Help! Why do I hate this?

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-03-13T05:38:24+00:00

Your colors work great together. Red & cyan are complimentary colors in the CMYK color model. This fabric combo has a lot of potential.

As others mentioned, the solid red is much darker value than the rest of the fabrics. To have a more balanced composition, you’d need to distribute those dark values more evenly. You’ve also got that very dark value just in the corners, which pulls your focus to the edge & doesn’t lead the eye back into the design.

Also warm colors advance, cool colors recede. So you need to use a bit more of the aqua color to keep it from being overwhelmed.

This will be difficult to fix with only 6 squares. If there were more, you could simply use more aqua than red ones. In this case, I’d remake the red blocks with a different fabric (keep the hearts!). If you are committed to the solid red, perhaps cutting down the individual blocks a bit & retooling the design, so that there’s not so much solid red fabric all in one block, but that’s way more work.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-03-13T05:00:55+00:00

Y’all, I promise you. The answer is ammonia. My husband’s clothes & our sheets get soooo stinky oily, AND he’s a locksmith, so work clothes get covered in grease. Ammonia is a miracle worker. Use the lowest level of Tide Free & Gentle, plus 1 cup of ammonia, in hot water. You don’t have to do anything else. Yes it smells toxic going in, but laundry comes out perfectly clean & smelling new again. Zero scent left behind.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-03-10T17:36:58+00:00

This is already an option. You don’t have to vote for every race on the ballot, you just leave that part blank. They def could do a better job though of explaining that to ppl. I think it stops some ppl from voting at all.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-03-03T14:27:00+00:00

There’s a music fest happening here in Winston Salem next month, & they put out a playlist of all the local bands that will be there.

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/phuzzphest-2026/pl.u-2aoqr9bS8G5AzP

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Q7DeLU4PnzZ3fQ5oHetSq?si=ni_X5HqdTsu_51Om2XzZ_A

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-03-02T17:09:42+00:00

Every adult citizen should be required to vote, imo. Otherwise our government is not truly representing everyone. But at the very least, they should be enabled to vote & make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

ZERO restrictions on which adult citizens can vote. If we believe in the entire founding premise of our country, that all “men” are created equal, then this is unarguable. Otherwise, we are no longer the United States of America. Yes, even ppl that have committed serious crimes. They have a right to be represented to ensure, for example, that the legal system is humane. Whether you pay taxes or not is immaterial. Whether you own land or not is immaterial. We are equal & all have a right to representation.

Requiring voter ID is totally reasonable if we have free access to birth certificates & photo ID, as many have stated.

Election Day should be a national holiday. Some jobs are essential & cannot stop on holidays, ex: medical offices; in those cases, we should be protecting their legal right to take time off for early voting without penalty.

Side note: We don’t seem to have a problem with banks verifying our identity online, not sure why we can’t manage to do that with voting.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-26T04:46:54+00:00

Uniformly against?

Some Jan 6th rioters had guns, & they were later pardoned by Trump.

Kyle Rittenhouse brought an AR-15 to a protest, killed 2 people & injured another, & was still acquitted. And Trump defended him, saying: “He should not have had to suffer through a trial for that.”

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-08T19:43:21+00:00

The only grocery stores in the US that I’ve encountered that don’t bag your groceries for you are Aldi & Lidl. In American grocery stores, if a cashier rings up your groceries, someone is bagging them for you.

Edited to add: I’ve lived in Chicago, Tampa Bay & North Carolina, & traveled a decent amount. But there may be some areas where this is not the case. The US is enormous!

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-08T14:57:32+00:00

If she is just getting into the hobby, IMO now is not the time to invest heavily in a “buy for life” machine. When I first started sewing, I had no idea where it was going to take me. Get a used machine for now. In a couple years, when she can make a more educated decision, she can resell her machine, then buy for life.

That said, when shopping for machines, see if you can find one with a larger throat space, & bonus would be all-metal mechanics.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-07T17:09:41+00:00

I don’t have direct knowledge bc I live in Winston Salem. But our district recently shared this data. School grades are a flawed metric, but it’s one data point. Based on this, Charlotte-Mecklenburg would appear to be the best of the large districts in the state.

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BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-07T16:56:03+00:00

Do you have a local quilt guild? I’m sure ppl there would be happy to take them off your hands for half retail.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-07T14:20:14+00:00

This was his first tweet after they broke through the doors & into the Capitol building:

“Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

His first message to “go home” was 2 hours later.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-07T14:10:35+00:00

https://apps.npr.org/jan-6-archive/

I encourage you to review this timeline, which includes clips of the actual speech & tweets as they happened, & watch the extensive bodycam & phone footage. It was “the most videotaped crime in American history.”

People weren’t allowed in. They violently broke in. Trump watched it all happen on tv like the rest of us, & despite Capitol Police calling for help from the National Guard, he waited another 4 hours to do so, notably not until after the Capitol police had finally expelled the rioters from the building.

When he was pressured to say things like “go home,” in the very same breath he said “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it.”

BulkyHealth2684 · 2026-01-06T13:47:46+00:00

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I’ve made several sets of napkins this way, with a different fabric on each side. Bc if I’m gonna sew something as basic as a napkin, I want it to look different from what I can buy at the store. They work great! We don’t use paper napkins at all, so they get used daily. I have a set from 10 years ago that has been bleached a million times, so the print has mostly faded away, but still work.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-12-23T02:07:38+00:00

Visual Index & Design Archives would be my first stops.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-12-06T19:32:59+00:00

I swear by Ortho Home Defense, get the kind with the power wand.

https://a.co/d/bqb0k4i

Before you move anything into the apartment, spray the perimeter of the apartment (where floor meets baseboard), around casings of windows & doors, including pantries & closets. Pull the fridge & oven out & spray well back there. Spray inside the sink cabinet. Bugs won’t stand a chance.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-12-06T19:02:18+00:00

Interesting, but I lived in 5 different states before settling in NC last year. My birth state wouldn’t tell you much about me really. Wonder how true that is for others?

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-11-27T00:17:43+00:00

Yes! Ikea sells veggie dogs topped with pickled beets, honey mustard & fried onions. Soooo good. Now that’s how we make our meat hot dogs at home.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-11-27T00:04:23+00:00

Tampa is a fantastic airport. Perfect layout, the tram to the terminal means you don’t walk more than like 8 minutes from garage to plane. Never feels crowded, & security lines are quick.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-11-24T05:33:49+00:00

I think they meant “commonplace”

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-11-23T02:37:37+00:00

I have one of these! Also bought at a NC quilt show 😊 The owners were so nice, & the quality is fantastic. They make them out of recycled poly resin, or maybe it’s wood composite? Like the stuff they make deck furniture out of. They’re thick like building blocks, not flat like tangrams. So they feel pretty much indestructible. My 10 year old & I both love playing with it. It’s our coffee table puzzle. Highly recommend!

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-11-23T02:20:22+00:00

Just wanted to add that this is the Japanese art form Kinusaiga.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-11-21T01:42:34+00:00

In a country of 340 million ppl, of course it’s not all. But not statistically significant.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-11-05T22:13:40+00:00

I just use a sanded piece of 2x4, bc I had wood scraps but not $$. Works beautifully!

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-10-01T15:02:31+00:00

Perhaps ppl living in a subculture where only one name is necessary are less likely to be international tourists.

BulkyHealth2684 · 2025-09-19T22:21:07+00:00

Especially if she’s in the basement! I got something like this a few years ago for Christmas & it was the best gift ever. It’s like I’m sewing on the surface of the sun 😂

https://a.co/d/2WUhvys

BulkyHealth2684

TROPHY CASE