Oh wait, it’s just me and my blog.

But what’s a gal to do? An Upcoming Features, that’s what.

Spreading Grampy Around – our lovable family all gets together with the Toronto branch and heads out on a day trip where we go out to dinner, then try to covertly spread ashes in the ocean. Bonus scene: we reveal why we don’t give Addison crayons.

Up at the movies – Mom and the girls go see Pixar’s latest tearjerker, UP! We sit behind the paper’s movie critic, who spends a good twenty minutes talking to Emma about movies.

Loving the Library – a library book sale, the summer reading club, and how Emma answered the question “What do you like best about living in Canada?” The answer left other parents in the room shocked while Mom hid.

Canada Day – My mom thought I was kidding when I said she could be in the parade. I wasn’t. How long did I do face painting for this year? After that, we hit a flea market that was just wrapping up and they didn’t want to take anything back home. What on earth did we find?

Also, tune in for the spin-off: Sarah, the college years.

Oh, but I need a light for stitching.

This quilt I kept having endless issues with. In an effort to use up some scraps, they were far too short for any speed strip piecing techniques. I would up spending more time fiddling with strips and ripping out seams than I did putting blocks together. I forged through until I got 16 blocks, then I stopped. It’s lap sized or wall hanging sized. It still needs a border, and then quilting. Not sure how I’m going to quilt it yet, or even what color thread. Then I think I may sell it.

I am quilting my daughter’s quilt, on my mother’s quilt frame, with my grandmother’s tools. I have decided that while I like speed piecing techniques, I adore old-fashioned patterns and quilting. I like some machine quilting as long as it’s on a small machine. I don’t like long-arm computerized machine quilting. It makes the quilt look store bought, and then I think what was the point in that?

And I am cursing myself over Sarah’s quilt. When I pieced it together, I had a new serger and sewed many of the strips together with that. then decided to hand-quilt it. If you don’t just go “ow” I’ll tell you why: serged seams are bulky and stiff. My stitches mostly skip them entirely. And there is a lot, as I also pieced the back. Yes, I have learned a ton of stuff since then.

There’s two stacks of fabric waiting to be cut for quilt tops. One, the old soft florals for Ron & I, another, reds and yellows with white. Can’t wait to see it. I keep swapping out fabric until I am satisfied, and I have an idea for the block layout, but I’m not sure I can pull it off without overthinking, and I don’t want to mess it up either.

It has to be enjoyable for me, this piecing together of fabric and pattern and color and shape, so they all work as a whole. I see it in my head, this quilt. The hard part is getting it out.

Not sure if I want to hand-quilt a third quilt, especially a big one. But either of my machines are to cranky to machine quilt with. My mom will be loaning me hers to try, as an instructor told her it would do machine quilting quite well. If it does, and I get the hang of it, I’m sure I will be doing all mine and mom’s too.

tally:
- one quilt on the frame (Sarah’s blues and pinks)
- 3 finished tops needing to be sandwiched and basted, then quilted (blues, baby and navy/yellow)
- 3 tops in process (purple pinwheels with Nanny’s dress, Amish sunshine & shadow, rainbow stripes)
- 3 stacks of fabric waiting to be cut (faded florals, red/yellow/white disappearing 9 patch, green florals for triple Irish chain)

Oh wow, that’s ten. I’ve got it bad. Right now, I’m mostly trying to use up the stash, and picking out fabric combinations and trying to be inspired.

Actually, it was more like “Where the heck did your pictures go? Sheesh, bring ‘em back will ya?”

So I’ve tweaked the header just for you. I need to tweak it further, as I’ve never liked how the thumbnails link to just a small picture. I want it to go right to the Flickr page.

EDIT: I updated the plugin, so now it does that! So click on any pics above.

Anyway, we had a busy weekend. You can look at the pictures with captions and comments over here.

It’s not all my fabric: this pile is just the large pieces of quilting cottons, the ones I have plans for or need to be inspired by, or have to look at to check against another piece. The “in use” pile.

Not to be confused with the container of just flannel, the large bin of scraps which may have large forgotten bits in it, and the other large container of knits and non-quilting type fabric. Oh, and the bin with in-progress projects that had to be put away for a while until I feel like working on them again.

Meaghan’s making a quilt too.

Hers is six-inch squares, finally making use of a stash I got through a long-ago swap. All greens and purples, we hunted and tore and cut our way through my entire stash of fabric so she had as many different pieces as possible.

There is a dearth of some colors in my stash. You can see from the top photo – hardly any reds, minimum orange, barely any yellow. But a riot of pinks a healthy amount of greens and look at all that blue. I blame my mom for that, as she frequently hands over fabric.

It’s funny, I look at the pile and see the quilts I *want* to make; an Amish sunshine and shadow, maybe one really bright and one more subdued. I think I have enough for that. Realizing I have enough florals to make another quilt exactly like the one I have planned for Ron and myself. Queen-sized, old-fashioned florals in soft colors. I am going to have to pay for decent batting on that, as I want a certain look to it after I’m done quilting it. Or the long piece of white that reminds me of the finished spinning spools blocks tucked in a container. The large stack of blue and while fabrics inspire me to do an entire quilt in nothing but blue and white prints. And I don’t even like blue much, but this I know will be gorgeous. It makes me want to do more two-toned quilts, maybe a yellow and white floral with white. Or better yet, my mind wanders, a two-tone quilt in just solids, preferably a red or yellow with white, the block choice showing off something special – a curve, or a pleated part perhaps. Drunkard’s Path or Ohio Star.

I love piecing the tops, whipping them up quickly. The quilting part I can do, it just seems to never get set up. I took my .. er, I mean my mom’s quilt frame down to Rose’s house. Rose, you know Rose. Rose said she’s be happy to quilt for me, she loves it. One of the few things she can still do. She’s young at heart, can’t get out much and poorer than the church mouse. But her eyes lit up as I set up the frame in front of her favorite chair, made sure she had some quilting thread and promised to bring the needles too. “Well would ya lookit that!” she keeps telling her husband. I brought her a couple tupperware containers, a couple glasses to replace the last of her that broke when her hand shook so bad.

The phone rang. It was her husband, tired and worn. “I hate to tell you this, but you’ll have to come pick up your stuff and take it back. Rose had another mini-stroke, so she won’t be able to quilt.”

Yes, she’s fine now, yes she’s home resting comfortably.

I think when I bring the frame and quilt back I’ll set it up somewhere instead of packing it away again.

And I’m annoyed at ebay buyers. I sold a small pile of stuff, answered a HECK of a lot of questions about shipping (yes, I’ll combine) and then after they won, I sent combined shipping charges, no payment. I sent a reminder. No payment.

If it was one person, that would make sense, but out of 4 buyers, two have neglected to pay after a week. Both for multiple items. One won two auctions, the other won 4.

I may have to threaten them with neutral or even negative feedback.

But! I sold an item on etsy! I was pretty happy ’bout that.

It will be her first day of “real” school.

Yes, we have already sent one kid off into the wild blue yonder of “real life”. But this time was different, and my feminist cred is gonna slip here, but… this time, it’s a girl-child! It’s totally different!

Alas, we managed. We stuffed what she really needed into her new room downtown (easy), I spun her around the grocery store (she’s familiar with it, knows how to shop), impressed her new roomies with the fact she knows how to cook more than KD (one guy’s face looked like he just saw heaven), and then…

And then I had to just… Leave her there. That was the hard part.

Skip past the melancholy glaces into her half-empty room, the mental fingers in my ears as I try not to think about it…

The smiles when I see an email that says, “I bought second-hand curtains, they’re awesome!” (paraphrased, not a direct quote), or the note on Twitter that she unfurled her freshly laundered blankets that night and found emma’s pajama pants tangled up in them. Or seeing how she has a stuffed full calendar of people to visit, things to do, places to go.

Yeah, she’ll be fine.

Not so sure about the rest of us.

See, in addition to the purging items I don’t want, some of it has been hitting another pile labeled “to sell on the internet”. Mostly destined for Etsy, but some for ebay.

I decided to do a “quick” sort of the to-sell stuff and make two piles. It was scattered around in boxes, and as I lugged each one into my craft room, it got bigger and bigger. I was laying out the “to fix” pile so I could take a picture. The “to fix” pile is any item that needs washing, repairs, a retrofit, or made up into some sort of goods (usually a tote bag) before I could list it.

I lost my floor again.

The whole time I was plowing through it all, the only thing I could think of was apologizing to the husband. You see, as we were taking things *out* of the house, a lot of my scoping out of yard sales and thrift stores has been with an eye for what sells online. (I’m not just guessing here, I’m paying attention to trends, picking up one or two to check out when I get home, and if I hit gold, grab more next time I see some.) So for that past couple of years – especially since we moved, although it started before then, I’ve been amassing things to sell online. In the words of my husband, “We’re supposed to be getting RID of things, not bringing new things IN to the house!”

I did have good plans, I was building a site to sell my own goods from, like my own etsy, run by me. Well, honestly at this point, I haven’t done squat except tear it down and partially rebuild it, twice. Plus I don’t have the time to market it. A slight change in plans, and this past week or two I signed up on etsy, plus listed a few things on ebay – just to start things off.

Well, looking at the stack of items and realizing I could stock a small storefront tells me I’d better get cracking.

And Ron was right. (I hate when that happens.) No more yard sales for me until I make a dent in the pile. I’m feeling especially masochistic and wondering exactly how much I spent. Not all of it I bought; some is my old stuff, some inherited and willing to be let go of, and some just stuff people gave me. All told, I think there’s a good hundred dollars of investment there.

In yard sale prices, that’s quite a pile.

A small list for the curious:
- 28 items of clothing, 16 of them dresses, 21 of the items are vintage
- 6 aprons
- 73 books
- 18 linens of some sort
- 64 patterns, most 30 + years old
- 20 + different craft supply items (in my own defense, some of this is yet more leftovers from my craft store, which has been closed for 6 years)

I’ll be allocating time on the weekends to list items, rather than go yard sailing. And yes I *am* embarrassed with myself.