Shrunken Head and Potholders

Shrunken Head


Many of you have been asking lately where Pappy's hat has been. You have said he doesn't look like himself without it. Lynn was in today and made both of those statements. Here is his response: "I got out in the rain and my hat shrank." The proof is in the picture. That's Lynn with Pappy in the shop. I wonder if it is truly that his hat shrunk or if is head has just blown up larger than normal.


Now that we have answered that question, here's what else we are doing. We were doing a Halloween sample for the shop and some of the pieces were cut incorrectly. After much cussing and swearing, we recut and prepared the sample correctly. Rather than throw out the bad pieces, we made potholders out of them. Here are 3 of the potholders.

For the backing we pieced together leftover pieces from the halloween fabric. So next time you make a mistake, make potholders. You could also give them away as Christmas gifts (not Halloween).

So when life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade, make potholders.

Catcha later,

T.

I love a Thimble

I have finally found a thimble I love. Cindy Blackberg introduced me to the Lady Finger thimble in her quilting class at the Knoxville AQS show. According to Cindy, you place your needle in the dimples on the side of the thimble and push with the side of your finger rather than the end. That also reduces the tension on your hand and may help reduce the chance of carpal tunnel syndrome.

I have one of those fancy expensive thimbles, but have never successfully used it. It was probably operator error and I hate to admit that I couldn't use something as easy as a thimble, but so what. There are lots of other things I can't do so why not admit to just one.

We now have the Lady Finger thimbles in the store. Stop by and try one some time.

Red Hatters Recycle

Good Morning,

If you haven't already decided that I have lost my mind, you might make that decision pretty quickly now. We had the Red Hatters in the Shop yesterday and they brought in a teacher to give them a demo on making purses. They very generously allowed me to sit in with them.

Some of the teacher's samples are pictured here. These are all made from items you would normally throw in the trash. Believe it or not, these purses were made by folding paper. The first photo was made with a dictionary (plus a little laminant). I liked these so much that we have set up classes beginning October 16 from 1 p.m.-3 p.m. and running for 6 consecutive weeks. The cost is $20 (one time fee, not $20 for each of the 6 classes) and includes the paper we will be using (discarded school books saved from the landfills). This dictionary purse is the style we will be making in the class.

Some other examples are: Starburst candy wrappers, Monopoly money and the Yellow Pages.

Do you recognize this technique? Think back to the days when you bought chewing gum that came in wrappers. Remember when the television stations signed off at midnight, 24 hour a day cartoon stations did not exist and we didn't have little handheld DVD players to watch movies or little electronic games to wear out our thumbs. Way, way back then we folded gum wrappers for entertainment. (Yes to those of you who are too young to remember this, we entertained ourselves. We also did not wear clothes that sold any kind of product.)

Any how, this class will teach you to cut your own papers, lace them together both inside and out so that you don't have to wrangle with lacing inside the bag an make fantastic corners without folding them inside and cutting.

These same bags can be found on Ebay (look for candy wrapper purses) for anywhere from $8 dollars up to $189 (that is typed correctly - $189).

Think about all of those quilting magazines you just can't bring yourself to throw - this would certainly take recyling to a whole new dimension.

Stop by and see the sample when you get a chance.

GO BIG ORANGE - IT'S FOOTBALL TIME IN TENNESSEE.

Spider Obit

It is with great sadness that I inform you Charlotte (the writing spider) has been squished. She is now quilting in spider heaven. I'm sure you are as dismayed as I was.


Last night I pulled into the carport (if you can call it that - it is one of those metal tops - not something attached to the house) as always. When I rounded the back of the car and started to speak to Charlotte on her web hooked to the second set of support beams there was nothing there. Charlotte and her web were gone. I searched around the other beams to no avail. Where, oh where, had Charlotte gone.


There was no tobacco juice so I could not quickly blame Rick. Simon (our outside cat) would probably been intimidated by a spider as big as Charlotte. Then it hit me. Justen had taken off the garbage as he had been told to do. I did not see that one coming. I whipped out the cell phone and punched in number 4 on the speed dial (1 was automatically set to voicemail, then I went by age, I can't help it that he was born after his brother and I am not getting into that discussion here). The conversation went something like this:

Me: What did you do to Charlotte? (Sorry, I know that was a quick jump to judgment.)
Justen: Who the heck is Charlotte?
Me: My spider, the one on the carport.
Justen: Oh, you mean that huge writing spider?
Me: Yes, that is Charlotte.
Justen: I squished it.
Me: Why did you squish it, that was my spider.
Justen: I had to take off the garbage like you told me and it creeped me out so I squished it.
Me: (I'll skip the lecture he got on not killing living things and the scientific conclusions that serial killers quite often kill animals in their youth because I don't know that squished writing spiders would fit into the category of mutilated animals.)
Justen: (I'll skip the half-hearted apologies here as well.)


So do you know what he did after he hung up? He turned right around and called Rick and said, "if she really upset that I killed a spider?" (Here's a little note for all you kids out there, don't call back and ask the one parent about the othere when the parents are in the same room.) Rick assured him that I was upset about the spider and that he (Rick) was now off the hook for spitting on the web and he (Justen) was on the hook for spider murder.

So I will end this by saying a fond farewell to Charlotte. I thought of her as I drove down Sevierville Road this morning and passed the bunches of webs hanging heavy with dew.

Quilt on Charlotte in that great web in the sky!

Quilting Spider

Today we are merging the quilting world with the spider world. If you gals don't want to read about spiders you can skip this for the day. We have a new insect at our house, Charlotte the writing spider. I know the name does not contain any use of imagination whatsoever, but I always liked the Charlotte's Web book and movie so my first spider every year is named Charlotte.

When we were growing up we were scared to death of writing spiders. Someone once told us that if the spider wrote your name in its web that meant you were going to die. That is probably what led to our destroying all of the writing spider webs we could find. It didn't matter that we couldn't read the "writing," we just weren't going to take a chance that it was our name in some funky alien spider script.

I would like to think that I have come a long way from the kid who destroyed the webs. Unfortunately Rick has not. Twice he has spit tobacco on the web forcing Charlotte to rebuild. He has been warned that he best not do it again or I'll help Charlotte catch him in a web of duct tape across the front door when he walks out in the dark one morning.

You are probably wondering by now what a spider has to do with quilting. Probably not a lot, but my imagination tends to work over time so I'm going to give you my whimsical connection between the two so here goes:

1. Female writing spiders are prettier than male writing spiders - need I say more?

2. Spiders use silk thread for their webs. Quilters use silk thread for many things as well. If we could only manage to shoot it out of our hineykanuchis (spelling?) like spiders we would save a lot of money.

3. There is a method to a spider's madness. They have to jump from one point to the other stringing a piece of silk behind them to get their webs started. When Sue was making a rag quilt the other day, she had strings going everywhere (she might have even figured out the answer to the quandry in No. 2 above). They then continue building around those pieces until the web is finished. Same for quilters.

4. The more thread the better. Some quilters like their quilts heavily quilted. The writing spider specifically likes the heavy quilting in the middle.

5. When you are finished and think you have done an exceptionally fine job somebody (usually a man) comes along and spits on your web. Although this might be a set back to some, quilters and spiders will just jump right back in and fix it again.

So that is why I think spiders and quilters are alike.

Happy Quilting,

T

Finished Quilt & HandiQuilter

Hi guys,

I told you I was quilting a quilt with lots of tight quilting. I finished it yesterday and she picked it up today. Here are a few photos of the finished quilt. I can't even begin to count the hours I spent on this quilt. It was fun, but tiring.

I also need to remind you all about the HandiQuilter promotion. They are looking for stories about your HandiQuilter - any model with do and it can be whether you rent our machine here or own your own machine. Go to www.handiquilter.com and click on My Story. From the stories they receive about a dozen will be chosen for publication in magazines. Those dozen people will also win a trip to Salt Lake City to a Handi Quilter retreat - that would be so much fun. We have been lucky in the past with this contests. Robin and Alice went to Salt Lake City a couple of years ago and had a blast. THE DEADLINE is FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, so hop to it if you want to join the fun.

Upcoming Show

Hi guys - I've got a couple of new shows to add to your calendars. September 18, 19 and 20 in Marietta, Georgia.


Cobb County Civic Center
548 S. Marietta Pkwy
Marietta, GA (Metro Atlanta)
Fri, Sat, 10-6, Sun 10-4
Daily Admission $8
http://www.ecqg.com/Show/index.htm


AQS still has the Des Moines Show Oct. 28-31 this year and Oct. 6-10 for 2010. They have also added a show in Lancaster, PA, on March 24-27, 2010.


If you have never been to one of these shows, try to go. You will have a bundle of fun.


Happy Quilting.