Design Wall Monday 8/8/11

I have a chatelaine on my design wall.  I bought this when I belonged to a local quilt group.  It is out a town group and meets in the morning.  A big group - had 250 members when I belonged - a little too big for me.  Plus it was a drive - not by California standards - driving an hour to LA is nothing around here or 1 1/2  or 2 hours to San Diego - that's just the way it is in car oriented CA. 

Back to the chatelaine - I really wondered about the meaning of this.  I thought it meant a thingy you hang your keys from your waist.  Here's a definition I found on ehow.com:

A popular modern sewing gadget also has the name chatelaine. It is a miniature pin cushion attached by a fabric tape measure to a small, often ornate, pair of sewing scissors. Sometimes the pin cushion is personalized in counted cross stitch or needlepoint. The idea is for the chatelaine to hang around the seamstress' neck so that she never needs to hunt for her needles or scissors. Read more: Definition of Chatelaine eHow.com  http://www.ehow.com/about_5055256_definition-chatelaine.html#ixzz1UP6kLenz

Our use of it was to have it function as our name badge and a place to hang our pins.  I've never been able to make it be for hanging my scissors - I keep poking myself, LOL. 

So what I've done is taken out the 3"square that had that old guild's logo and I'm going to substitute my new quilt guild's logo in it's place.  Now to figure this out.  Help me, Rhonda!!

Go on over to Judy's Patchwork Times on my left sidebar and see if she has posted about Design Wall Monday.  She is expecting the movers at 8am tomorrow, so may not be there.  But knowing Judy, she's probably scheduled a post and it quite possibly will be there.  Then you can see what all the design walls have on them.

Stash Report 8/7/11

Well, I did accomplish two of my goals for last week, but they didn't involve much new fabric out of the stash.  I did make two BOM blocks, finished the applique on my coverlet and pulled out 26 nine-patches from my stash (I guess those count - they're not part of it any more). so total I used about a yard give or take a smidgen.  So here are the numbers:
Used this week: 1.00 yards


Used/Donated Yr to date: 54.21 yards

Added this wk: 0.0 yards

Total Yr to date Added: -11.0 yards

-----------------------------------------

Total Yr to date Use: 43.21 yards

Hope I can do better next week!

How are you doing?  Go on over to my left sidebar and click on Judy's Patchwork Times button and see how all the others are doing.  It amazes me how many are still playing this far into the year.  That means a lot of us want to wither that stash down.

Saturday Quilty Tip # 1

Many of you probably know this, however, if not, here goes:  When you are making oodles of nine-patches to set in a quilt top, press the inner seams toward the center of the block, whether dark fabric or not, like so:

See how two seams of the blue are toward the sides and two are now toward the center? That way when you sew them together you can rotate one block so that the seams will always nestle together.  If the seams were all facing outward (as in the first block in the photo below) you won't be able to get them to nestle together to get perfect corners.

Do you have a tip to share?