Foto Finish --- Things That Are Round

Art glass is one of my favorite things, marbles are another.

so when there's an art glass marble - that's heaven!

Here's one now:

I'd say that this marble

is

definitely

ROUND.

Hop on over to

Cat Patches

to share some of your round things,

or see what others have posted!

Happy Halloween!

sue

Scrap Splat Challenge

In September, Generation Q magazine & Thomas Knauer

invited their readers to a scrappy challenge.

GenQ picked 30 random commenters to play,

and Thomas sent us each forty 2.5" squares,

each one a different fabric. 

We had to use all of the squares, in any fashion we so desired.

The only additional fabric allowed had to be solids - as many colors as we liked.

We had about a month to work on the Challenge,

and pictures of our finished project had to be emailed in by October 26th.

I, of course, finished mine on October 25th,

sometime between 11:25pm and 11:59pm.

(I know it was during the first half-hour of the Tonight Show)

Of course.

It was much too late, according to my brain, to take photos at that time,

so I waited until the next morning, before work, to shoot my entry

& email them to Megan.

So, here's my project.

Photos taken in my sleep.

I made the 3D flying geese

using the one-seam method

demonstrated by Ricky Tims on The Quilt Show.

Easy to make, but then when sewing them together,

there were a lot of fabric layers to go through.

The red & aqua triangles in the center

were paper pieced.

I drew out my pattern on graph paper first.

When I started to piece them, for some reason I thought

I should do it like they were individual pieces

(with the red triangles in 2 pieces),

instead of one long strip.

Duh.

At least I figured it out after only a couple.

Sheesh.

I opted for the overlapping flap for the back of the pillow.

Then I made an pillow insert to fit.

My brain is still tired from figuring it all out!

Is it time for a nap yet?

That pillow is so darned inviting!

I do love my RED chair too!

Hope y'all have a

wonderful Thursday!

sue

Foto Finish --- Spooky

This was the spookiest thing I could come up with:

My back porch light

"decorated"

for

Halloween!

To see more SPOOKY stuff,

click on over to Cat Patches -

heck, share your OWN spooky stuff with us!

Have a great weekend!

sue

TLC Racers



That's me, peeking over the top!



Last Saturday I taught my very first

TLC Quilters guild workshop,

all by myself!

I taught the Jelly Roll Race quilt

and we had a lot of fun.

2 of my sample tops

My first instruction to my students was this:

"Take out all of your strips,

fluff them up

and put 'em in a big pile on the table!"



This one had all of her strips neatly separated by color

and wound around cardboard tubes!





There were batiks, civil war repros, Halloween,

red-white-&-blues, and Christmas strips.

Making sure there weren't any twists.
An impossible task!

Out of the 8 students that were sewing,

5 of them had completed tops by the end of the workshop!

A 6th one emailed me on Monday, that she finished her top on Sunday.  I think that's pretty good!

Here they are, in order of finishing:

Marlene

Jean

Carol
Look how it divided itself - dark on one side, light on the other!

Jenel

Dawn

And the whole crew:

Laura~Marlene~Carol~Dawn~Jean~Jenel~Lydia~Donna~Mary Ann

They were wonderful students!

They've made me start thinking about

what I could do in another workshop.

Thanks!

sue



Foto Finish --- Orange

Every Saturday on Cat Patches,

it's time for Foto Finish.

Each week has a different theme,

and anyone who wishes to join in the fun

just needs to do a blog post

with one of their photos that fits into the theme.

I've been playing along for a while now

and it has been a LOT of fun!!

This week,

our theme is

ORANGE.

(Did you already guess that?)

Here's my entry:

Did you realize

that the whole photo is

ORANGE?

(well, except for the barbed wire)

Yep, it's part of a smallish grove

growing about a mile away

at Cal Poly University.

Here's a little more

ORANGE

for you!

Please!  Join in all the fun!

Click here, or on the button in my sidebar

to go to Cat Patches.

See what photos other have linked up.

Have a GREAT weekend!

I'm going to start mine off by teaching my first

quilt workshop solo!

Wish me luck.

:^)

sue

Black, White & a POP! of Color DQ

Last month I joined in on the September DQ swap over on the Quilting Board.  Our optional theme was

Black & White with a Pop of Color.

First I thought that I would do some

Wonky Stars

as I had just demostrated them at my guild meeting.

But nah,

I want to make something a bit bigger.

Then I thought

Single Irish Chain.

No, that's not it either.

So I put it out of my mind for a time

while I worked on the supply list for the workshop

I'm leading for guild this coming Saturday...

the Jelly Roll Race.

That's it!

I'll do a miniature JRR!

It took me a while to figure out the math

to get the size I wanted,

and then I began grabbing my black & whites &

my POP! of color & started cutting.

It went to together so quickly.

And I liked it soooo much

it was hard to send it away to my partner!

Taaaa-Daaaaaah~!!!

Even though I had good lighting,

the blue is not the right color in the picture.

It's really turquoise,

but you get the idea.

I just did a quick stitch in the ditch for the quilting.

I've decided I'm going to make a big one for myself now.

After I finish up a few more things I have stacked up!

sue

edited to add:  I'm linking up to the Clover & Violet Stash Project of the Month!

Foto Finish --- Old

For this week's Foto Finish,

our theme is

"OLD".

This is a Half Dime.

The Half Dime or Half Disme,

was one of the first coins minted by the

United States.

First minted in 1792, it underwent several design changes during the nearly 80 years it was made.

The five cent silver piece shown here features

the Seated Liberty design on the front.

The arrows on each side of the date

denote that the coin was struck at a slightly reduced

weight of 1.24 grams, from the original 1.34 grams of silver.

(The arrows were removed in 1856, although the weight remained at the lower amount.)

In 1873 Congress decided to revamp the entire coin system,

removing several denominations, including the half dime.

If you'd like to see more "old" things,

pop over to Cat Patches to check them out---

or share something of your own!

Have a great weekend!

sue

Foto Finish --- Feet

Due to some computer problems,

I wasn't able to post last week's Foto Finish - Feet.

Soooooooo...

Here we go!

Hmmm...49 cents for the yardstick -

can you still get them anymore?

This one came from Standard Brands Paint Company,

which, I believe, declared bankruptcy in 1995.


If you want to see some more feet,
click over to Cat Patches!


sue

What's in a Blog Name?

Zzyzx & sue - what the heck does that mean?

Well.....

I'll have to go back a bit for this.

When I named my pets,

I never wanted them to have "people" names.

So my dog was named after a car -

Jensen.

Then I decided that I wanted a cat.

I went to the Humane Society, looking for a black kitten.

Turned out that they had two kittens,

one black & one orange & white ~

but the black one wasn't available yet.

And the orange one reached her little arm out

between the bars of the cage & grabbed me.

We went home together that day.

She was quite a character, and I knew she needed a

special name.

At that time, a bunch of us used to go rough camping

in the high desert areas of So. California.

To get there, we always passed this one particular off-ramp:

ZZYZX ROAD.

I knew that zzyzx was just the right name

for this little ball of fluff.

She was my constant companion

for 17 years.

She could even do some 'tricks':

Sit, Sit UP, Shake Hands, & Count!

(Of course, all of these did require treats ;^) )

So, when I decided that I wanted to try my hand at blogging, it just seemed right to keep her at my side.

(And yes, that is her as my avatar.)

So there we are,

just for you,

zzyzx & sue.

I'm linking up with Dawn,

at As Sweet As Cinnamon

for "What's your name & why".

Happy Trails!

sue

De-Stash 4 Malawi

A few weeks ago I learned about a new challenge

from Barbara, over at Cat Patches.

It's been organized by Snoodles at Lily Pad Quilting,

and is called "De-Stash 4 Malawi".

Snoodles heard about Lois Kropf, who, along with her husband, live and work with the very poor in Malawi.

One of things that Lois does is make clothes for many of the school children there.

Snoodles thought that since so many quilters have stashes,

that we could probably be able to come up with a yard (or more) of cotton that we would be willing to donate to the Kropfs.  We send the fabric to the Kropfs' daughter, who lives in New York, so postage is not much of an issue!

This is what I sent - there's about 4 yards of fabric,

plus 2 spools of thread.

Check over at Lily Pad Quilting

for all the particulars.

But hurry!

The challenge only runs through Oct. 15th.


Have a great weekend!

sue