Lone Stars, Pumpkinstein

That's how I spent my Veterans Day Holiday (Observed), and it was awesome!

First, I took a 10a-4p Lone Star Tree Skirt class from Bobbie Moon at Bearly Stitchin. We did it with the Quiltsmart system (4x4 Lone Star), which was amazingly fast, easy and best of all, ACCURATE!

I showed up at the store at about 9:55. Traffic cooperated, I just hit snooze one too many times. Got all of my crapolla out of my car (no small feat!) and was in position for Bobbie to start instruction at 10 am.

Despite all of my stellar intentions, I didn't do crap to be ready for this class, beyond pulling three fabrics from my stash. I was thin on reds and knew there was a background fabric sitting at Bearly that I liked.

I started cutting out the quilt at about 10:15. 32 rectangles that are 2.5x5.5 (FYI, if you cut 2-5.5" strips, you're just about guaranteed to have the perfect number of rectangles). The first of my eight "pie pieces" was a teensey bit slow, but once I got into a rhythm (fuse, glue, sew), it flew by.

At lunchtime, I took a field trip to Unraveled in Monrovia. My friend Beth works there some Sundays. I had a BLAST and found some really great yarns for very good prices. Everything was either on sale or was great yardage for a very good price.

Even with my hour-long field trip, I had all eight of my pies finished by 4 pm. I guess that makes me the class over-achiever, since nobody else got that far. It took until about 4:30 or 4:45 to get all of the long seams pressed open (the worst part of the process, by far). Here's a pic:

That cream-colored square in the bottom right corner is my background fabric

And here is a close-up!

I didn't feel like continuing on the Lone Star as we morphed from "normal" class into Friday night. After a dinner field trip with Beth, Carol and Lisa to Whole Foods for extra-yummy salad bar dinner, I switched machines and started cranking on applique for Pumpkinstein.

At the start of the evening, I think I had four of the pumpkins zig-zagged. everything was fused about a year ago, laid out before they were pressed so the seams will next. I'm hoping that I have that digital photo on my personal computer or on the memory card on my old camera so I can remember which pumpkin goes where, since I just chukked these onto the table for a photo op at the end of the night.

This quilt was in Quiltmaker magazine about a year ago. It was great fun and I'm looking forward to getting it pieced, sandwiched and quilted.

A few little catch-up notes:

1. Thursday was a day that made me loathe living in LA. I stayed home until 8 am to hang out with mom and Suzie a little bit before they headed off to Vegas. It took me 90 minutes to get the 16 miles from my house to work. I left work at 5 sharp, and it took over two hours to get home. I don't think I topped 20 MPH the entire ride home. It was awful.

2. I'm almost done with my third pair of fuzzy feet. I'll polish off this toe and cast on the next pair as soon as I'm done with this blog update.

3. I'm past the heel on my second "real" sock. Look out, I'm learning toe-up and short row heel next! ;-)

4. Going knitting tomorrow. Better get to bed reasonably soon so I can be at Beach Knitting at their open (11 am). I managed to screw up everything I touched right after I left the store last Sunday, so Irma has her work cut out for her in helping me fix everything.

Enjoy whatever is left of your weekend! :)