Bonnie Hunter in Stuttgart

Bonnie has started her Stuttgart visit with a trunk show at the Schönaich Quilt group. Lovely, lovely quilts, and she did a great job of communicating with the Germans. Birgit was a great translator, really bringing over the meaning of what Bonnie was saying, and not just the words. .
Here a couple of pictures, and don't forget to visit Bonnie's web site for much more.
Tomorrow I get to go to her Cathedral Start class! Yay! A day off work AND I get to play with fabric!

Mola magnificence

After 100,000 stitches which I loved doing by hand, it's pretty clear to me that I always need a hand sewing project to work on. I do have a wholecloth pillow top I'm working on, but it's mostly for practice rather than performance. Also, my holy grail of a double wedding ring is not right for me to start either yet.
Enter Herma, who volunteered to teach a Mola class for us at the James Byrnes Center in Stuttgart, where we meet for a sewing circle one Friday each month. If you're interested in American/German local relationships, visit this place, or join the membership. It's very good if you spend a lot of time in Stuttgart.
Our class started on Feb 3, my birthday, so how could I refuse?! It was just great, and I find myself staying up late, working on the project. Remember my attempts to learn applique? Well this is a type of reverse applique, and I LOVE it. I'm going to pull out some more hearts and get back to my applique again as well.
Here's my progress so far.

Good eggs

Just to give you a smile on a Sunday evening, here's how we store our hard-boiled eggs.
Yes, I know they spin differently from raw eggs, but seeing these guys when I open the fridge door is worth the effort.
If you liked this, try http://www.fridgewatcher.com/
Happy Weekend!

100,000 stitches, and I loved every one

Old news: I finished my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. See all those posts here.
What you didn't know, nor did I until I did the math, was how many stitches I put into it.
The question first came up as I was stitching the last quilting stitches.
I had already checked how many stitches I had been sewing as I put the hexies together. Someone once remarked how tiny those stitches were, so I checked several times. There were many stitches per side, on the order of 29 or 30 stitches, pretty consistently.
The fundamental question was, how many sides of the hexagon did I sew? Ultimately I reognized that the side of each hexie was sewn to another side, so that simplified things.
Here's how the math came out:

• About 1100 hexagons total
• 6 sides per hexie makes 6600 sides
• Each side was sewn to another side, so reduce that to 3300 sides
• Add to that the following:
• Extra stitches to make the Y-seams work
• Quilting stitches
• Binding stitches

The last groups of stitches I didn't even count (I certainly wish my quilt stitches rivaled my whip stitches). So 3300 times 30 makes 99000. Rounding up to cover those stitches I didn't count, and there you have it: 100,000 stitches.
Looking back on it, I realized that I was never frustrated or bored making this quilt. On the contrary, I loved each one. 14 months of love - a rare thing, I think.