A RANDOM ACT OF SERVICE

Our new chapel (across the street) is ready to be dedicated this Sunday and there has been lots of chores to be completed by then. One of the jobs is to get the kitchen stocked and organized. I never realized what that meant until this past week. Zillions of dishes, bowls, plates, etc. etc. (very heavy stoneware by the way) Of course all items needed to be washed, dried and stored away. This new chapel has a small kitchen so it was took a lot of creativeness to make it all fit. One of the chores was to unwrap all the silverware, wash and dry all the pieces. Ugh! I volunteered to take them all home and put them through the dishwasher. I didn't realize what a big job that was going to be. Nor did I realize that each piece was individually wrapped in plastic sleeves that were full of static! There were 25 doz. knives, 75 doz. forks, oodles of spoons and serving spoons. You do the math! Plus 48 sets of salt and pepper shakers to be washed! I started in by unwrapping 12 doz. knives and felt very overwhelmed. I decided to convince my little granddaughters that they could make a big contribution to our new building by helping with the silverware. They were anxious to come home from church that day and start in. They unwrapped all the rest of the utensils. I was so happy that they were so willing and excited to be helping. You can see from the following pictures what a big undertaking they took on. Of course a nice Sunday dinner and lots of ice cream sweetened the pot! Who says bribery doesn't work?? It took 3 days to put them all through the dishwasher but they are now safely deposited in the kitchen drawers waiting to be used. The irony of all this is that the 3 wards that will be sharing this small building will never be able to use the facility for ward dinners because it is too small and large events will have to be held at the larger facility down the hill - and - who uses real silverware anymore at large functions?? Plastic and paper is the way of the times. I told the girls that whenever we do use the silverware at the church they can think about the time they helped in this service project. I appreciate their enthusiasm, willingness and sweet attitude - and the Lord does too.

Jenna's sweet smile while helping.

This is only a fraction of what was unwrapped and washed!

Hannah was really happier than what she looks like in this picture. She is always willing to help with anything she is asked to do. She also knows how to be a leader and a supervisor. Hannah is going to be a great teacher someday. She has a knack for getting others to follow directions and listen to her.

NEW FAVORITE TOY AND FABRIC STORAGE!

I purchased this new size ruler for 2 reasons: First it was one I didn't have and second I like the 8.5" width. I discovered that it is just the right width for cutting fabric to go through the printer. It also is much easier to cut wide borders with this wider ruler. I might mention that I already have a 24" one that is this width, but this one is cuter!

When I purchase fabric that is not going to be used right away and needs to find a home on one of the many shelves, I fold it as in the following photos. This new ruler does the job just right! I first fold the fabric in half lengthwise so it is now in 4 layers. Lay it down on the cutting table, put the 8.5" ruler on top and start folding.

Over and over!Over and over again and again...til finished. Pull out the ruler and now I have a nice neat bundle. I can count the folds and figure I have 1/4 yard for each fold. Of course that is approximate because 1/4 yard is 9" not 8.5", but is a really good estimation. Onto the shelf neat and tidy. I try to stack fabric by color or theme. This picture is not a good example of that, but just wanted to take a quick picture. This method has made my closet very manageable. Needs tweeking every now and then, but ordinarily is tidy.

SUNRISE/SUNSET/QUILT

Not much news here except bindings bindings everywhere. I just wanted to post some pictures I took of the view from my sewing room early this morning about 7:15-7:30 a.m. It was breathtaking. It was also very cold! Brrrrrr!! Then this evening while posting this blog I noticed the sunset and how beautiful it was as well. I'm not a very good photographer so one of the pictures is pretty fuzzy, but you can get the idea. I sure hope a house is never built in the empty lot next to us! One advantage of this building slump I suppose.


Well, I suppose I should post a picture about something quilty. Here is the One For The Money I have just put together. It is waiting for the black borders and barberpole binding. It has been a lot of fun coupled with lots of head scratching!

ANOTHER MONSTER (MONSTROUS) QUILT!

Here I am - stalling doing the binding on this quilt. It was quilted well over 3 years ago and I have been hesitant about doing scalloped binding. I thought I was stalling because I didn't know what color to use, but no - it was because of actually dealing with this huge quilt. I have done a little bit (a real little bit) of scalloped binding before but not of this magnitude. I asked several people what color I should use and most of the advice was to use the same white that is in the quilt. Ah, now I had a real excuse - I didn't have enough of that fabric! So the stalling continued until one day I was looking at "the" white fabric and suddenly realized that because of the way it was folded, I acutally had twice as much as originally thought. Dang!! Now what would be my excuse? None - so now I am getting into the acutal chore of doing it! I came across a website with excellent instructions - http://www.lindafranz.com/index.php?sectionId=38. No excuse now. I even stalled longer by writing Linda Franz with some questions. Now that they have been answered, I am ready to go! I want to enter it in our upcoming quilt show in April, so the heat is on. Wish me luck and patience - please!!

11 - COUNT 'EM - YES 11!!!

I have had my nose glued to the sewing machine for the past several days applying bindings to 11 quilts! I must be crazy! Some of these have been quilted for 3 years, others more recently, but I decided I had to at least commit to getting the machine sewing part of the bindings completed so I can go on to the hand stitching. I don't really mind the hand part and actually prefer it to completing the binding by machine, no matter what the destination of the quilt will be. I had to replace a worn out binding once that had been completly applied by machine, and I'll tell you - it was torture to take out. A hand sewn one would have been so much easier!


HOW DO YOU WRESTLE A GIANT QUILT? PROBABLY THE SAME WAY YOU WRESTLE AN ALLIGATOR!

This quilt will be beautiful once the binding is finished and hopefully it will hang straight, however I have my doubts about that. As you can see, the setting triangles have a stripe and I wanted to make the front black binding appear as one of the stripes but I didn't want black on the back. I nearly go blind everytime I have to hand sew a black binding. I decided to make a double sided binding with the black on one side and the backing fabric on the back. The other problem that presented was that the stripe was much wider than a normal binding so I had to really tweek the measurements for the double binding. After several binding samples and trial runs, I finally got it to work.

The binding is ready to go - miles and miles of it!


Finally, it is all on - Whew!! Time for a nap! Now for the fun (grr) part - joining the ends of the binding. My favorite book on bindings, etc. is "Happy Endings" by Mimi Dietrich. When I took a binding class years ago in Connecticut, the woman who taught it had learned from Mimi. I think the book is in its 2nd or 3rd edition. Every time I do a binding I pull out a copy of that page of the book and refer to it. I learned long ago in the legal profession to not bother trying to memorize everything (laws) as things are always changing. I would always look things up so I knew I had the current information. Therefore, I haven't bothered to remember all the numbers involved with the binding. I made a copy of the page in the book, mounted it on cardboard and just keep it handy. Just avoids mistakes - of all the things I miss I miss my mind the most! Also here is a picture of some vinyl lettering on the wall in my sewing room to remind me of the fact that another birthday just passed and I am well into the Medicare system and I can't trust my memory all the time!
When I hand stitch my bindings, I like to lay the quilt on my large sewing machine table (love that Horn cabinet) and stitch away. No heavy quilts on my lap and I can just slide the quilt over the smooth surface and get done in record time. Makes it great for summer sewing too. I have a TV in my sewing room and when I am stitching I am facing it. I pre-load 10 needles with thread, get out all my must have binding notions and I'm ready to go. Now, I'm certainly not going to do binding on 11 quilts non-stop, but will get another project underway - wait! I have probably 11 more that needs quilting. Darn - I guess that next Kaffe Fasset project will have to be put on the back burner! Whoops - I just remembered too that I have 2 at the longarmer right now that will soon be ready for binding. Change that number to 13! Zowie, I've been busy! Oh dear, just remembered hanging sleeves for the large ones and hopefully labels for all! Getting tired!