wfmw - just go ahead and call poison control

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my supervisor at work told me a very sad story about the little neighbor girl who drank bleach. Have I ever mentioned that I'm a bit paranoid about keeping the bleach completely inaccessible to my kids? Nasty cleaning supplies, vitamins, medication...all of that stuff is where they can't get at it. And after seeing a story on the news last night about button batteries, I've really got the heebie jeebies about those now. My kids should be getting too old to put stupid things in their mouths...I hope!

It's the weird little things that have given me trouble. I mean, who gets mad and deliberately swallows his older sister's tooth? Who eats a glue stick? Or tries to suck the ink out of an empty printer cartridge?

Or the things that you can't believe they got their hands on. I was Christmas shopping with my youngest in my arms a couple of years back, digging through my purse and standing in the checkout line. With that awful speed that only young children headed straight for trouble have, he reached right over my shoulder, grabbed a fistful of petals from a poinsettia display I hadn't even noticed, and stuffed them into his mouth.

That scared me. It was too early to call the doctor's office and I was in an absolute panic, imagining my little baby in the emergency room getting his stomach pumped. Called the emergency line for our HMO -- and they had me call poison control. It turns out that poinsettias aren't as deadly as we've all been warned they are.

And why would anyone take a swig from the bottle of food coloring?! (Not to mention, who got it down from wher I had it hidden?)

The nice man at poison control actually laughed at me this week and suggested I take pictures to blackmail my child with once he's older. And I was pretty sure that it was harmless, but wanted to be prepared with real answers when Daddy got home and I had to explain the dark green teeth.

If you even think your child might've gotten into something, give them a call. I'm convinced that they have information about everything (Including ink cartridges...did you know that those have antifreeze in them?) They'll tell you what symptoms to watch out for. Or if, God forbid, you need to head to the emergency room.

And, every single time I've called, they've told me it was going to be just fine.

1-800-222-1222

This post is linked to Works for me Wednesay at We are THAT Family.

Note -- if this seems like a lot of calls for one Mom to have made to poison control, please keep in mind that it was spread over four kids and almost fifteen years!

Baby Quilt Binge - Day 4

I may need to start looking for another brightly colored sheet, because finding ways to combine this blue sheet with my scraps has been so much fun. Having the blue to work with took care of one big decision. All I had left to do was pick out a pattern and the right handful of scraps.

Last night, I pin basted and quilted Blue Sheet Quilt #1 and Blue Sheet Quilt #3 -- those names are terrible, but at least it helps me keep track of which is which!



Bear with me, I only got half of the binding sewn down last night before the migraine won and chased me off to bed.



This is the one that started it. I wanted to do the scrappy churn dash blocks and was getting ready to dig out a white sheet when I stumbled across the blue one.



Once these two around bound and I get the binding hand stitched on the kaleidoscope quilt, that'll be five of my ten baby quilts done. Now I've got to start the next five from scratch.

This post is linked to Sew Cute Tuesday.

Rustic Pot Pie

This afternoon, I took a little break from the baby quilt binge to go to the grocery store. The kids had finished off the last of the milk and I was running out of diet Coke and I really did need to figure out dinners for the next couple of nights...

I've been spectacularly uninspired for a long time now, rotating between spaghetti and tacos and white chicken chili. And with the cold I've been fighting this week, nothing sounds yummy.

There were a couple of emails in my inbox from Pillsbury that I hadn't deleted because they had decent looking possibilities. I couldn't remember exactly what they were, but I decided that was what we were having for dinner tonight.

So I made Rustic Pot Roast Pot Pies.



I substituted beef broth for the beer and cooked up some beef stew meat to chop up and add to the filling because I wanted it to be a little more substantial. And almost everyone ate their dinner -- that's a rarity lately. We'll be having this again.

Now that our fridge and bellies are full, it's time to get back to the quilts!

Baby Quilt Binge - Day 3

Instead of sewing binding before bed last night, I put together another quilt top. I can do binding no matter what else is going on. Time to lay out diagonally set blocks without little feet stampeding over the top of them is harder to come by.



It's just Pumpkin Carving without the pumpkins. And another excuse to play with the blue sheet. I think there's just enough of it left for a fourth baby quilt, if I plan the blocks carefully.

The kaleidoscope quilt is quilted and the binding just needs to be hand stitched. I originally bought the fabric to make an Irish Chain, but this is so much better!





One of my biggest fears with two color quilts like this is what to use for the backing. I was sure I'd have enough if I pieced the two colors, but I still had to find a twelve inch strip of something else to bring it up to size. Not quite what I had in mind, but it works.



This post is linked to Patchwork Times and Fabric Tuesday.

Baby Quilt Binge - Day 2

Late last night, I was sewing bindings and watching old television shows on Netflix, keeping an eye on my cell phone's clock to make sure that I didn't stay up too late. With the time change, I figured that as long as I went to bed by two, I'd get enough sleep before I had to get up at seven. And then somehow or other, I completely missed the part when the clock jumped back an hour and wound up going to bed an hour later than I meant to.

But I got the binding on the mouse quilt (Baby Quilt Binge #2) I'm still not wild about that wide border, but the quilting makes up for it.



This morning I pulled out my isoscoles triangle die and some cotton yardage that I bought last January and started making kaleidoscope blocks.



I love the illusion of overlapping curves, maybe more than I love real pieced curves. I definitely won't be up as late tonight, but hopefully I'll be able to get this one quilted and bound. After that, I've got one more top to quilt and the third blue sheet quilt...and then I'd better think of something new to start.

I'm going to stay home!

Finally, I've got a stretch of days where I don't have to leave the house. I can go somewhere if I decide I want to, but there's no place I have to be. After weeks of running here there and everywhere, staying home sounds like the best idea ever.

So I'm planning another baby quilt binge - ten quilts in ten days. The last time I tried, my sewing machine died around day five or six. But I still wound up with six completed quilts and four new tops. This time, I don't have a head start, just the mouse quilt top and the blocks for Blue Sheet Quilt #1.

Saturday was day one. I got the blocks for Blue Sheet Quilt #1 assembled and cut the blue pieces I'll need for Blue Sheet Quilt #3. It looks like there's enough left for that fourth quilt I was hoping for.

And here's Blue Sheet Quilt #2 (Also known as Baby Quilt Binge #1) --



I made the blocks and assembled them Saturday afternoon, then got it quilted and bound before bed.

The applique mouse is quilted and waiting to be bound. I love the way the quilting makes the mouse and cheese stand out.



Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 5 1/2 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 62.25 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 1012 yards
Net Added for 2011: 949.75 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 6640 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 14075 yards
Net Added for 2011: 7435 yards

Except for the yard of Ghastlies Mom gave me, I haven't brought any fabric home for a solid month.

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

blue sheet quilt #1

The blocks for the first blue sheet quilt are done. Somehow, I keep coming back to Churn Dashes, even though it's not one of my favorite blocks...maybe one of these days I'll figure out why!

I do like the way they look in this project. There are twenty different fabrics in each block, except for a couple I made at the end when I was running out of triangles.



Once I get the sashing on these blocks, I'll cut the rest of the squares I need for blue sheet quilt #2. And I'm almost positive I've got enough fabric left for #3.

I'm keeping my eye open for more bright solid sheets -- this is fun!

purple and white finish

More proof that everything looks better once it's quilted!

This little purple and white top has been sitting since I cut the pieces while I was making the video for the Two Color Quilt. It was a wrinkled mess and I must've assembled these blocks in a hurry -- nothing lines up quite as well as it should.

I wasn't ever going to take those blocks apart and put them back together, so I pressed the worst of the wrinkles out and backed it with a purple striped sheet.

And I got the tutorial for the bats done before Halloween. And helped my daughter with a finish of her own that I can't blog about here because it's hers, but believe me, I'm glad to see it done!

This post is linked to >Can I get a WHOOP WHOOP? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

How black does black have to be?

With just a little bit of digging, I came up with some more blacks.

What I've really got to do is stop looking at finished quilts and seeing the black fabrics I've already used up. They're not in my stash anymore. I love the quilts I used them in. There's no point in wishing I had just a little bit left to add to my black pile for Orca Bay!



Before I took the picture, I was a little more concerned about my choices. The background of the witch hats is a bit brownish. The polka dots are polka dots. But they all seem to play nicely in the picture.

I've dug out my Easy Angle ruler, which I bought because one of Bonnie's other patterns called for it, and one that I thought was the Companion Angle but isn't. (It's actually part of a different set that I bought for a different project that I never made.) I'm sure I bought the Companion Angle when I bought the Easy Angle...hopefully I can find that one before the step that calls for it.

getting ready to plunge into Orca Bay

Bonnie has announced her new mystery quilt, Orca Bay. I hadn't really thought about participating in this one until I read her fabric requirements. Then that little voice in the back of my head, the one that gets me started on so many different projects, started to remind me that I've got plenty of reds and blues and neutrals -- lots of neutrals... and this quilt is little enough that it doesn't scare the heck out of me!

It's the black I'm not so sure about... I've got blacks, just not a huge variety of them. But I'm sure I'll find more when I'm cleaning up my sewing corner. And if all else fails, Mom's got lots of blacks and maybe I can mooch a few pieces from her.

Back when Bonnie announced the colors for Roll Roll Cotton Boll, I had stacks of pink and green right in front of me, but decided not to go through with it. Bad decision.

This time I'm going to try not to let myself get too intimidated before the first step is released.

wfmw - Removing Glass Splinters

I couldn't think of anything good to write about for works for me Wednesday this week. Now I'm wishing that I still didn't have any ideas!

My teenage daughter was doing the dishes and had nested two juice glasses in the strainer. I picked them up to remind her not to do that because they suction together and it's almost impossible to get them apart...They came apart. Very easily. And left me with shards of glass in the palm of my right hand.

Splinter removal is not one of my skills. I got rid of the glass bits that were visible, and I think I might've snagged this last one out when I was pressing on it with a towel to stop the bleeding, which was almost nonexistent, but any amount of blood gives me the heebie jeebies lately.

Just in case, I Googled "glass splinter removal" to see if there's a method that doesn't involve digging blindly with a straight pin.

Suggestions included pressing a piece of tape onto the area and then peeling it off. Or applying a layer of white glue and letting it dry before peeling it off. Or applying a paste of baking soda and water to draw the splinter. And there was one article on how to remove a splinter with bacon fat...we won't be trying that one! There are also a lot of different suggestions at NaturalNews.com.

The best bit of new-to-me information was to apply a bit of Baby Oragel to the area to numb it before trying to get the splinter out with tweezers or a needle. With a pack of kids who insist on running outside without shoes, I'll be using that trick next summer!

Regrouping

re·group v. To form into a new grouping; To reorganize

Yup, that's what I need to do here! I'm done with deadlines, for the moment at least, and it's time to figure out what I've got in all of these piles next to my sewing machine.

There's Quinn's green quilt....and the alphabet sampler....and the first two blue sheet quilts...the pattern and fabric for Swoon....cheddar bow ties...some 1 1/2" strips I started cutting because I want to make a Lego quilt...Texas Braids...some little tops that need to be quilted...Scrap Vomit, if I can ever figure out what safe place I put my red and black Kona in...the applique mouse with the wedge of cheese...the hobo quilt...North Pacific...By the Lake...

And then there are the things I still want to start, and the possibility that Thanksgiving is coming and maybe I should move most of the fabric out of the corner of the dining room...

I've got a lot to do!

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

Apple Core Bats

Halloween is tomorrow?! How did that happen? I'm nowhere near ready for this. But I did get my bats, which I've been planning for months, finished this morning.

Did you realize you can make bats with the AccuQuilt Go! Cutter and the Apple Core die? Want to try some of your own?



In addition to the Apple Core die, you need some black cotton and paper backed fusible web.

For each bat, cut two rectangles of black fabric and one of fusible web. I cut my rectangles 6" x 8". If you're using a different apple core pattern, measure and cut a rectangle slightly larger than the cut shape. Iron the fusible web to the wrong side of one black fabric rectangle, then peel off the paper backing and iron the second black fabric rectangle to the exposed fusible web. You're creating a slightly stiff sandwich of fabric.



Cut out your apple core. The die leaves a little triangular tab in the center of each curve to aid in piecing. Trim those off so that the outline of your bat is smooth.






To give the wings some dimension, sew a straight seam down the center of the piece, using the longest stitch length on your sewing machine. Leave long strings on either end and do not back stitch.



Gently tug on the threads to gather the bat's body. When you've got it how you want it, knot the thread at both ends and trim it.



For the body of your bat, cut two 1 1/2" wide strips of black fabric. This time, you'll add the fusible web to both pieces.



Lay one 1 1/2" strip under the wings and one 1 1/2" strip over them, carefully lining up the edges. I used one of the bigger pieces of paper backing left over from the wing sections to make sure that none of the fusible web got onto my iron. Gently press the pieces together until they're fused. It will flatten your bat's wings a bit.





Trim the ends of the strips to shape the bat's head and tail.



I plan on joining a dozen or so bats at their wing tips to make a bunting.

Weekly Stash Report

This is the third or fourth week in a row that I've resisted temptation. I think I'm starting to hit that point where the longer you go without shopping, the easier it gets.

Fabric Used this Week: 1.25 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 56.75 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 1012 yards
Net Added for 2011: 955.25 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 6640 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 14075 yards
Net Added for 2011: 7435 yards

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Birds in the Air

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival time again, and because I haven't finished anything big or ambitious in a while, I'm pulling out one of my favorites.



I'm honestly not sure how or why I made this quilt. At the time, I'd never worked with triangles before. I certainly didn't know how to do applique. About the time I was starting this one, my best friend had decided to do an improved nine-patch, complete with curves and templates. Compared to that, maybe this project looked easy!

Many quilts after I'd finished this one, triangles still made me nervous. I remembering stumbling across it at one point and having this weird "Hey, I've done this many triangles before -- what am I so scared of?" moment. It's also proof that I can manage enough blocks for a bed size quilt. I originally wanted to make it smaller, but I didn't want to sacrifice any of the blackbirds and didn't want to crowd them together.

This is my favorite leap-before-you-look quilt, and it proves what you can accomplish if you don't think about it too hard before starting that first block.

being afraid

Why is it that so many of us are afraid of our quilting tools? Not the sharp rotary cutters and hot irons -- that's the kind of fear that makes sense. I'm talking about the fear where you're afraid to take your new toy out of the box.

I've got a basting gun I've never tried, and a Cricut I got for Christmas last year that I haven't even touched. And then there's my Featherweight -- I'm beyond scared of breaking that! What if I can't get them to work?

I've been having trouble with the bobbins on my Janome for a couple of years now. They just don't wind properly anymore, even after I've had my machine serviced twice in the past year. I have to turn the speed down and hold my breath and sometimes rewind the same bobbin four times just to get one I can sew with.

This week, I finally broke down and bought a Sidewinder. If it saves me even a fraction of the time I spent fighting with the bobbin winder on the Janome, it'll be an absolute Godsend. But anything to do with bobbins stresses me out lately.

If I didn't need something to blog about this morning, it would probably still be in the box.



It wound my bobbins -- now I guess the question is whether they'll work for free motion quilting. Are they wound evenly enough? I think I've forgotten what a properly wound bobbin looks like.

getting it done before we go trick or treating

I set the second drab top aside while I worked on baby quilts. Once something in my sewing corner gets set aside to work on something else, it can take me a while to find my way back to it, but Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts is giving me some motivation. So I could get this one photographed this morning, I hand stitched the binding late last night while the kids were at a Halloween party and I was off in a corner with the other moms.

My first drab quilt started as a way to use up some scraps that wouldn't work well in the baby quilts. Then I pulled in some favorite scraps from my darks bin and really started to fall in love with the combinations. And now I want a big version of this quilt for myself!

I'm linking it to the Abundant Thanks linky party over at I gotta Create. I'm very thankful for my abundance of scraps and warm quilts to snuggle under!

I've entered Carving Pumpkins in the Halloween quilt contest over at Quilting Gallery. Voting is open through 11:59pm Sunday night and there are some fantastic Halloween quilts over there to drool over!

wfmw - just let them enjoy themselves

When we took the kids to the Denver Zoo a couple of months ago, I got a case of the Mommy Guilts. We'd been wandering through the zoo for hours and come to the fish. I don't think anyone in our family was too enthusiastic about the fish -- by that point, we were trying to find the komodo dragons so we could see them and get back to the car.

I saw another mommy who was reading every sign to little ones, making sure that they understood the fish in the tank was the one who kept its babies in its mouth, "like the one in Finding Nemo!" She was so perky and so enthusiastic, puffing out her cheeks and everything.

And it hit me that I hadn't read my kids a single sign in the entire zoo. I'd skimmed a couple myself to answer questions, but I definitely wasn't being a perky tour guide. The kids have watched enough Animal Planet and National Geographic that that probably know most of what's on those signs...but I still felt a bit like I was shirking my mommy duties.

Then last week my littlest one came running up with a book about fish showing me a picture and telling me, at the top of his enthusiastic little lungs, that it was a glass catfish, just like we saw at "that place we went that time" and he could see right through it.

THAT'S why we took them to the zoo -- so they could have fun and learn about the animals for themselves.

For more Works for me Wendnesday posts, visit We are THAT Family.

Barns and UFOs

Old barns fascinate me. Since we moved to the country five years ago, I'm lucky enough to see them every time I leave my house. Actually, I can see a couple just by looking out the window.

The one is at our favorite nursery. I always find myself wondering what it was like before it was converted to a gift shop...what dusty treasures might be hiding behind those upper windows...





Because there are never enough neat old barns to drool over, check out Barn Charm Tuesday.

I'm getting a little work on my projects done. Now that the 100 Quilts for Kids challenge is over, I pulled out and pin basted drab quilt #2. I'm wavering between really loving this flannel as a backing and just thinking it's good enough. Either way, I'm using it.



And I'm getting ready to cut up this pile of 4" squares that I found in one of the scrap bags. The very darks and very lights will get cut into strips for my next log cabin variation, and the rest will get cut into 2" squares for By the Lake, a long forgotten UFO.



It feels so good to be working on projects again!

This post is linked to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Design Wall Monday

Here are the first two of the blue sheet baby quilts.

My little helper insisted on laying out the last two blocks himself, but you get the idea. My older helper walked past and thought it was going to be one quilt with a churn dash border around a nine-patch center. I think I like that idea and will try it later with a different background and scrappier fabrics to make it more of an everything-goes scrap quilt.

One quilt leads to the next, which leads to the next...

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.