Modern Monday Quilt Along

My 18th block:

And a group shot:

Go see Caroll's version of this block at Attic Window Quilt Shop. And the Modern Monday Flickr group has lots of eye candy too.

Brief personal note: My work situation has changed this semester. Without going in details, I have a large volume of work that needs to be done within the next month. The time required for the overwhelming amount of grading that needs to be done has to be taken from somewhere and unfortunately it will have to come out of my sewing time. Less sewing time means fewer blog posts because I won't have anything to show you. So if I am not posting as often, this is why. I still hope to do my Modern Monday block each week but I may not have time for much else.

Thanks for understanding and I hope to be back to my regular routine by the end of February.

Crocheted Potholder

My son has a small part in our local college's upcoming production of A Christmas Carol. It has meant numerous evenings of rehearsals each week. I have enjoyed watching the show evolve and have been spending my time crocheting. The theater really isn't bright enough to sew, but I've had no trouble seeing well enough to crochet.

So far I have made a potholder using this tutorial by Deanna at Wedding Dress Blue.

It's just like the one I won, blogged here. I've only been crocheting for about a year. I've made one scarf which turned out terribly, mostly due to a bad choice of yarn, lots of dishcloths, a few Swiffer covers and now a potholder. Since I'm not an experienced crocheter, the construction of this potholder confused me a bit. I couldn't see how this was going to work. But I followed Deanna's excellent instructions and photos and everything worked out exactly like she described.

My confusion was due to lack of experience, not Deanna's instructions. I'm not experienced enough to read the directions and figure everything out before I start. So I just start and do step 1. By the time I'm ready for step 2 it usually makes sense to me. Then I proceed to step 3 and just trust that I'll understand each step when I get there. So far it has always worked out.

I've started another potholder. There are still three more weeks of rehearsals before opening night on December 2nd. I'll probably make a few more potholders at this rate.

Practicing

I quilted a charity quilt with my new HQ Sweet 16 this weekend.

It went well but I need to quilt a few more projects on it before I get the hang of the new setup.

I got the extension table on yesterday morning, all by myself. The hardest part is removing the machine from the table and flipping the table over and then putting everything back. Both the machine and table are heavy. The instructions for installing the extension table are very clear, with pictures, and I had no trouble doing it myself.

After doing one project on my new machine I discovered two main differences between quilting on Lily, my regular machine, and on my new one. By the way, I have named her Hattie or Chatty Hattie. Have you seen the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? Hattie has a rhythmic sound like the car in that movie, like she is talking to me as we work. Anyway, on to the differences.

(1) Hattie's speed is set by her computer (the little screen above the needle arm in the first photo of Hattie above). When I step on the pedal she is almost instantly going at full speed and easing back on the pedal has little or no affect on her speed. On Lily, the speed is controlled by the pedal, like a car. I have obviously learned how to adjust the speed of the machine to my hand speed when quilting on Lily. I'm going to have to work on maintaining a constant hand speed on Hattie. I also need to play around with the stitching speed to figure out what works best for me.

(2) With Hattie the main body of the machine is directly in front of me at the back of the table. On Lily the main body of the machine is to my right. So the ways that I have been controlling the part of the quilt that is not under the needle is going to have to change. This is just going to require practice and trial and error to figure out what works best for me.

I've got a couple more charity tops ready to be basted and quilted to practice with Hattie. School begins next week for our whole family. (My husband also teaches at Adams State College) It will take a little time for my routine to adjust and solidify. Then I hope to get into a quilting/work/family rhythm again.

One more picture of the quilt. Goldie had to see what the heck her momma was doing at 7:15 am out front with her camera this morning.

Science Saturday - bridges

The activity yesterday at Science Saturday was popsicle stick bridges. First there was a discussion about bridges and how they are built. Then the kids were instructed to design their own bridge. It had to span at least 14 inches and could use at most 45 sticks. Parker and I started designing and came up with a "teepee" bridge design. The top view photo below may make the "teepee" idea a bit clearer. The popsicle sticks were hot glued together and then the joints were reinforced by drilling a small hole in the joint, adding a piece of broken paper clip, and adding more glue to hold the "metal pin" in place.

After the bridges were all constructed, they were tested. Two bridges were set up on stools 14 inches apart and weights were suspended from them. They kept adding weight until one of the bridges broke. Then another bridge was brought up, weight was added to get it up to the same weight as the first one, then the weight adding continued. Parker's bridge never broke! After all the other bridges broke they were going to try to break Parker's, but it slipped off the stools before it broke. So he got to bring it home. He didn't want to break his bridge anyway. Once he found out that they were going to try to break it, he didn't really want to make it, but he didn't want to leave either. I said he had to make a bridge or go home, so we made a bridge. And it all worked out for him.

By the way, Parker's bridge was the "last one standing" because triangles are stronger than squares. Most of the other bridges made were square or rectangular.

Science Saturday

 

At Adams State College, where both my husband and I work, they have started a program called Science Saturday. It is geared towards school age kids from kindergarten to high school. The program has only been running for a few months and there hadn't been that many kids attending, until today. Over the past two weeks they have been doing quite a bit of advertising and today's topic - Lego Robots - drew a crowd. I'd guess about 30 kids and about 20 parents. They learned about robots in general - how they work, their limitations and strengths. Then the kids had the opportunity to program a Lego Robot, download the program into an actual robot and then watch your robot execute your program. It was fun, but chaotic.

In the photo below, Parker and Jamie are doing one of the introduction exercises. One person, Jamie, has a picture with a grid super imposed over it. He then has to tell the other person, Parker, 1 or 0, depending on whether or not the square has part of the picture inside it or not. Then Parker had to shade in the appropriate square. They didn't get very far. Time was short for the exercise which caused Parker to get quite frustrated. But he really enjoyed getting to program a real robot.