NBC-10-Philadelphia-kimwolterman

Since we had my old office/new guest bedroom painted a couple of months ago, we have hung nothing on the walls in there. We have four vintage sheets of paper dolls that we framed and hung in Katie's room when she was little. Jim now has his office in that room, and doesn't want the dolls in there. Imagine that! So we will be moving those into the guest room. But I also decided to make a quilt to hang on the wall above the new bed we purchased for the room. I was about two-thirds done with the piecing when my sewing machine began to act up. All I could think was, "Thank God this didn't happen while I was working on the graduation quilt for Tommy!"

I took the machine into Jackman's Fabrics since that is where I purchased it. They will do an initial trouble-shooting on the machine, in case it is something simple. No such luck with this one, so the machine had to be sent in for repair. I have had it for five years and have never had it cleaned, which they recommend that you do on an annual basis. So I guess I am lucky that I have gone this long with no problems. Though I could point out to them that my Sears Kenmore machine, given to me as a college graduation gift by my parents in 1978, has never been in the shop and runs like a charm. As my dad would say, they just don't build things like they used to. At any rate, a week later I received a call that the machine was ready to be picked up. All that needed to be done was a good cleaning and an adjustment of my feed dogs. So basically I just had to pay the cost of the cleaning. Not too bad.

Now I have finished the quilt and just need to sew the hangers onto the back of it. My secret? I attach several of the coated paper clips to the back. You can then bend them as needed to hang the quilt on the wall with Command hooks. No harm, no foul.

I had a bit of a sewing set back. Actually it was a cutting remark that caused all the problems. My 70 different squares of fabric are all cut, so this afternoon I began cutting the purple fabric that will surround each novelty piece of fabric. It readily became clear to me that I did not have enough of the purple fabric to cut into 280 pieces. I quickly gathered up a piece of the purple and one of my squares and dashed off to Jackman's Fabrics, offering up a prayer to the fabric saint that more of the purple remained in the store.

I found the proper color on the shelf, eying it with the sinking feeling that there were not 3 yards remaining on the bolt. Once at the counter I had the clerk go over the numbers with me to see how much more fabric was required for my squares. Math is totally not my thing, so to try to calculate the yardage needed to cut 140 5 1/2" x 2 1/2" rectangles plus an additional 140 9 1/2" x 2 1/2" rectangles was a challenge for me. But I thought 3 yards would do it. As the clerk measured my sample square, she said "You do know that your square is 5 3/4" and not 5 1/2", don't you?" Huh? I know I looked at her like she was crazy. I explained that I use a quilting ruler, and I am very accurate with my cuts. She explained that some of the rulers have an extra 1/4" in them. WTH!!! Why would anyone think that was a good idea?

At any rate she confirmed that 3 yards would do the trick, and as luck would have it that is exactly what remained on the bolt. Whew, crisis diverted. But when I got home and looked at my ruler, sure enough it has the extra 1/4" on it. So the rest of the afternoon I cut that amount off of each of the 70 squares plus all the purple strips I had already prepared. Like I don't already have enough cutting to do! First I threw the stupid ruler and its three larger sized brothers in the recycle bin. Maybe I should rethink that and throw them in the trash. Or else some poor woman who shops at Goodwill is going to be cussing this old sew and sew!

Two years ago when my friend Diane purchased the quilt I had donated to the school auction for her daughter Lauren, she cautioned that she would need quilts for for Tommy and Courtney when they graduated as well. At the time I wasn't sure if she was serious, and anyway Tommy wouldn't graduate until 2011 and that was a long way off. Well, Diane was serious and it is now 2011!

Last week the two of us went to Jackman's Fabrics to begin looking at material. Tommy wants a quilt just like Lauren's except that he wants purple as the main color and not Mountain Dew green. So the good news is that I know what pattern I am doing, the bad news is that the quilt has 70 squares of novelty fabric, each representing something of the past or present. That's right - I need 70 different fabrics. We found 26 at Jackman's, as well as three different purples for my borders. I came up with 18 additional fabrics I had a home that will work, leaving me with 26 additional fabrics to locate.

I love shopping online as I can enter what I'm looking for, say Harry Potter fabric, and I can usually find something that will work. The trick is to make sure it will look okay with purple! I located the lady I have purchased from in the past, and I'll be able to make up the rest of the squares from her I think. She is looking for a few things I could not find, such as something to represent a trip to Germany/Austria. Castles, perhaps? It will be fun to see what she comes up with. Last time she sent me a whole bag of scrap materials to dig through, and she wouldn't let me pay her anything for them since I was donating the quilt.

Last night I cut the 44 pieces of fabric I already have into 5 1/2" squares. Lauren's were only 4 1/2", but Tommy is quite a bit taller than her for one thing. The fabrics we located also have larger patterns on them, so I wanted the extra inch to capture more of the detail. While I am waiting for the other fabrics to arrive I'll begin cutting the purple strips which will border each of the squares. All the cutting is the most time consuming and least rewarding part of quilting, in my opinion. I like seeing all the squares come together as I sew. Oh well, off to the cutting board!