doll quilts....

Last year I made a ton of 9-patch blocks from old sheets. I am making them into doll quilts this summer. They are for donation to a new program Karen has learned about.

She talks about it (here) and you can see her quilt too.

Because they are sheets, they don't like to stay flat....even after you steam press the crap out of them.

That made them rather hard to quilt.

(for me anyway)

I tried diagonal on the first one, and just wavy lines along the seams on the last two.

That seemed to go okay.

I did one more. 

Last spring I got a huge tub of sample shirts and fabrics. Some of it just seemed gross to me. I didn't see anything wonderful in it at all.

Kristi, who gave it to me said,

"go though it and pitch what you don't want"

It had been given to her by someone else.

I cut off sleeves and backs.

There was also a small packet of decorator fabrics.

I combined the decorator fabric with the stripes from the shirts, and free pieced hearts, 

this is what I came up with.....

It is about 20 x22 inches. I am thinking that I will give it to Kristi's little girl. I am sure it will shock her to see what came out of the box. It shocked me! 

We spent 2 days down at ISU, in Ames. 

That would be Iowa State University, home of the Cyclones.

NOT the University of Iowa, home of the Hawkeyes.

I easily confuse the two.

(I am a Minnesota girl, a Gopher!)

Anyway.....

Crispy will be attending ISU this fall. We spent two days walking around the campus.

Miles and miles of walking. 

Okay, we did some geocaching on the campus and that added to the total of miles.

Crispy's dorm room is the window right above his head.

We looked in the windows of the room right below it. Nice corner room, with two windows.

He is pretty sure he will love it at ISU.

little things....

Last winter, I saw this blog...buildinghousesfromscraps....teeny tiny houses, seemed simple enough.

Except it wasn't.

I made a few using different techniques. I found this one in a pile of fabric. Not sure what went wrong. There were others that weren't nearly as bad and they were put into pot holders and given away.

I gave up.

Then I saw this wonderful pile of mini-houses here at karenssewingrooms and she encouraged me to give it another go. 

So I did. I made tiny templates for the roof. Strip-pieced the chimneys. And very carefully cut the doors and window to the size they needed to be.

(cutting things the correct size always helps)

Here are the first four....and I was happy enough with them that I made about a dozen more.

While I was going through my skinny strip bag, I found some small string quilt blocks I had started. There was even a few paper squares in there,

all  ready for sewing more string blocks....

So I ran them through the machine while making houses.

They are 4 1/2 inch squares. It will be a bit before I have enough for a quilt.

While cleaning and sorting my way through a pile of fabrics, I found rectangles....

all cut and ready to go.....I sat right down and made......

Little tissue holders!

Karen, my Karen, not the little houses Karen, said if they were re-sized just a little bit they would make nice cell phone holders. Hmmm.....that would require more thinking and measuring.

I will save that for another day.

the super secret project......

The William A. Irvin t-shirt quilt. This race is held every year during Grandmas Marathon weekend. My sister, Jill,  has run this several times. 

She likes to run.

Her husband Jon tried running several years ago to see what the thrill was.

He never could find the thrill.

So, instead, he worked behind the scenes. For 18 years he has been involved in the set-up and take down of The 5K William A. Irvin Run which is held the night before the marathon.

The William A. Irvin is now a floating museum up in Duluth.

This year, Jon was to receive an award for his many years of service. Jill wanted him to have a quilt too, she secretly collected the 18 t-shirts from every race. It took her a while, but she did it. 

I am not a big fan of t-shirt quilts. I made one years ago. It went okay...but I thought I would never ever make another one. I didn't even have the pattern anymore, I had given it to my nieces so they could make their own t-shirt quilts.

But, here I was making a t-shirt quilt.

I looked at Karen's wonky t-shirt quilt (HERE)....and this one (HERE) and got verbal directions from her. I jumped in and started making the rows.

I wanted it 4x5 shirts....only had 18, so I used the backs from some. Inspector Kitty, sitting on a backs-block,  said the first row looks good and I should carry on.

I kept adding filler fabrics to the blocks and before I knew it, I was done.

It was machine quilted.

When I brought it home, I laid it on a chair. Ozzy jumped on it, and declared it quite cozy and comfy.

I added random fabrics for the border.

Except for some words that were added using the nautical flag alphabet.....

It has his name Jon and his last name.

The words run and race.

....and the word Duluth.

Here is what it looks like all together.....

and you know what?...it wasn't that bad, I may even make another one some day.

Mrs. Browndirt goes camping and geocaching.....

When I mentioned that I was going camping, a comment came in from Brown Dirt Cottage....

she said she could start a fire with one match and no paper.

I thought,

It sure would be nice to have her along to start the campfires.

Then I thought some more....

She could go with!

I could make a Mrs. Browndirt, she could do everything we did.

Mrs. Browndirt arrived safe and sound at the campground with us. She sat nice and still on the trip over. She didn't even get into the graham crackers and leave crumbs all over.

Mrs. Browndirt wasn't able to start the fire like she said, 

BUT 

I got all kinds of encouragement while I started the fire. I used paper. Mrs. Browndirt said that was okay, I still only used one match like she does. 

Always the prankster, she played with the flashlight. When it got dark, she stuck it under her chin and tried to scare us. 

Time to go geocaching!! It was me, my sister Jane, and Mrs. Browndirt.

First up was a cache inside a library.....

We needed to search the card catalog for John Sculley. This was the wrong drawer. It was the next drawer we tried. We found what we needed and went searching for the book.

Mrs. Browndirt helps sign the logbook...

There were kids playing video games at the library. 

A bunch of them kept staring at us.

Watching us.

What the heck?

Was it because we actually used the old card catalog to find a book? 

I can't imagine what else would cause anyone to take a second look at us. I thought the three of us blended right in at the library. Good geocacher use stealth. Doesn't do anything to call attention to themselves. I think we were okay.

The next cache was in a small wooded area, in the middle of no where. There was no clear path to it. We had to fight our way through the trees to find it. It is called bushwhacking. The next problem was getting the lock open. It took a couple attempts before we got it right.

I opened the door...

and looked inside.

I screamed my fool head off and slammed the door!

Jane's eyes bugged out, "whaat?"

Then I started laughing and couldn't stop.

Jane wanted to know if there was a mirror in there?

NO! Go look!

Jane refused to look, 

and Mrs Browndirt just sat there with that amused look of hers, wondering what all the fuss was about.

I finally calmed down enough to re-open the door. Jane came over slowly to see what made me scream so much.

It was just a fake chicken with real feathers and beady little eyes watching for anyone who might open the door. The cache was in the drawer. We did a few more caches that were pretty tame, then headed back to the campground.

After a few hours of geocaching, Mrs. Browndirt needed to lay back and relax. 

We had lots of fun while camping. Our only complaint was how HOT and miserable we were every afternoon. 

The body for Mrs. Browndirt came from (HERE)

I'm back.....

Camping was hot. We sat there wishing for rain and wind, and we hate rain and wind while we are camping. We thought winter was the best season. We laughed at ourselves....we are never happy....

My sister and I stopped in an antique store. I found this old postcard, it seemed so fitting, that I had to buy it. 

This is also an experiment. I was playing with my camera, it will convert pictures to super small and I had to see how they would look here on the blog. 

I think it works rather well. I need to go convert pictures I will blog about next.

schoolhouse blocks

Yesterday, I finished 9 school house blocks to enter in this month's block lotto.

I thought I was done sewing for the week. I was getting ready to go camping and was busy gathering and packing. 

Except, this morning I started thinking....I had extra roof pieces and a pile of scraps sitting there staring at me.

And I wondered, 

what would multi-colored scrappy houses look like?

So, instead of packing, I was sewing.

Now I know what different colors look like.....

And what they look like mixed in with my incorrect red ones.

I like it.

Now I better go work on packing and finish sweeping the kitchen floor. I walked away from that when the fabric called. 

I will put these in a drawer, and cover up any other fabric scraps. 

That way any calls from fabric will be muffled and I won't hear it.

block lotto and the boomerang

I finally took out all the plaid blocks I won at block lotto. I laid them out this morning. This isn't all of them, but a good number of them. I never marked them with names. 

I am thinking that I will add narrow sashing and white corner stones,

and the setting triangles will be white and some dark.

Picture snow topped mountains.

Or maybe not, it is all just rolling around in my head yet. 

Yesterday, I hung up my super secret project to take pictures of it. While I was out there Crispy came along with his brand new boomerang. He was throwing it around, trying to get the hang of it.

I did duck for cover at one point.

He was rather close to me. I could hear it cut through the wind.

Then I heard him say, "oh God"

and his foot steps were running towards ME.

It was coming back, with me as it's target.

I covered my head and closed my eyes waiting for impact!

I escaped being hit. When I felt safe to look, it had landed several feet away from me.

All was well. Crispy adjusted his throws and continued to practice. 

Next thing I know, Crispy is out walking in the corn field. 

This corn belongs to Farmer T. Our acreage is surrounded on three sides by his farm ground. The fourth side is the edge of town. It is a good combination of town/country.

Anyway, the boomerang landed in the corn but he couldn't find it. Years ago he lost a boomerang to the corn field. We never found that one back. He wasn't losing this one. 

I went out to help look.

 So did the cat and dog. But all they did was fight and chase each other. They were really no help.

It took a good 20 minutes of walking up and down the rows.

We had to change our search tactics. We started looking at the corn and not the ground.

That worked. There it was, hanging on a baby corn plant.

Back to throwing.

More block lotto stuff.....

The June block is a SCHOOL HOUSE block. So cute.

I made two, but they are wrong.

The chimney reds are the same color as the roof. They should be the same red that is used on the door side. Plus they could use more contrast with the reds. So I pulled out some more reds and laid them out. I leave for camping this week, but I am hoping to dive into these and sew a bunch of blocks.