EPP Bowls

Currently a furor on FB...EPP bowls.

First, Pirate posted one that she did and it was gorgeous. She posted the vendor she got the pattern from, Cake and Ale, and a bunch of us ordered the same bowl. I ordered a couple of others too.

Here is my first 'DOOM Dish'. DOOM stands for 'Didn't Organize, Only Moved'. I have lots of DOOM piles. This will make a DOOM pile that is contained, and movable.  

Edge treatment - I do ladder stitching on the edges

The underside of the dish

Another view of the edging - I am proud to say, my stitching does not show!

The inside of the bowl. The fabric was a bit loose, so I sprayed just the inside with Magic Sizing and when it was dry, the fabric both had shrunk AND was adhered to the paper plate that used as the templates for the bowl. Yippie!

BUT...it seems like its not really getting to live up to its name!

I used it for corraling my little tools in my recent class - there is a wee tomato pincushion in there and I stuck the tape dispenser and the the scissors in when I started sewing. I had a wheel of pins in there too.

This isn't my first 3 dimensional EPP object...

This was an attempt to make a bowl that I did many, many years ago.. it typically holds yarn balls. It has one layer of Peltex...and that was a BEAR to stich thru. The top edges are kind of moldable - I have them curved out.

Back

The seams overlapped - getting the needle in there was really hard!

And the hexies that this bowl were made of are ALL the same size as the DOOM dish's center!

More from Road To CA Quilt Show 2024

I went to Party Time again this year.. this used to be a really fun party, and you got a lot of value in the give-aways. One year everyone got a baby quilt batting as they went out the door. The prize table had lots and lots of fabric and tools and other goodies.

This year, not so much. I think they didn't get as many donation items from the vendors - and there were not as many vendors and a few of the big names were not there this year - it only took me a little more than 2 hours to go thru the vendor mall - at the hey-day before Covid, they had an extra tent outside the Convention Center stuffed to the gills with vendors. They didn't have the prize table - if a table won one of the games a 'walker' brought a bag with enough items for the table right to the table - no choosing. 

Probably won't do Party Time next year - its late at night and I was TOTALLY exhausted by the time the party started. 

The tool bag is ok - I stuck the popper on my phone - not sure I like it, but it is interesting.
Needed a new seam ripper! The nail file is glass - I have a small one I got years ago - they last for a lonnnggggg time.

Thank goodness I thought ahead and brought my camp stool - a lot of ladies thought that was really smart and they are thinking of bringing one next year! I got the idea from an ad were they put a backpack around a camp stool and advertised it- I looked at ordering one, but it wouldn't have gotten here before the show.  And the one I have is really light, so carrying it was not a problem. I made the strap out of a strip of fabric - I love that fabric, but I only had that one strip!

I sat down quite a bit. I stuffed the camp stool in one of the past Road To CA bags (I inked what was just plain canvas with InkTense pencils and water.) so I could wear it over my shoulder - DH came up with the idea to put it upside down with the legs pointing up. It worked!

One thing different they did this year was have the vendor mall open on preview night. That probably helped the vendors a lot! Though, unless folks were ready for it, they might not have brought funds!

The quilts, except for the major prize winners and a couple of exhibits (Cherrywood Challenge) and one other if I recall, were all in the ballroom. It was dim in there with spot lights on the quilts and there was gentleman playing an electric piano - he is terrific (but I wondered why he played the 'Go to Sleep Lullaby"!!!) 

Road To CA Quilt Show 2024

I went to the Road to CA Quilt Show again this year...first time since Covid. I used to go every year.

The highlight of the show was seeing fellow Valley of the Sun Retreater Kathi's Tropical Dreams quilt that Ami, also a Valley of the Sun Retreater,  quilted and it's ribbon!

and yes.. it WAS dark in that room with spotlights from the floor...not my favorite way of presenting quilts, but evidently done on purpose...yuck!

This was another one that was splendid:

You can follow Road to California Quilters Conference & Showcase on FB to see LOTS of pictures of the winners. They haven't posted this year's winners yet on their website.

I took a  half -day class from Grace Errea - Randomly Pieced Backgrounds... evidently my distaste for patchwork carried over to this technique...sigh.. I did so many things wrong - only got TWO blocks done and a bunch of...well.. not so good chain pieced pieces.

My workstation - Moore's Sewing Machines supplied the Juki..its a good machine and I didn't break the thread!!! (I had one class where I was fighting the machine every seam I sewed)

Grace explaining the technique

I think I would be able to do this better if I didn't do her chain piecing but built it one block at a time(less chance of getting every single freaken one in the chain wrong, like I did :(  ) I will try it again at home! Here are the two blocks I got done in class

But.. you end up with a cool background. Grace's eye for color is terrific and her samples are really interesting! I finished my piece at home. The gal sitting next to me in class said I should put a chicken on it..we will see!

I will try again. Here is my second set of fabrics - but Grace said we shouldn't have seams in our pieces to try this technique...but now that I think about it, I could have just cut the pattern pieces on that fabric after I cut all the rest of them - and that is what I will do with these fabrics. Might put some koi fish on this one!

 The blue arrow is pointing to the seam

After my class, I went to a lecture from a wool vendor. They had some really cute stuff. I ended up buying one of their kits to make a pillow. They have a sew-along for the month of Feb - a new video each day. That will be fun. I love the design on the pillow! Only thing I wanted to change is the background. DH is not fond of black. But I didn't find any pieces in my wool collection I liked any better, so black it is.

Then, on to see the quilts and the vendor mall.
I stimulated the economy a bit - got a bunch of FQs from a new vendor...some really cool pieces! Here is my haul 

One of the vendors intrigued me - CutterPiller. They make lighted boards that have a translucent cutting mat over the light. But, the price was out of my budget. So I ordered a small translucent mat from Amazon that will go over my LightUp Pad.

Spinning Stars

This is one of my oldest handwork projects (there are still a couple more though!)

I started this after seeing a picture of a Spinning Star quilt in the class roster for Road To CA. I didn't take the class since something else was scheduled at the same time that I wanted to take more. But I copied out the picture for inspiration. 

It's gotten quite wrinkled over the years!

When I got to Retreat that year, one of the other ladies just happened to be working on a Spinning Star quilt...I found out where she got the template for the block, printed out the pattern and made a cutting template from template plastic when I got home. 

The idea that the Spinning Star could be seen as a flower with green leaves around it appealed to me. So, I gathered up some scraps and commended cutting. I found out really quickly the template only goes ONE direction to nest properly. I have a bunch of miss-cuts in my scrap bags,

This was in one of my Go bags for years. I only worked on it when I was out of the house until just recently when I decided it was time to finish 'er up!

It been backed with green fleece and bagged out and is waiting it's turn to be quilted. Not sure if it will get hand quilted or if I will do it by machine - probably by machine - the fleece backing is kind of odd to needle. Thinking of adding some French knots to the center of the flowers.

In hindsight, I probably should have gone with ONE green fabric for the leaves. But, I kinda like how the miscellaneous greens look too. The whole table mat is all scraps from my scrap bags.

Snowball Fights and Javalina in Tucson

What you say...where the heck did you get snowballs in Tucson? 

Well, let me tell you how!

We went to Tucson for a face-to-face Team Meeting for planning our next 13 weeks of work. There were probably around 100 of us from the applications development and support team. We also had some of the team on Zoom.

We stayed in a resort (pretty fancy!) 

The hill with cactus across from the resort

 My balcony

Had some lovely meals there too - I had swordfish one night and it was superb! Appetizer was figs stuffed with blue cheese - those were yummy! 

The leader of the Team Meeting said she always wanted to have a snowball fight in Tucson  -  she found you can purchase faux snowballs! They are made of some sort of cottony material and don't hurt when thrown. She had a bowl of snowballs on each table and we had great fun tossing them around.

We had a great meeting, got lots of tasks created in the planning software.

One night when we went back to the resort and pulled into the underground garage,  the driver of the car suddenly exclaimed 'PIG!' Sure enough, there was not only one javalina (the kind of wild pig that is common in Tucson), there was a WHOLE troop of them!

I told the front desk as I went up to my room - javalina can be dangerous if confronted.

South Padre Island

 Aggh.. it has been a long time since I posted anything, yet again. Sorry!

**********************************************************

I started work at an aerospace company in 1985, right before I graduated from USC (Master of Liberal Arts) and worked there for nearly 10 years, until the programming department was outsourced. I worked for the company that got the outsource contract for another 27 years, supporting the same customer. I finally had the chance to become 'A Real Girl' when the customer decided to employ me directly! I switched jobs on my birthday this last year and one of the things that came with the job was 50 hours of vacation. Now at this company you have to use your vacation before the end of the year - if you have time left at the end of the year, you can only save up to 40 hours and those have to be used by March of the next year. So what to do with my 50 hours?

We decided to investigate the southwest part of Texas (we have explored the northeast, the southeast and central so far). Plane flight to Austin the day after Thanksgiving and then we started our exploring. One of the things that was highest on our list was visiting Starbase in the very tippy bottom of the state.  We made it down there just before sunset and decided we liked the area a lot. 

One of the Starships

Sunset at Starbase

South Padre Island is near  to Starbase as the crow flies, but to get to it from Starbase means a 35 mile journey. We were looking for someplace to spend the night and decided we wanted to be near the water. We found a hotel with beach access and headed there.

View from our room on the fourth floor - you can just make out the water. The guy at the front desk said they USED to have full beach view, until the building in the back was put up.

Walkway to the beach

 Port Isabel Lighthouse

 From Port Isabel, you take the Queen Isabella Bridge. You can just make out Starbase (it was foggy a lot!)

We liked it so much that we spent most of the rest of our vacation days on South Padre, though we did take jaunts out to the surrounding area. It was fairly hot compared to the beach! We liked Los Fresnos and Harlingen. We explored Brownsville and Edinburg, but they are a bit noisy!

There was an amusement area. Tucked into a corner was this amazing sandcastle display.

I spent some time sewing up the Winding Ways blocks from my Go bag. I actually finished all 9 of the blocks and sewed them into a top. (It's going to be a table mat)

We went down to the beach every day, sometimes more than once a day.

View of the Gulf of Mexico.

Collected lots of sea shells.

I can identify most of them - there are several cockle shells, several oysters (the outsides of several look like they are rocks, but turn them over and you see they are really oysters), a partial mussel shell, a partial whelk shell, a baby's ear, a blue-edged scallop, a sundial, a clam shell, a lettered olive, a bonnet shell - could be a white scotch bonnet which the identification pages say is pretty rare, and a half-naked pen shell. 

There is a wee orangish cockle shell on the bottom right that has a hole - evidently Moon snails like to latch onto other mollusks and liquify the owner for their dinner.  

My favorite is the lettered olive - it has such an interesting surface - very polished and smooth. The pen shell is the most delicate - it traveled home inside the large oyster shell at the top. 

I need to find a way to display them. Probably need to get a shadow box.

And we made it back to Starbase before we left. Amazingly we got there just as the road was closing for the movement of the launch vehicle - the rocket part that will lift the Starship into space, back to its hanger. The guard was so excited!  We pulled over on a side road and got out just as it was passing by. It's HUGE!

Video of the launch vehicle being moved - not sure if this will work in the published version of this post - I can't get it to run in the preview. We shall see!

We went back up to Austin the day before our flight home so we would be 'in the area' and not have to rush to the airport. (We learned that lesson when we went to central Texas a few years ago..it was quite the wild ride and we were so frazzled when we got on the plane) We took a drive north of Austin to see more of the Hill Country. Since it was Fall, there were lots of gorgeous trees.

We want to go back to South Padre!