Pouch, Pizazz, and PARIS!

At this month's St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild meeting...Pouch swap!  Here's how my second attempt at a zippered pouch turned out:

My secret pouch partner Juli Ann graciously received this pouch, mistakes and all.  What a great gal!  And Carol drew my name; here's what she whipped up for me:

Nice, huh?  A neat little coin purse.  Thanks again!

So, one of my favorite features of the Guild meetings is the freebie table.  People bring in fabrics/patterns/etc that they think they have no use for, and hungry scavengers like me get to paw through all the goods.  Confessions of a bargain hunter: Truth be told, that's where I want to run the very second I walk in to the meeting, but I try to play it off very casually.  I nonchalantly walk by the table, making a mental list of the items that I crave, so that when the meeting is over I can book it and snag the items on my wish list.  Do we have to wait till the end of the meeting to grab freebies?  No.  But I am trying my hardest to look cool here, folks.

Speaking of looking cool...

A couple of months ago, I snagged a couple of early 1980s quilting magazines from the freebie table.  You know how I love old stuff; I couldn't resist.  As I flipped through the mostly black and white pages of old quilts and patterns, I stopped short.  Glowing from the magazine in full color was some of the most dumbfounding quilt work I've ever seen....quilted clothing (above).  If you want to look especially cool, maybe try out one of these looks.  I am particularly fond of the yellow quilted sun robe.  Just so many things to love on these two pages!  I can't contain myself!

Exciting news on our home front: We recently found out that we get to go to Paris for 2 weeks!!  We have never been overseas, individually or together, so it will be a grand adventure for us both.  I have been attempting to learn a wee bit of French by watching youtube videos.  So far, I have mastered one sentence: "L'homme mange le poisson."  It means, "The man eats the fish."  I am really hoping for an opportunity to use that sentence.  Maybe if I'm lucky, Hubby will order some salmon at a restaurant.  I'll stand up, point to him, and exclaim, "L'homme mange le poisson!".  An eruption of applause will follow.  And I will be paraded down the avenue, held high in my chair by all my new Parisian friends.  And I will be wearing a ravishing quilted robe with a sun on it.  And perhaps a matching yellow beret.

Adieu.

Ree, the Piano Teacher (and Zipper Artist)

When people ask what I "do for a living", I love watching their reaction.  At first, it's the look of surprise. From there, it can go one of two ways: 1) it morphs into a pleasant smile, or 2) the look of surprise slowly fades to a foul grimace as the words "piano teacher" sink in.

Very rarely do I get a person who simply says, "That's nice."  Usually, people give me a little summary of their own childhood experiences with piano lessons.  Group 1, the Smilers, typically have fond memories of their piano teachers, or never took lessons but always wish that they had.  Group 2, the Ones Who Look Like They May Vomit, have different memories of their piano teachers.  In their minds, piano lessons were complete agony and the teacher was "a mean old lady whose house smelled really weird".  Not to mention those horrible recitals and all the (insert gagging noise here) practice their parents made them do.  I come from Group 1; my husband comes from Group 2.  I think it's quite ironic that he married a gal who became a piano teacher.  Oh, Life, you are too funny.

Sometimes I wonder what my young students think of their piano lessons with me.  I do hope that they enjoy it and will look back on their lessons with a smile.  But it's so hard to tell.  For example...One week, I got a love note from Little Georgie* complete with a beautiful sketch of a piano encircled by a heart.  A couple of weeks later, he asked me a joke that started like this: "Why did the kid push his piano teacher overboard?" Another week, he quit piano lessons.  Then a couple weeks later, he comes back with another love note.  Who knows?  (* = name changed)

My piano teacher, Kim, was awesome.  She bore with me through the awkward teenage years, even letting me play a Hanson song for my recital one year.  I felt so hip, walking down the aisle of the church in my psychedelic long blue dress and white platform sandals, a thick roll of bangs neatly curled on my forehead.  As I approached the piano at the front of the church, I somehow felt I was getting ready to declare my love for Taylor Hanson to all the other kids and parents in the audience.  After I banged out "Where's The Love?" with sweaty hands, my adolescent act of devotion complete, I turned to see Kim smile and give me a wink as if to say, "You go, girl."  I hope I can be that for my students.

In sewing news...

I have conquered my fear of zippers!  For the St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild this month, we're doing a swap of pouches.  I signed up, and then realized, "Oh, shoot...pouches usually have zippers."  So, I had a little "dress rehearsal" in making a zippered pouch before I make the real deal.  Here's how it turned out:

I used Noodlehead's gathered clutch tutorial found here.  Zippers, it turns out, aren't as scary as I thought they were.  Here's the inside:

The end.

WNBA Dreams (and A Quilted Pillow!)

Shwew!  What a crazy couple of weeks it's been.  I was able to squeeze in one sewing project, and I'm so glad with how it turned out!  It's my very first quilted pillow.

I made the quilt block several months ago, just to see what it would look like.  I liked it so much that I couldn't part with it, so it just sat up there cluttering up my cutting table forever.  It didn't take too long to put the pillow together, and the quilting was super easy (a few straight lines shooting out from the yo-yo in the middle of the square).  And now I am free of my rogue quilt block...man, it feels good.

Somewhere in the craziness of the past couple of weeks, Michael and I went to see my little sister play 4th grade basketball.  The girl is a force to be reckoned with!!!  Don't even try to score a lay-up on her.  She will block your shot with little-to-no effort, then laugh in your face (wait...that's probably me laughing at the poor little girl from the stands, living vicariously through my sister--embarrassing!).  As I watch her play, here's what I'm seeing:

But here's what I'm really seeing:

By Michel Euler, AP, 2008

One and the same in my mind.  

I'm 98% sure that Karli is providing more entertainment/pride for my parents on the court as a 4th grader than I did my entire junior high basketball career.  I was a force to be reckoned with in a different way.  Don't even try to wear a higher tighter ponytail than me while sitting on the bench!  My moment in the sun was never during a game, but during the warmup routine.  It was more of a performance in my mind, a perfectly choreographed dance routine (thwarted by the fact that we had to simultaneously dribble and shoot basketballs).  Running through that Dragon Power paper door frame to the tunes of Jock Jams...I could not have been more cool in my mind.  Practically a Broadway star.  But I secretly hoped the crowd would be too in awe of my ponytail to notice the air balls I kept delivering up to the basket.

So when Karli is suiting up for one of her WNBA games, I will be there in the crowd, with a tear in my eye...due to the tightest ponytail you've ever seen.  And maybe because I'll be a little proud of her.

Want To See My Collection?

I come from a long line of collectors...and please hear me when I say collectors and not hoarders.  Great-grandma Farrie is a collector of stuffed white cats (I'm not talking taxidermy, by the way).  Uncle Lenny was a collector of beer cans and coins.  I was a collector of crystals (shiny rocks I found at my house OR manmade crystals bought from places like the Science Center).  My brother Adam was a collector of Beanie Babies.  Youngest brother Luke: bouncy balls.  And little sis Karli "collects" coffee beans from the containers at Walmart (shhhh.....).  

And Grandma Alice.  In addition to collecting various State refrigerator magnets from her travels, she has decades worth of fabric.  Grandma Alice has sewn amazing things my whole life, and I often reaped the benefits.  From dresses to doll clothes to an entire sunflower-themed bedroom to simple mending, she spoiled me with her talents.  When she recently decided to downsize her enormous fabric collection, I was, once again, spoiled by Grandma.  She sent me home with LOADS of amazing fabric (some of which I remember from outfits she made when I was little). 

The stacks of fabric stared at me for a long time before I took the plunge and organized it all.  I was pretty frustrated with the whole process and had to take a few breaks to unwind (a.k.a. watch gameshow bloopers on youtube).  But, hey, now I have a system to all these fabrics and don't have to go digging through scraps to find what I need.  Hurray!  Check out "mah stash":

Get it?  "Mah (My) Stash"?  Mustache?  ehhhh...   Here's my real stash:

Boom,

boom,

and boom.

Also, I got this wall-mounted thread organizer, which has simplified my sewing life SO much.

And thank you, once again, Grandma Alice.  My new fabric collection is way cooler than my crystal collection (although that collection really rocks...  Anyone?)  But enough of all this talk of hoarding and organizing.  It's time for a break!  You know what that means...  And please pay special attention to the very last clip (from Family Feud).   I was embarrassingly close to hyperventilating from that one.