Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Bonnie's Blog……..

I am so excited, Bonnie Hunter is featuring some of my BH quilts on her blog today. You can check it out here. She has a global fan club of quilters from around the world, her self proclaimed #1 Fan Angela, lives in Phoenix too!
Photo courtesy of Bonnie K Hunter  quiltvilleblogspot
Bonnie took this photo at her Tucson classes in February. A group of her devoted followers made the road trip for the event. and this is "Smith Mountain Morning" one of  the BH designed quilts that I still had in my possession for Show And Tell. You can see a complete gallery of my BH quilts by clicking on the Bonnie Hunter tab at the top of the page.
I have provided lots of links in today's posts, I find it really disappointing when I read a post that doesn't give me links to referenced material and linking makes it so fast and easy to check out the sites.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Playing With Jacks


Quilted with "Swirls". I think the binding will be pieced/scrappy.
Pieced backing, using left over fabrics, gets them gone from the stash and saves purchasing a back and I think it makes an interesting contemporary alternative to the front. Yes, I am a fan of pieced backs! 
Close up showing more detail. The batting used in this quilt is Dream Green, a product from Quilter's Dream made from recycled materials. It quilts nicely and stands up to a lot of abuse, appropriate for a boy's bunk bed! I also use this Dream Green batting for the Wounded Warrior quilts, many of them get a lot of laundering when the soldier is still in a hospital setting.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

The Week In Review

This week my biggest hurdle turned out to be painting - my bedroom! It was a dark indescribable color, somewhere between brown and OD! Trying to decorate around it the past few years, I finally decided that it had to go, too dark and depressing by far!
So when DH left Monday for a couple of weeks in Colorado, I went to the paint store and after experimenting with half a dozen trial colors settled on "Warm Muffin" and that turned out to be the easiest part!
Moving the furniture, removing everything from the walls, taping all around the woodwork, windows, electrical outlets and covering everything is time consuming - and hard on the body before the actual painting ever gets started. I have decided that this will be the last major painting I will do, next time I will hire someone else to do it as I struggle with accepting that what my mind can conceive my body may no longer always be able to achieve, at least not without pain and strain. Falling off the step stool did not improve my well being especially when I landed on the back of the wooden antique commode chair, ouch!
 Now isn't that a vast improvement? I think so! Painting is by far the fastest and least expensive way to redecorate, it's the biggest bang for the buck!
I completed everything all alone and in one day, although Button was still impatiently waiting at midnight on Thursday for me to clear off "her " bed so she could jump up and go to sleep! She spends a lot of time there on our bed keeping watch, standing guard, she can see everyone who passes down below. Button, by the way, is nine today and gets a nice big marrow bone to celebrate - no candles.
 The only sewing was finishing up the latest QOV, now bound and off my list- the binding is this great diagonal stripe I found at "Bob's Variety Store" in Sun City when Meredith took me there.
Some new software from Lindee Goodall for my little embroidery machine has allowed me to make smaller, neat cursive fonts for labels and the idea going forward is to embroider my labels directly onto the backing before quilting, as you can see in the pic below.
 I like that it is there, "Made by Roslyn Atwood Southern Cross Quilting 2014", but subtle.
This method has a twofold purpose-it saves time and effort sewing on a label afterwards and pretty much guarantees record of provenance making theft/loss much less likely since removing the evidence would damage the quilt.
Now I can move onto the next "to do" item which I will call "The Wedding Gown Quilt"!
I am rather excited to get going on this, it's a little different from the usual commission involving a vintage wedding gown and a collection of vintage handkerchiefs.
My client has asked me to construct a full size quilt using these materials as a kind of "memory quilt" of  her mother and I think it's a lovely way to re-purpose things that really have no other current use.
Watch for the next few posts as I begin working on this quilt.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Sunday, April 20, 2014

He Is Risen!

ALLELUIA!
The tomb is empty!

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Weekly Report

Having not posted any quilting progress all week I wanted to show that I haven't been totally indolent!
Most quilters are not the most fond of the final process of binding application

Belated Birthday…...

Today we celebrated the Boy's birthday a little late and threw in an Easter egg hunt for good measure.
The yummy ice cream cake came from Baskin Robbins, the "Cars 2 world Grand Prix" design and he chose Mickey Mouse banner, plates and napkins.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

A New QOV

Thanks to Loretta's gift of the blue fabric, this QOV is ready for the longarm. I did add an extra red border to enlarge it to be more man-sized, now it's 60" x 76". I haven't chosen a backing yet, may need to purchase one tomorrow so I can get this finished……….

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Truncating Your Blog

After reading about all the nasty places a blog post can show up after being trolled by one of the computer generated thieves, I decided to look into truncating my posts in future. After all, I do not want one of my posts to end up on a porno site or some other despicable website!
It's pretty simple and since I plan to begin doing this I hope that my fellow bloggers who visit my site will not find it an issue. I have encountered truncating, did not realize what it was but I had no issue with it and do not think it should turn off any readers but it does prevent the robot from copying the post.
It simply means that only the first paragraph of a new post will show on the home page and readers click at the end of the paragraph to see the remainder of the post.
Truncating is super simple for bloggers to do- place the cursor where you want to truncate the post then click on the "torn page" icon in the Blogger toolbar at the top of the page. A grey line break will appear on your working space and only the words above the line break will show on the home page with a "read more" in red below. Readers click on that [but the robots can't] and presto the rest of the post shows up. Like this……...

Fabric Found!

Woohoo, look what came in the mail today……...

Re:Theft of Personal Website Content!

I got a "heads up" this morning from Heather over at Books and Quilts that another website had stolen the full content of my last blog post without my permission and without linking back. It has happened to countless others so I contacted abuse@godaddy to report the violation and I also plan to notify Wordpress of the issue.
It is not uncommon on the web but this site is flagrantly reposting the entire content and doing so habitually.
A little further investigation revealed outraged comments from many of the offended bloggers, one of whom Alison, at Little Bunny Quilts, posted a copy of the complaint she sent to GoDaddy and has invited other "victims" to use the letter.
When I tried to return to the site it had already been removed, thanks GoDaddy for a lightning fast response!
So you see it does pay sometimes to report copyright infringements, especially when working with a top notch company like GoDaddy.

Gentle Reminder: it is courteous always to link back to the site whenever one references any material from another person, and posting content from another site should always be prefaced by a request to the site owner for permission….just sayin'!
Most bloggers love to have their posts recognized and referenced by another blogger, it is a compliment, but it is simply respectful to give credit to the originator.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Two Yellow Brick Roads

These adorable quilts are for two great grandsons [not mine, I don't have any LOL]…….

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

World Autism Awareness Day

I am linking this post to the official Autism website where you can find information about this disease that can so disastrously limit the lives of wonderfully gifted people.
Autism now affects one in 42 boys, one in 68 children……..shocking statistics our family knows well. Our youngest grandson has autism, a beautiful, intelligent and captivating child, he is a delight----and a challenge!
This is the face of autism…………...
Fearless…….
fun loving……...
little clown……….
the serious side……….
water baby………….
snow lover…………..
school enthusiast……...
 adventurous………..
imaginative………...
dirt loving…………..
thoughtful…. 
and so many other faces too numerous to name!