Quilts and Thoughts…

margaret | February 25, 2011

It’s almost time for you to nominate your favorite!

SewCalGal is offering a chance for you to express yourself within the quilting community.

If you have a favorite:

Best Designer
Best Teacher/Instructor
Best Author
Best Quilt Store (physical)
Best Quilt Store (online)
Best long-arm quilter
Best Quilt Retreat (new category for 2011 Golden Quilter Awards)
Most Innovative new product (physical item)
Most Innovative new product (software item)
Most influential person in the world of quilting to-date, aka “Lifetime Achievement”

Drop by SewCalGal’s blog and nominate! Of course, she has all the information on her
blog so you won’t want to miss this chance. It begins March 1.

Guess what! You can even have a chance to win prizes!
Help with the PR, nominate, sponsor, participate!

 

Category: Contest, General, Tips | No Comments »
Tags: just for fun, sewcalgal

margaret | February 21, 2011

Have you ever give any thought to when measurements are not an absolute but become a variable? It’s certainly not for me, right brain dominant, to ever question math or numbers, but the other day I got to thinking about how some things that one thinks should be absolute, just aren’t.

I sat down in the chair to have my hair cut and asked the hairdresser to cut it to mid ear and take off three quarters of an inch everywhere else. Give me a neckline in the back and all would be well. She took forever, and when she turned me around where I could see the mirror she was in the final stages of the haircut. That’s when the math absolute hit me. She was cutting off ¼” not ¾”, it was not mid ear and not a neckline. Forget the rest of the haircut, it was the ¼” that got to me.

Has it ever happened to you? Go to the meat counter and ask for meat to be cut 3/8” and get a strange look from the employee? I wonder if it is how we actually say it? If we say one fourth is it a true one forth? If we say a quarter of an inch does that mean something else? A quarter is a quarter whether it rolls or not. It’s is ¼ of a dollar. A quarter hour is ¼ of an hour, but somehow ¼” becomes something else. What if it’s written like .25? Does that make a difference?

It makes one wonder in what grade we were all taught to read a ruler? Maybe some of us were absent that day. How does ½” mean one thing to someone and totally different to someone else? It’s like the tick marks on a ruler move around. All of a sudden it’s a variable.

It becomes quite important when measuring for cooking and baking now doesn’t it? I totally messed up a cake mix once because I put in 1 1/3 cup oil instead of 1/3 cup. Ok, that doesn’t count as a variable. It counts as stupidity. But still, there’s a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper; what’s up with that?

Have you ever seen quilt patterns with the seam to be a “scant” quarter inch. What does “scant” mean? How much is a scant?

What about time? Fifteen minutes can be a short time or a long time. Five minutes of doing something you hate can feel like forever. Yet, it takes about 5 minutes to go through a yummy brownie and that must be shorter than 5 minutes. Five minutes should be 5 minutes no matter what, ¼” should be ¼” no matter what. Can you tell I’m ticked about the haircut? The other day I just cut it myself.

So it seems as if time, measurements, and absolutes in general are not so absolute after all; at least to the some of us. I don’t know, but I’m just sayin…

Category: General | 2 Comments »
Tags: just for fun

margaret | February 19, 2011

When I think of berries the first thing that comes to mind are strawberries. Ah, blackberries are wonderful too. My mother and father had several blackberry bushes and I would go out to their place and pick and eat them right off the vine.

Today I’m thinking of another kind of berry, a different one that grows wild on vines climbing high into trees.

As the cold weather turns warmer during the month of February in Texas (ok, not all month is warm) our minds turn to working outdoors. We have hundreds of trees that need the lower branches trimmed so when you ride beneath the tree to cut the grass you don’t get hit or thrown off. Sitting atop a large tractor means one is very high; therefore the branches need to be cut up to accommodate the driver not being thrown into the brush hog.

The brush hog is a very large implement that is dragged along behind the tractor to cut the grass. It has a huge blade beneath it and I learned, from experience, not to put anything beneath it while the blades are twirling. My broken finger has healed.

Because it is impossible to get to all of the trees during the spring months before the temps reach 95 by 10 am, we can’t trim all the trees in one season. Think of it as spring cleaning outdoors. Some of the trees have vines with thorns growing from the ground extending high into the trees. Those are the ones we haven’t cut in a while. We put on gloves and pull the vines from the branches and cut them along the ground knowing they will grow again. But for the time being the trees look trimmed and well groomed.

The temperature has been in the 80s, and we’ve been in t-shirts out trimming trees every day for about a week now. We noticed some of the vines had small dark berries on them, but mostly sharp thorns that have cut our arms to pieces. Because we were in the heat of getting the limbs and vines down we didn’t think too much about the berries.

I didn’t see any leaves around the berries and we do have wild mustang grapes on the property, so were they just left over grapes?

The blisters have started to appear and no amount of lotion can stop the irritation and itching. Hmmm…perhaps a little research prior to tree trimming should have been in order.

I have always heard about, “leaves of three, leave them be” so I wasn’t concerned. Oops!

Now I know…even without leaves poison ivy is available. It doesn’t go dormant, it is there to greet you 24/7. Those little berries?…right!

Category: General | 2 Comments »
Tags: just for fun

margaret | February 15, 2011

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to visit our blog during March. We will have some fun things to share. If you get the newsletter, “the latest” you’ll know about them on March 1 when we send out the news. If not, you’ll have to keep checking back as things will appear periodically. Well, we want you to keep checking back even if you subscribe to the newsletter!

If you haven’t subscribed, or if you did and your name didn’t appear on the list, please sign up. It’s right on the left of this post and you only need to put in your name and email. Don’t forget you get the “Lets Be Friends” pattern free for signing up! I’ll send the back newsletters as well because there are links in it to things you won’t want to miss.

Not only will there be a giveaway beginning March 1, but you won’t want to miss the new movie/video, “Spirit of the West”. It’s not the same short video made to highlight the quilt with the same name; however, it does have great music (as the director knows how to pick the perfect audio to enhance the videos).

This Spirit of the West does include some quilt images, but it’s so much more than just about quilts. If you love history, particularly history of the west, you will enjoy this movie. Even if you don’t love history, you will enjoy the work gone into making this beautiful video.

The premier date isn’t an arbitrary date, it coincides with something within the video.  On the right side of this blog is the movie trailer…it’s just a snippet to encourage you to watch the full presentation March 6…right here! Of course, if you subscribe to the newsletter there will be a link to see it on March 1!

Category: General, Giveaway, Newsletter, Videos | No Comments »
Tags: giveaway, newsletter, ongoing projects, Videos

margaret | February 14, 2011

March Giveaway Preview

This is a small prototype block (half size) of the larger block from the block of the month quilt, Beyond the Gate, which will be the giveaway beginning March 1. I’ll post the rules and have everything ready on March 1. This post is just a preview.

This one is fused and ready to go. It’s 16.25″ x 35.5″ which is still a good size for you to add borders or other block to increase the size. It would make a good center for a round robin.

The giveaway will begin March 1 and run the entire month.

See how this block fits in within the entire quilt

Category: Block of the Month, Contest, General, Giveaway | 1 Comment »
Tags: Block of the Month, giveaway