I don’t normally do New Year’s Resolutions.  It’s just something I’ve never gotten into and it is not something my parents did while I was growing up.  But I have a need and I’m going to call it my NYR as opposed to just for the heck of it….

No more buying fabric until my birthday (May 19th)

GAH!  Ok, wait…  no more buying fabric that’s not for Violet Crown specifically.  There.

WAIT…  crap…  ok, no more buying fabric that’s not for Violet Crown or isn’t the bolts of fabric I need to keep in stock for customer backings.

Oh holy heckle shells….  what am I doing?!  I need to buy a bolt of Moda Bella Hershey when I go to the warehouse sale.

Alright, how about this:  no more buying fabric, until my birthday, except for the fabric for Violet Crown and any fabric that I buy at the Moda/UN warehouse sale.

That, ladies and jellybeans, is why I don’t do NYRs!

Anjea, if you so much as tempt me, I will tie you down and feed you cheap cheese.

I get a little distracted from quilting or sewing every so often.  It’s hard for me to concentrate on more than one hobby.  Oh, I can get my work done, but I can’t do the “for me” part well.  Right now, I have two other things going around here: decorating the house and couponing.  The house is a pretty obvious choice.  Rich was a bachelor when he bought it and he couldn’t decorate himself out of a shoebox.  The most he did was paint the living room a slightly-purplish shade of blue and buy some furniture.  After being married more than a year and living at this house for not quite two, he finally gave up and gave me free-reign to make my choices and do it all.  As long as I stay in budget.  I can do that.

The couponing kinda grew out of the needing to save money thing.  I LOVE getting stuff for free.  I LOVE finding deals.  It’s the hunt; I am such a hunter-gatherer!  And with sites like refundcents.com and thegrocerygame.com, my life is much much easier.  Finding deals is a breeze when you know about sales ahead of time and can stock up on coupons a few weeks in advance.  Like, with our wedding cake, for example.  My sister wanted to use a mix since I insisted on the real buttercream icing and fresh lemon curd.  I watched the sales and stumbled upon a deal at Randalls where, with the coupons and their sale, they ended up paying us $3.15 to take 36 boxes of cake mix (and 36 tubs of icing) off their hands.  I have no idea what to do with all that icing, by the way.  Rich has been eating some of it on Animal Crackers, but what do you do with 36 tubs of icing when you don’t eat it?!

The problem with couponing is that it takes time.  Time I love but time that doesn’t go to sewing.  But is it worth it to get deals like 16 various Maybelline lip products for a refund of $5?  Or 10 bottles of Garnier Fructis hair stuff for FREE?

Now, if only I could find coupons for paint, lumber, and dupioni silk!

I broke down.  I couldn’t stop myself.  I was calling my name, making my fingers itch, and making my mouth water all at the same time.  It’s just too purty!

I have a weakness for samples anyways.  I have them all over the studio and I’m still looking for wherever I put that Kona sample card from before the wedding.  Hmm…  with the box of invitation leftovers, maybe?  … I digress.  I started looking for the right color for the night sky part of the dress and can’t really see on the screen.  When I started to order individual samples, I realized that it was probably better to just order the whole set and have it over with.  Oh DARN!

Once that arrives, then I get to go thread shopping!  Thursday night I got a wild hair and started playing with some YLI 100 silk thread I had from a vintage quilt repair last year.  It is so delicious to quilt with on Lola.  Part of me hates not buying Superior Thread.  They’ve been really good to me so far and I love their threads.  A little birdie tells me they’re working on silk thread, but it got put on the back burner in favor of a 40wt solid cotton (think King Tut size, MasterPiece solids) that will be out April or May.  I can’t wait for that, but now I’m forced to use retail thread for a while.  Heather and Bob, just know, I’m waiting with baited breath for that silk.

I know, I know, Bottom Line is the same size.  I tried it, side by side with the silk on a sample of silk satin with wool batt.  It’s just not the same on silk.  Maybe on cotton it wouldn’t be so obvious.  It’s somehow rougher to stitch with.  And that was running it under the exact same conditions as the silk (same top tension numbers, same bobbin thread, both off the spool not a cone)  Granted, rougher than silk isn’t saying much.  I can see why hand appliquers use silk.  It. Melts.  Melts, I tell ya!  I’m definitely going to use it as the background stitching on Violet Crown.  Luckily, Honey Bee (down the block) has a really comprehensive selection of colors.  I need to check with them about a sample card or ordering colors that they don’t already carry.

Now I remember why I have more projects planned than finished…  it’s just too much fun!

Tomorrow evening, while a customer is on the longarm, I’m hoping to get some things loaded up into my etsy shop.  I’ve had a few requests to sell my hand-dyed fabric, perle cotton, and silk ribbon.  I’m happy to oblige as long as it doesn’t take over my world.  Problem is, I can’t decide what to put up.  I could really use some feedback on what would be most interesting.  I’m considering:

- fat quarter or fat eighth sets, potentially in color wheels, single color gradations, or color runs

- jelly rolls (or other pre-cut sets) in color wheels at light, medium, and dark saturations

- yardage (any thoughts on colors to start?)

- misdyes

- perle cotton, both individual and sets (but can’t decide what to sell and what to keep for myself)

- silk ribbon (what I have already dyed is mostly bold solidy-type colors)

What am I leaving out?  What is reaching?

Tomorrow, I have Teacher Round-Up at Ready to Sew Bernina from 1-4.  I’m teaching 3 classes during the winter quarter:

- Kwik Sew Yoga Pants: Saturday, January 17, 10:00 AM

- All About T-Shirt Quilts:
Lecture – Wednesday, February 4, 6:30 PM
Hands-on – Saturday, February 7, 10:00 – 1:00 PM

- Finishing Your Quilts: Saturday, March 21, 10:00 AM

I’m really excited about all of these classes.  The binding class (Finishing Your Quilts) is actually at the request of a number of my friends and students.  Ok, y’all…  get over there and sign up soon!  Space is limited because you’re actually going to bind a quilt during class.  It’s a fantastic method that makes for a high-quality, low-pain binding.

I have to get back to working on the sample for the yoga pants class.  I made it up according to the instructions and wore them for a few days.  Who thought that 3/8″ elastic is going to hold up a pair of knit pants?  I changed it to 1″ on the supply sheet for class but I haven’t changed the waistband on the sample, so I have to get working NOW if it’s going to be done by tomorrow.  Oh, and I haven’t finished my BOM for the $5 Quilt class at 11.  Bad!Deana…

Now that I’ve sorted (and catalogued) all the vintage patterns I bought on eBay with the money I’d planned on using in Houston, I can get started on my next wearable.  I had hoped to have it finished by Christmas, but that’s not likely.  Things have been busy in the Duck Soup Studio!  But, at the very least, I want to have it ready and entered into the Dallas show, so I have to have something ready to take a picture by Jan 1st.  I’m thinking I’ll take a picture of the lining, since it’s essentially the same silhouette as the dress.

For those of you not from around here, you probably have never heard Austin called The City of the Violet Crown.  O. Henry was the first to put that in writing, actually.  Austin and Rome, apparently.  There’s this beautiful atmospheric effect that happens at sunset, mostly in the late summer, where the city looks like it’s glowing violet along the horizon.

Gorgeous, no?  And with my friend Marcia Kaylackie winning the Violet Crown Award this year, I’ve had the phrase on the brain.  It sounded so beautiful and I just adore violets.  I was originally going to make my opera gown as Violet Crown but changed my mind when I saw this vintage pattern on Out of the Ashes

I scanned the line drawings from the instructions and have been doodling different ideas for a few days now.  Cause, cataloging patterns is kinda boring and a girl’s gotta take a break now and then, right?  It’s been hard for me to figure out how to make the quilting design work with both the real Violet Crown and what people are going to see if they don’t know and only hear “crown” in the title.  This is where I am right now:

Ignore the bows and the trim.  I don’t know yet whether I want to do the button placket down the front or not.  It may be too much visually or it may really need the addition.  The ruffle at the bottom with have an overlay of longarm lace shot with irridescent threads to make it look like the lights of the city in the picture above.  The overall dress will probably be a blue-purple but I haven’t found the right color just yet.  Anyone have any thoughts on lining?  I’m leaning towards a lighter violet or a cereulean blue but I would love to hear some ideas and opinions.

I am now the very excited owner of a BlackBerry Curve! Over the next day, I’m installing apps and finding ways to make mobile blogging easier. I hope to be able to make most of my posts as I think of them, instead of when I remember them later. Stay tuned for more posts on this.

I am in awe of the enthusiasm I witnessed today.  And so, a thank you…

Thank you to everyone who called or emailed or IM’ed or texted to remind me to vote.  You all deserve hugs.

Thank you to each and every person who took the time to exercise their constitutional right.  You braved the hassles, the lines, and the traffic to protect my rights as much as your own.

Thank you to every person in history who fought to give us that right.  My eternal gratitude is with you.

Thank you to the women who were beaten in jail for daring to picket outside the White House.  Your strength makes me well up with tears of pride.

Thank you to every person who expressed your personal opinions, be they conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican (or Libertarian or Independent), radical or moderate.  I hope that you never have to fear reprisal for your speech.  I will fight for your rights with every breath I have.

Thank you to my parents who made me watch C-SPAN as a child and took me along to see how the process works.  I pray that I am able to teach my children as well as you have taught Jon and me.

Thank you to my friends who let me be rediculously political at times in my life.  You all should have been issued earplugs the moment you met me.

Thank you to each and every one of the delegates I met at the county convention in March.  Your willingness to put our differences aside and come to a compromise gives me great hope for the future of this nation.

Thank you to the politicians I’ve worked with over the years.  You didn’t have to be kind to a teenager who knew way to much about government for her own good.

Thank you to all the men who created this process that has worked so very well these past 200-odd years.  You deserve much more than to only be called Founding Fathers.  You risked everything to follow your dreams and I hope you would be pleased with the way we interpet your dream today.

And thank you to YOU for reading this far.  

I am very proud to be an American tonight.  That is not something I could have said after past elections.  It’s not because of who won.  It’s because of the enthusiasm I saw this year that I’ve never seen before.  I’ve been to precinct caucuses with 8 people and to attend one with 443 blew my mind.  To break records across the country for voting numbers and registration numbers is monumental.  I have great hope that our generation will stand up and work for the changes we seek.  I head to bed now with a calm about my heart.  I no longer feel like things are spiraling away from me politically.  I do see hope with the dawn.

I finally got it finished!

I decided to go ahead and switch to a self-hosted blog using the wordpress.org software.  Love it love it love it.  So, now, the blog is hosted at deanatollerton.com.  You can still go to the original ducksoupquilts.wordpress.com address and your RSS feeds should all still work.  If they don’t, please let me know.

This took me a little longer than I anticipated.  But I’ve also been MIA for two very good reasons.  #1 – my camera battery died and I can’t upload the pics from SF.  And #2 – I have been so busy since I got back that I’ve barely had time to breathe. I haven’t checked other blogs or any forums in like 3 weeks.  I had to make a conscious effort to log into Facebook yesterday.  That started it all rolling again.  Now I’m reading on MQR and checking back on my google reader and sorting emails I haven’t gotten to in a while.  It’s a little much to do all at once, but I’m going to try and get it done over time.

I finally broke down and ordered a new battery charger for my camera.  I’m really glad I did.  Even if I find the old one, the new one (after-market brand) can be charged in the car.  Big plus for traveling!

Off to run some errands downtown.  I’ve got SF trip posts prepped and waiting for pictures.  In the meantime, what do you think of the new layout?

Whenever I go to Dallas with my sewing machine, I always seem to forget something.  I’m packing right now for SF and I’m afraid I’m going to forget something important.  You know, like thread.  Or a seam ripper.  Something not very expensive to get another but that I have at home and will still be a hassle to go find.  There’s not any quilt stores near our hotel.  It’s a 45 minute bus ride to the nearest quilt store, but they might not have what I need.  Britex isn’t that far, I guess.  I just might not be able to find, like, rotary cutter blades or something.

So my question is:  What do you find that you always forget when you travel/go to retreats?  And what is on your must take list?