Calamity Nancie Rides Again!!!!!

Yes...I'm still here!  Morning Foo-Foo coffee in my cute snowman mug and all!

Love my mug!  We found the "one-and-only-we-could-find" little guy at Cracker Barrel one night in December.  His nose and scarf are silicone and both remove for thorough washings!  That bright orange carrot nose actually pushes onto an appendage that resembles a doorknob!  We tried to find a second one to appease our left handed daughter who insisted he was made just for her...no success...I guess we'll have to add him to her inheritance!  Provided he survives long enough.  I seem to have the gift for dropping things lately!  I was really upset with myself when I broke one of my favorite Christmas bowls during the holidays and then my husband informed me that I seem to be dropping everything these days!  That made for a pleasant evening...

Perhaps we should change my moniker from Naughty Nancie to Calamity Nancie! 
That's kinda the story of my life in quilts these days too!

I received a little email from Quilt Sue this morning inquiring as to "where I went?"!  She was actually referring to my little PSA post about the copy of Primitive Gathering I had seen available at an affordable price that I left up for a couple of days in the event someone was interested, then I deleted it.  Sorry for any confusion or concern this may have caused.  She also inquired about how the un-sewing on Country Charmer was coming along...I think she may have had a vision of me choking to death on a thread ball!  Not so...many, many wads of removed variegated threads are still landing in my wastebasket...none have found their way into my throat!  I wonder if kitty hairball remover would work on that should I accidently ingest one?  I'm still making progress and still picking my way toward the center of the quilt.  All of the birdies and pumpkins on the outer circumference have been freed as has almost all of the sashing that surrounds them.  Only one little birdie has suffered any significant injury due to the threads that crossed over him in too many layers.  I will probably replace him...but, he may still wind up on the quilt...just in the label on the back, to remind me that losing one fight doesn't mean you have to lose them all!

I've also been remodeling my hubby's Housewarming Quilt.  I was inspired to work on it due to the fact that we just celebrated our 36th Anniversary in January and he just celebrated a significant birthday over the weekend!  Guess who now has a new Traeger Grill & and bag of Apple wood pellets to play with!  AND!...Alert the media!  Last week we saw all but our California kids and had all three Grandkidlets over for visits!  That's an amazing accomplishment!  Baby girl is going through that, "nobody can touch me but my Mommy & Daddy phase" and she has all the tears & lower lip to go with it...but she will grin from ear to ear watching Gramma make a fool of herself talking to her and making silly noises!  Her hair is amazing!  At 4 months they are able to put it up in a little Cindy Lou Who topknot, and it's getting more and more auburn.  When the light hit it the other night it shined like a copper penny! 

So, back to Calamity Nancie & the Housewarming Quilt!  That's the quilt that hangs above the cutting table at  Quilt House in Gardnerville, Nevada, where my husband first saw it as we traveled through on our way to visit our daughter in 2011, when she was there for that one year internship thing, that turned into love and marriage.                                      
 I'm not gonna say anything frilly, like he was in-love, but he did stand there for the longest time repeating how he really liked the colors and the little pointy bits...um..I mean those little tulip blocks in the corners.  This design was published in the Best Of Quilt Sampler in 2007 when Quilt House was selected one of the Editors Choice shops.  

 

My poor rendition has had its challenges! 

And that's without telling you about burning my thumb and then getting the nastiest paper cuts ever on the same thumb in a 2 day span! 

You will be relieved to know that stayed away from all quilts for several hours that day and no fabric was harmed!

I began taking it apart to fix what resembled a boob by the center block,

 that no way would one be able to quilt into submission...

then it got a spill on it...

then when I put it in the bathroom sink to rinse the spill and one of the dark blue houses bled...

not just a little, but a dark, dark blue bleed on cream

that resembled something like this...

 Just Darker!

 

One attempt at a gentle hand wash and three exasperated super hot machine washings later, all with Synthrapol, the quake bleed was finally chased away forever!  During these washings, with little else to distract me, I cut and assembled the checkerboard borders according to directions.   With some creative piecing on the center star and a lot of head scratching, readjusting & holding my mouth just right, I was finally able to get the blocks reassembled in an acceptable fashion, although I'm still trimming away frayed strings and balled up wads from the back.  After all this trauma, I began to lose sleep over whether the thing was going to really be salvageable or should I just chuck it and start over.  I woke up and looked at it again with semi-fresh eyes and decided to move forward.  Of course with all this extracurricular washing and disassembling and reassembling, the measurement of the pieced interior was off  & those pieced checkerboards were too long...and how do you cut a checkerboard border down to the right length and get it to look decent?  Well...you don't.  I did a little clandestine math & added 3/4 of an inch to the width of my first red border and measured through the centers of the top for the correct length.  

Not the clearest picture...can't seem to put my hands on my favorite camera this morning...but, yes, that red border is a Nancy Halvorsen Christmas holly print & it works perfectly to pull out the golds and the muted teal in the centers of the log cabin blocks. I'm also loving that green homespun. 

 

Nervously, I laid the top out, thinking that I hadn't added enough extra width to the red border to accommodate the checkerboard and figured I'd be adding another narrow border of something, kind of a fake flange to get it right, but then I found my centers, and began pinning and lo' and behold, it fit like a glove!
So today,  the big plan is to go stash diving to see what I come up with for the outer border.  I'm also planning to change the corners up a bit.  That little angle thing (see magazine photo above) reminds me of those silver metal hardware brackets you use to attach a bookshelf to the wall... & we can't have that thought every time we look at it, so I'm going to do a little more math and audition a couple of options for those corners.

~singed...I mean, signed,
Calamity Nancie!!!

and true to form...right after I published this post I looked down by my keyboard and there sat the camera I couldn't find earlier this morning!  Go Figure!