2012 May 04 — Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara

You Know You’re in Texas . .

May 4, 2012 · by JudyL

When you walk out of the restaurant and see this:

All pickups and one little Honda SUV . . ours! When we walked out, Vince looked around and said “Don’t say it!” I didn’t know what he was talking about til I saw all the pickups. I keep fussing about not having a full size pickup. I said “Let’s get up in the morning and go buy a truck . . first thing . . before breakfast!” Vince said “We can’t . . Steve is coming over to help build the second chicken coop.”

Dang it . . if he’d just give me the checkbook, I’d go buy the truck because I’m not working on the chicken coop. You can bet he won’t turn me loose to buy a vehicle . . ever. I’d come home with a 1967 Mustang and he knows it. I might do that some day anyway.

While at the restaurant, we had the cutest waiter. He was a high school kid. It was a little restaurant in a town about 25 miles south of us . . population in the 2000 census was 350 and this restaurant is known for having great fried catfish. Our waiter was telling us a rattlesnake story and that story led to another story. His cousin survived a rattlesnake bite. He demonstrated how he shakes a stick through the weeds and how the rattlesnake sounds and how it crawls. I was trying not to laugh . . heck, rattlesnakes aren’t funny but he was hilarious. The rattlesnake story started because last night they had a rattlesnake at the front door of the restaurant and customers had to step over it til they could get it moved and he had to demonstrate how they did that . . without a shovel or a hoe. Honestly . . this is Texas. You know someone had a pistol . . probably every one in that restaurant was carrying a pistol but I guess shooting a rattlesnake right there at the front door would probably not have been a good idea.

It looks like we could get a bit of rain tonight. Send good thoughts our way please . . we so desperately need rain. This summer looks like it’s going to be just like last summer with the drought. It’s so hard to see everything dying and the tanks (ponds for you non-Texans) drying up.

After a long nap this afternoon, I’m going to sew til I see lightning, then I’ll go to the house and knit. So many options!

· Filed Under: Texas · 13 Comments

My Mother Has a Long Arm

May 4, 2012 · by JudyL

My mother is a tiny lady . . she’s always been little. She’s not even 5′ tall and has probably never weighed over 90 pounds. So, you can imagine how odd she looks with that one long arm!

No . . not that kind of long arm.

You can see she was being quite uncooperative about having her photo taken. We both had our pajamas on while quilting and it was fairly late in the morning.

My parents decided a couple of months ago that they needed a longarm and ordered an APQS Lucey machine. Mom and Dad did a great job of getting it all set up and had done several practice pieces. They all looked way better than the first few pieces I had did as a new longarmer! I think it’s fantastic that folks their age are doing something they want to do and not saying “we’re too old for that”! I can remember when I was wanting a longarm and Vince said “Is this something you’re going to be wanting to do when you’re 60 years old?” Hmm . . I’m almost there and the answer is still yes!

Because I’m a good daughter, I won’t tell you how old my Mom is but I will tell you that she was 20 when I was born and I’ll soon be 58.

Speck felt right at home with his pillow and quilt under Mom’s longarm. It probably seemed kinda strange to him though that it was so clean under there. It’s never clean under my machine . . always “stuff” under there.

Sleeping under a quilting machine is something Speck has done since we brought him home when he was about 8 weeks old. And, he’ll soon be 12 years old. He’s surely seen lots of quilts get made.

I’m proud of my parents for getting themselves a longarm machine and for learning to use it.

· Filed Under: Quilting · 19 Comments

News Worth Sharing

May 4, 2012 · by JudyL

I have two newsworthy events to share and they certainly are not listed here in order of importance or excitement!

First, I got a call from my editor this morning telling me that 60 Pieced Quilt Borders is going to its second printing. She said this is about as fast as they’ve ever had a book go to second printing. I know that a whole lot of that is because you, my loyal blog readers, have purchased it and asked for it at your local quilt shops and I appreciate that so much! Thank you all and thanks again to American Quilter for giving me this opportunity.

Second, I’m going to be grandma! Chad and Nicole got the cart ahead of the horse but they are expecting a baby. I was in Louisiana when they called last week to share the news. I think they’ve both be dreading telling us and Nicole’s parents. I didn’t dare say anything on the blog til I was sure all Nicole’s family knew because the last thing I wanted was for her family to hear it from someone in Nevada who read it on my blog. They assure me that everyone has been told and I can share the news.

I absolutely love Nicole to pieces and as aggravated as I was at them for this happening before they were married, I’m thrilled to know that she will be my daughter-in-law. I’m happy that her family (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sister) have taken Chad in and treat him like family. I’m not so happy that I’m so far away but I’m thinking there will be lots more trips back to MO in my future.

· Filed Under: Family · 124 Comments

Sweet Treat Quilt Along

May 4, 2012 · by JudyL

Today we begin a quick quilt-along. I’m using the May Color Palette colors. Feel free to us any fabrics you desire.

The quilt as shown will finish at 70″ x 79″. As far as yardage, use stash fabric or scraps and use as many different fabrics as you’d like. For the white or ecru (or whatever color you choose) background, you will need about 2-7/8 yards.

The quilt below shows pieced squares for the sashing squares and a few pieced squares in the border. The quilt show above has no sashing squares. I will give instructions for both or you may use plain squares for the sashing and all plain squares in the border.

The blocks are 7-1/2″ finished or 8″ unfinished. The block could be strip pieced but for variety, I will piece all of mine with individual pieces. We only need 30 blocks.