Freedom is the ability to fill your sewing room with as much crap as possible

Lots of news and fun stuff from the last week or so. I'll try to include a little bit of everything. I should break in the new blog layout with a nice long entry, after all.

Last Saturday, we went down to Lake Jackson, an area of Texas near Galveston, for a Ron Paul rally. Tanya came with us and we got to hear Ron speak, which was unbelievably awesome. There were tons of people there supporting him. He had a lot of very insightful and inspiring things to say, and I managed to capture the whole speech on video with my nifty camera. I'll be transcribing the speech if anyone's interested. If you'd like to actually see the speech, I would suggest doing a search online for the Lake Jackson Congressional Rally, as the quality of my video isn't very good. Lots of shoulders and picture-jiggling.



After the rally, we drove down to the beach, which was just 10 miles away, and I got to see the ocean for the first time since age 2. Completely amazing and very beautiful, even with the overcast sky. (And yes, the picture in my header is from that trip. That's me wading in the sand and collecting seashells.)



Tanya was quite freaked by the seagulls flipping out over the food we brought for them. They swarmed into a cloud of beaks and feathers that I have to agree was pretty intimidating.

So, rest of the week. Psych test was Thursday, and I did awesome! So I'm pretty happy about that. Grade came back from the Microbiology test, and that was a total A, and Sociology wasn't too bad either.



I got a whole giant box of fabric in the mail, courtesy of my dead grandmother. There's a lot of really awesome prints, and this photo doesn't nearly show all of the kick ass-ness of this fabric. When my mom got all of the fabric from the estate, she called to ask what types of prints I wanted, to which I replied "Just give me half of anything cotton. I guarantee I will use it at some point in my life." So she sent this giant box stuffed to the gills with tons of old fabric and, oddly enough, she included my violin from when I was in high school. My mother's weird.



I also finished the chameleon foundation block for a quilt I've been working on for some time. It's called Escaping Bugs and it's a Bottle Quilt Co. pattern. (I would link to their webpage, but the site was shut down after the passing of the owner.)

I've been saving up different bug fabrics for a very long time, and I had the majority of them stuffed into a basket with the pattern since before I moved to Texas. They sat in a box or the closet or just hidden somewhere for the last four years, and I was almost convinced I'd left them back in Reno. But I finally started on this quilt a few months ago. (I ended up having enough bug fabric for three quilts, so I sent some pre-cut blocks to my sister and aunt.) Now that my chameleon block is finished, I just have to finish the Sticky-Tongued Frog and then put the top together.

Last bit of news: I bought Dane a Nintendo Wii for Valentine's Day, officially making me the most amazing wife in the world.

And I close this post with a challenge! I want to see some artistic representations of this photo from my beach trip:



Use any medium, make it any size, add any elements, do whatever. I have plans for this picture, and I'd love to see what others can do with it!

The unexpected gifts of Christmas

The holidays were enjoyable and fruitful. Dane and I went to New Braunfels to spend Christmas with his mom and brother. We were both spoiled with awesome gifts, including a crock pot for me and a Nintendo DS for Dane.

The best part was the day after, when mom-in-law Jackie and I went to Wimberley, a cute little town that's 30 minutes from New Braunfels. We looked around in their cute little shops, and I found not one, but two old handmade quilts for VERY reasonable prices. They only needed some minor repairs, which I feel comfortable doing myself. The first quilt was $60 and is made from feedsacks. The second, a $30 solid colored quilt, is completely hand pieced.

I'm still learning the best settings for my camera, so some of these pictures came out a bit yellowed and unclear.


Wonderful feedsack prints, and a very soft backing. The only problems with this quilt are the split seams on some of the blocks, and a burn mark that goes completely through all layers and will need to not only be patched with a swatch of batting, but the pinwheel block will have to be recreated with a reproduction print.


The feedsack quilt spread out on our bed. The very dark spot in the center of the quilt is where the hole is.


Closeup of the hole. It shouldn't be too difficult to repair. I found a nice off-white quilter's flannel to use for the back and preserve the softness.


The solid colored quilt. The front is rather nice in a geometric way, but what really sold me is the print used for the back.


What a cute print! And this is the only picture where I got my flash settings correct, which is why it's so nice and bright.


This is the only spot of damage on this quilt. The hole isn't even the size of a silver dollar, but it knocked down the price dramatically. The antique shop owner said she was about to cut up this quilt to make pillows! Blasphemy!!!

So, I have my work cut out for me. I looked at some tips online for repairing old quilts, and I'll be documenting the origin of these quilts, what issues there were, and what was repaired, to help preserve as much as possible about their history.