Batting and Joann's

I have progressed far enough in my "football quilt" to need batting now. However, my stash had been depleted to the point where I don't think I have enough of any one kind of batting to make a quilt this size. So, yesterday, I dragged my boys off into Joann's. (I now it's only Joann, but that's so silly. I like that 's' at the end better.) Now there was a shocker. By the time I got back to the batting section, I was rather upset. Our particular Joann's only carries polyester batting now! It's like walking into the fabric section at Wal-Mart to look at their batting. Not a pretty sight. They no longer carry the Heirloom batting and they definitely didn't have the thermal batting I wanted. I think it's called ThermaTex. Then there was their so-called 100% cotton batting that was 80/20. Let me know what that's good advertising! Sheesh! However, on my way out, I noticed that they now carry this eco-friendly batting made out of 50% bamboo and 50% organic cotton. Like I said, eco-friendly. Expensive stuff too. However, I had to see what it felt like. I mean, bamboo batting? How weird! Imagine my surprise when I reached into the bag and felt it and felt one of the softest battings I've felt in a long time. I mean, it was so soft that my only thought was, "It sure is a shame to have to put that inside of a quilt." Then my next wonderful surprise was that it didn't need close quilting. It could be quilted up to 8" apart. I like that kind of batting because there are just times where I don't want to hide my quilt's visual pattern in misc. quilting. Okay, and I'll admit that I actually don't like the final quilting stage. I like to get it done as fast as possible. So I'm a weird quilter, no big deal. I enjoy quilting for the color combinations, not the actual quilting part. *grin*

So, needless to say, I now have a bag of bamboo batting sitting in my living room. With a 3% shrinkage, it's perfect for my needs. Now, to only get the backing fabric prepped, pieced, and that first section quilted. You know what? There's no way this quilt is getting finished in time to be used for this year's football season. Oh, well. It turns out that my middle son just found out that he adores wrestling. Maybe I can fold up that quilt and use it for bleacher padding during wrestling season. *grin*

Quilted tonight!

Well, I guess it still qualifies as "tonight." I haven't gone to bed yet. I'm a night owl by nature so I like to stay up late.

Anyway! I worked for 2 straight hours on my new quilt. I managed to get one 24" panel done. In case you don't know, I'm doing a twin-sized quilt in the 'Quilt As You Go' style. I've cut it up into several 24" panels and a few are larger. So, 2 hours netted me 1 panel and some random sewing on the other sections. I'm a huge fan of "leaders/enders" so I just used other parts of the quilt as my leaders/enders. It worked out well and got me closer to finishing more sections. Maybe I'll get more done tomorrow in 2 hours than I did tonight. Or rather, further visible progress.

What makes me sort of sad is that, the entire time I was working, I could only think, "This is boring." Wow! I don't remember the last time I ever thought that while quilting!! Then again, I'm going through emotional issues because my husband is gone at the moment. For all I know, it's just backlash from that. I was hoping to do 1 full bobbin's worth of piecing, but gave up when I finished that first panel and all the center sections that I had ready to go. I just didn't have the patience to just sit and put together the bars and the 2" squares that I still have to create.

I have decided to piece a backing together out of all the patriotic fabric that I own. I have tons of it! So I think I'll cut out 7" blocks out of several of them and then piece them together for the back. I'll probably start the work on that tomorrow since I have a panel ready. Maybe my boys will let me go to Joann's and get some batting so I can start quilting it. If not, I'll force them anyway. LOL If I only get one panel top ready a night, I'm in "trouble." I'll never finish it in time for the end of football season. Or if I do, it will be within 2 weeks of it ending. Oh, well. I'll still do it because I've already decided to create a utility quilt out of it.

The top of it will look really cool as it's in my son's football colors. I made the background black with a rich red (not a true, bright red) as the only other color. Though there might be some touches of gold in it here and there in the 2" squares. I cut up some leftover Oriental fabric that I had and it had some characters in gold here and there on it. This shade of red was "precious" in my stash and I can't match it without buying more fabric. Since I didn't want to do that, I figured I'd put up with the gold. *grin* Except for the batting and maybe the thread to quilt it, I won't buy anything for this quilt. It's time to use up some of my stash. Not that my stash is really large, it just needs used. I want to prove to my husband that those fabrics really do have a use. *grin*

With that, I suppose that I should call it an evening. I should probably get to bed so that I can set up my next amount of sewing tomorrow. I prep during the day when the light is best for cutting and then sew at night. I just find that the easiest way to do it. When I get a little further into it, I'll put in a picture of my new quilt. Maybe it will even get finished this month. That would be exciting. *grin*

Books and Reading

I came across a blog, which apparently is a "blog of note" to Blogger and found an interesting topic. What book are you embarrassed to have NOT read?

In going through the comments, the same books kept coming up. Oddly enough, Lord of the Rings ranked pretty high in there. As did the usual Moby Dick, War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice, etc. You know, supposedly the ultimate classics.

I have read a lot of books in my life. However, I never find myself feeling bad or embarrassed if I haven't read one. I just add them to my list of what I want to read and keep going on with my life. Though I was embarrassed to not have read some authors, like Ernest Hemmingway. Well, I've read one of his books now, have found him to be very depressing, and my life will continue. *grin*

No, I'm widely read and I don't feel too bad if I've missed something. If I even attempted to list what I have read, it would take next to forever! I also know that I've read obscure authors that most people haven't read for several reasons. First off, my favorite author's books are only on the bookstore shelves for a very short period of time. Second of all, I have yet to find a library that even carries her books! So, that gives to a very small readership. If you're interested, and can find any of her books, the author's name is Paula Volsky and she writes fantasy/pure fiction stuff. It's hard to describe her. Her world is completely made up, but some of the stuff she writes could have come from our own history. Illusion is a good example of the French Revolution with a lot of magic thrown in for fun. *smile* She's just a fascinating read, but be prepared to think your way through her books. She's fun to read, but not easy to read... Figure that one out. *wink*

I don't know. I just can't bring myself to feel too bad about books I haven't read. By the way, Edith Wharton is an incredible author. You should give her a try sometime. *smile* Now, I do feel bad about her. She wrote "The Age of Innocence" in case you're interested. I had put that one off forever! I finally read it this summer and wish I hadn't of put it off for so long. I loved that book. That reminds me, I've been meaning to check out more of her books. Silly me! *smile*

What if...?

Here's an interesting "what if" for you. What if you made every single block on the Quilters Cache website? I was out there yesterday trying to place a block I was making. I never could find it, but that's okay. I was just curious if it had a name and it wasn't that big of a deal. It's an incredibly simple block and is part of many blocks. However, on page 54, Marsha announces that one of those blocks is her 1300th block. There are approximately 75 blocks that come after that. So, you'd need to make a minimum of 1375 blocks with Marsha lovingly adding more blocks all the time. Could anyone actually do it? I'm just curious. I'm actually almost curious enough to try it. LOL I would personally exempt myself from making several of the blocks just because I have already made them.

I have used her patterns for Irish Plaid (my example is actually on her site), and I did Nelson's Victory (one of my quilts is there too). I have done a few others. I think Comets is one of them. I'm pretty sure I've done more than that, but I can't think of them right now. Of course I've made many of the blocks just because I pulled the patterns from other places.

However, think of it. How many quilts could you make out of 1,375 blocks? Goodness! A lot comes to mind. *grin* A twin sized quilt I'm working on right now has 154 blocks in it. They're all 6" which is why it takes so many. So... Wow. I don't know. I might still have to try it. *grin* I want to know if I can make every single block on her site. I don't know if I'll actually do it. It just would be fun to try.

I know, I know. I'm weird like that. *grin* However, not this evening. I have a quilt already all cut out and awaiting piecing. I should get going on that if I want it finished before football season gets too cold. Or, in my case, over! LOL So I hope that everyone has a marvelous evening. I think I'll go see about starting to put that quilt together.

New Quilt Started

It's a miracle!! Did anyone here trumpets sound yesterday when I ironed fabric and started cutting for the first time in months? LOL Just kidding. Then again, you might have if you lived closer to me because I did have my stereo on a little loud at first. *grin*

I have decided to go ahead and do that black and red quilt. I measured off the 5 yards of black I needed off of my bolt of black (I think I'll cry when I use that all up) and tossed it into the wash. While that was going, I set about pulling several reds to start cutting up. I ended up using 3 different fabrics in the red department to pull this off. No big deal though. I mean, I just cleared out more space in my "red drawer" to add more later!

Then, I proceeded to cut up all that red fabric to get it ready to sew together. I tell you, I was pretty sick and tired of it after cutting out 81 3.5" squares and 308 2" squares. As that got me into the late afternoon, I held off on messing with all the fabric I'd washed and dried earlier. I then discovered that when I rearranged my living room, I failed to put my cutting table near a good light source. Oops. That means I can't cut at night. With winter coming, I think I'd better get a lamp set up on my table. It's just that I actually keep it folded up now when I don't need it. So the light source didn't cross my mind when I moved the furniture around.

The quilt is going to be twin-sized when finished. I'm also going to use the QAYG (quilt as you go) method and break it up into 4X4 block sections. That will put each section at about 24" square. I could probably do it larger than that, but that's okay. I'll figure it out more as I get closer to that stage.

So anyway! My huge chunk of black fabric is sitting by my ironing board awaiting my attention. I ended up washing a lot of fabric that had been needing to be washed and ironed most of that last night. However, my back was definitely letting me know that it was not amused at this "new" treatment before I got to my black fabric. I guess I'll have to ease into it, huh?

With that, I think that I'm going to get going. I don't feel a strong urge to quilt today so I'm just going to force myself to do it anyway. I want to get that black all cut out so that I can collapse my table. Considering it takes 5 yards of black for this quilt, how long do you think it's going to take to cut it all up? LOL Yeah, you're right. I'd better get going if I want that table down by tonight. *grin*