Quilting Design

Ever notice how quilting ideas can come from anywhere, sometimes when you least expect them? 

 

I saw this pillow at my daughter's house, and thought, "What a great quilting design that would make!"  I really like the randomness of it.  The design could be done with more than one color (as in the pillow), which I think could really add some interest.  It could even be done, I think, without the little leaves on the stems, which would make it just wavy, over-lapping lines, and I think that would be nice.  I can't wait to try it.

Here's a close-up of the stitching. Isn't it nice?

Blue jeans!

I found a tutorial on hemming blue jeans the other day.  You have to check this out.  It's awesome!  I have this blog listed on my sidebar.  It is quilt-knit-run-sew.blogspot.com. You will be saying, "Man, that makes so much sense!  Why haven't I been doing it like that for all these years I've been hemming blue jeans?"  Kind of makes me want to run out and buy some new jeans in a regular length instead of petite.....

Oops!

OK, as I said when I first started this blog, it would be really scary if I knew what I was doing!  Yesterday, after not posting for way too long, I put up two posts.  One was a post that had been saved as a draft.  So I went in and edited it, then posted it.  But it posted with the date of the original draft, so it appears way down in my daily post list.  sigh......

Paper (n)Or Plastic

Last Friday was the opening of an art exhibit called Paper (n)Or Plastic at the Gualala Arts Center (in Gualala, CA).  Harmony (of Harmony Arts Fabrics--see sidebar) and I co-curated this show, working to promote the idea of using Neither paper nor plastic when shopping.  Yes, re-usable shopping bags are the way to go!!!  And if they are beautiful and artistic, so much the better.  We had some fantastic entries, all shapes and sizes, made of all sorts of materials.  The show will continue through June 7.

The bag above is the one my dear daughter entered.  It's titled "Food For Baby" and features actual handprints from my little granddaughter, BabyStitches.

This is the bag that my mother, MomStitches, sent in for the show.  Beautiful quilt square there, don't you think!

And this is the bag that I entered!  It is made from a worn-out, cast-off

pair of jeans from MisterStitches.  This "haute couture" bag features

three pockets, and a zipper opening!

One of the highlights of the show was the loan of two works of art by Chris Jordan.  One of these extremely large art prints shows gazillions (I'm sure of that number--I counted them!) of plastic shopping bags.  The other one shows approximately the same number (give or take) of paper bags.  Check out his website and see all his amazing photos.  Really makes one stop and think about all the garbage we create.

Another highlight was a visit by Teresa, aka The Green Bag Lady.  (Her website is on my sidebar.)  Teresa is a fantastic woman who makes fabric re-usable shopping bags and gives them away:  all over the country, all over the world, all for free.  She brought 101 bags with her and gave them all away.  When you check out her website you can see that she records every bag given away, and keeps track of where each one goes.

Exercise

I'm very excited about my new heart rate monitor!  I suppose that says something about my age, or stage in life, that I asked for this for my birthday!  It's for exercise, not because I have a problem with my heart.  It is made by Polar and consists of a strap that I fasten around my chest, and a wristwatch that I wear.  I wore it while swimming last week and it worked very well.  I pushed a button on the wristwatch to tell it I was ready to begin exercising.  It recorded my heart rate, then calculated my target exercise zone.  So I started swimming along, doing my usual laps.  If I stopped at the end of the pool to talk to friends, though, my heart rate would drop out of my "zone," and the thing would start beeping at me!  Not annoying, just telling me to get back to work.  When I was all done I pushed another button on the wristwatch.  It proceeded to tell me how long I had exercised, how much of that time was in my target heart rate, my average heart rate, my highest heart rate, and how many calories I had burned.  It was pretty cool.  I've always felt like I'm a fairly lazy exerciser, so it was good to know that 26 of the 31 minutes that I was swimming were in my target zone.  I can't wait to try it out when I'm walking.