down south

i've taken another trip, the last one of the year. (i'm seriously ready to stay put for a good, long while, even if traveling does mean epp and visiting quilt shops.) the mr was traveling to visit company offices in the southeast and i was invited along to nanny the children he also brought, d2 (11) and d5 (nearly 2). well, maybe i'm not the nanny, but that's what it felt like because of the pace of the trip and his inability to help much while working (completely understandable). i brought epp with me, of course, but got a lot less done than anticipated. travelling with a 23 month old put a damper on the sewing. she was a very cute beast of a traveler. 

 don't let the photos fool you - she was not well behaved most of the time. but that's to be expected and we should have anticipated this after 6 older siblings.

we didn't spend very long at all in each city we visited, which is a shame because they were some really good stops: atlanta, ga; chattanooga & knoxville, tn; charlotte & raliegh, nc. but it was still wonderful to be in the south again after nearly a decade away from the land i once lived in and still love dearly.

 uhm, uhmmm! not health food, but some downhome cooking: smoked bbq, boiled green beans, coleslaw, fried okra, and fried dill pickles in the background. all the southern cooking, desserts, and sitting in cars half the day did nothing to help my recent push to eat better and be more active. quite the opposite.

photo downloaded from estate website - click to view larger

 we did have one day of complete pleasure, no business. we stopped in ashville, nc to visit the biltmore estate. it's an 8,000 acre property and home built by george vanderbilt in 1895. with 250 rooms, it's the  largest home in america, they say. photos are not allowed inside, so all i've got are a few exterior shots.

just a wing, less than 1/3 of the house

stable roof and clock

is this what your front door looks like?

the mr looking out over one of the verandas, beautifully covered in vines

one tiny end of the house seen from the garden

 the house was lovely, said to rival those in europe, but it's not the kind of place i'd like to live. the gardens and grounds, however, i'd take in a heartbeat. i was falling in love with the colors and textures in the late afternoon light. individual flowers and blooms had me completely smitten. here's a sampling:

 the baby may or may not have been helping deadhead fading blooms in the rose garden.

 a would-have-been cute photo of the baby and me, but the mr had the background in focus instead of us.

 the hotel room we stayed in in ashville had some inspiring colors and designs going on. and i don't even like purple! but this was cool.

all 4 of us in the hotel mirror

aside from the biltmore, the best part of the trip was the tupelo honey cafe in ashville. if you are ever in town, EAT THERE. seriously amazing updated southern cooking. the biscuits were to die for. with the homemade blueberry jam, they were like desert. i'm ordering the cookbook.

i also got to visit one southern quilt shop in charlotte. the girls just weren't interested (go figure) in seeing anymore fabric, so that was the extent of my touring. i got some fabric, but no photos because they were so busy running around the store, i had my hands full of combing through fabric and making sure they weren't destroying anything.

so now i'm home and ready to stay here for a good stretch. i'll have to find other times to epp but i'll also be getting some machine sewing done, too. it's good to be home.

some wicked wips

this weeks wips are costumes! only marmee is the seamstress here, not i. she has been assigned/graciously accepted the task of creating two elf maidens, one ranger, one lady of the rohirrim, three hobbits, one elf warrior, and one ax-weilding female dwarf (the 7 yr old - she's unique). marmee, my mom, has been making costumes since i was a wee baby. it's what has always made halloween fun around our house - dreaming up anything we want to be and her producing it. she has continued to make for any posterity that wants her services. at out house, that's a tall order. we've done themes for several years now. this year, as you can tell, we are lord of the rings characters.

 i'm especially excited about the two youngest girls' hobbit outfits. selecting fabrics for all the costumes is not the kind of fabric shopping i like to do. i was dreading it for weeks. the hours of torture were fun for the few minutes it took me to select the brocades and linens for their dresses. they are going to be so sweet!

 marmee is set up in the dining room alongside me with her two machines, serger included. she should be stationed here for about the next two weeks. we really should have started sooner, but she's plugging away gamely.

on my end of the table:

i'm at work on straight line echo quilting jed's baby quilt. finally. i really fell off the bandwagon on this quilt.

also, my epp link party is under way right here at splish splash stash. if you epp, join us, please! or if you don't, go see what others are doing.

i'm linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced and kelly's needle and thread thursday.

newcomers and 2 more down

 i've added a few new prints to my epp  project. i'm not really sure how i feel about this. somehow, it seems all new fabrics i add are upstarts of a sort, newcomers pushing their way into the original crew of the project. silly, i know, since i'm the one that selected them and threw them into the mix. and i did that because i felt i needed a few more options in pink and navy blue to balance out what i already had. i'm sure they will seem right at home and part of the family before too long, that i'll forget they ever nudged their way into the party after it was started.

the top row of pinks are various designer fabrics i got at the quilt shop. i was already using the eiffel tower print in red, so adding the pink version felt natural. the diamond pattern and dot pattern echoed other prints i already had, also. i'm still a bit unsure about the rather strange dots on the turquoise. it's a perfect fit color-wise, but i'm not sure if the pattern is in keeping with the feel i had going.

the other four prints on the bottom were some quite lovely bits i discovered at joann crafts. they're not technically designer prints, but they meld very well and were good quality. they pass muster nicely.

 i got most of the prints washed and cut in time to take on my latest excursion - a business trip with my mr and two of the girls to the southern u.s. for 5 days last week.

since i neglected to bring along extra hexies, i only completed one block and mostly basted shapes in the new prints. having an almost two year old along also severely limited my production. this is the last time she's invited as a business traveler, not only because she no longer flies free but because she is a travel nightmare these days.

i finished off the block i started during general conference weekend and completed one more on the road. or, actually, in the air - 5 hour flight, you know.

 i now have 10 complete blocks, one connector/half block, and a set of 3 interlocked blocks completed. to get the size quilt i want, i'm going to need about 7 blocks and 7 half/connector blocks blocks per row, about 15 rows. which simply means i have a long way to go!

the epp project has earned it's own (overflowing) basket and cubby space in my dining room shelving. it looks as if it will be a resident for some time yet to come. maybe until the baby leaves for college.

for now, this quilt is intended for me when it's complete. i wonder who it will go to eventually and if it will be much wanted? "hey, i get the quilt mom made by hand! i remember her working on it for years, everywhere we went. i want it!" maybe. or maybe no one will care.

linking in to in hand epp link party right here at splish splash stash and thursday threads.

in hand epp link party

welcome to the first in hand  link party!  i am quite anxious to see what other epp projects are going on out there. i've been traveling (and epping along the way, of course) this week so although i set up the party to publish beforehand, i didn't get my epp photographed for this post. i'll be linking up myself the beginning of next week. thanks for joining in!

epp on the airplane again

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home ec friday

this photo from a post last week generated some interest, so i'm here to explain today.

in the not-so-busy times of the year, fall and spring, my friend jill comes over to sew on friday mornings. the mr. takes our youngest children to the zoo for the morning or day, the older children work on their own school or craft projects, and we sew.

jill and i took a beginning quilt class together in april 2011. neither of us has finished those quilts, but we are very, very close now. this week we thought we would be able to finally complete the quilting on our respective quilts. we were especially anxious to do this so we could do the handbinding during our general conference listening over the weekend. (we've had that goal the last two conferences. *sigh*)

alas, it was not to be! i sat down to work on my stippling of "taite":  i found my starting point, got my thread to the top, put my gloves on, and took off. for some reason, however, the quilt just wasn't sliding or moving around at all. i stopped to make sure my supreme slider (mat designed to allow the qulit to move in all directions easily during fmq) was in place. i saw the corner of it under my quilt, so i tried again. still no sliding. urgh! i figured the threads were making a big nasty snag and i'd just have to start again. wrong!

 what i actually found was much worse. my slider had done the sliding instead of the quilt and was now sewn to the quilt! and the tugging i did to get it out of the machine had ripped the slider, too. i was aghast. when i got my slider out to begin the fmq on this quilt a week earlier, i'd noticed it had some lint on the grippy side, but since it was still staying put, i didn't think much of it. apparently i should have paid more attention and done some maintenance.

i carefully took the stitches out of the slider. fortunately, it didn't rip where there stitches were. i then took the slider to the sink for a rinse. that lint washed off in about 1.5 seconds, pretty much as soon as the water hit it. with a bit of shaking, it was dry enough to use almost immediately. an ounce of prevention would definitely have been worthwhile here. i was impressed with how tacky the slider was after rinsing. i could barely get it in place because it stuck to the machine table the instant it touched it anywhere.

jill and i had a good laugh over the incident. i told her it seems like no matter how hard i try, i always flub up somewhere, somehow. in the beginning, i was always forgetting to adjust settings whenever i switched feet or tasks. in fact, when i started the fmq on "taite", i knew i usually forgot something and took extra care to make sure i'd changed all settings after putting the walking foot on. (did you smart people catch that?) however, despite having changed the stitch length to zero, dropping the feed dogs, and putting my slider in place, it just wouldn't slide around the way it's supposed to. after about 3 attempts i suddenly realized i'd put the wrong foot on! since the last quilting i'd done was straight line, i was thinking "quilting = walking foot" when fmq actually requires a fmq or darning foot. oh, when will i ever get it right!

jill laughed with me about this too. i told her i call these gaffs "home ec moments" because they are the kind of mistakes you'd make as a beginner in home ec.  a few minutes later, jill had a home ec moment of her own. she stopped to check how the back was looking and could not figure out what was going on. it looked as if her threads weren't aligned somehow.

 on the back, there were two rows of stitches, less than a quarter inch apart, which should have been overlapping. how on earth had the machine done this?

 when we looked at the front side, there was only one line, as there should have been. it was completely bizarre. i know how you can have misalignment when hand stitching because the needle doesn't enter and exit the same place, but this seems impossible to happen on a machine. she kept flipping it back and forth from each side, trying to find the source of the problem. as we sat there puzzling over the issue, jill suddenly realized the cause - she was sewing through two sides of the quilt, which she'd accidentally folded when putting it  in the machine.

the batting is so thin that she didn't realize just by feel that the quilt was doubled. you can bet we laughed over this one, too! it wasn't friday the 13th or anything, but we were feeling unlucky in our sewing attempts for the day. jill was a good sport and let me photograph her home ec moment, too. they do make for fun posts.

apparently home ec moments aren't just for beginners. wish us better luck next week after fall break when we get back to sewing on friday mornings again!

an invitation

i'm saving up all my finishes for this weekend as i listen to general conference, so i don't have any final finishes to share. but i did finally get my buttons made for a monthly link party i'll be hosting starting next weekend.

i've had this link party on the brain for a few months now and am finally ready to launch it! epp has been such a satisfying addition to my sewing repertoire. i know several other epp-ers (a new word i just made up) are out there and i want to see what they're working on! having links collected in one place is so handy. so beginning this month, i'll be hostessing a little get together for sharing all the epp goodness going on out there.

epp is a long-term project, usually accomplished over a length of time. i do mine in bits and pieces when i have a chance. for this reason, i thought a monthly link would be better than a weekly. i've chosen the second saturday of each month for the party, which will stay open for at least a week. i hope the alliteration helps everyone remember when it is!

i'm not sure which button i like best. any thoughts? maybe i'll just offer both. or if they're really awful, i'll start from scratch. tell me, please!

in addition to some quilt binding, i'll be working on my epp this weekend, also. when i epp at home, i like to listen to something, like a book or inspirational talks. this weekend i'll be following general conference live. it's perfect as a backdrop for epp. or, to give proper emphasis and priority to that statement, i should say epp is the perfect thing to do with my hands while i listen.

so if you're home this weekend and want some uplifting and inspirational listening to go along with some handwork, join me! schedule here. and if you epp, please join the party starting next saturday, october 12th . i can't wait to see what everyone is worring on.

september quilt photography workshop challenge

frustration

things that make me laugh - or a typical day
(this is both right now)

i'm linking in with beth's photo challenge at plum and june again this month. i have to say this one was harder for me. most likely that's just because it took more forethought and i just didn't feel up to that this month. we were supposed to use her word phrase prompts to inspire a photo composition. that had me stumped for the most part. but then a few situations came up that provided opportunities so i get to link up after all. we're not supposed to write any explanations (egad - i have to hold back my tongue!) but just supply the phrase the photo matches. i've kept to the rules. however, the story of sewing my slider to my quilt will be told later in another post. it's too good not to share the laughs.

a pressing matter

which side of the debate are you on? do you press open or to the side? I was taught, originally, to press to the side, but after reading Elizabeth Hartman's book "the practical guide to patchwork" I decided to give "open" a go. something about it appealed to me. (her use of white space and fabrics also inspired my design decisions.)

unfortunately, the very next quilt I made, "taite", had lots and lots of tiny patchwork and it was quite a pain to press all of those open. that is one thing about "open" that is not in it's favor - it is twice the work.

that quilt has also been put aside and taken out several times since it was begun. this has required re-pressing all those darn seams more than once. ugh.

on Friday, my sweet friend jill came over to sew with me. I drug out "taite" to be basted. it was still sandwiched after my last unsuccessful attempt to baste it, and neatly folded. I was hoping it would be just a matter of taping it down and getting those pins in it. unfortunately, I could tell by looking at it that she would require pressing of the back and top due to the large creases left by months of being folded.

I drug out my iron and board, then got to work. it took way too long, but I eventually got it all pressed one last time.

I realized this was the last time I was going to see all those crazy seams and had to take one last photo of them. strange, but I think I might actually miss them. seeing, not pressing, that is.

farewell, my first open seams! may you lay flat and be easily quilted.

linking to needle and thread thursday

what's on

on the machine: "taite" is being stippled

on the couch in the formal living room: a pile of wips in various stages
(no space is safe around here - the dining room and the living room both now have sewing scattered about.)

on for the weekend: general conference
I hope to make a big dent in these projects this weekend because general conference is coming up! this is one of the bi-annual weekends when our family gathers at home to listen to our church's prophet and general authority leaders speak to us. I usually try to keep the kids quiet with handwork while we listen. often, I can squeeze some in myself. it's the perfect time to bind quilts or do some epp work.

if you have a chance this weekend and would like some uplifting, inspirational listening to do while you either work on projects or just sit back and absorb the peace, join me! (maybe you can do some lovely embroidery like the abc bow over at shush, i'm quilting.)

there are 2 2-hour sessions on both saturday and sunday. you can watch or listen via the internet or cable from several sources. refer to the schedule (here) to find out when and how.

linking in to wip wednesday at freshly pieced.