How to deal with magazines

 

OK -- so I have NEVER said so many bad words while reading a book - EVER! The Innocent Man by John Grisham is just - well - it blows my mind at the comedy of errors that occurred for the characters in the book. Corruption, the desire for elected personnel to please their voting public, taking advantage of people with mental illness, poverty, and many other factors. It just boggles my mind that any of this was allowed to happen. 

I consider myself a believer in justice for all and hope that common sense and justice would prevail should I ever find myself in a situation like this. However, I now have my doubts! There are five characters in the book that were convicted when in fact, they were all innocent. Sadly, a mere tip of the iceberg. I've still got four hours of the book to go - everyone is in jail with life imprisonment or death row. I know some of them get exonerated - I'll let you know!

My only experience with visiting a prison was visiting Alcatraz many years ago. What a haunting place, and I just can't imagine what it would be like to live there. You would go MAD!!! BTW - if you're in San Francisco - you can actually go there now - it's open! 

It's a very frustrating book to listen to, and yes - I keep yelling at the injustices as I hear them. I can't help myself, although I did find myself chuckling at one point. 

It's back to half-square triangles today. I love that we are of two camps. Those who sew the seam for the half-square triangle BEFORE get cut off, and the other camp is that we sew them together as enders and leaders after they have been cut off. I love sewing them AFTER and love the mindless sewing, very therapeutic. I also include all the triangles cut off from joining binding strips or borders (I make a LOT of 2½" borders). 

Even though I had that pile on the ironing board to press, I found a small bag of teeny tiny ones that were already pressed and just needed to be trimmed. So when I had a few extra moments this morning, that's what I did. 

These little guys are being trimmed to 1¼". So yes, they will be tiny when they get stitched together. I have NO idea where these came from, but I suspect they are mine. I know exactly what I'm going to do with them, but I'll wait until they are trimmed before I start sewing them together. Well, I don't have to - I could start now and use them as enders and leaders. I'm so excited that I'm getting these cleaned up!!!

Small half-square triangles

Not much to trim off, but it needs to be done. So therapeutic, especially when listening to an audiobook. 

The trimmings

Even though I was busy yesterday, I don't really have much to show for it! However, I do have a customer quilt that got stitched. 

This is the pattern that the customer wanted on the quilt. You have to love the computer on the long arm as there is NO WAY that I would have been able to do that by hand. 

Penguin pattern on the long arm

Here's the quilt. It's gorgeous - nice colors and a great way to use a horizontal panel. 

Customer quilt - DONE

The back is Minky, and there are those frisky penguins!!!

The back of the quilt

The next quilt is loaded, and it also has a Minky backing. I have NO presentations today. I haven't had a day off during the week for weeks! I won't know what to do with myself. HA!! Just kidding!

I got my barn block done for the Breakfast Club hosted by Thimbles and Things. This is not how the original block looked, but I didn't want an applique block in with the pieced blocks. I simplified the original block, and I'll use it for the quilt label. I could have used red fabric for the shadow, but I don't have very much red set aside for this quilt, so I went with black instead. I think it's just fine!

My maple leaf block for the Breakfast Club

I searched for that elusive picture of a quilt yesterday, and instead, I found a display card with local birds attracted to bird feeders. Do you remember my woodpecker from yesterday? 

The woodpecker

Hmmm -- the pictures of these two woodpeckers on the sheet look IDENTICAL to me. The first one, though, is called a Hairy Woodpecker. 

Hairy Woodpecker

And this one is called a Downy Woodpecker. 

Downy Woodpecker

Well, that will remain a mystery to me. They are the SAME!! At least they look the same to me. 

So have you been working on your magazine sorting? I know that some of you do NOT have an issue, but some of us do! My stash is now sorted by title, and I'm very slowly going through them. What to do with something in the magazine that you want to keep? 

First - think really hard before you decide if you really want to keep that pattern or article. I have found MANY magazines with patterns tagged, and seriously - will I ever make them? No - I was like a kid at the candy buffet with a 5-gallon pail when I started to quilt. I wanted to do and make EVERYTHING. But I realized, many years later, that it's not possible. I see some of the patterns I tagged, and I think - well, I know that I'm beyond that! I don't mean just in skill-level, but in every sense of the way. 

So here's the thing - as you sort through the magazines, rip out what you want - YES -- RIP the articles or patterns out. But think twice before you do that! 

The rest of the magazine needs to be recycled. Do NOT save it for a friend (unless they are happy to get the magazines with missing pages) - just recycle it - it's OK. The person who wrote this article that I'm referring to (Christina Fairley Erickson) ripped out articles, patterns, and ads or shows that she wanted to investigate further. Hmm - I've done a bit of that. But if these magazines are older (like mine), you probably won't be needing those ads or the information about upcoming shows.  

Now you need to sort - put the articles into piles relating to the topic. Perhaps, it's a quilting technique, an article about a person, or some history or whatever. Put the articles into page protectors and use DIVIDERS to keep the categories separate. Do the same thing with the patterns. Create an index at the front of the binder, so it's easy to find what you're looking for. 

Perhaps you just cut a picture because it inspired you. Then get a sketchbook and glue those pictures into the sketchbook. Then you have an instant inspiration book that can be used for choosing the color for your next quilt. 

The other option here is to scan the articles and patterns. Save them as PDFs on your computer and file them diligently into categories, so it'll be a snap for you to find them. Name them very carefully so you can search for them. If you can TAG the items with search topics - that's even better. I know you can do this with photos, not so sure about PDFs. 

Having access to patterns and articles organized like this means that you'll actually be able to go back and find what you're looking for. And it's also easy to get rid of a pattern if you realize that you'll never make it. 

It also takes less room than having all those magazines on a shelf. YES - I know that!!! 

I've decided for the Cloth Paper Scissors Studios magazines that I'm going through that I'm NOT going to be saving anything, although I do see one article which I'll tell you about tomorrow, I might take a picture of two of it as there's a great idea in it. 

I know that I have a few binders of patterns and articles that I've pulled from magazines, and those will have to be dealt with at some point. But I have also learned that you can find a lot of those articles ONLINE!! I like the articles written by Dawn Cavanaugh from American Professional Quilting Systems. She writes articles about quilting using a long arm. Well, if you check their website, those articles are on that page. OK -- so I just went to find those articles, and I do NOT see them this morning, but there is SO MUCH other information online!!!

Same thing with historical information, articles about quilters, etc., that they are mostly online, or you can find the same information online. Hmmm --- do you want your own database? Or rely on the internet. 

So something to think about if you have magazines to deal with, or perhaps you've got binders filled with stuff you pulled. It's time to get organized and think about what to do with it all. I'm good with taking my time - it's all neatly organized, so I'm good with that. 

And I've finished reading the second magazine that I downloaded to my iPad. I haven't returned it yet as I want to make a few notes and send an e-mail or two about something I saw. Then I'll return it!

On that note, it's time to get myself organized. I've got quilts to quilt, articles to write, blocks to make, a quilt to trim, and well - another typical day at my house! I'm going on a car errand today - I'm off to the gym! Well, an appointment with the sports-medicine clinic to get some kind of a plan to assist with my aging body and my desire to walk myself to death! I smile as I say that! I'm so obsessed, it's sad, but I'm OK with that. At least I acknowledge it and am trying to do something about it! I'd rather die knowing that I had a lot of fun in life instead of sitting around because I was afraid or tired or hurting to do something that I wanted! And my definition of fun is quite different from most people!

Have a great day!!!

Ciao!!!!