Stats and progress…

First let me say, a home computer failing can really put a glitch in daily photo posting to a blog and I was much better at keeping up on my blog when the possibility of the photo a day was still looming…now that I have admitted I will never pull that off, I easily let the blogging slip too.

Today’s topic is quilting and my fabric obsession…I have too much fabric in my stash…I love too many different fabrics…I can’t possibly sew all the quilts that I plan for…but still I try.

On one of my e-quilting groups we freely use the term STABLE (that is Stash Accumulated Beyond Life Expectancy). I truly hope that I am not there yet, but in the interest of making sure I can say that next year, it is time to start watching that stash shrink instead of grow.

I found this little chart on a group of quilters’ blogs and decided to throw it out here – these are her numbers not mine:

Fabric usage goal --100 yards-- 115.47 to go (going the wrong direction)

Fabric Added This Week - 11 yards (gift)

Fabric Added Year to Date - 58.75 yards

Fabric Used This Week -6.99 yards (or -4.01 cumulative)

Fabric Used Year to Date - 32.08 yards

Fabric Used this month - (11.77) yards

Net year to date: (15.47) yards (increase)

Notice that the originator of the charts does not indicate a ‘yardage on hand’ , that is because a real quilter has no idea how much fabric they have…and measuring it would mean finding all the places in your home where pieces of fabric have been stashed, unfolding, measuring, refolding,…you probably should organize while you are at it…too many sewing hours lost-lol.

In my normal OCD mode, I have to wonder about how the 'used' measuring is done. If you use a 2 yard cut then 2 yards disappears…but scraps are generated so do they reduce the amount used….and if you use scraps then how do you accurately take that measurement…what about those UFOs (unfinished object) do you take credit for them?

LOL- Nothing like good analysis on a ‘supposed to be helpful’ tool to paralyze one and render the tool useless…If I use a 2 yard piece and have less that ¼ yard left the whole 2 yards will disappear. Otherwise subtract the yardage left. Scrappy quilts will be ‘high level’ (read not obsessively) calculated to account for scraps used. UFOs will be stash until they are done and then calculated as yardage in project.

I’ll be going from the first of May so will make my goal 8/12 of the 100 yards (66 2/3) for the year out of my stash…that allows me to take the superhero quilt I just finished for J and the pillowcases I made for myself and S out of the totals – all finished a week ago.

I purchased yardage for the back of J’s quilt so that is the ‘added’ this week. Honestly it is the super wide (108”) so it really should count for more than just 2 1/2 but in the interest of staying in the spirit of the challenge and not OCD-ish...

Here is my chart – as of May2:

Fabric usage goal – 66.66

Fabric Added This Week – 2.5 yards (back for a quilt)

Fabric Added May 2009 to Date – 2.5 yards

Fabric Used This Week – 10.5 yards
Fabric Used this month – 10.5 yards
Fabric Used May 2009 to Date – 10.5 yards

Net year to date: 10.5 yards

Below we have the recently completed top for Js bed and up top is the done-done (quilted and bound) project from the Hoffman Bali-Pop.

Our first sports injury...

J takes karate and has since she was 5. She also plays basketball with a passion and I believe she was 3 when that started. She is one of those kids that wants to climb on things and turn everything into a playground, so you knew sooner or later it had to happen. S got a sports injury. Yes, that’s right, S got injured.


Now, like most kids, mine get out their magnifying glasses and if they detect a tiny spot of blood they are whining and need a bandaid-if I am around…So no one was more surprised than me a few weeks ago after gymnastics. Miss Beverly had a few minutes waiting for her private lesson to come in and called S over to work on her cartwheel. “What happened to your toe?” she asked. There it was - S had a bloody big toe…must have slid under something as she was practicing. We put a bandaid on it and went forward.


I left the bandaid on the next day and told them at PreK that S had a legitimate injury and should she complain about her toe they might want to check it out.


As is likely with toe bandaids, it fell off when socks were coming off and S announced, “Look I can pick this (the nail) right up and look under it!” EWWWWWWWWWW….I couldn’t even bear to watch that toe fungus commercial where the animated creature pulled up a toenail. I can’t get excited about the live show. (That said, I could take care of the cat when he ripped his whole claw out in an accident and the shiny white bone was showing – it is just the nails…)


As weeks have gone by it is obvious there has been a severe compromise to the toenail. I can see where the new nail is coming in and where the old nail ends and will come off…However about 10 % of the old nail remains attached…and not the bottom 10% where I could carefully trim away as it grew – it’s the 10% closest to the next toe. So, like a wiggly tooth this nail is hanging there waiting to catch on something and cause a blood curdling scream (the only kind S emits)…I am hoping it is not at her first competition next week.


Note: I couldn’t subject anyone to a real photo and don’t even google toe injury images! Here are toes of happier days…

The art show!

Right before spring break J announced that her art project had been selected to be in the art show. She didn't know what that meant or where it was just that she was the only one in her class that they had called her teacher about.

Today she came home with a paper I had to sign...up to 2 children in grades K-2 from each school could be entered in the show and J was selected - her medium crayon and her subject an alien...how I wish I had seen the picture.

The details are confusing, what I signed looks like permission to compete in the county competition but she thinks she must first compete against her friend C...the one that edged her out in the spelling bee.

Whichever, it is big stuff to me that my child was selected in anything art...I missed that line when ablities were handed out.

Update: J's art teacher just called me for permission and she was asked to submit 2 pieces from the 400+ students in grades K-2...so quite the honor!

Snapshot Sunday

Ready for the egg hunt at Grandmommy's.

Playing Bubbles with Granmmalu's new pup

Bunny cakes from J&S - we made 24...one of those ideas that you have second thoughts about...but overall quite cute.

Happy Easter

from Anzio...

It's this Sunday

On Easter evening on ABC is the airing of the Extreme Makeover home edition show where the Kadzis family in Florida gets their new home. It is set up as a two hour show so I hope that means we see M from J's travel group as I know she was around for some of the filming.

You'll see Chinese dragons and fireworks, a gorgeous house and a wonderful family...I am looking forward to it.

It's all how you spin it...

J loves treasure maps…she has a soft leather map that came with her cowboy costume that she pulls out from time to time. This past weekend she decided to recreate the map in our home for S and I to follow. She found the different landmarks on the map and made them within the house. We had to find the landmarks. There was a rock, a pond (to her credit, the pond was represented by an empty water cup) and the treasure of course.

After this exercise I offered to make a treasure hunt for the girls. I made them each a list – S doesn’t read yet so hers had pictures – and the winner would be the one that returned the most stuff to the designated spots in the living room.

I carefully walked through the house identifying certain things for the list…I presented the list and explained the rules. All the items would be found outside of the spot where they were normally stored, so if it was a hairbow you couldn’t get it from S’s basket of hair accessories, if it was a shoe you couldn’t get it from the closet.

The timer was set and they were off….odds and ends were quickly piling up in the living room…a tennis shoe, hairbows, a homeless sock…At the end of the contest J won with the most items collected. I picked up the shoes and said “I’ll take these to the closet, J put the socks in the laundry and S put the hairbows in your room”, to which J replied, “Hey – we just cleaned! I’ll always clean like this!!!”

Score one for mom.