Show + Tell :: Sunburst + T-shirt Quilt

January 26 2012,

This quilt below is call "Sunburst". It is the same concept as "Starburst" but has more orange fabrics in it. It measures 86" x 59" and contains 840 quarter square triangles that measure 2.5" each.

I sent this quilt out to be quilted by a local long arm quilter name Concessa. The quilting turned out beautiful.

Below is the back of the quilt. I used leftover fabric pieces from many projects and made it into a collage. Hubby prefers the back instead of the front, go figure.

Wait there's more!

Below is a queen size t-shirt quilt that a friend commissioned me to make for her father. Her mother had passed away, and over the years, her mother had collected a bunch of astronomy t-shirts during her travels.

Below is the result. The quilting was sent out to another local quilter, Martha, who did a spectacular job. The result was stunning, and the lady's father who received this as a Christmas gift this past Christmas was in tears.

Happy Quilting,
Quilt & Bitch

Happy Chinese New Year

January 23 2012,

Happy New Year! May the new year bring plenty of joy, wealth and good health.

Here are a few rituals and traditions that we follow just before the new year and for the new year day. Note that there are many other beliefs and traditions, and the ones below are just the ones we follow.

• Before the new year, the house must be clean and in order.
• Cut your nails and hair before the new year. 
• One must not cut hair or nails on the new year day.
• Have a new year's eve feast, that consist of noodles, shrimp and fish.
• On new year's day, nothing can be cleaned, swept or washed.
• Wear red on new year's day.

According to our neighbor, people who are born in the year of the dragon, because it is the year of the dragon, should wear a red belt all year around. I googled and found one site which said that wearing some kind of red thread is fine too, like on the ankle or wrist bracelet. Time for me to go to the craft store and buy red embroidery thread and brush up on the techniques on how to do a friendship bracelet. Hubby says he won't wear it, I guess I just have to do it for the two of us.

Happy New Year,
Quilt & Bitch

Sitting Pretty Again

January 16 2012,

Last winter, instead of throwing out the Amaryllis bulbs, I decided to keep them and try to replant them for this winter. It was a success. Out of four bulbs, two are producing spectacular flowers. The other two may just be late bloomers. Below are the stages of the Amaryllis.

Pretty aren't they?

Quilt & Bitch

Cleaning Bonanza

January 13 2011,

Chinese New Year is fast approaching. This year, the new year falls on January 23rd 2012, and is the year of the Dragon.

Some of you know that before the new year approaches, the house must be clean. For the next 10 days, the house will be in a shamble. Dusting, washing, vacuuming, sweeping, wiping, will all occur. I will go through a lot of Q-tips and toothpicks (in order to get into the nook and cranny of things). In our domain, this type of deep cleaning only happens once a year.

Surprisingly, we have gotten one of our neighbors, who is of Italian descent, to clean house, and to celebrate the Chinese New Year. This reminds me of the phrase, "Keeping up with the Joneses".

We've also notice that we are trying to "one-up" each other. Well, it is not exactly "one-upping" each other, but we seem to set the standard, and people in the cul-de-sac, seem to follow.

One example were the Christmas lights this past Christmas. As soon as we put up ours, our Italian neighbor's kids said, "Our house now looks boring. Let's put up some icicles on the roof". The next week, icicles popped up on their roof.

It's all in good fun and a friendly competition.

Happy Cleaning!

Quilt & Bitch

Show + Tell :: In Unison

January 11 2012,

A new year, a new quilt. Regular readers are probably not surprise by this orange and blue color combination. The quilt is call "In Unison". It is hand appliqued and hand quilted. This project took me 5 months to complete. Most of the time, it was sitting in a bag waiting for me to pick it up and work on it. It wasn't hard or required any brain cells. I had no motivation to finish it. Finally last week I picked it up and vowed to finish it.

Quilt & Bitch

Christmas Lights

January 8 2012,

Happy New Year!

I just had the time to take pictures of Christmas lights that we put up. Below is the fountain area in the summer. And below that are pictures of what the fountain currently looks like.

 

The icicles portrays water flowing down the fountain, and the itsy bitsy colorful lights are fishes swimming in the fountain. Some of the colored lights blinks.

We picked up four more of the same icicle lights that went on sale on December 26. Next year, we'll have more! The more the better right?

Quilt & Bitch

Painting Party

December 28 2011,

We've been busy painting last week and this week. When there is a little bit of down time, we tackle a few walls each time. Last week was a section of the foyer and hallway.

The time consuming part is not the painting but the prepping of the walls. We have bad plaster on some walls, and when this happens, when we try priming the walls, the paint peels after it dries.

To make matters worse, the paint that we bad bought, was streaking badly.

We went back to the store and discussed the issue with the store owner, and he suggested buying Benjamin Moore Aura paints. Our original paint was $25.00 a gallon, and this special one was $60.00 a gallon. Before we jumped to the conclusion that it was the paint, we bought new roller frame, new rollers, and the streaks were still there.

With the Benjamin Moore Aura paint, we redid the wall, and there were no streaks at all. What a big difference. This paint is expensive, but it has primer built into it, and the paint is easier to work with.

Streaking on wall

Below is a small wall that we painted. I wanted this 3 feet by 3.5 feet wall be colorful, because our other walls are all off white. This orange color is call "citrus blast" (color # 2018-30). We bought a pint of paint with this color. It cost us $6.50 for the paint, it was worth it. It is on the bright side, so a small wall was appropriate.

Splash of color (citrus blast #2018-30)

We had gone to a friend's house over Christmas and saw these triangle on their handy man's workspace. We inquire what these things were, and he explained that they were call "Painter's Pyramid" and that it will make painting quicker.

Painter's Pyramid

You put doors, cabinet, small furniture on these pyramid, and then you can paint things in half the time, because you can get it off the ground or saw horses without having to wait for it to dry. It is a brilliant idea!

Hubby and I decided to set it up for our pine doors and did a trial run in flipping the doors before we painted to see if it was even feasible. As we flipped the door, we noticed little dimples on our doors. Darn. These pyramid left little dimple marks where it had been resting. Hubby concluded that the pine doors were too soft for these pyramid to rest on. So now, we are back to waiting an hour after each side of the door is painted and then flipping it over. Brilliant idea, but just not for us.

Painter's Pyramid resting on solid pine doors

This whole thing has certainly been an adventure. We're still painting doors. We can only do two at a time because we only have two sets of saw horses. The house had all brass hardware, and we are getting rid of the brass hardware (hinges, door knobs) and changing them all to satin nickle. Slowly but surely, we'll get there. After all the doors are done, I think we'll be tackling the trims.

Happy Painting,
Quilt & Bitch