Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts

Are you watching Bernina’s game show launch for the new 830?

Where’d I put my dongle?

It has an alarm clock, people.

And built-in dual-feed.

I’m Swiss. What kind of discount does that get me?

The features are wildly impressive.

They are doing for machine embroidery what Bill Gates did for graphic design.

Oh, crap. There’s an 820 that doesn’t have the embroidery module. I was afraid of that.

I can save my money. The 820 isn’t coming out until early 2009.

The Bernina Boys? Really?

I think I may have to resign myself to appreciating the Swiss precision of my Sigg water bottle.

I hope you’ll pardon my play-by-play comments as I watched the webcast…

And now I am sad.

Back to finishing the quilting on Radioactive Renaissance, its solid black border covered in batting fluff.

All 5,329 square inches are quilted:

There is satisfaction in the completion, but I am SO glad this is done. I ran out of thread early yesterday and hope no one will notice the difference between the dark icy grey and the light icy grey thread substitute. oops The binding is ready to be stitched down, but I’ve run out of movies for the moment. May need to make a quick run to the library before it closes for the weekend.

So, the next thing that needs to be taken care of is using this circle:

to cover this hole:

I’ve machine stitched it twice but will now hand applique it on in hopes that it will not pucker up AGAIN.  Then it’s on to borders, quilting and making up some sort of directions to add in to the pattern. Oh, that will be fun.

So, um, do you think there’s something wrong with me? Yesterday, I was driving down the road noticing all of these slow-driving types surrounding me. I thought to myself, ‘why are all of these people driving below the seam allowance?’ Yeah, I thought so. I’ve been spending far too much time at the sewing machine…

I’m working on keeping my seat in my seat. Deadlines are upon me and I’m a quilting fool. Finished quilting two quilts on Monday. I might get a third one done today. The nice thing about the first two is that I can hand them over to their respective owners and THEY get to put the bindings on. I may need to get one more biggish quilt done by the middle of next week. I think I can, I think I can…

Whilst I’m working away, I have been entertaining myself with movies. Let’s see, The TV Set (oh, that was a clinker), The Jane Austen Book Club, Valley of Elah, Howard’s End, started to watch the Kite Runner but I can’t quilt and read subtitles (d’oh), and I just started The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Oh, downloaded American Gods to listen to as recommended by Kirsten.

OK, back to work. I did take a little field trip yesterday and bought myself a spinny cutting board. SWEET! Don’t worry, I’m thinking of fun things to do when the work is all over!

I don’t think you understand. I can’t grow anything that requires my attention. If a plant can’t take care of itself, it is doomed in my care. Plants don’t like me. Never have. So I’m probably jinxing the harvest by even talking about this:

My grandpa always grew the best tomatoes. Frankly, he grew the best whatever. He always had a cutting of some odd thing or another that he was trying to grow. Oh, and his kohlrabi (or as we pronounced it, “call-a-rabbi”) were the BEST. He is a green thumb extraordinaire, in my humble opinion. I have tried off and on over the years to grow tomatoes because they have to be my favorite food (and pretty much anything created from them goes along for the ride) and I have such fond memories of home-grown tomatoes.

I know these babies aren’t ripe yet, but it is giving me immense pleasure to see them get even this far.

::sniffle:: Please excuse me, I’m feeling a little verklempt…

The ever-creative Lil posted a beautiful quilt recently. In her post she referenced an applique technique from Yoko Saito. I admired this book in past issues of Quiltmania. After seeing Lil’s quilt and being intrigued by the technique, I ordered the book:

While searching for that book, I saw another Yoko Saito book that is also BEAUTIFUL. This book actually includes directions for the technique of applique that Lil mentions:

OH MY! This book combines Japanese AND Scandinavian????????? What’s not to love? It is beautiful! I purchased both of these via eBay but the seller, Pomadour24, also has them for sale on Etsy.  Lil, I believe I have tempted you in the past. Maybe we’re now even.

On a recent rainy day, someone special came out to play:

Why, hello, Helly Kitty! Olive needed a quilt:

A certain young lady in the household did a lovely and patient job with piecing the squares and adding borders. She also learned a few things about Mr. Seam Ripper. Now we need to sew down the binding, but that hasn’t stopped Olive from enjoying her new quilt.

Finally, I am totally GEEKed today.

Hello, iPhone! Mind you, I do not even LIKE phones and my old cell phone was R.A.R.E.L.Y. turned on. But we’ve been waiting patiently for the new phones to come out. We were fairly blasé in our approach to getting them. The AT&T stores opened at 8 am. We left the house about then. The line at the small AT&T store we chose was short and the “line guy” told us he would probably be out of phones by the time we got in to the store. We decided to just wait and order the phones. AND THEN THEY STILL HAD A FEW PHONES by the time we got to the door! Woot! Thank you, impatient people who left the line! I do believe the call clarity is better than our land line. I may not have liked my old phone, but I like THIS phone!

I celebrated with a free Slurpee since it’s free Slurpee day!

Hope you have a great weekend! Next week begins a first-ever two-week session of Camp Granny. I have so many quilts to finish in the next week weeks…I’ll try not to let the new gadget distract me.

We’re introducing dear daughter to Gilligan’s Island. This morning she watched the episode about the radioactive seeds that Gilligan found washed up on the island. She asked what radioactive means. You know, that is kind of tough to explain.

While thinking about the various vague notions I might have about radioactivity, I thought about glowing radioactive things (I did find out that radioactive things don’t glow on their own, that they must be mixed with some type of fluor in order to see a radioactive glow, blah blah blah, science-y things). Whilst thinking these not-so-deep, nor-very-clever thoughts, I thought of the latest round of Annabella fabric and the Blue Underground Studios‘ Renaissance pattern. You know, it kind of has a glow, and so I bring you Radioactive Renaissance:

I just love all of these acidy colors mixed with some black.

The wedgie wheels are finished with rick rack. I even used black rick rack on the smaller circles that are on black backgrounds. This amounts to the ultimate in laziness. So far, I have appliqued all of my wedgie circles, but haven’t been entirely pleased with the results. I decided to resort to a favorite rick rack trick this time. Maybe I’ll explore the six-minute circle method from Pieces Curves So Simple sometime in the future.

In the meantime, I thought I would try to illustrate this trick (yes, with black fabric, black rick rack and black thread–BRILLIANT!).

Here is the large circle with its rick rack edge:

In this case, I am using 11/16″ rick rack, but I also used 3/8″ with fine results. If you try this, a wider rick rack is probably better starting out.

So, take your circle and your rick rack to the sewing machine and lay the rick rack on the raw fabric edge ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE CIRCLE so that the approximate middle of the rick rack is approximately on the 1/4″ seam line. Use a straight stitch to sew the rick rack to the top of the circle.

When you start sewing, leave about an inch of the rick rack unsewn at the beginning so that you can finagle  it at the end. When you do get all the way around the circle to the end, try to figure out a tidy overlap that hopefully brings two ridges together. Fold one edge and lay the other raw edge on top of that fold (all of this happens on top, don’t fold anything under–sorry I don’t have a photo of this…) and finish stitching the rick rack.

OK, take the whole thing to your pressing surface and start to flip the rick rack to the back. Finger press a good portion of this, pulling out the rick rack edge as needed, and then press with your iron.

Work your way around the circle, folding the rick rack under and pressing on the top.

This is what the back looks like (it pretty much looks like the top did when you sewed the rick rack on the top, except now you have that brilliant finished edge hiding underneath):

Now, you’ll edge stitch the circle to your background:

I line up the inner opening of my 1/4″ foot with the finished edge of the circle.

And there you have it. Clear as mud, I’m sure.

While I’m not done with the first Annabella quilt, I’ve already started the second. Initially, I was more attracted to the green/grey/red colorway but was too lazy to pick fabrics to go with it. It seemed a more daunting task than finding things to go with the pink/yellow/brown. I overcame my laziness and picked some fabrics for the green/grey/red Annabellas:

I couldn’t wait to cut into these. I’m going with a variation of the Renaissance quilt pattern that is going to involve–ta da–wedgie circles:

I think I’m in lurv.

I also wanted to mention an AWESOME book we got today:

We have a perfectly lovely hardback copy of Pippi already, but I saw this one illustrated by Lauren Child and had to add it to the book collection. I think I love this more than dear daughter does.

What’s not to love? It’s got all kinds of fabric-y goodness:

Hey, I think I have a piece of that brown dotted fabric!

Happy 4th of July! I have to keep reminding myself that we also celebrate one of the dog’s birthdays on July 4th. And let’s just say she will not be allowed a mud pie as her treat.

I was going to title this post: “Those are for the DOLLS, not the DOG.” But then the second dog got into the act, and I just couldn’t help myself.

This is a burst of doll-culinary creativity–a Crabapple-Mulberry Sandy cookie:

This is what is left of a Crabapple-Mulberry Sandy cookie:

At different times, both dogs showed up at the back door with sand-covered snouts. One day long ago, this was sterile sand. I wonder if it still is…or if that matters in a dog’s digestive tract. Maybe one of these cookies would cure dear daughter’s day-long hiccups. Hmmm…

Someone needs to do a better job of cleaning up the outdoor cooking. That would probably end up being me.

You DO NOT want to sit next to either of these canines later today!

The only quilt-related item is that the Renaissance blocks are together. They pretty much look like they did yesterday (and I only had to rip one row). Now to decide borders and go sweep up some cookies.

You know the iron from the other day? Well, yesterday I LOST a container of sliced green pepper. You know, in that fridge cleaning moment that occurs when you arrive home from the grocery with a load of things that need to go into the refrigerator and there is no room? And many of the items you need to put into the fridge are replacements for iffy things that needed to be removed anyway (but weren’t even though the garbage was picked up in the morning and you have arrived home from the grocery AFTER the morning)? You know, that moment? I lost the peppers. I thought maybe they’d gotten thrown away. Couldn’t find them in the garbage. They weren’t sitting on top of the fridge. I figure I might find them later this week in the sewing room or something stinking up the joint.

Today, I left the hard boiled eggs on to cook FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR. Somewhere papers are being drawn up…

On a somewhat less forgetful note, I finished the blocks for the Tina Givens’ Renaissance quilt. I would have started piecing the top, but a playdate drop-off parent STAYED all afternoon. That’s not how this works. Kidding!

Here is the current block arrangement:

The mail carrier brought a FABRIC SHACK delivery of Park Slope. I LOVE Fabric Shack and I LOVE this fabric:

I’m not sure on whose blog I first read about this book:

But it is the most wonderful book! There are SANDwiches being made left and right. A pine needle upside down cake has been baking since yesterday, and a creation of dust (we have plenty of that) tea is on to brew. Oh, I believe there is also a pot of back yard stew. Since we don’t have eggs, I’m afraid it’s all I can offer, won’t you join us?

It has been an exceptional Sunday. Mainly because I didn’t have to go to work. Can’t remember the last time I didn’t work on a Sunday. We didn’t do anything out of the ordinary; it was just nice to change the routine and to have time to lollygag. Which I did. I cut up some of Tina Givens’ new Annabella fabrics and mixed them with some others. It was a squares and rectangles kind of project from Blue Underground:

I ended up with some of these:

And will eventually begin to arrange them…something like this:

I believe I have completed 26 out of 35 blocks. These blocks go together so zippity-quick! I had a hard time choosing between the brown/pink/yellow colorway and the GREY/red/green colorway. I can’t believe I didn’t go with the grey/red/green first, but this was so fast that I might make another. I know a girl whose name is very close to Annabella and she might like a quilt for her bed.

Taking a break from all of that fun, we wandered to the bookstore where we bought the new Mysterious Benedict Society book (if you are a grown-up and you can save Mr. Benedict, you will have my highest admiration) for someone who is reading and reading and reading this summer. While I had a book coupon to spare, I resisted literary temptation since my summer reading stack is growing into a summer and beyond reading stack.

I only came home with this delightful summer reading:

Oh, and, er, I came home to find that I had left the iron ON while we were gone. I DOUBLE CHECKED IT before we left…I wonder if I actually turned it back on instead of off. It would seem that any replacement iron will have to be of the dreaded auto-shut-off variety. I’m getting closer to The Home every day. And while it sounds like it might be very relaxing at The Home, I doubt they will let me bring my sewing machine, my stash and a variety of sharp implements. I’d better keep it together a while longer!

I hope your Sunday was great too!