Heart Quilt...and Mouse Tales Update

Finally finished a quilt today for my friend Jean. The blocks are Sister's Choice, with a few heart blocks mixed in. The pastel stripe border also features hearts. So, naturally, the quilting is a heart and loop freehand meander.


The top thread is a variegated cotton King Tut in pastel colors that match the top perfectly (called "Mummy Dearest"-they are really stretching the fact that it is Egyptian cotton thread).

Her backing is a pale pink flannel, and I used a Super Bob bobbin thread called Baby Pink.

Here is something else I did when I was avoiding organizing my sewing space last weekend...I had some fabric paint out for another project, and I hate to waste any leftover paint on the palette, so I painted some used dryer sheets.

I piled up about three at a time since they are so porous, and painted them with a brayer. Then, I would put the top one on the bottom, and paint with a different color of Lumiere. These are delicious paints that gleam! Painted dryer sheets can be used in mixed media projects to add additional layers of color and texture.

And now, the news you have all been waiting for...

Mouse Tales: The Sequel!

I have gotten several interesting comments on that post, as well as some private e-mails offering advice on the mouse problem.

My son suggested using peanut butter instead of cheese- that's what his own personal mice love! They can't just grab it and run!

So, I put a nice dollup of PB on the old snap trap. Within an hour, I could see where the mouse had stuck his paws through the peanut butter. In fact, there were little peanut butter tracks where it left the scene of the crime. Trap was not sprung. Mouse wins again!

When I took my postcards to be mailed yesterday, I bought some fine new mouse traps at Ace Hardware. In fact, there is a post office inside the new Ace Hardware near my home- how's that for convenience? When is the last time the phrase "Post Office" was used in the same sentence as "convenience?"

I got two kinds. One is the traditional snapping kind that the dumbass on the You-Tube video kept catching his fingers in. Except, these have fake yellow plastic Swiss cheese. You put the prong into one of the holes on the Swiss cheese. The "S" hole is for sensitive, and the "F" is for firm. I am not making this up!

So, do you use the "S" hole if you are a sensitive person, and don't want to kill the mouse? Or, does "sensitive" mean that the slightest touch will set off the trap? Does "firm" mean that it will hold the mouse more firmly??? Curious customers want to know! I opted for "S."

The other kind is the sticky pad that the mouse gets stuck on when he walks across it. It has some kind of crumbs in the center that I guess is bait. This type of trap is what I was cheaply trying to produce at home with duct tape and cardboard. A sad failure...I later found the duct tape and cardboard in the garage with no mouse attached.

Anyway, the package comes with four sticky pad traps. I set the two fake cheese traps and the four sticky traps all around the area behind the garage stairs where I had alertly scouted mouse sign. I know all about scouting for sign, having been married for 38 years to a hunter. You will recognize mouse sign when you see it. Especially when you have seen the live mouse jumping around in the vicinity.

And, despite the fake plastic cheese and the crumb bait, I added additional bits of cashew to each trap. This morning, the cashews were gone from the snappy traps, but they had not been sprung. What was I dealing with here, Mighty Mouse? Darn, I knew I should have picked Hole #2!

But this afternoon, I snared my first mousie! It was a very, very fat little mouse with bulging sides, either from all the cheese, peanut butter, and cashews, or perhaps it was a mother-to-be. It was stuck in one of the sticky traps!

So, finally, Jeanne wins one round. We will now see if it was a lone marauder, or part of a family of mooching mousies.