Deadlines

Every month I have two deadlines.  An Artistic Trading Card group has a specific deadline each month and a Postcard Trading group has a “sometime during the month” deadline. 

Every month as I face these two deadlines I fight with myself over the argument as to whether my work is considered “art” or “craft” – art being more desirable/uppity and craft being more………..well, lowly.  Now where did I get that attitude and why can’t I make it go away? 

Here is a link to the ATC’s from last month.  Can you pick out my crafty one as opposed to the other artistic ones?  Probably not. 

And here is a picture of the postcards from last month….

Which one is mine????  All three could have been done by me as I am always trying to measure up or going on a diet, but the May Binding is mine because I had a stack of quilts to bind in May and those are pieces of leftover bindings .

So am I an artist or a crafter?  I think I will compromise and be a crafty artist. 

Time to go work on my deadlines for June.

Oops

Whenever I feel confident that I know what I am doing, it always surprises me that I can so easily mess up.  One wrong flip of the fabric and the block pattern does not work and ends up in the overflowing waste basket.

That’s what happened when I attempted the 3rd and 4th Anita’s Arrowhead blocks.  Oops.  So I got the instructions back out and followed them carefully to make one more block.  (3 done, 2 wasted, and ???? to go.)

The instructions work amazingly well when you follow them!

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Finished up some binding for my friend, Moe.  I hope she blogs about this quilt as the story is very interesting.

As for knitting, I am still working on a shawl that is getting rather tight on the needles because the rows are so long.  Will I make it to the end on these needles or will I have to give in and purchase the next longer size?

Playing

Today I was creating a little quilt using a piece of counted cross-stitch I did a long time ago.  In my box of “trims” I found this card with just the right lavender color to add to my little quilt.

The darker chenille trim I used as the “piping” around the edge, carefully couching it with a zig-zag stitch.

Then I used the sparkly thread to add a little pizazz to the stitching.

I can’t show the little quilt yet, as I need to finish it and save it for the June UFO Challenge. 

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More playing today included making another Anita’s Arrowhead block.  Two done, ???? to go.

Please note my immaculate design wall – just a few little threads here and there.

Play Ball

Saturday I was invited to go to a Brewer’s ballgame in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  It was a beautiful day – perfect weather for a ballgame.  We got there early and enjoyed watching the seats slowly fill up.

Dinner came first  - outdoors and on the Milwaukee River. (Why do hamburgers taste better when eaten outdoors?)   Then the short drive to Miller Stadium where we had very good seats.  The Brewers won making the whole day a winner in my book.

Today after church I went to a BBQ with good friends.  Have you ever had asparagus on the grill?  Soooooo good.  Good friends, good food, and good weather – another winner of a day. 

Tomorrow it will be back to reality (laundry) and maybe some sewing.

May UFO Complete

Following along with Judy’s UFO Challenge, I finished my May UFO (#2 from the list), titled Fall Tumbler

Binding -

….and backing.

Check out the other finishes shown on Judy’s blog.

Scrappy Happy

This quilt started out with 6-1/2 X 9-1/2 rectangles, then when I made a mistake cutting some of the rectangles, I had to add a strip down the center to make it 6-1/2.  I liked the strip and re-did all the rectangles to include a strip down the middle, but again made a mistake and the 9-1/2 had to be cut down to 6-1/2 – scrappy squares.  I just grabbed strips for the centers so they range in size from 1-1/2 to 2-1/2.  Because I cut down the squares, the quilt wasn’t big enough so I added some plain squares. 

For the border I picked out some old book fabric, added some spacers for interest and used some alphabet fabric for the corners.

It sure is different than what I started out to make, but I like the scrappy, busyness of this little quilt.

Now I need to pick out a backing and binding.  And I should clean the quilt studio and organize the mess of scraps and work on binding for Moe and make some more Anita’s Arrowhead blocks and pull out a UFO to complete and…………umm……maybe I will just do some knitting tonight and put everything else off for another day.

Anita’s Arrowhead Block

One of the gals in my Bee group made several quilts using this block and the method to make this block titled Anita’s Arrowhead.  It was featured in Quitmaker magazine and was a free download when I printed it.

I was very happy with the result and enjoyed the process of making the block.  Some people are so clever and figure out an easy method to make a difficult looking block.  Thanks Anita for sharing your expertise and thanks Gail for recommending it to our group.