That’s what happened tonight, when I went to the ironing board to have a look at the iron because there was a hot metal and overheating electrical smell in the room. Oddly enough, the smell wasn’t strongest by the iron; in fact, it didn’t smell at all right by the iron, so I picked it up and put it down on the board to see if it was heating up at all, since perhaps the smell was coming from something else, and the iron was status quo.

Obviously, it was the iron that was emitting the smell. I immediately turned it off and unplugged it. I’m really NOT happy, on a number of levels. One, if I hadn’t been right HERE, it could have been bad (I don’t leave the iron on when I leave the room usually, but heck, if I’d left to go to the bathroom, this could have been a much worse scenario!). Two, this was the BEST IRON EVER. I probably can’t even get another one like it, which leads me to three, I don’t have time for this right now! I do not need to have to spend any time at all going to the store to search for the perfect iron at the moment.

But wait, would you believe that I searched Google for Bosch Bügeln, and came up with the same exact iron, that I could order online, and for quite a bit less money than I paid for it the first time around? It’s served me well for years, never leaking or spitting water or deposits, and I think it even fell off the board once thanks to the cat, and it survived. It was well worth the cash I paid for it back then, and even more worth it now. Whoopee! It was so cheap (relative to what I paid the first time, anyway) that I even paid the company for overnight delivery, which means I’ll have my new iron on Thursday (not tomorrow, since it’s already so late). I’ll have to live with ITMan’s wimpy iron for tomorrow and part of Thursday, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Okay, so I’m still not a happy camper that it died, but at least I know I have another one on the way, and nobody got hurt. The only small injury was to the ironing board cover. ITMan said I should have listened to my instincts about the iron when I heard it clicking on and off, and stopped using it, though he didn’t suggest that at the time. I didn’t want to panic about it, but I guess I should have. I’ll remember this the next time, for sure.

So it’s all good again except that, of course, while I was writing this and buying the new iron, the lights in the bathroom cabinet went out completely when my daughter tried to turn them on. It’s not the breaker, and all the bulbs didn’t go out at once, so I guess it’s the switch or something, since there is power in the unit because the plugs in the cabinet are still working. *sigh* I guess it’s not a good day for electricals in the house. I think I’d better just shut it all down, and go to bed before anything else goes haywire!

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• Am old, clean sheet or piece of fabric bigger than the quilt (helpful to keep lint or pet hair off the quilt, and a bit of the moisture off the carpet)
• One wet quilt (I wash most of my quilts in the washer, either with a clear water pre-wash and then soap, or just clear water; you can also start with a dry quilt, and sprinkle or spray water on it to thoroughly wet while it’s on the floor)
• A tape measure
• A Stanley S2 Laser Level Square (more on this tool here), or a 15″-24″ square acrylic ruler
• An oscillating fan
• One cat (optional)

Spread out the sheet on the floor, ideally in a room or area that you can close off for 24 hours to keep curious pets or kids away from the quilt while it dries flat. Carefully spread out the quilt on the sheet, patting it into shape, but not stretching it. Smooth out any bubbles or wrinkles, and try to make the borders look square and even.

Once the quilt is looking as flat as possible, measure across the top, middle and bottom of the quilt. If these measurements are not the same on the top middle and bottom, pat, smoosh, and mash the quilt lightly until they are. Yes, these are very technical methods here, smooshing and mashing.

Keep working with it until the the measurements are even, and then measure the left, right and center of the quilt top to bottom and repeat the smooshing and mashing process until these three measurements are equal as well.

Once the measurements in each direction are equal, use the Laser Level Square (or the large square ruler) to square up the quilt. The Laser Level Square shines a red laser line all the way down each side of the quilt from the corner to help you straighten the quilt. Using a large square ruler isn’t as easy, but you can at least square up each corner, and eyeball the sides between them to make them straighter. More smooshing and mashing may be required to make the quilt look like a square or rectangle rather than a parallelogram. Examine each corner and side and smoosh and mash until everything is straight and each corner is a 90 degree angle.

Use the measuring tape to check the measurements one more time, in case anything changed while you were squaring it up. Leave the quilt to dry on the floor for 24 hours, or until completely dry. Picking the quilt up while it’s still damp undoes all your hard work! Use an oscillating fan to help speed the drying process.

I block my quilts before I sew on a hanging sleeve or a label. If a quilt is ever washed after it’s been hanging a while, it should be blocked again while drying. I do block most of my quilts that are meant to hang, even king size show quilts, but I don’t block lap or bed quilts if they won’t ever be hung on a wall.

That’s my blocking method; if you have anything to add or a link to your method, share it!

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No, you’re not seeing double, I marked the first set of lines through the stencil on the border of this quilt, and it was in the wrong place, so I marked over it, figuring I’d be able to remember which lines were the right ones later. Yeah, right. And there were other parts of the marking on this quilt that were much worse, with so many lines and marks that it was likely to be impossible to figure out where to machine quilt when the time came.

But wait! I’d temporarily forgotten that you can use the iron to make the marks disappear:

Ah-la-peanutbuttersandwiches and A-Ha! A quick pass with the iron, and the marks were gone, and I could re-mark the lines in the proper place. This makes fitting continuous line borders easier too, since you can start at the corners and mark your way along, guestimating as you go how it will all fit together in the middle, and if you need to, you can erase a bit of it and remark it to make it fit better in the end.

And while the Clover White Marking Pen is ideal for really dark fabrics like this black Bali batik, I’ve used it successfully on even medium value printed fabrics, when nothing else would do. The ink is delivered via a roller ball like a Gelly Roll pen, and marking lightly is best. Also note that the ink is virtually invisible until it starts to dry, and will become fully white and opaque when completely dry. The white ink sits on top of the fabric a bit, so that it’s easier to see under the sewing machine lamp. It’s become my go-to marker when I’m faced with a difficult marking task.

It is a bit expensive, selling for around $6.50 per pen in shops, and to be honest, I sometimes marvel at how fast the ink in the pen disappears, but it’s so worth it when no other marker in the arsenal is up to snuff. You can find it cheaper if you scout the Internet a bit, and buy in multiples so that the shipping costs per pen are cut down.

Definitely a Keep It notion in my book! If you’ve used it, share your experiences, good or bad, here!

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ITMan and I spent the entire day today (and I really do mean the entire day, from 7:45 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.) dealing with car maintenance. Both cars needed their winter tires put on and oil changes, as well as a couple of smaller fix-its and warranty repairs, so we just used his day off to get it done. It might not have taken quite so long had the service department not lost the keys to the Mustang. Yes, they LOST the keys and the transmitter to my car somewhere in the service area. Good thing I had a spare key with me. They didn’t find it until we’d been gone a full hour; they sent me home with a brand new key and transmitter, but now I’ll have to go back at some point and have the original key, and my other spare, reprogrammed since I guess they won’t work now that the whole system has been reprogrammed. Sheesh.

Despite being in the Ford dealer’s waiting area all day, I got a surprising amount of work done on The Book. I took the laptop with me, plugged in to their power and did drafts of the instructions for two of the quilts in the book, so it wasn’t a completely wasted day like it could have been. The trip back over there to take care of the key mess will be wasted time, but at least it’s not a “have to do right now” thing…

Backing up a bit: Sunday was the day to head to the Holiday Bazaar in Heidelberg, and shop for foody gifts to mail back to family in the States, but the entire thing was really just a bust. The vinegars and oils that we usually send back won’t be going this year, as the vendor was all out of the good stuff before we got there. I’ve no idea what that means for the family Christmas boxes, and I don’t even really have time to think about it too seriously at the moment. I’m waiting and hoping for inspiration to hit.

Then on Monday I had to be a nice Mommy and take Guitar Girl back to the bazaar, since she worked all weekend and wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise. It was a bust the first time around, but maybe I spent more time just perusing the aisles on Monday (since I knew there wasn’t any of the “must buy” stuff there anyway), because I did find a couple of other cool things, including these:

Woohoo! Slippers that you put in the microwave and then put on your feet! Awesome! I used them this evening, and they are perfect. Though I LOVE my quilt studio, it has absolutely no insulation up here and it’s freezing even now (and it’s not even deep into winter here), so my feet are always cold (and don’t get me started on how bad this room up here is when it’s windy outside. brrrr.). The radiators are so weak and wimpy up here that they don’t even deserve the name, so there’s no such thing as climate control here unless you count slippers, socks, sweaters and scarves.

The Wonnie slippers have flax seeds and herbs in them so they smell nice when heated, and are wonderfully soft and soothing. You can’t walk in them, so it’s a sit-and-relax type of thing, but I did figure out how to run the sewing machine at the right speeds for machine quilting with them on. So I now have another climate control option for my feet!

Here’s Shadow’s version of climate control:

He’s always been a chilly little thing, and since there’s not an ounce of fat on him he has no insulation. What he’d really like is my lap 24/7, but failing that, he camps out by this space heater that’s sitting by my computer chair all day long, as long as it’s on. He turns over once in a while, to roast the other side evenly. We’re both a little warmer now, at least!

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I’ll be teaching Machine Quilting—Master the Basics online at Quilt Campus, November 8-29. This is the same class that I teach in person for shops and guilds, and it’s equivalent to more than 6 hours of instruction. Online workshops are great, since you can do the work at home, on your own machine, and at your convenience but still have the instructor available in an online forum setting to answer questions or provide guidance. Interested? Find out more at Quilt Campus, and register for the workshop now!

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Lufthansa serves either Cognac or Bailey’s Irish Cream after the main meal during the flight, and it truly was the only good part aside from good company!

The best part: watching Kimberly perk up like a curious meerkat when the cart with the Bailey’s came into view! She’s just so funny! The main meal on the flight was some weird pasta thing that was barely even passable as “food” in my book, and my thought was “This is really not very good, is it?”, but Kimberly, being the “glass is half full” person that she is, says “Boy, we’re really going to enjoy dinner tonight!” We kept each other laughing.

I can’t begin to tell you about all of the new things I saw (and in some cases, bought!), but I’ll try to touch on some of the “new and notable” highlights, things I thought were just plain cool and other fun happenings.

Everything in the quilting world is “foody” right now. Jelly Rolls, Layer Cakes, and new Sweet Rolls (like Jelly Rolls but with 1 1/2″ strips) and Turnovers (5″ x 5″ stacks of fabric like charm packs, cut diagonally into a turnover shape) from Moda. It’s not just Moda with the food thing either; the other manufacturers are on that bandwagon too, I just can’t remember the names of all the other foody things I saw. I visited the Moda Bake Shop, and ordered charm packs for the DreamWeaver’s Quilts Studio (eeek! I actually ordered stuff for my online shop, which was a little scary!). The Moda rep gave me the most adorable little box with two teeny tiny “Sweet Roll” fabric rolls, each about 2″ across. I think they’re just too cute to use!

I played cards with Ricky Tims, and won the deck, including his autograph:

Hmmm. Maybe pictures of my quilts will be on a pack of playing cards one day, but I’m not sure I want my face on the Joker cards. As for other celebs, I did see the winner of Season One of Project Runway, Jay McCarroll (though because I don’t watch TV at all, I’m clueless and I didn’t even know who he was until I read Kimberly’s blog just now. I do remember seeing his hair at the show though! ), but I missed seeing Marie Osmond at the show by two minutes. C’est la Vie!

And one other notable celeb sighting: Kimberly invited me to accompany her to the Robert Kaufman reception on Saturday evening (which was very nice) where I met Mark Lipinski, who is just as real in person as he is in the pages of Quilter’s Home magazine. Of course I couldn’t come up with a witty response (or any response at all for that matter) when he said “I know your name! Why do I know your name??” I can’t imagine why Mark Lipinski thinks he knows who I am. Not a clue. Who knows? Maybe I’m an “It Girl” and I don’t even know it.

I bought lots of embellishments; beads, fibers, hand dyed floss, threads, micro beads. You name it, it was there at Quilt Market, and I sampled heavily for both the book and the DWQ Studio. I viewed new fabrics from Hoffman, RJR and Robert Kaufman Fabrics, with an eye toward including some of the newest fabrics in my book, and let me tell you, the newest fabric lines are awesome! The batiks in particular from Hoffman and Robert Kaufman are really wonderful! I also met the folks who should probably be held responsible for my bead addiction, Edward and Ruthmarie Hofmann, creators of Hofmann Originals Bead Mixes. I brought home some of the newest additions to their Bead Soup Starter lineup, and a few totally new, limited edition mixes called Soup du Jour. See, more of that foody stuff, yummy!

Here are some of the other goodies I brought back with me:

Notable faves: Hot Ribbon Art fusible ribbon (bottom center), Valdani 3-strand hand-dyed floss (top left), Kaleidoscope Kreator 2.0 software (bottom left), Diva Cord Maker (top center), Yazzi organizer tote (top right).

I picked up so much stuff, including a small mountain of literature from many different companies, that it almost didn’t all fit in the suitcases to get it home. I’ll get to play with some of it while I work on my book, but a lot of what I was after at Quilt Market was for the DWQ Studio, and I have to put that on the back burner for a month or two. In fact, I have to put everything on the back burner for a month or two, and work on nothing but the book, so I can get the manuscript done asap. I hope to have it done and to the publisher by mid-January at the latest, so if things are a bit quiet here until then, that’s why. I’m just going to have to ask forgiveness ahead of time for being too busy to write much here! Exciting times ahead!

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I’m packing like a mad woman getting ready to fly to Houston for Quilt Market, and at the last minute, I’ve received some super exciting news! While I was in Des Moines, I submitted a book proposal to the executive book editor for AQS, and I was excited to read What a Great Show on the AQS Publishing Blog. The pertinent part of that post was this:

My week was spent meeting authors old, new and wanna-be, and every single one was delightful. We received interesting proposals and scoured the vendors for what’s hot and what will be The Next Big Thing. Too much fun to call it work!

I spent the time since Des Moines, and especially since reading that blog post, hoping that my proposal was one of the “interesting” ones. The editor really seemed very receptive to my proposal and ideas when I met with her, and very friendly and easy to work with. I left our meeting feeling pretty good about it all, but you know how things like this are; sometimes you have the utmost confidence that it will all go your way, and other days are the exact opposite! Writing a book is a lot of work (and a lot of quilting!), but it’s something I’ve been working on and toward for a number of years now.

After what has seemed the longest week and a half ever, the editor emailed me this evening to say that AQS wants to publish my book!!! OMG! Can you believe it? I almost can’t! We were out for a family dinner at Wingers when I got the email, and I was so excited, I almost bounced out of my chair! I don’t know when it will be out (it’s not even ready to submit completely yet, of course), and I don’t know what they’ll decide the title will be or anything yet, but I couldn’t wait to share the news! The editor wrote in her email:

Congratulations! Bet you fly to Houston on your own steam!

She’s sure right about that! I’m off to finish packing now, and then go to bed since I have to be up soooo early for the flight, but I just know I won’t be able to sleep at all tonight! I won’t promise to blog from Houston (though I will try), but I will try to take lots of pics and notes to share when I get back…See you on the other side!

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Here we have a very mixed bag. From the top center:

• Beads! Couldn’t pass up the Miyuki beads since I’ve been wanting to see what all the fuss is about. Interestingly enough, though Miyuki beads are purported to be the “be all and end all” of high quality seed beads, I’ve kind of decided that I like plain old average seed beads just as well for my purposes. The Miyuki beads are TINY, as well as being more cylindrical and uniform, and while the uniformity doesn’t bother me, sometimes they’re too small (though maybe that’s just the combination of the colors that I have with the fabrics that I’m using them on at the moment), and the more rounded edges of a regular seed bead work better for what I’m trying to do than the cylindrical shape of the Miyuki beads. So now I know.
• Next are some hand printed fabric panels from Block Party Studios. These are really fun printed panels with sayings on them like
• The fabric is four fat quarters of Halloween type prints with holographic or iridescent overprinting which was just too unusual and fun to resist!
• The bundle in the middle is a few bits of hand punched, hand dyed wool fabric, and the curly stuff below it is also wool, hand dyed but more “au naturale” just as it came off the sheep. There was a booth that had all kinds of wools and other things for needle punch, and they had these overflowing bins of curly, colorful wool that you just grabbed what you wanted out of, and they sold it by weight. Think embellishments…
• The packets in the lower left corner are Painters Potpourri from Tentakulum, a German manufacturer. Each packet contains a paper-like background card, silk cocoons, a bit of silk fiber fabric stuff, and a hank of different fibers, all hand dyed in a coordinated colorway. These were too unique to pass up when I came across them in the YLI booth. I’m sure that any of you who are into the altered art or mixed media thing would know just what to do with these, but so far, I’m just admiring them. Their day will come though.
• Last we have the Bo-Nash bonanza bag. Bo-Nash was at the show with their newest products, a line of super fine glitters, Tonertex foils, glue pens and fabric adhesive in a fabulous squeeze bottle. I bought some of everything, and can’t wait to try it all out. I’m not sure it’ll be as “no-mess” as they claimed though.

Even that’s not quite all the loot from Des Moines, since we did spend one day at the local mall where I found the leather coat I’ve been searching for for years, and a pair of Anne Klein brown patent leather boots to die for. The boots were quietly waiting for me to discover them in the giant shoe department at Von Maur, but the coat positively screamed my name from across the store, and what could I do but answer the call? Everything else I bought is cool, but the coat was the best buy of the entire trip!

Believe it or not, I’m getting on the plane again on Thursday morning (yes, just 10 days after returning from Des Moines) for a super quick, four-day trip to Houston. Kimberly and I are going to Quilt Market to see whats new and news in the retail quilting world. I’m planning to make connections with distributors in preparation for stocking my new online shop which should be opening by the second quarter of 2009. My head is already spinning with products and plans, but I’m sure it’ll be doing a negative 4-g rolling dive by the time I get back!

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Looking at it all now, I’m sure it’s not terribly exciting to anyone but me, but I’ll tell you what it all is anyway. From the top center, sort of counterclockwise, we have:

• Something called a Waterbrush, which you fill with water and then you can brush small amounts onto fabric or quilts. The folks selling it were using it with Caran D’ache colored pencils to make a watercolor effect (a bit of a strange technique that wasn’t quite ready for prime time, IMO), but I’m thinking it will be great for correcting mistakes with the blue washout marker, and it will probably come in handy for many other things at some point.
• I bought a strange and lethal-looking seam ripper thingy, after the vendor demonstrated how it could be used to cleanly slice through fabric layered between fusible web and freezer paper. Think fusible appliqué pieces.
• The Magic Bobbin Washers were something I’ve wanted to try, and the Lickity Grip is probably just an alternative to my favorite free motion machine quilting “get a grip” tool, the Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Hand Cream. Worth a try to see if it’s better.
• A couching foot for my Bernina 440. This thing makes couching soooo much easier. You use it like a free motion quilting foot to stitch down cording and fibers to fabric.
• Some new embellishment glue and fabric markers that I haven’t tried before. It never hurts to try lots of different brands to see what’s best.
• I renewed my AQS membership, and they gave me free curved thread snips at the show. I love these thread snips and they’re at least $15, so that was a steal!
• I searched all over the show floor to find that little green thing there on the left. It’s the new flat needle threader from Clover, and I LOVE it. Works great for threading fibers through small needle eyes.
• I bought a couple of new types and brands of hand needles that I haven’t tried before. So far, I really like the Bohin Crewel Embroidery for embroidered embellishments on quilts. It’s nice and long and sharp, and pretty easy to thread with that new Clover threader.
• The clear box is a bead storage box from Embellishment Village. You can never have too many beads, until they outgrow your storage options, that is.

That’s it for the first round. My goal at the show was to catch up with (and buy) the new things that I’ve missed because I live here, and don’t see or hear about the new stuff until it’s old news most of the time. I’m off to try out some of the Loot! More to follow!

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I also made some great connections with the AQS folks while I was there; Kimberly introduced me to Bonnie Browning and Meredith Schroeder, and a whole host of others in the company that I’ve emailed back and forth with over the years when I’ve sent quilts to the show or the Quilt Museum in Paducah. It’s great to be able to put faces with the names I already know. I had a couple of really good meetings, and I hope to be able to share some super exciting news with you very shortly!

But the better part of the show was growing a friendship with Kimberly. We were great friends already, but spending so much time together made it even better I think. People couldn’t believe we’ve only really known each other for a couple of months, I guess because we are so comfortable and get along so well.

Kimberly and I are really good traveling partners. Our internal thermostats are very close most of the time, and we find ourselves reaching for the temperature control in the car to adjust it at about the same moment again and again to keep things within our 3 degree comfort zone. We both love to shop though not necessarily for the same things, but are perfectly happy to separate and shop alone for a bit, and then meet up for a drink or snack later. We tend to like the same kinds of foods and restaurants as well.

And don’t get me started on how much time we spend dissolved in laughter when we’re together. Kimberly is “incessantly cheerful” (as one of the other instructors at the show put it), and, well, I’m anything but cheerful, incessantly or otherwise. Being the eternal pessimist that I am, I have a pretty dry and sarcastic sense of humor which cracks her up, and then I’m cracking up too. We seem to balance each other nicely.

Here’s another “what not to do”: never underestimate what an instructor goes through just to show up and teach at one of those shows. I got the inside look at it all hanging out with Kimberly. It’s damn hard work, from hauling all the quilts, books, rulers, class handouts, etc., to being on your feet and “in teaching mode” 8-10 hours per day for classes, and that’s after all the prep work at home. You’re lucky to get lunch, and it’s not like there’s anyone there to help you schlep all the stuff, so you really need the food!

I really enjoyed the time I spent in a couple of Kimberly’s classes watching her teach. She’s so professional and so good at it! She’s much better at it all than I am, and all her students loved her. Despite all the hard work and preparation, she makes it look effortless. I should have been taking notes…

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