Preparing for Winter

We have cranked up the furnace, and I'm working on hand quilting my "Peggy's Sistine Chapel."

It should make us feel warmer just looking it. It's the "Delectable Pathways" pattern by Mary Sorensen. I gave it the Sistine Chapel name, not because I've done all the work on it on my back, but because it's probably the most intricate quilt I've ever done if you count all the needleturn appliqué and hand quilting. 

If you look closely, you can see where I took out the stitches I made 1/4" inside the seams of the triangles. I decided I didn't like the look, so I'm quilting in the ditch. The straight lines are made using a strip of masking tape as a guide (see tip, below). The dark thread is basting. I had my friend Julie, who has a long arm quilting machine, do the basting for me. It sure beats crawling around on the floor. 

The Busy Bee Throw is coming along. Here's the layout.

The row at the top of the photo is a single layer and will be in the middle of the throw. The other rows are stacks of two identical rows. Each of the hexagons has a twin of the of the same color underneath, so I can sew them together as a mirror image. (The table isn't wide enough to hold the entire layout.) Since taking this photo, I have sewn four rows of hexagons together. I think sewing the rows to each other will go faster, because I won't have to keep starting and stopping. I've discovered that using stitch markers to hold the corners together helps keep the piecing more accurate. If you missed previous posts, I'm using Knit Picks City Tweed DK.

Vintage Stitchers met at Diane's on Thursday. There wasn't much to show, but Barbara had finished this flannel quilt based on "Turning Twenty."

The back shows the quilting better, as usual.

I didn't get much time to play this week. I dedicated most of my play time to solving my phone problem. My phone (iPhone 4s) has dropped calls as long as I've had it, but only in my house, where I had 1-2 bars of cell service. When I go out places (even out in my street) it has worked fine. In the house I've been using the Internet through Google Voice or Talkatone to make phone calls. You only get so many free minutes each month, and if I ran out, I would lose the call anyway. The 4s is only 3G and has a slower processor than the newer phones. Some research led me to believe a new phone would perform better. 

Losing calls in my home was the first problem. The second problem was our internet service. It goes out frequently and can stay out up to 24 hours or more. If we have urgent Internet business we have to go to a restaurant or other business that has a different provider. We looked into changing providers, but didn't want to pay more or have to change our TV service. (Our Internet and TV providers are linked together, although they are different companies.) Newer phones may be set up as a personal hotspot or can be connected to your computer using the charging cord (tethering) for emergency Internet service. Some cell providers just count the data you use, regardless of whether you use your phone to provide Internet for other devices or not; others charge extra every time you do this. 

I was happy with my cell service but was unable to get the new phone I wanted (iPhone 6s) from them. I ended up ordering the phone from Apple and switched to a provider that charges $10/month more than I was paying. (It's really only $5 more, if you have one incident a month of having to use the personal hotspot, as my old cell provider charges extra for it.) So far I've made a number of calls from inside my house without dropping them. [Fingers crossed!] I was able to set up a personal hotspot with no difficulty all on my own, and it worked. I'm keeping my 4s as an extra handset and iPod. If my phone is in the house and both are connected to the Internet, they both ring if I get a call, and I can answer whichever one is closest. (That's my excuse for not much progress on projects.)

Saturday I attended a workshop with Maestro Jonathan Griffith, who has trained and directed the chorus at the Carnegie Hall. He came to Utah to work with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and our little group, Park City Singers.

We will see him again on Tuesday, when he directs our practice for the Christmas program. I'm not a great singer, but it's fun, and I'm already better, thanks to this workshop. I have lots of things to practice.

We don't do a lot of decorating for fall, but we put out this guy, and he's outstanding in his field, small though his field may be.

Every time I look out my kitchen window, I think I'm seeing a person standing in our yard.

As promised a couple of weeks ago, here's a look the first of the quilt shops Vintage Stitchers visited during our time in St. George, Quilted Works Quilt Shop.

They carry the Bloc Loc ruler I'm so fond of and even had a stack of HSTs to use for demos for customers. Three of our group bought one each. I bought some fat quarters at each store.

What's on my needles: Still sewing the hexagons for the Busy Bee Throw together. Hand-quilting the Delectable Pathways.

What's on my Featherweight: Kaleidoscope Quilt. No progress this week.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Listening to Banished Love by Ramona Flightner, another WhisperSync deal from Audible (a free book from Book Bub and low-priced audio if you had the Kindle book). I'm not very impressed with the narrator, but the book is interesting so far. Still reading Auld Acquaintance by Ruth Hay. (I'm enjoying it, but you know I don't do a lot of reading in print.)

What's in my wine glass: Fish Eye 2013 Shiraz. The big bottle, much needed this week!

What's my tip of the week: Masking tape makes a great quilting guide for straight lines or cross-hatching. You can make straight lines of quilting any distance apart by quilting along one side and then moving the tape the right distance from the line you just finished. Just remember to take the tape off if you're putting it aside for some time. Painters' tape will work as well, and you don't have to be as careful about leaving it on, but it loses its stickiness faster, so it will take more tape.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.