Piedmont Quilters Guild Show 2010

I have entered two quilts in the Piedmont Quilters Guild Show which opens tomorrow and continues through Sunday, October 3.  If you are in the Piedmont Triad area, I hope you will try to attend.  The quilt above is called "Mérida Remix".  You can read about the construction of this quilt at these post.
The quilting and finishing of it can be seen here.

This one is called "Curiouser and curiouser." Read more about it at these posts.

Chatting with SLIS students

When I was in library school at Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science, my favorite courses were taught online by Dr. Annette Lamb and Dr. Larry Johnson.  Not only were they challenging and informative, they were also fun.  Last year at the AASL conference in Charlotte, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting both of them in person for the first time.  Recently, Larry asked me to serve as a virtual visiting professional and dialogue with the students in his Library Media Specialist class via their class blog.  In honor of that, I thought I would feature the One Million Books quilt that hangs in my office at school and a new set of pennants I'm making for the library media center.

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 Using the same technique that I employed for the letters of the OMB quilt, I cut out letters to spell out, "Read one million books." Black seemed to be the best background color for the pennants themselves.  The pattern was developed last summer when I made a string for Anna and Matty's wedding. For the moment, I think they will hang in the display case outside the library media center.  

While my blog is called The Quilted Librarian, it tends more toward the "quilt" end of the spectrum than the "librarian" end, but, on occasion, I do let my inner librarian/information specialist speak.  In this post, I talked about the unique and useful information provided by tracking one's blog. The importance of titling and tagging a blog were the subjects of this post.  My first experiences with Twitter are discussed in this post.  Banned Books Week rated a post, too. This post involves my responses to a reading meme.  You can look through the labels to the right for other library-related topics.

Technology and social media figure into what I do every day.  When I create a new blog post, it's automatically Tweeted and appears as a wall post on my Facebook page. I keep up with news and what's happening in the various blogospheres with Google Reader.  A digital camera is always in my purse as is my iPhone.  

I love reading about how many school librarians are using cutting-edge technologies with their students and it makes me wish that my own students had more access to technology.  The digital divide is unfortunately very real and it's going to take lots of money to make things more equitable.  I've had two very different job experiences as a library media specialist--the first in a small, rural corporation with lots of technology and a strong budget for materials and the second in a sprawling, urban corporation with very little technology and an almost non-existent materials budget. I'm sure the SLIS students will have lots of good questions.  Hopefully, I will be able to provide some insightful answers.

Pennants and porch quilting: a weekend round-up

The morning has been spent moving between Safety Pin Studio and the screened porch.  I made the bias tape for the pennants since I had all of the "READ" pennants finished.

Here's the R going on the raw edge of the bias.

Once the pennants are sewn down to the raw edge, it is pressed up and the other raw edge (that's been pressed under one-quarter inch) is brought over to cover the first stitching and pinned down.

The second edge of tape is topstitched through all the layers and grommets are added to each end so the string is ready to hang.

A Great Weekend for Getting Things Done

While I did spend some time quilting on the porch on Saturday, the weekend was mostly given over to a variety of jobs around the house.  Nearly all of the supplies are now here for the bathroom remodeling.  (More on that in the days to come.)  I took off the last of the wallpaper borders in our bathroom and we are ready for the demolition and then, the new floor and fixtures.  The front beds are weeded and ready for the fall and a large limb that came down in the backyard is cut up and ready to be collected by the city tomorrow.  I made Thanksgiving for Jim and our niece and we are all nursing food babies at the moment.  I hope your weekend was enjoyable and productive, too.

Screened Porch Quilting on Jim's Woobie

Another gorgeous day in the Piedmont Triad, so I was out on my screened porch quilting on Jim's woobie quilt.

The stippling design shows better on the back side.  I'm loving the 80/20 batt and the soft backing fabric.  They quilt like a dream.

Basting Jim's New Woobie Quilt

Since it was lovely and cool today and the table on the porch is the perfect  size and height, I basted Jim's new woobie quilt. You can search the labels on the right to see other posts about this Denyse Schmidt pattern called "Single Girl."

I use a curved upholstery needle for basting which should be not further apart than the hand.  Miraculously, I didn't stab myself with it this time.  There's an old tradition among quilters that it's good luck to bleed on the quilt you are making.  That should make me a very lucky person.  If you do bleed on the quilt you are working on, your own saliva is the very best stain remover.

This long, thin table is ideal for basting. I tape the back down to the table to keep it still and mark the side centers with pins.  The batting comes next and then the top with the side centers also marked with pins.  I line up the centers, secure with long pins and begin basting.   Starting in the center with the excess resting on the chairs, I use long threads and baste the entire center area, then move the quilt to the two extremes to finish.

I've decided to use the large stippling stencil to quilt this one.  More on that process later.

Finishing up the doll quilt and a weather change

We awoke Saturday morning to a lovely change in the weather--beautiful deep blue skies and temperatures in the high seventies and low eighties.  I spend a large part of the day on the screened porch finishing up the hand quilting on the doll quilt.

The quilting is finished and the continuous bias binding is all machine sewn.  Now I just have to bring it around to the back and hand sew it down.  The tag has my name and the washing instructions on the reverse side.

Here's the lovely little lady who will soon be covering her babies with the quilt.  Dan took this photo of Zoe at Anna and Matty's wedding.