My friend, Jacquie, shared some fabric from her stash with me. This piece of white (which is nearly gone) has become my favorite white, ever:

I think it is a pima cotton – it has a fine, tight weave – but what makes it special is the stitching. It appears to be a chain stitch, done by machine, with a fine enough thread so that it isn't bulky. The stitching didn't shrink and make the fabric pucker when I washed and dried it. It has a lovely personality when pieced together with other fabrics.

This is the sort of fabric that you rarely see in a quilt shop and, if you did, it would be expensive. I look for this sort of thing and when I find it, I buy it – although I never buy enough.

I was thinking about this fabric when I went through the mail last week. The CB2 (Crate & Barrel 2) catalog came and this duvet set was on display:

It looks like the 'stitching' on the duvet cover and pillows is done with ribbon, or strips of fabric cut on the bias. I don't know that I'll ever get around to making my own fabric that looks like either of these pieces, but it's definitely do-able.

We took Elanor and Jack to a nearby resort, Tanglewood, at Lake Texoma Thursday. It was an interesting experience. I unplugged (mostly) and so did Steve (mostly). We didn't do much with the kids that we couldn't have done at home, except that we gave them our undivided attention. That is kind of rare. 

Judy, Lorna's mom, is the kind of grandmother we all think we will be. The one that stops and plays, a lot. I have found that I am not that kind of grandmother. I wasn't that kind of mother, either. I always thought that the boys should learn to entertain themselves without a lot of my input. It seems to have worked for them – at least they tell me I was a good mom. Of course, I'm the only one they had :-).

In thinking back on my childhood, I tended to play physical games: cowboys and indians with the neighborhood boys, tree climbing, exploring places none of us would let our kids go now. Boy, those were the days… I'm not sure they were better, just different. I had very little use for dolls, cards, or board games then, or now.  Some of us are just like that.

I'm good in shorter bursts so a 24-hour vacation works. Tanglewood has 3 pools: the baby pool that we never got in, a middle pool that is 2'-5', and then a much deeper pool. Both of these pools are bigger than ours at home and that was fun. 

We spent time in the room – Jack's first hotel stay! He wanted to watch cartoons and we let him. I had gotten them each new art supplies and Elanor especially enjoyed hers. We ate in the restaurant – twice! Very exciting!

We played foosball. I am not that good at foosball which is good. Elanor is 10 and understood the game but had not played much. Jack, 5, had never played and it showed, for about 10 minutes. Then he got the hang of it and really enjoyed it. That boy is competitive!

I tried out my new Lumix camera. This little camera takes a very nice picture.

We all had a good time and might do it again next year!

I have a big, heavy, hard-to-move piece of furniture in my studio. When Miguel and Juan took out the floor after the flood, we put it on some flat things with rollers to make it easier to shift around. We left it on those things so that it would be easier to move around when the the new floor goes down. 

The 'things' made the piece of furniture taller and I realized that I liked it taller! Steve said he could add casters to my big piece of furniture. I found 175 lb locking casters – surely it's not heavier than that.

Steve put a 2×4, laid flat, from front foot to back on the bottom of the legs on each side. He screwed the 2×4's on with long screws, and then screwed the casters to that.

I may get around to painting the 2x4s, or not. For now I am just very happy that I can move this big thing on my own. I still have to fill it with stuff that is in boxes in the other room but I'll do that after they lay the new floor. That should happen on Monday. Maybe by the middle of next week we'll be back to where we were before the flood. 

It was time to replace my little Lumix camera. The new one came today and I realized that I had not ordered a case for it. The best place to look locally is Best Buy and you all know I'm not going there! I decided to make a case from one of my Piece O' Cake tote bags. I cut it apart at the edges, leaving the big middle to work from (I have a lot left over).

I measured my camera at and decided that a strip 4" x 12 1/2" would do it. But what if I was wrong? I decided to make a prototype from a Priority Mail padded envelope. I almost never take the time to do this but it's a really good thing to do.

I folded the strip over the camera to see where to place the bottom fold, leaving enough for the flap.

I sewed the strip right sides together with 1/4" seams, then turned it right sides out.

The flap was too wide and needed to be trimmed. I reinforced it with duct tape because I may keep this prototype in my luggage, just in case…

The case was just a little tight so I made the real one from a 4 1/4" wide strip.

The ends of the seams are backstitched, a lot. I folded the bottom corners and sewed across the corners to make gussets at the bottom fold.

Turning it right sides was sort of tough. I used that green stick that I've had for years to pop the corners out. then I trimmed the flap.

I decided to sew on velcro rather than using the sticky kind. Sewing it on the flap was easy – and then I realized that I should have sewn the other side on before sewing the case together. I had to unstitch some of one side to sew it on. If you make one, remember that part.

It's way cuter than the worn out pink one that was on my old phone. And it was free!

We're taking Jack and Elanor to Tanglewood today to swim and play and spend the night. It's a resort on Lake Texoma with a big pool and a nice restaurant. Maybe I'll get some good photos with the new camera :-).

I ran across this TED Talk. It is short, and beautiful. There have been so many devastating storms this spring and summer and I have watched the footage from storm chasers, transfixed. These photos are different and I think it's because they capture the beauty of the storms. That said, I don't think I'd want to watch any of them from where she is.

And, as long as I'm sharing short videos, here is one that my Aunt Helen sent to me. It is lovely but, if you have a dog nearby, let me know if they howl. There is a high pitch in there that sounds to me like it would make a dog bark.

Every now and then I am taken to task by a reader who says that I should write more about quilting. Unfortunately, I can't show what I'm working on because it's for a book that is too far from being in print. If I show too much now, it lessens the impact of the book when it comes out. I don't have time to work on quilts just for the blog, outside of the work I'm doing on the other projects. It's a real quandry.

Yesterday's post was an attempt to show something quilt-related, without showing too much. I'm going to try to do more of that. That said, I will continue to share things that are not specifically about quilting because inspiration can come from the strangest places… like TED talks and glass harpists :-).

We've shown how to use tape when making triangle squares in a few of our books. This is a handy trick to keep in mind because it works for more than triangle squares. By using tape, you don't have to take the time to mark the seam line on your fabric.

The quilt I am working on is scrappy and the binding needs to be scrappy too. I prefer to make bias binding but in this case I decided to use many of the left-over strips from the quilt top. The strips are cut on the straight of grain, the ends of the strips are cut square. Binding looks better if the seams that join the strips are on the diagonal.

Here's the trick: Line the left edge of the tape up with the needle. Stick the tape to the bed of your machine and the table as shown below. Do not put the tape over the hole the needle goes into on the throat plate. If you have to cover a bit of the feed dog, that's OK. 

Cross the ends of the strips, right sides together, as shown below. Three v's will form – place the two on either side of the crossed strips on the left edge of the tape.

Begin sewing. Keep the v at the far end on the edge of the tape. Focus on it as you sew.

Continue sewing across the crossed strips. Sew together as many strips as you need in this manner.

Trim away the excess fabric leaving a 1/4" seam allowance. Trim any dog ears. Press the seams open.

Cut one end of the binding off at a 45° angle. Press the length of binding in half, right sides together.

This combination of fabrics will make a nice binding for the quilt it's going on (look close and you can see a part of it in the background).