 16 corner blocks prepared and will be working toward getting 8 blocks completed by the end of the month! It is really feeling good to be back on schedule for November.

Here is Mary Brown – Block 1 of the top left quadrant section!

This was my original bird but I just was not happy after seeing purple instead of black in the fabric (new eyes help)! LOL

Goal for this week is to finish up with Alexander blocks and work on Sweet Stitches, Mary Brown, and Jacobean Holiday. There are so many other quilts that I would love to start working on, but I really want to finish up my UFO’s and catch up on Mary Brown!

Have a great week!

Nanette

November 17, 2019November 17, 2019

Bye Bye Enduring Legacy – A Lesson Learned – “KnowingWhen to Just Give Up on a Quilt”!

Greetings from South Texas – where we are having a wonderful cool November and I am back to 100% normal! OK – well just dry eye!!!

I had made this beautiful quilt – Enduring Legacy – in fact, I made it twice (exception – the medallion in the center)!! It was showcased by Barbara Brackman on her Blog!

Then I loaded it on the Long Arm in August only to end up with this mess the week I found out about Cataracts (15 Aug 2019) – No wonder I had issues seeing!

That did not go well did it! But never fear! I was not going to give up on this puppy! Fast forward to this last week when I felt that I could get this baby finally quilted! But ALAS, I ended up with this quilt on the floor half quilted! The quilt was lucky to not be in the burn pile!!! NEVER have I EVER wanted to rip a quilt off the frame before finishing, but I almost did this one.

This quilt was doomed from the beginning and I should have known to not even try to quilt it EVER! This quilt will be gifted to my cousin Susan. I offered to rip my mess out, but she said she would love to have the quilt and take care of it! Sweet Susan!

IF I ever start working on a quilt and have issues like I experienced with this one, it will NOT become an obsession to “not give up”. There are too many other quilts that may not cause issues waiting in the wings to be made!!! They offer more positive challenges!

OK – I have vented enough on this project and it is in a bag awaiting its’ new owner!

Once I decided to move forward from this heart break, I felt that I needed to start making some changes with my Handi Quilter and its frame. I am so happy that I did that, as I figured out why there were problems in loading the backing and as the left side did not load as well as the right side – PROBLEM: The top pole (which Clay changed to a one piece rather than the original break down pole) was not able to keep from bowing a slight little bit. The original poles were so much worse. I realized that the bow was causing me to have issues with the background not being as tight on that side! YEA – one problem resolved. I will now make adjustments when loading the quilt back.

The next issue was to have Clay lower the frame by 4 inches! With new eyes (without glasses now) I can see where I am going while quilting and where I have been. The lighting is perfect (he adjusted it to where I have more than enough light).

One thing I hate to do is ‘practice’ doing anything, but this time, since I have not quilted as much as I used to since 2014, it appeared be a good idea to do a muslin practice quilt! I practiced all the different free handed designs I used to use in my quilts prior to 2014! I do not use panto’s and my machine is not computerized. I purchased it in 2005 and it has been one of the best performing quilting machines for someone who does not want to spend $30K+ on a new long arm.

The ONLY reason it performs so perfectly is due to my Clay (and engineering genius) who has just re-engineered the original table, poles, lighting, and modifying how the electrical cord is positioned to prevent it from causing unexpected jerking while quilting.

I have made the right decision on this quilt and going back to the beginning on my Handi Quilter! I am certain that the next quilt loaded will be a success!

Here are some of my favorite free motion stitches that I am working on:

Here is the Sampler Quilt of Stitches that I ended up binding and now it will replace the Dresden Plate quilt that covered my machine! I prefer the Dresden, but this is a great way to review the patterns that I like when quilting!

Have a great stitching week!

Nanette

November 10, 2019November 10, 2019

HQAL and Slow Sunday Stitching!

Greetings from great weather in South Texas! Looks like we just might have a very nice winter and it is welcomed after 4 months of 100 degrees plus!

This has been a great week for me – totally over all ill effects, and energy level back to 100%! What a blessing.

I have finished Block 6 of Sweet Stitches! Yea I finished something.

This is the first time that I worked with the chain stitch and it really made the “Liberty” stand out!

Status on Celebrating Mary Brown: I spent a couple of days washing and ironing fabrics and yesterday I spent the day working on Mary Brown. I have a great Reproduction stash now to pull from for this quilt. Corliss Searcy used so many greens in this quilt and I am trying to spread the colors out and incorporate some light and darks in the same family colors, but just not as dark! It will be fun to work with the fabrics and see if I can do scrappy. I tend to look at the color and design and most scrappy quilters look only at the color! Maybe this will help me look at both but color first!

Today will be to finish “re-preparing” the pieces for all 16 blocks that I will be doing first. Each of the 4 corners of this quilt are connected with the vines and I want to be able to tie other blocks with the colors in each corner. Now this may not work out that way, but at least I will not be having to wrestle with matching things when sewing on the vines!

After I finish the 4 corners, I will probably go back to Block 3 and do a couple of blocks a month! Will also be working on Block 7 with Sweet Stitches. I would like to have this quilt finished by the end of the year.

Status on Alexander Bean Pot Quilt: Poor Alexander – he is currently being ignored! Those 24 blocks that are waiting to be sewn together are still sitting there. I will start working on them as soon as Mary Brown preparation is completed.

Enduring Legacy – Revisited: OK – Remember this Fiasco with Enduring Legacy? Interesting it was the day before we found out that we needed Cataract Surgery! Well, I plan on incorporating quilting this puppy this month. Any bets???

A quick note on my visit to the monthly Friday UFO sew day at a quilt store in San Antonio. All I have to say is that I prefer being with Clay and being in my Studio and will give up on the idea that there are sister quilters for me in San Antonio! Enough said.

Please take time to visit the HQAL quilters’ links below. We have 3 new additions – Bella, Daisey, and Connie is back again! Yea!

Happy Veterans Day week-end and please thank a Veteran for their service to our Country! I am looking forward to a highly productive week catching up from the last 90 days!

NANETTE

This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another. If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.

Kathy, Margaret, Emma, Tracy, Deb, Susan, Nanette, Edith, Sharon, Karrin, Connie, Bella, Gretchen, Daisey , Kathie.

November 7, 2019

More Eye Candy and I am Back!

Evening! We in South Texas are now getting a cold front that will bring cooler temperatures and the ‘promise’ of some rain (will believe it when I see it here). Tomorrow it will be in the 40’s. My kind of weather! The colder the better!

The depression from the lovely steroid eye drops is G-O-N-E! I am back 100% and today was the 2nd day of happy! I am behind 2 months in my UFOs and new projects, but I now have high hopes that I will be caught up in the next week or something and back on schedule!

I have clocked 18 days straight walking my 1.5 miles each morning. Boy those first 3 days were hard after the Cataract vacation, but I just kept pushing. Before the “C” mess, I had just achieved my 20 minute mile goal, and finally I am getting there again! As you can tell, I am back to normal!

I have achieved over 13,000 steps the last 2 days – ironing really adds to those steps along with going back and forth from the House to the Studio and washing all the fabrics that I purchased for my Reproduction stash!

The fabrics below are from the Temecula fabric line. They are absolutely what I needed for Mary Brown and other quilts in the que!

This is a beautiful yellow that I found and will be using in Mary Brown. I did not have a lot of yellows.

I purchased fat quarters of Abigail Blues that are absolute beautiful. I ordered 3 sets of the fat quarters and then ordered some more of the light fabric (2nd one from the left). I will wait and hand wash these because even though all the other fat quarters were washed in a laundry bag in the machine, I have never seen so many threads!

Today I finished the majority of the ironing after a marathon day of 6 hours of pressing fat quarters and yardage! I will finish it all tomorrow after going to the “get together group” at the Mesquite Bean Quilt Shop in San Antonio.

Sharon asked me to provide her the links to the shops where I purchase my fabrics on-line and then thought that maybe others would be interested. I did a search for fabrics on Etsy and found great fabrics from the following 3 shops:

Bellatique Fabrics

This Old Fabric Store

Boston Fabric Stash .

Web Fabrics. I have been dealing with Carly since 2003 when she started her business or at least it was when I found her. Sign up for her newsletter as she has a weekly special each week. I have almost every color of Moda Marbles and all were purchased from Carly. If you purchase a certain amount of fabrics you will always get a discount

Hancock’s of Paducah – Sign up for their newsletter for daily specials and good sales.

I will admit that I do comparison shopping. If I find a fabric line I like, I will check all of my sources or google the fabric line. Amazon is beginning to sell fabrics but sometimes the price is too high and I can find it cheaper on other on-line quilt sites.

Hopefully by Sunday I will have some progress on Mary Brown and Sweet Stitches to show for our HQAL!

Have a great week-end and holiday on Monday if you still are in the working world.

Nanette

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019

Sweet Stitches and Etc.!

Greetings from now Spring South Texas (at least for 2 days). We have 2 cold fronts heading our way on Thursday and then a big one on Monday! My kind of weather!

There is a quilt store in San Antonio that has a UFO sit and sew on Tuesdays and then on Fridays once a month in which you pay $5.00 to sew with a group of quilters. I am going to attend the Friday group as it will provide me an opportunity to be around others with the same interest. I love blogging, but I miss the interaction with other humans. I love living in the country where it is so peaceful, but will enjoy being around quilters for a change.

In the meantime, I am trying to get back in the groove with my projects and having a difficult time thanks to the Steroid eye drops.

I am also waiting for additional fabrics to arrive for Celebrating Mary Brown so I can continue on with fabric selection. In the meantime for my evening project I picked up Block 7 of Sweet Stitches by Kathy Schmitz to work on.

I started this project in the 2015 timeframe but have only completed 6 blocks – there are 12 total in the BOM. The blocks are embroidered in black thread and with each month block fabric was provided to frame it with. This will make a neat quilt when I get with the program and work harder to pick up where I was in September on my UFO’s. Additionally I am hoping that being around other quilters with the same interest in quilting that my desire to quilt again will come back!

The Etc.! After 2 months, all is finished with the Cataract game of life! The drops gave me a lot of issues the last month – especially the Steroids. Now I am just dealing with the withdrawals of the Steroid eye drops. Hopefully I will begin to feel better by Friday. But I am off of them (threw the bottle away yesterday – 2 days early). My vision is fine, just need reading glasses but the dry eye will need more time to get better! I was having issues with the right eye — burning when I used the Systane for dry eye. I had my last check up from surgeries yesterday and told Dr Young about the issue with the right eye – would you believe that 3 eye lashes (bottom) were turning in and rubbing my eye!!! She took care of that and things are really getting better now – just dealing with the aftermath of getting off the steroid drops.

I will snap back soon. Have a wonderful day and enjoy stitching!

Nanette

November 3, 2019November 3, 2019

OMG For November, Mary Brown Update, and Alexander BP

Happy Sunday from South Texas where the weather has been absolutely perfect AND I got my hour back! Double Yea! This week we will warm up to the high 70’s but then later in the week it will cool off! Yea! I am back in the groove of walking and trying to lose the stupid 4 pounds that the steroids gave me!

My goal for November is to work on 2 projects this month and hopefully finish Alexander Bean Pot (ABP) and catch up with the other ladies on Celebrating Mary Brown. Here is where I am on ABP – 40 blocks completed!

Here is what I need to finish – making 2 more of the top 12 blocks. (Excuse the leaning tower of pizza on the right – I could not get them straight!) LOL

When I began this project (cannot remember when) I made 4 each of the same fabrics, a total of 16 blocks. But, alas, when I started to make more of the blocks I only made 2 of each fabric before I realized that I should have cut out 4 of each fabric color way. SO, I have now cut out 24 more blocks to have 4 of each color! They are ready to be sewn, but first I have to draw that diagonal line on 384 each on the 1 1/4″ squares for the square in a square 2″ corner blocks!

That will be done today. Hopefully the day will go quietly and I will have a few of the blocks completed. This is not a difficult block – 5″ unfinished, 4 1/2″ unfinished! It is a Carol Hopkins pattern.

Now to move to my evening project Celebrating Mary Brown. I am 2 months behind the group, but am sure by the end of November that I will be back on track! Check out the links below for our SAL.

Before the C surgery I had selected fabrics, traced all blocks (16 for the corner blocks of the quilt) and thought I was ready to appliqué. I appliquéd the red bird and flower for the first block, BUT with the new eyes I realized that there was some purple in the red bird and had a difficult time really matching the colors for my flowers. Plus this was not a reproduction fabric.

Moving along, I tried another fabric.

When I started working with this choice I ran into the same issue – it I not a reproduction fabric and I started having fabric selection issues.

So what does a quilter do when the reproduction stash does not have enough reds, greens, and yellows? YES! Go shopping on line or at a shop! I chose on-line. Jan and I got together on the phone and did some virtual shopping for those colors. Here are the results of this shopping spree (justification in doing this was “it is my 75th birthday present”).

This is a fat quarter bundle that I had on hand called Hope’s Journey.

Here are the fabrics that I found on-line.

I also purchased a French General fat quarter bundle called Chafarcani. I do not have any of the French General line in my stash, so this will be a held for a special project – UNLESS…

For my “pre-birthday gift” I purchased a couple of fat quarter bundles of Thankful. I did not realize that there was a Turkey panel included, I just love the Autumn colors and Quilt in a Day had a great sale on them – how could I resist?

My buddy Jaydee gave me a great gift certificate for my birthday and of course I found a sale on Hancocks of Paducah and am now waiting on that delivery – yup – more reproduction fabrics AND some beautiful blue and white fat quarter bundles! I am thinking I will use the blues for a star pattern that I want to make…. When you ask? Maybe 2020!

Hoping all have a wonderful day and great week. I know I will as I am back to my favorite things in life – enjoying time with Clay and making quilts and doing my daily routine of walking 1.5 miles each morning – Life is good – peaceful and quiet!

Nanette