Connecting arcs...

Okay, now we're really rolling on the Dahlia, and this part goes surprisingly fast, even if it is the scariest. Last time we finished putting the individual arcs together. The next step is to put them together in pairs. This is where the real curved piecing happens, and of course, the challenge of lining up seams that aren't nice and straight, like most matching of points. You will start with your B arc on top, despite it being the convex piece of the curve in this situation. The main reason you do this is because of how the Dahlia goes together overall.


It's important one again to make sure that your marks are lined-up. By this point, I don't need to use the pin anymore, I can just eyeball it. But do what works for you. You can see my B, the light piece, is on top. In the book, it says to start at the dot, but on this piece, there's no reason I can fathom to do so, so I started at the edge and lowered my stitch length to 1.8 or 1.6 to make it a little more secure.


It's important to remember that unlike square or rectangle piecing, you can't just line these seams up by snugging them together. The seams make a sort of X as one piece is angled one way, and the other, the opposit, nonetheless, we want them to match. The best way to do this is by feel, I think. You want the cross of the X to be right at the quarter inch. In the picture above, you can barely see the yellow tidbit, but you can see that the two seams will cross right at 1/4 inch. I will say that sometimes you really have to manhandle your fabric to get it to work. I don't know if my way of piecing this curve is the "right" way, or what the quilt police would say, but it works pretty well for me, so I'll pass it on, but I encourage you to do what works for you.
You can see above that I am stretching the hell out of my fabric. Those are very curved pieces but I stretch both top and bottom until they're practically straight. I don't stretch the inner part as much because the curve is subtle, and easy to accommodate with less drastic means, but out toward the edge, the curves are deep and can be unwieldy using some more traditional method, such as pinning. The book also says to pin at every seam intersection, but I like my "find the crux of the X" method better.
The only seam that doesn't really cross in an X is the very last one. You can snug that one just like you'd snug the seams of a four patch to get sharp points. Like below:
Do not connect all your arcs together. Just connect them into pairs with one B arc, and one C arc.

If you stitched right through your X crosses, your seams should be nice and lined up.
The next step is to connect your arc pairs to the center of the dahlia that we made earlier. You will only sew one side of the arc's bottom to the left side of the opening in the center piece.
Here I've already attached the arc on the right, but you can see that the left-hand side I left open. I also only sewed dot to dot when attaching that short segment. Then moving counter-clockwise, I attach a second arc, as I show above. Now, according to the instructions, you should have all your arcs flapping around the center before you connect them to one another, and that is the ideal, but for purposes of blogging, I went ahead and attached the two pairs that I sewed on.
You start at the dot on the back of an A piece, but other than that, it's just like connecting the arcs into pairs, except you have the center flopping around.
This is the only stretch that's different from connecting your arcs. Sew from the stitch line on the A piece (the orange wavy business in this picture) and then continue on like you did above.
Continue counterclockwise around the whole center, and voila! You'll have a Dahlia. I'll do my best to get mine done this weekend and start with the process of putting it on the background, but I have two card tournaments this weekend (yeah, I'm a geek and I play a game called Magic, increasingly in tournaments, but originally just with my fiance). At least I'm not gambling. Anyway, I'll do my best to keep the Dahlia rolling.
Happy Quilting!

More Dahlia!

Mon, May 26th - 2:38PM

Completing the arcs.
Okay, just for the record, I didn't get all sixteen of my arcs done, just the two shown here, but this way if you're following along, you can move onward if you want.
Last time we pieced the BCDE and CDE arcs, now you move onto making the rest of the two arcs, and finally attaching them. The first step is to create the very outermost unit: the IHI unit. It involves sewing two pieces on one petal as shown below. This is the hardest part for me, so I'll try to give you as many tips as possible.
First, sew the left I onto H. Again, I like to put H on the bottom. If your cutting was slightly inaccurate (the piece I have the most trouble with is I) now is the time when those dots you carefully marked can save you from having to try to fix an miscuts.

So you can see that I was not perfect on my cutting on the top corner, but below you can see that since I lined up my dots (I sewed edge to edge, but made sure the dots were in line) it came out with a nice point and a quarter inch seam allowance beyond that.

Remember that you want to press both your seam allowances towards H (the darker green here). The next step is to sew the IHI piece onto G. I have two different colored Hs and two different colored Gs, but I decided it didn't matter which went on which, as long as I was consistent.
When sewing a pieced curve onto another curve (IHI has a seam along the curve) it's really important not to unintentionally compromise your seam when stretching it to fit the curve, particularly if it's the concave piece, as it is in this case. When I sew this part, I constantly hold the seam with one finger to ensure the seam doesn't come apart.

Other than securing the seam, you sew this just like the other curved seams we've done so far. Again, you'll want to make sure that you line up your dots (throughout the seam, I always look to make sure they're close, I don't put a pin through like I do at the start, I just do a visual check). It's also worth pointing out at this time that while you're sewing along, if you aren't going to sew right through the dot with your quarter-inch seam, it's not worth diverging to hit that dot. If you try to hit the dots dead on with your seam, your curve will not be smooth. The main purpose of the dots is to line the pieces up and to help with Y-seams, not to be a quarter-inch seam allowance guide.
The next step is to sew the G piece to the F piece. This is a slightly deeper, longer curve, so I sew it a little bit differently than the short curves we've done so far.

You can see that I hold the top piece, only lining up short sections of the curve as I go along, and again, I use the dots as a visual reference to make sure that I'm not over or under stretching.

And voila, I end up with two finished arcs (only 14 to go). I get easily bored with repetition, so I actually like doing a couple arcs at a time, rather than chaining because it keeps it a little more interesting. I'm trying to stay focused on this project for a couple reasons: the most obvious is you, dear reader, how annoying, should I stray wildly into other projects, but the second is that I would actually like to have this top done before my wedding so I can hang it in the shop while I'm on my honeymoon, quilt it when I get back, and amazingly have a quilt to put on my bed. :)
My next blog project is going to be an "accidental landscape" a technique developed by Kathy Eckmeier that seems very therapeutic and as though it would a). be very hard to screw up and b). lend itself to all sorts of embellishments, including some fun new things I'm planning on doing with beads and Angelina.
Until then, however...
Happy quilting!!!

Starting the arcs

Fri, May 23rd - 4:07PM

Piecing the Dahlia Arcs...
The next step in the Giant dahlia is to piece the arcs. You'll piece two sets of arcs, one that starts with B, and one that starts with C. Today I'm doing the B arcs, but the technique is exactly the same. The only thing I had to pay attention is to what color of each piece I was using, as my C and my E pieces are alternating colors. I laid them out below so I made sure to sew all of one color on the B arcs, and all of the other color on the C arcs.

To begin piecing the arcs, I took a B piece and the C pieces and laid them how they would and then flipped them right sides together. I put a pin through the marking on each to line up the first corner.

Then I squeeze the fabric together, carefully remove the pin and slide it under my sewing machine needle and lower the needle to hold it in place. Unlike some of the other pieces we've sewn, we'll sew edge to edge here, not dot to dot, as there won't be any Y-seams, or anything like that.

Here I have the needle down in the fabric and I'm going to sew a scant quarter inch seam. When I sew curves, I generally like to have the convex side on the bottom, and the concave side on top, however, for such small, barely curved pieces as B and C, it doesn't matter. I'm actually stretching both pieces in the picture above, and sort of pushing the edges into alignment. This works especially well for subtle curves. We'll get into deep curves later in the process.

Here you can see that I pressed toward the smaller piece, as I will do for this whole arc (the other arc we'll press the opposite way), but you can also see the difference between lining up those dots...and being too lazy to line them up. It's subtle, and fixable later on, but if you're a stickler for accuracy (I'm not, I'd rather fudge something later than do it right the first time :), make sure you line those dots up.

Here I'm piecing D and E the same way I pieced B to C, except now I have D on the bottom (the convex) and E on top (concave) the way I like to. In order to keep them lined up all the way to the tip, if you look carefully in the picture above, I have my forefinger on the bottom piece and my others on the top, that keeps the bottom piece from sliding around as that curve feeds through your machine, it also keeps the stretch even in both pieces which is critical for sewing a smooth curve.

Here is the finished DE unit which I will join to the CB unit the same way I did before. I laid the result on the center below to give you and idea how things will eventually go together.

My other colored Es and Cs will be in the other arcs, but you can begin to see the Dahlia coming together. Next time we'll get into some deeper curves with the big outer pieces, and hopefully, time willing this weekend, some tips on piecing curves with seams on them.
Until next time:
Happy Quilting!

To market to market to buy a fat pig....

Mon, May 19th - 4:32PM

Busy busy...
Well, I'm back from the Spring International Quilt Market in Portland, and I wish I could have brought all the new fun stuff back with me, but unfortunately I have to wait for some of it to ship! Bleck!
One of my favorite new things that I don't want to have to wait for is Eric Carle's Hungry Caterpillar fabric by Andover Fabrics. Here's a tantalizing tidbit:

This is the panel (which I ordered, of course) but many of the coordinates are just as adorable. So keep your eye on www.ltquilts.com because it should be here in three weeks or so.
My other favorite finds of market were patterns. Oh the wonderful new patterns!!! Bigfork Bay Cotton Company, Crabapple Hill Studios, and Botanical Art Quilts had amazing new stuff! I should have those up by tomorrow afternoon so you can see for yourself. I also broke down at Superior Threads, and will now be carrying the entire line of Carol Bryer Fallert's Brytes, which I will also get up as soon as possible on the main site.

And here is me, the very last second we (my mom went with me) in the convention center. I was very tired. We'd had five days of business classes, meeting with reps, and walking around with 7000 lbs of papers, brochures, books, and catalogs on my shoulder, so I was very very tired by this point, but still sad to leave. It's just so much fun to see all the new stuff.
And the last thing that I have show for now is my very favorite quilt (they have a couple of small contests/shows during market) that I saw while I was there:

Yeah, just in case you can't tell, that's all THREAD, glorious THREAD. And, as you may have guessed by the label, this is the back of the quilt. The back. The front was applique with very dense quilting. And the back is just sooooo beautiful I had to share.
Keep your eye on www.ltquilts.com until next time for all the new goodies as they come in.
Happy quilting!

Computer failure

Sat, May 17th - 1:28AM

Ah, computers.
Well, I just wrote a post about my good finds at market, but when I went to post it, the computer whiffed, so this is just a very brief message to say that awesome, awesome new things will be coming home with me from market, so check here, check the site: www.ltquilts.com for the latest and greatest. I'm having a great time, but man, oh man am I pooped.
Happy quilting everyone! And get ready, cause it's gonna get happier!

Conquering the Y-Seam

Mon, May 12th - 2:16PM

Conquering the Y-seam
Well, it's Monday again already. While I didn't make huge progress on the giant dahlia this weekend, I did get some done. (the future in-laws were here this weekend, more scrabble and hiking done than sewing). The most important thing is that I got the hardest part done: the center. The Not-So-Giant Dahlia doesn't have any Y seams, and you can fake them or avoid them altogether in the Giant, but I decided that a few Y-seams don't scare me. And they were surprisingly easy.
I started out with my marked pieces and I sewed from 1/4 " away from the edge, right off the other edge (in the pattern, she tells you which dots to stop at and which to sew right on through.

This one is nice and easy to see, but sometimes, when I'm sewing with orange So Fine on orange fabric, the starts and stops are a little hazy. I'll point out where I've sewn from a dot (that you'll have marked if you make this pattern along with me) and where I sew right through it.
Next comes the Y-seam. I pressed this seam toward the white piece, and took another orange piece exactly like the one above, and placed the two orange pieces right sides together. The I put my need down in the spot where the seam above (white to orange) ended in that dot, which is incidentally where the dot on my second orange piece is.

So this one is harder to see the seam, but I did start right where that other seam ended and stopped at the dot on the bottom of the orange piece. I didn't use a lock stitch because it adds too much bulk in thread. Instead I used a very tiny stitch and sometimes (read: when I remembered) did a little backstitch, but usually the tiny stitch did the job.
So that was the first step of the ever-terrifying Y-seam. Here it is from the front:

So the right, short side of the orange piece is still hanging loose. That's the only part of our Y-seam left to finish. And I like to use the same method as before. I put the other short side of the white piece to the short side of the second orange piece. Then I put my needle down in the dot or where the other seam ends (ideally this ends up being the same spot, but nobody's perfect). Then you sew from that dot/seam end all the way off the other edge.

This is exactly how the piece was as I put it through my sewing machine. This one was okay to sew right off the edge at the end of the seam, so you can see my threads there (and the threads coming from the crux of the Y). And voila! Your Y-seam is finished. Then I pressed as shown below:

Notice the little spiral of seam allowances at the crux of the Y. That's to eliminate bulk. It also tends to keep the other seam allowances in line.

So there is one of eight Y-seams that I had to do in order to put the center together. Every seam putting together the center is dot to dot. You never sew off the edge during this stage. And when you put the two half centers together, you don't get to just sew straight across, you still sew from dot to dot, then press every "spoke" seam in the same direction and make the center bulk of seam allowances press into a little spiral (forgot to take pics, but there's good illustration in the pattern).

As you can see, my center didn't turn out perfect, but it came out pretty nicely (I put this together in about half an hour) and the print really does a pretty good job of hiding the nubbed off points because the eye is distracted by the movement in the print.
Thanks for reading. I'm off to International Quilt Market (to market to market to buy a fat pig) tomorrow and will be back on Monday. I'll try post on Friday, but if not, I'll definitely have a fun post on Monday.
Happy Quilting!

The Giant Dahlia Begins

Fri, May 9th - 2:15PM

The Giant Dahlia begins!!

Well, I haven't had a chance to sew a thing since retreat (you would be amazed how long it takes to put fabric online!) :( But I did get my Giant Dahlia cut out at retreat, so I'm going to get cracking on that...when? Who knows. The future in-laws are here this weekend, so I'll have to entertain instead of sew, but what can you do? Anyway, the first step is of course to choose your colors and cut it out and this is the combo I came up with (apologies for the lighting, it was raining when I took the pictures, so it's kind of gloomy light).

I am finally going to make a quilt for MY bed. The only quilt that fits my bed is a rag quilt that I made when I first strarted quilting. I hate it. It's a trapezoid, for one thing, so it only fits in the loosest sense of the word, and in colors I hate, and I believe it actually quadruples my cats' shedding capacity.

Any other queen + quilts I've made I've given away, so I finally decided that I was going to make this one, and no one would take it from me! I love bright colors: orange, lime green, blues, and yellows especially, so this one will be oranges and yellows with green 'leaves' around the outside edge, and a very pale lime green background.

The worst part of a dahlia is not the curved seams, trust me! I really like Marti Michell's method and rotary cutter templates, but the cost of accuracy and ease in the rest of the quilts is the dreaded M-word (okay, maybe only I dread it, but it's marking). You have to mark your pieces. You really don't have to mark every single dot, but I do, because once I start, I get anal. Her templates have holes in them. I like to mark with something permanent. Why, you ask? Because my last dahlia, I marked with a very fine metallic pen that I had on hand so that it barely showed. Well, it bled bright pink! Joy, oh joy, so the white center of my other dahlia has pink streaks. I also don't like watersoluble because I find it's hard to see on many colors, for one thing, and if I decide I want to Best Press or spray part while I'm working, POOF, all my marking is gone! I prefer a very fine point Pigma Pen (made by Sakura, archival, used in scrapbooking a lot) and, to those of you who know me, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I'm using lime green. I don't like to use black, on the off chance I sew a seam incorrectly and it ends up on the front of the quilt, a dot of green is bearable, a dot of black will really stand out. So I try to go with a color that won't show too much. This is ultimately what the markings look like:

You can see they are very tiny! Bear in mind that when I whine about marking (I whine about a lot of things, but mostly, ironing, pinning, and marking), it really doesn't take very long. I lay out all sixteen of one size on my cutting table (or kitchen table, or any flat surface) and just hop from one to the next, and I can mark a whole group of petals in 5 minutes. So total it probably takes me about an hour. And it is definitely worth it! It really goes together nicely if you line up the marks.

I'll be keeping you posted on the Dahlia's progress as I go...Next week I go to Quilt Market in Portland, OR, so hopefully I'll find lots of fun new gadgets, patterns, and fabrics to share! I'll be sure and take lots of pictures.

Happy Quilting!

Stash...The Real One

Tue, May 6th - 1:03PM

Stash, the real one.

Apologies for not updating yesterday, I'm still trying to get used to the blog/internet thing. I know many of you out there don't have stashes, but I love my stash. I never buy anything specifically for a project, I always buy beautiful things and wait for the project to find me, and that's worked pretty well so far. I also have an APQS George (and am a dealer) and an APQS Milleniumm longarm. I thought I would get to quilt y own quilts now that I had my two big, beautiful, machines, but instead, I do a LOT of quilting for other people. As one of the kids in an after-school class I teach said, "Why don't any of your quilts have that tiny little border around the edge." Point taken, kid, I don't finish anything. Well, I like to think that I finish a lot of stuff! It's just not the same stuff that I start. I try to finish one or two quilts for customers a week (albeit, I have been a little tied up with the internet lately), so the stash below is used for them too. Yup, that's my weak justification for owning hundreds of different threads, but the real reason is that I LOVE THREAD!!!!

Yes, some people would walk into my studio, see this and think, "Man, that girl has a LOT of thread" (not to mention books, projects, glitter, and whatever else is crammed on those shelves)...But these are just my 'cheap' threads, and small spools. If you were too mosy around my studio and open any given drawer at random, you would probably find thread (or candy). Like the drawer below, which is all bobbinwork (or couching) thread.

I will tell you now, that once I discovered Superior Threads, my life (and bank account) changed drastically. Yeah, I do have every color of Razzle Dazzle, and about half of the Halo colors :) Sparkle junkie, don't you forget it!

My metallic collection (I only use Superior Metallic, the other brands are just too much hassle) and my collection of the flat monofilament Sliver/Holoshimmer/Glitter type threads, while appearing small is probably close to twenty colors (I love Hello Kitty too).

Can you tell that I also like to buy in bulk? Why buy a spool when i can buy a cone? And why buy a cone when I can buy a JUMBO cone!

And yeah, that is a drawer full of candy above my thread.

What can I say, I need sugar while I sew (and while I do everything else).

Yet these are just the tip of the iceberg: these are only my sparkly threads!

Below I have my variegated cottons. My two favorite types of variegated cottons are Superior's King Tut, and Sulky's Blendables. While I find Blendables annoyingly weak (on my gigantic machines) at times, they have too many beautiful colors to ignore. I also have some YLI, but the darker colors are also very annoying to use on my large machines (bear in mind, that I can use holoshimmers, metallics, etc...APQS aren't picky), but again YLI has some colors I just can't resist. They also tend to be VERY heavy weight which I love.

I confess, I have a couple solid cottons in the same drawer (though some look solid that are very subtly variegated)...Alex Anderson's Masterpiece has some colors I couldn't live without. Did I mention that I love Superior threads. Also, in addition to this jumble, I have probably 30 more cones of vari cottons at work, by the long-arm, but I forgot my camera today, so you'll have to wait for my long-arm post.

Ah, my other true love, big, fat, high sheen polys. I also fell in love with Carol Bryer Fallerts Brytes. They are solid, 30wt, trilobal polys. I love variegated, but often what a quilt really needs is a beautiful, bold, shiny solid.

Mmmm....I could almost eat them. I have a couple Highlights in there too. And no, I don't quite have every color. Shouldn't Superior be sending me some free thread for this post? Not to mention for my 'frequent buyer' status. Speaking of solid polys...

While I think the Bottom Line is fine, I actually prefer John Flynn's So Fine. You can cram a ton on the bobbin, it comes in gorgeous colors, and I piece with it to. I know some people are opposed, but the only plausible reason anyone has ever given me not to piece with high quality polyester, is that it might melt. Well, dear quilters, my iron is set to "Fire & Brimstone" and I've never melted it, so I don't quite buy that business. Anyway, I love to use it in my bobbin when I quilt, and I really love it to piece because it's lint free, and my seams lay so flat. Which is why I need so many colors. (Neutral shmeutral, I like to piece with thread that matches my quilt).

And, unsurprisingly, I have more at the shop! Imagine that. Even have a couple newbies in that drawer.

And the final bit of my poly collection is my Rainbows and Lava (the best combination of fat, shiny, and variegated).

Lava is made for Gammills, since they aren't as accepting of thread. Lava is a tougher, heavier version of Rainbows, with some great new colors.

So, now anytime your husbands or wives (or financial advisors) give you a hard time for wanting some pretty thread, you just show them this post, and I bet they'll shut right up, because with few exceptions, I think I have more thread than most quilters.

And they say you can't buy happiness.

Happy quilting!

Friday May 2nd

Fri, May 2nd - 11:52AM

Ooops!

Well, apologies that I wrote that last entry when I did, I didn't realize that my blog would go live immediately and my site was still in the works, but now my site: www.ltquilts.com is quite live. I'm still plugging away at getting the merchandise up, and some of the other pages are as yet under construction. But I hope you'll look around anyway. I'm getting stuff done as fast as I can :)

I was away at my quilt retreat this past Friday-Sunday, hence the lack of communication (I was quite braindead on Monday due to sleep deprivation).

My favorite thing about my retreats is that they actually let me sew too! And sew I do. I also do demos (glittering and cut-a-rounding this retreat), help people with their troubles, chat, and eat. Stress on the eating there :) This spring, I sewed from noon to 1:30AM on Friday, 7:30AM-1:30AM on Saturday, and 7:30AM-noon on Sunday. I'm lucky I don't have bed sores on my butt.

Anyway, here are a couple of the projects I worked on. My Not-So-Giant-Dahlia that I made a while ago using Marti Michell's rotary cutter templates: I only worked on appliqueing it onto the background (a girl's got to sit in front of the fire sometimes :).

I even used my stash to make this one and may end up selling it, as I have someone who quite loves it :) (aside from myself).

It was a surprisingly easy quilt and the method I recommend as an introduction to curved piecing.

Unsurprisingly it has two different fairy-frosts :) and two other metallic pieces. I'm like a raccoon, if it sparkles, I have to have it!

You can see I didn't get all my hand-stitching done :)

Oh well, it's still pretty.

This is the body of my Crazy Eights sampler. I haven't finished it's pieced border yet, but it has three borders, ultimately. I love the Crazy Eights method of eight-pointed stars: you'd never guess that all these stars were strip pieced.

Almost every piece of fabric in this top is either metallic or glittery. Sparkly sparkly sparkly sparkly :)

Note: if you make this quilt--make sure to use Best Press or spray starch to keep those bias edges from stretching (I didn't, and I have some nubbed off points.)

I would also suggest using higher contrast fabrics for your strips, but I was young and silly when I bought these fabrics, and obviously really liked the selection of reds at the time.

And finally, I worked on the Double-Wedding Ring that I'm making for my oldest sister, Morgan. When she got married a couple years ago, she wanted a quilt. I told her to send me some patterns that she would like. So here is a pattern she would like (she only sent it three months before the wedding, so I knew that wouldn't happen). I got these three rows joined, and the other six rows made, so I'm getting close. The joining of blocks is much easier than I thought it would be, but time-consuming. I used rotary cutter templates to cut this bad boy out, and combined with my rotating cutting mat, that part was a breeze. I'm glad I'm making this quilt, but I don't know that I'd ever make another one. You never know, I suppose. This will ultimately be a wedding, Christmas, and possibly first-fifth anniversary present for them. We shall see, I'm sort of on a roll with it.

So, those were my main projects. I also cut out a Giant Dahlia (yay for spinning cutting mats!) in shades of bright orange and yellow with a very pale spring green background...I don't have a quilt for my bed and I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous, I need to have a quilt on my bed" so I'm making a queen sized Dahlia for my bed. Also Marti Michell templates. I cut out some pieces of a quilt I'm making for my baby brother (who is now 20) that has polar-bears in it. All in all, I had a wonderful time, a productive weekend, and got to enjoy the constant inspiration of other quilters' work.

Until Monday: Happy quilting!!

An introduction

An introduction!

Hello fellow quilters,

I assume if you're here, it's because you've found LTQ & C online, so thanks for visiting my website! I thought my first blog should be an introduction of myself. Much of the store's news will be on the main site, so this will be a blog for me, as one compulsive quilter to others who may be more or less so. I was trying to decide how to open my blog the past couple weekends while I was reorganizing my studio, and as I folded all my fabric, I thought, quilters meet each other while quilting, or show 'n' telling, so it seemed the best way to introduce myself (and for you to see how much I LOVE fabric and thread) was to take some pictures of my studio, etc...

Those are my two wonderful Janomes. Why two, you say? Why not! One is an embroidery and sewing machine, but I also like to bounce from project to project.

I took over the living room of the house my fiance and I moved into when I came home to Montana after buying LTQ&C in August of 2007. It was big, it had windows, we have no furniture except the glorified scratching post in the picture (aka--the couch). He doesn't care, so I thought, why not?

My stash. Piled on top of my cutting table and ironing board. I did put it away, but I couldn't resist having a picture of my beauties all neatly folded and delicious looking.

My fiance keeps his keyboard (we don't have room for a piano yet...wonder who's taking up all the space?) in there for the view of the Crazy mountains and to play while I sew :)

I have a few other fixtures that make my studio my favorite room in the house, although they are sometimes a pain.

Medea is one of our kitties and she loves my sewing chair. I hop up to iron or cut, and there she is.

She also enjoys sitting in my lap while I sew, scratching me every time I use my knee lift and move her slightly. As you can guess. I like it much less when she sits in my lap while I sew.

And the other cat...

Possum, our other cat, getting "scoops" from Erik, my fiance (July 5th is the big day). Possum lives to be Possum, nothing more, nothing less. He does enjoy lying on brand new fabric and doing his best to molt.

Who knew that one cat could shed an entire cat every single day, but only when freshly vacuumed carpet, or new fabric or batting is exposed. Even the occasional quilted quilt prompts him to lose three or four pounds of fur.

I guess if I was a cat, I'd probably lay on fabric too, since I couldn't sew with it. Darn paws.

Possum ignores us most of the time, but if we say, "You want scoops?" in a very high pitched voice, he immediately turns around an meows until you flip him on his back and scratch his tummy.

Does that look like a happy cat or what?

Possum is like the Buddha of cats.

The formatting of this blog software is crappy, so I have to put in extra text to keep my pictures from overlapping the text. So I apologize for the rambling, just trying to fill space sometimes.

The fiance is pretty cute too, huh?

And the final piece of my studio is my "guard dog", Siri, who is no more a guard dog, than I am a house cat. She's a big pansy. Siri was my shop dog for a while, but at 95lbs (her ideal weight) and 11 years old, jumping in and out of the car was hard on her hips. She misses cleaning up spilled candy and following around susceptible quilters and just putting her head right below their hand for some unconscious scratching. She likes to sleep on the cat bed in my sewing room. As you can see, it's slightly ridiculous looking.

Siri spends much of her life in such dignified positions. Nothing like a 100lb dog on a 2lb cat bed.

Can you tell she's be gnawing on rawhide all morning? She occasionally 'smuggles' treasure in from outside. It's usually some small part of a dead animal, but she tucks in way back in her mouth so we can't see it, then gallops in the house and spits it out on the rug to inspect. Charming, really.

So, until next time, hopefully that shot will give you a laugh. Thanks for reading! I'll be updating on Mondays and Fridays at least--coming up next, maybe my thread collection! But more likely my retreat projects as I've got LTQ&C's spring quilt retreat this weekend!

Happy quilting!