Clay play time

Today was play time with clay at Pam's house.  I haven't been there for 3 weeks, and had no idea where to start. But, she had bisque fired J's pieces and a couple of mine, so it was obviously glaze time.  I glazed Jordan's tiny little tray with Randy's red and her pencil holder with Opal.  Then I glazed one of my little bird plates with Opal followed by BB.  But, the blue didn't go on well at all.  Almost immediately, it began cracking and was just yuck.  I told Pam that if it still looked horrible when she was ready to fire the next load to just wash the glaze off and I would start over.  I also did some tedious underglazing with Amaco velvet underglazes on a plate that I made.   Then, before I knew it, playtime was over. 

I still haven't brought my kiln to anyone to repair it yet.  I talked to someone, but Pam gave me another name and will talk to him to get another estimate for work. 

Wall Hanging from Scraps

I had several scraps lying around after making my first two quilts and decided to use them to make a little wall hanging. I love the pinks, greens and blues together!  I thought I'd try to make it a bit wonky, but as I sewed it just didn't come out that way.  Instead, I just sewed random widths together and had one small section that used a left over triangular part from the zig zag quilt.  I ended up with four squares and used my 6 1/2" square ruler to trim everything up.  I decided to frame each of them out with some solid brown that I had in my stash.  It brings out the brown in the polka dot print.

Here are all four blocks in the process of framing them out in brown:

Ok, notice that the orientation of the lower left block.  I specifically wanted the blue section to mirror the blue section in the upper right and then look how I ended up sewing it together.

The funny thing is that I didn't even realize that I had turned the block upside down until I was loading the pictures on the computer.  Oh well.  It was meant to be this way. 

I couldn't decide how to quilt this and after looking at it for about an hour, I realized that the quilting wasn't the focus point of this wall hanging.  I just wanted to see the four squares.  So, I just did an outline stitch around each square and added an aqua border.  I really like it. 

Some things I've learned while doing this:
1.  I still can't sew good 1/4 inch seams, even with my super duper razzle dazzle 1/4" foot. 
2.  I need to learn to square my fabrics better before cutting.  Two problems I've noticed:  I seem to pull things out of square while ironing/sewing and I have tons of loose ends that look messy and make a mess while sewing.  Maybe squaring better will help both of these issues.
3.  I spend way tooooo much time measuring and remeasuring. And I still end up with lines that aren't correct.  Look at the upper left square.  See the right side brown frame.  What's the deal with it being so skinny compared to the others?!