Thanks to Doodlebug Gail of Quite Quilted fame I was inspired to make this Halloween Hexagon Table Quilt.

Thank you to Evelyn aka Starfishy of Scrappy Happy Quilts fame for the tutorial on “How to Make Octagon Flowers. This was a useful reference in making this quilt top.

This was my reward today for working on a particularly challenging customer quilt. Sometimes when we are feeling challenged by a project or we are working outside of our comfort zone we need a little incentive to keep pushing forward. Today as I worked on the customer quilt I alternated between it and working on this long anticipated Halloween project. This project was quick, fun, and served as my reward.

It is complete to the flimsy stage and will hopefully be sandwiched and quilted tomrorow. It will be quilted simply so that it can grace the dining room table well in advance of Halloween.

The borders are finally completed on this monster. I thought I would never get this one done. This is my Stack’N Whack Christmas quilt, completed to the flimsy stage. I have been trying to get the borders onto this quilt in between helping the “painter” all week. This quilt ended up 89 1/2 ” wide by 111″ long.

I finished stitching the last border after supper tonight and headed upstairs. I called out, “I need help.” Silence followed. The TV was going but no one was in front of it. I knew that my husband and daughter were home, but they were very, very quiet. I had to leave shortly to attend a meeting about the quilt show we are putting together for our guild this fall so I didn’t have time to do much searching. I improvised by pinning the quilt to the deck lattice and taking the picture from the ground. The light is not the best, the sun was getting low and so the lower part of the quilt is in shadows from the tree in the back yard.

Miraculous that after the picture was taken the quilt “helpers” materialized. My husband says my mistake was saying that I needed help. He said if I really needed his help, I would have sought him out and found him. How would I have suspected that he was in the office, light off, in front of the computer? Was the TV left going to throw me off the trail? Not to worry, I am not easily discouraged. I can come up with plan B at the drop of a hat–after all, I am a mother! I am used to solving problems for others!

I have been asked to post again about what a flimsy is. Flimsy is a nicer way to say, UFO. However, not just any UFO qualifies as a flimsy. A UFO that has been completed to the stage where the next step would be to sandwich and quilt it is a flimsy.

One of our guild members was on the ferry traveling to Vancouver Island one time when she encountered some quilters from another guild on the ferry traveling to the same quilt show that she was. They were responsible for telling her what a flimsy was. She came back to our guild meeting and asked us at guild meting one night if we could define the term, “flimsy”. Of course none of us had ever heard that term before. She went on to describe flimsy as a completed quilt top before it is quilted. Now doesn’t that sound a little better than, UFO?

I think quilters are great–we can justify just about anything. Look at how many UFOs most of us have on the go at once and we still manage to justify starting something new. Look at how much fabric we have hoarded, I mean, “stashed” and yet we continue to search for that special fabric. And to top it off we create new words and language at the drop of a hat to describe our craft and keep it mysterious to non-quilters. Do you speak, quilter?

There hasn’t been much quilting going on in this house lately. I am still working on the borders for that Stack’N Whack. It is a good job no one is paying me by the hour to finish that quilt because they would never afford it when I am done!

These are two pictures of my husband painting the stair well. It made me nervous to see him on his homemade scaffolding as he painted. My husband paints and I clean up after him. The arrangement seems to be working.

This has proven to be the perfect opportunity to sort through things in the hall closets and thoroughly clean and wash things in and on top of cabinets as they are put back in their places. Some things will never be returned–they will just be discarded.
You can really see the contrast in the old wall colour – white – and the new paint. Quite a change!

What you can’t see in this second picture is the ladder that is holding up the plank on the far end. The plank is balanced on the top of the ladder on one end and on the upstairs floor on the nearest end. Notice the coffee cup–never too far away!

Others have not only shown us their pincushions, but have shown us the other treasures in their quilt studios as well. These are three little Hallmark Christmas ornaments that my mother has given me over the years. Each one has a “quilty” theme so I don’t want to put them away after Christmas. These ornaments live in my quilt studio year round.

Today I have been working at putting together the Stack’N Whack blocks that I made over a year ago. The blocks are now all together and the sides are squared up – ready for borders. If all goes well, I should be able to put on the borders tomorrow.

We are also painting the living areas of the house – living room, dining room, hallway, and stairwell. The walls were previously an off white–very boring. I chose an olive green to paint the walls. The colour is called, Moselle and is General Paint number 8184. I wanted the darker, 8185 Ardmore Green. My choice was a little too much for my husband–he thought the colour was too dark. We compromised and went with the colour that was one shade lighter (8184). My husband has agreed that after we have finished painting all the walls but one, we can decide if we want to paint that last wall a shade darker–8185. I think that is a fair compromise. The walls are turning out fabulous.

Everyone seems to be showing pictures of their pincushions, so I will join in too.

These are the three pincushions that I currently use. The black and gold round one on the left was a pincushion that we made in a workshop at our Guild one evening. The workshop was to teach us how to work with wool. The cushion is filled with lizard sand to keep pins sharp. The top of the cushion is four gold hearts on a round base. I bought the ladybug and added it as a personal touch. Each heart organizes one of my pin types. The ladybug keeps track of the needles.

The silver pincushion in the center of the picture is not a pincushion at all. It is a magnetic dish used by mechanics to keep track of bolts and such when they are working on motors. It has a huge magnet as a base. I use this dish to keep my corsage pins that I use on the long arm. The “arms” or rollers on the long arm are metal and this dish sticks very neatly to the long arm as I am either pinning on a quilt or removing it. Very slick! My dad is a retired mechanic. I had a hard time finding one of these bowls. When I mentioned to him that I was looking for one, he knew exactly where to find me one. Thanks Dad!

The chicken pincushion on the right was a gift from a quilting friend. I use this pincushion to store safety pins. I no longer pin my quilts but there always seems to be a need for a safety pin in this house. Since the safety pins never seem to make it back to their container, I started just sticking them into the chicken. We always know where to find a safety pin now.

Update: Several people have asked what lizard sand is. Lizard sand can be purchased from your local pet store. It is merely sand that has been screened and cleaned so that it is suitable for housing your pet lizard in your aquarium. Because it has been sterilized for the lizards, it is perfect for our pincushion–no bugs or surprises in this sand.