Catching Up...A Few Past Projects

March 19, 2024

As I mentioned in my podcast episode, I’ve had a few goings’ on. Here’s a quick gallery.

Photo 1: The sew day with friends in my office. The quilt hanging on my wall was made by my Mom—no idea what the pattern was, although it smacks of a block of the month kind of thing, or maybe a book of blocks or something. Anyway, because it has the church block it seemed appropriate for my region office. (If anyone recognizes the blocks/BOM/book, let me know!)

Photo 2: A close-up of one curvy log cabin block (using Creative Grids Curvy Log Cabin Trim Tool). You can tell I used three different quarter-inch seam presser feet in the process by the length of the longest “logs” next to each other. Having the trim tool saved me, though, as the block gets squared up every round of logs.So even though my seams weren’t altogether consistent due to the change of presser feet, the blocks themselves ended up all exactly the same size. Bonus.

Photo 3: All the blocks completed. I’m still in the process of piecing the top together.

The Storm at Sea Just Never Ends...

February 1, 2022

quilt blocks — *Previous unit of the same type but smaller*

If you’ve been following along in the podcast, you’ll know that I’m now piecing the fourth unit for the block. This unit is a square in a square…in a square. I’m sure there’s a word for that. But essentially it starts with a square, piece four triangles on to make a square on point, and then another four triangles to make it a square-in-a-square no longer on point. If that makes sense.

Anyway, looking at the stack of pieces, I knew I was nowhere near close to having enough of the final set of triangles. So tonight I put my big-girl-panties on, as it were, and did a count to see just how far off I am.

I need 380 more triangles.

380.

More.

Triangles.

Big sighs. Several of them. In a row.

So I pulled what little medium blue batik I have left in my stash, did some math, and realized that yep, I need to buy more fabric. I was a little over a yard short and no…I don’t have close to enough in my existing scrap stash.

Fat Quarter Shop just got some of my business tonight.

Weekend Report...reporting not much

December 6, 2020

This was a cleaning weekend—or, perhaps more accurately, a “reverse cleaning” weekend? A “putting everything back where it belonged” weekend?

We had painters come in this past week to paint three rooms—a downstairs powder room, our mudroom, and our guest bedroom that has become my husband’s home office. The powder room needed very little prep. My husband took care of his home office but mostly was able to just slide stuff to the center of the room, so not too much got displaced to other rooms. The mudroom was a whole other matter. Our mudroom serves as kitchen overflow so the shelves are half appliances or larger pots n’ pans and half outwear and dog gear. It all ended up in the dining room.

We’d also originally intended to do my daughter’s room but it turned out to be too difficult to get everything moved out in time so that got bagged…but not before a whole bunch of my books got moved from bookshelves in her room to cartons in the upstairs hallway.

Painting now done and thoroughly dried, my husband and I spent the afternoon today moving the boxes of books to the areas they were headed to (mostly the back of my car for donation and to take into my region office) and reorganizing the mudroom. The mudroom is actually exciting as I was able to get rid of some stuff, move some stuff out of our kitchen into the mudroom, move some things from the mudroom to the basement…. It all makes so much more sense now.

As long as I don’t look at the basement. But that’s a job for next weekend.

The only time I spent in my quilting room was about an hour doing my pre-cutting for eventual cutting of the Storm at Sea blocks on my Accuquilt. I’d hoped to get all the lights pre-cut today but didn’t quite make it before my arthritic foot gave out on me (with all the mudroom work I was already pushing it). I did enough, however, to be able to do the math to realize I didn’t have enough light batik fabrics. I just placed an order with Hancocks of Paducah for another 3 yards or so (in half-yard increments as it’s “scrappy”) of lights.

Feels like this quilt is going to be humungous.

One ABQ and One Start

November 29, 2020

This one’s done, “All But Quilting” (or ABQ). Finally! Five years in the works! I haven’t decided how to quilt it yet. I did a little Pinterest research on quilt designs for quilts with embroidery in them and most seemed to go for an overall design of some sort that would help hold the embroidery in place. I don’t want to do much as I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it (it’s just a goofy Halloween wallhanging after all) and the quilting needs to not distract from the embroidery, which is what I took five freakin’ years to finish.

Anyway….Any suggestions? Corner-to-corner diagonals for a diamond grid? Meander? What color thread? I’m pondering, so ponder with me!

And so, on to a new start. I had a bit of a reprieve on the wedding quilt I had designed for my niece out in California. Their wedding was scheduled last April. Due to the pandemic, they ended up getting married on the beach with just parents and a couple of very close friends, and none of us right-coast family flew out. At that point, they said they’d do a reception in August, so I put aside what I’d designed while I dealt with all sorts of other pandemic-stress, and returned to it for a few days to get ready for an August finish date.

Then August got cancelled. So it got put aside again, but this time with no definite deadline.

Now they’re talking about trying again next April. At this point, I’ve decided not to worry about a date so much (‘cause I’m skeptical we’ll be traveling yet in April 2021) but I’d love to get it done and off my mind.

I’m doing a traditional Storm at Sea using the Accuquilt block die, which finishes to 9”. Since I’m making a King-sized quilt, roughly, this puppy has 120 blocks involved.

I’m doing it in beachy colors—blues and “sand”—and all in batiks.

I’d collected fabrics over a period of months for this but it had all gotten mixed in with my stash at some point, so I had to go digging again. That actually helped me as I realized how much of my original collecting had veered towards same-same, so I was able to mix it up with some other stuff that’s been in my stash for awhile. I felt like it had a little more spark when I was done.

I was a good little quilter and did a b&w version so I could check values. Some of my darks veer just a bit into the medium in the monochrome version but I’m not worried.

I love the look of batiks but the resulting quilt isn’t exactly “cozy.” They never really soften up in the way the way woven cottons do. At least I think batiks are more durable, and as it’s going to live with young adults with dogs and a still-transient lifestyle, durable is a necessity.

I sat down and did the math of how many pieces I’d need to cut—subcuts and final cuts included. (Subcutting, for those of you who don’t have an Accuquilt, is when you cut a piece of fabric to a size just slightly larger than the die itself. It’s not absolutely necessary but for something like this it’s helping me stay organized.)

This took me a little while as I’m doing it scrappy, so I had to figure out roughly how many pieces of which fabric I needed. Then I got to the end of a bunch of calculations and added “and whatever else I end up cutting.” If I cut too many, I’ll throw in a pillowcase or two.

I subcut a handful of fabrics so I could run a set through the die to make sure I’d thought it through correctly. This is how it looks when it’s laid out on the die.

And this is the final (pre-sewn) version.

(Boy, that light looks super-light in this photo. It’s really much more sand colored.)

Pretty nifty. I’m digging this Accuquilt thing. If I’d put my mind to it, I probably could’ve had most of the quilt cut out in a couple of hours.

I didn’t sew this test together as I want more variety of fabrics in each block, but I was able to see the basic layout and make sure I’d done my figuring correctly. Once I have more fabrics cut, I’ll take another pause and sew together a few test blocks.

I’m so excited. I’ve been wanting to do a Storm at Sea for so stinkin’ long!

Friday Sabbath

November 13, 2020

It’s been awhile. I’m being pretty forgiving of myself these days. Long weeks of Zoom meetings day and night has me good for little else than housekeeping and reading by the weekend. I haven’t been doing much in my sewing room or anything.

However, I have lots of unused vacation days, (thanks, lockdown), so I’m taking every Friday in November and December off. Instead of just thinking of them as a “day off,” or a “vacation day,” I’m very intentionally calling them Sabbath days. This simply makes me much more intentional about thinking through what would be renewing and restoring rather than just what I can do with free time. It comes out to a lot of the same activities, it’s just a little different mindset going into them.

One piece of my plan was to go for a long walk with the Aug-dog. I wanted to take him to a place up on the shores of Lake Ontario that’s a nature preserve and I recalled some really nice paths through it from a family hike we’d taken a number of years ago.

Unfortunately, it’s not really obvious which trail is which and they don’t all lead off a common trailhead—not even close. They’re spaced over about a 6-7 mile area. Ultimately, Auggie and I ended up driving around for a good 45 minutes total between finding trailheads, realizing it wasn’t the one I wanted, finding another one that looked good and heading off only to find out that it was a very short, loopy trail through brush and trees with only the slightest glimpse of the lake far off over a lot of reeds. Not particularly interesting. And I’m trying to stay ahead of the rain that I can see gathering on the horizon so I don’t feel like I’ve got a whole lot of time to mess around.

I finally took Auggie back to one that was a more populated and well-kept trail that would at least take us through some wetlands. 15 minutes into the walk, I see a hunter in full gear walking towards me. Ummm… “Are there a lot of hunters back in here?” I asked him as he got close enough. “Well,” he said, flipping his shotgun into his arm and scratching his head, “I think I’m probably one of the last ones.” I look down at Auggie, with coloring remarkably like a deer, and my own jacket which, although fairly bright, is still green. Yeah, no. Not a chance I’m willing to take. Hadn’t ever given a thought to needing reflective gear since we were only going to be in public parks. We turned about face and hoofed it back to the parking lot.

I grew up in the country. I know about hunting season. We wouldn’t let the dogs out to run at certain times of year because of the risk. But hunters in a well-traveled park with walkers and dogs? Huh. I looked it up online when I got home. I don’t think it’s legal to be hunting there, but there sure were a few folks doing it openly and a bunch of walkers who didn’t seem surprised so they must know something I don’t know. Still, I won’t be going back there any time soon.

Fortunately, it was enough of a day for Auggie that he’s now conked out on his bed. Between the walking and all the great new smells (although he was none too keen on the bridge we had to walk over), he’s a sleepy boy now.

Mission accomplished.

(BTW, he rarely lays down in the backseat. He likes to sit up and lean his head against the door. Weird dog.)

I had originally planned to spend most of the afternoon in my sewing room but by the time we got back from our adventures all over the shores of Lake Ontario, it was later than I’d intended. I only ended up with a little over an hour. It was long enough to clean off the cutting table (ahem), remind myself where I was in the Halloween project that no, didn’t get done in time for Halloween again, and get one more block done, which completes the top row. I lost a couple of points on the “spooky” banner in the upper right, but overall I’m pleased with the way it’s turning out so far.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to remember what I intended to do with these. {{head scratches}}.

In other news, my daughter has just been quarantined. She lives about 3 hours north of us so this Mama Bear is worrying and not able to do anything about it. Someone in her office tested positive a few days ago so they quarantined a few people right off the bat, and a few others subsequently tested positive, but my daughter and her office-mate didn’t get sent home until yesterday afternoon. Then her office-mate tested positive this morning. My daughter went right in today and had herself tested as well, and so far so good. Still, she’s definitely quarantined through Thanksgiving which is deeply disappointing, and I hate thinking of her alone in her apartment that day. If she stays healthy, her quarantine lifts the day after Thanksgiving so she’ll probably come home that weekend and we’ll do something late with her. But we’re taking it day by day. While I’m praying she stays COVID-free, it’s hard to imagine that she’ll be able to be with everyone else in her office down.

Yikes.

Lookie what's coming together!

September 12, 2020

Can you believe it? This quilt has now officially been four years in the making. I got the first delivery in June of 2016. As I suspected when I started it back then, although I definitely hoped for better, it wasn’t going to get done by that first October.

After spending a significant amount of time today cleaning out my bedroom closet, relegating clothes I’m unlikely to need in this pandemic situation to the unused closet in my daughter’s room (I’m not doing much in person in the next several months so dress clothes are tops only), moving summer-colored clothes out and moving my cold-weather clothes in (although we’ll still have warm weather, I do a lot of layering so my fall wardrobe will do double-duty), and generally re-organizing and cleaning things up…I rewarded myself with some time in my sewing room.

It actually took me almost an hour to sort this BOTM out, put all the parts in order, and read through the piecing directions to make sure I understood everything. Then I tackled the first couple of blocks.

It’s very easy piecing, as you can tell. The tricky thing is that I’m cutting the pieces for each block individually and, as we always say, “random is hard.” It’s going to just keep getting harder, too, as I get into lower rows and am trying to make sure I don’t have the same fabric in any of the connecting pieces. So it’s pokey, but not difficult.

It is, however, fun to finally see how it all comes together.

I clearly got lazy partway through the embroidery. The first few blocks I’d carefully pressed and gotten the marks out as soon as I finished them and before putting them away in the project bin. Not so much everything after about block four. When I got done with what I wanted to sew today, I took out the next few blocks and hit them with a spray bottle of water to get rid of the water soluble pen. It may be too late for some of the darker marks at corners, but I have hopes. The water will also help with remaining embroidery hoop creases. Fortunately, I’m cutting them all down small enough that I’ll likely be cutting out all of the hoop marks.

So stay tuned…

And by the way, since one of y’all talked me into it, I did buy a couple of Angela Walters’ Creative Grids Machine Quilting Tools. I looked on her blog and she very helpfully listed which she used the most, so I only bought two of her go-to’s, “Slim” and “Elvira.”

I’m still uncertain I’m going to be able to manage these. I’ll keep you posted once I get to the point of experimenting with them.

Tomorrow is supposed to be mostly rain, so I’m predicting some more sewing time in my future!

More of "not a whole lot going on" and a question about scraps

August 22, 2020

It’s another weekend after a very long week, so motivation is at low ebb. I had to put in a couple of hours of work this morning (Saturday) for some things I didn’t get done during the week because next week…yay!…my husband and I are going on vacation. We leave tomorrow for a week. We’re staying in-state due to the virus and all sorts of travel restrictions/mandated quarantines and such, but it’ll be good to have a change of scene.

In terms of creative work, I did take about an hour last night to work on my newest embroidery project.

I decided I wanted something just a bit more challenging, and I’ve been wanting to do some crewel work again. I love Jacobean-flavor designs, so I bought this kit. It’s a small project so it’s just enough to be interesting without being overwhelming. The “challenge” piece is to help me perfect my stitching, really. there aren’t any new stitches for me in this. Just a more complex combination of them.

Also, after trying to do good French knots on my last project which was in a hand-held frame, I decided I really needed to figure out a way to have both hands available. So after reading some recommendations and such, I ordered this from Amazon.

It has three different hoops you can use with it, plus I ordered the clamp accessory you can get to use other frames. It’s nice and sturdy with several adjustable points.

The trick is knowing how to position the darn thing.

I used it for the first time last night and kept getting myself into all sorts of awkward positions as I was working my way around the design. Like I was playing Twister or something.

It wasn’t until I’d finally decided I was too tired to do anymore last night and was putting things away that I realized an entirely different way I could’ve positioned myself with it and probably would’ve had far greater success. Oh well, that’ll wait until after vacation.

I’d actually taken my first stitch in it last weekend, but with just that one stitch I managed to get myself a pretty serious tangle in the back. I was WAY too tired last weekend to have even been pretending, so I set it aside, tangle and all.

So… all that’s to explain why I only got this much actually embroidered last night.

Watch me burning up the track.

It took several minutes to get that tangle taken care of, several minutes of futzing with the new frame to figure out how I was going to sit, and then away I went. Watch my dust. (It was very slow going.)

I’d planned on making myself some more masks today as I’m not sure I actually have enough cloth ones to get me through a week away. However, I discovered I am well and truly out of elastic and don’t like any of the other methods. So I’ll have to use the disposable paper ones once I’m out of my cloth ones. I already have elastic on order so, by the time I get home next week, I can make myself a few more. I just thought I remembered having a couple of mask’s worth left. Nada.

Instead, I decided maybe I’d cut some more scraps into usable sizes. Well, motivation left me on that one too, so here I am writing a blog post instead. But I have been doing some blog-surfing to decide what scrap sizes I want to cut routinely. I’ve been doing 2 1/2” strips for a long time—whenever I cut fabric for a quilt, if I had less than a half-yard left, I’d slice it into 10”, 5”, or 2 1/2” strips/squares. Now I have a whole lot of “real” scraps from making masks—fat quarters with big holes in them. I’ve been doing 2 1/2” squares, and a few tumblers with my tumbler die when the piece is a little bigger. But I really want to get myself into a system.

In my growing AccuQuilt collection, I have a 5” die, a 2 1/2” square die, and a 2 1/2” strip die. Those are easy sizes to cut, and I do still remember how to use a ruler, LOL.

ScrapTherapy uses 2”, 3 1/2”, and 5”.

Bonnie Hunter does strips in 1 1/2”, 2”, 2 1/2”, 3”, and 3 1/2”, then cuts those down when she needs squares or rectangles. (She seems to vary from these sizes but those are her standards.)

In my current scrap stash, I have 2 1/2” strips, some 2 1/2” squares, 5” squares, 10” squares, and some small number of 1 1/2” strips.

If you’re someone who routinely cuts scraps into usable sizes, what sizes have you found most helpful to have in a stash? I don’t want to get overly complicated, but I would like to get in habits so I need to be more systematic.

Help?

Weekend Check-in

July 26, 2020

I didn’t realize that I hadn’t posted once I finished the Halloween embroidery. Yes, this project is now finally on to the next step—piecing! I really need to get on to that. Halloween is right around the corner.

If I recall, most of the fabric is in 2 1/2” strips—it’s all in the project bin but I haven’t taken it out and looked at anything other than the embroidery for awhile. I should probably target that project for next weekend. It would be nice to have the Halloween project actually done in time for Halloween…five years later….

I’ve been more in the mood for embroidery lately than for quilting. I think that’s because I haven’t been sleeping well lately so I’ve been pretty fried after work every day. As long as I’m doing embroidery, I don’t feel quite as guilty binge-watching guilty-pleasure-TV. “Look, I know I’m on the third episode in a row of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, but look at how much stitching I’ve done!”

The night I finished the Halloween embroidery, I immediately started searching for new embroidery designs in some of my favorite places. You may recall my new little niece? She’s four months old now and I’ve still not gotten to cuddle her. Blame my auntie-withdrawals but I ended up buying several designs I want to work up for her nursery as Christmas gifts. They’re all from BumpkinHill Designs. They’re stinkin’ adorbs. Before I started in on those, though, I wanted to do more of a practice piece that would be just for me.

The design is another BumpkinHill one. We all know how I feel about pudgy birds. And tea. Plus I’d get to use all sorts of pretty colors (no more limited color palette for years on end!) and a slightly wider variety of stitches. I’m using some embroidery fabric and some lightweight stabilizer I had in my stash. I’ve lost the AC plug for my lightbox (no idea) so I had to use the old window-and-painter’s-tape trick for the transfer. My lines probably aren’t as true to the pattern as they should be.

It’s a fun design to work. However, I’m not keen on how my fabric and stabilizer are behaving. It’s a little too lightweight to hold up to the stitching. The design calls for three strands, which I’ve used in a lot of places, but I switched to two strands for a few elements because the fabric just wasn’t behaving. And the French knots? Puh-lease. They’re either pulling through the back or I overcompensate by making them too big. I’ve ripped out multiple FKs and finally decided to wait until I have everything else done, then tackle them again (perhaps after a glass of wine). I’ve done FKs before with success—but these are killing me. I’m definitely checking out other fabric and stabilizer options for when I do my niece’s project for realsies.

As an example of how focused I am on embroidery these days, I’ve made a few new book purchases.

I love the A-Z books—they have excellent diagrams. I already owned another of their embroidery books—on motifs. Tatiana Popova is a talented designer of crewel embroidery designs in a style I adore; I’m working my way up to doing something of hers, or one of the ones I’ve been drooling over on Mary Corbett’s blog.

And just because I’m a gadget girl, here’s a review for you. As I dove back into my embroidery for the first time in years, I also began to hanker after a neater-looking floss holder. I use Artbins and have a shelf that contains all my supplies, but the DMC floss (and floss like it) container just had skeins tossed in it, organized by color, but I had to dig through everything to see what I had. I prefer my floss to be on bobbins when I’m using it—much less likely to end up in a tangled mess. So I ordered a bag of bobbins from Amazon and ended up choosing one that came with a doo-hickey for winding bobbins.

Once I managed to get it hooked on to the side of my Artbin divider securely, it actually worked like a charm. I take the paper off the floss skein and put the resulting “loop” over my right arm so I can quickly unwind it with a few flourishes of my arm (very graceful and dancer-esque, I assure you); then I use my left hand to hold the tension while my right hand then starts winding the little doo-hickey. It would go very quickly except I don’t have a fine-point permanent marker so I have to use my label-maker to label the DMC color number on the bobbin, which takes extra time as I have to cut the tape down to size. (You can see a labeled bobbin in the lower right.)

I really wasn’t in the mood for any of the sewing projects I have in my head that I need to work on, so I ended up standing and winding bobbins for about a half hour. There was something strangely satisfying about it.

Maybe this week I’ll sleep better and be more in the mood for quilting. Not sure what’s blocking me, but it’s definitely not felt like my jam the last couple of weeks.

I really should plan these things better...

May 6, 2020

…in that I really shouldn’t try to sew when I’m this overtired.

After another evening set of conference calls last night, I’m once again giving myself the morning as I have…yep…more calls this evening. So after breakfast and a lingering time with my coffee, I felt like I was up to sewing together the blocks from yesterday.

Somehow I managed to press seams in the wrong direction three different times.

And then I realized in my attempt to “randomize” the directional print cornerstone block, I’d flipped one set and had two cornerstones facing the same direction, so only 3 compass points, so to speak, were represented. I debated leaving it (reminding myself “baby quilt, baby quilt, baby quilt”) but then decided that was the sort of thing that would forever-after drive me nuts and could quite possibly have the same effect on the poor baby’s parents. Seam ripper put into use, re-sew, press seams again.

The blocks are done, but I’m stopping myself before I do more damage. I can piece the top together tomorrow…when I’ll be even more tired. Won’t that be fun?

In other news…

Who wants to make a swap for a barely used 2 1/2” square AccuQuilt Go die? Yep, I realized after I’d already opened and used my new one once that there was one in the GoCube 8” pack. So, because it’s opened and used, I can’t return it. I’ll swap it for a die of equal value with anyone! Email me if you’re interested.

I also realized I already had a 5” die before opening the additional 5” die I’d bought, so that one I can return. Debating which die I want to put it towards. At least those two dies are different—the one that comes with the GoCube is a single die, whereas the one I bought does two squares at once. I debated keeping it as it would be a lot faster to cut scraps, but I have the feeling I’d rather have more different dies now. Still debating that one because, honestly, returning dies to AccuQuilt is kind of a pain (especially in these pandemic days when making a post office trip is like preparing for a lunar moon landing), and there’s a restocking fee. Now I’m talking myself back in to just keeping it.

I need more coffee.

Making progress

May 5, 2020

What do you do when your preferred method of basting is basting spray and you realize you’re fresh out, so you need to make an online order and then wait for it to come before you can finish the baby quilt you’ve started?

Why, start another baby quilt, of course.

I believe I mentioned in the last blog post that I’d rediscovered a set of fat quarters in the search for mask materials and decided to make a little playmat for my baby niece, in addition to the quilt I’ve already got in progress for her. “Playmat” just means I didn’t have enough fabric to make an officially-sized baby quilt, so it’s just a small quilt for a baby. A newborn-sized baby quilt, perfect for a little girl who’s just about 6 weeks old now. Playmat just sounds slightly more intentional.

I refreshed my memory as to how to scan fabric into EQ8, chose two blocks from my GoCube AccuQuilt block set for which I had all the dies, and played around with arrangements until I hit on one I really liked. This was the original.

I then looked at the fabric requirements and realized, nope, didn’t have quite enough for that size, especially as I was working with fat quarters, not quarter yards (WOF), which makes figuring the cutting amounts a little different.

So it got a little less square and a little smaller overall. More playmatty. 16 blocks down to 12. I had just enough fabric to make that work.

Which means you know what probably happened next.

I have conference calls every night this week, multiples in a row, so I’ve been taking mornings for myself to balance. I’m finding it relaxing to spend time in my sewing room before work.

Sunday, I found the white fabric in my stash to supplement the fat quarters for the design, and I cut some of the pieces for the Uneven Nine-Patches. Monday morning, I finished the cutting of the Uneven Nine-patches that I’d started on Sunday, and I got the blocks sewn together.

I’m not entirely sure what happened with the tone-on-tone white rectangles.

If you look closely you’ll see some of the rectangles had to get eased in a little bit. I cut them all with the AccuQuilt die. I am pretty sure I double-checked to make sure I was putting the grain in the right direction, but it’s possible something got off. However, I will say it’s a fabric that’s been in my stash for a long while, I have no idea where or when I got it (definitely quilt-quality, though), but it looks like it’s a lower thread count than the other fabrics. Might that have been the issue?

Nevertheless, I persisted.

This morning I was fairly overtired from last night’s Zoom calls, but I was looking forward to getting back to my sewing room. Grabbing my AccuQuilt dies and the posie fabric, I started cutting the 2 1/2” squares.

Or I thought I was.

Turns out, I had grabbed the wrong die. I had looked at it briefly and thought, Yep, squares. Turns out, Nope. Not squares. Two rectangles instead, and narrower than 2 1/2”. By the time I realized my mistake, I had already cut enough of the fat quarter into the wrong size that I couldn’t regroup and fix my mistake. Dang. The posie fabric had been my fave in the design.

Back to EQ8 and my stash. Revision 3 of the design…

The posies are gone replaced by a Valentine’s Day fabric I’ve had in my stash for years (scanned into EQ8 to make sure it would work okay). It had come in a scrap box from…was it Fat Quarter Shop that was doing those for awhile? Are they still doing it?

In any case, it was the only fabric I had that was at all similar in feel to the rest of the fabrics. I don’t love it the way I really loved the posies, but when I cut enough squares so I could selectively use the ones that didn’t have “February 14th” emblazoned in them, and only had all the other lovey-dovey wording, it works. My SIL will probably adore the fact that it has XXOO and “sweetie” and such in it. Who knows? Since she’ll never have seen my original design, she won’t know this is slightly less-than.

And the fabric is now no longer in my stash. Always feels good to use something that’s been languishing, and I’m sure the fabric will have far more fun playing with a baby than sitting on my shelf.

So with that quick switcheroo, I completed cutting the pieces and have started sewing the blocks.

The AccuQuilt really shines when it comes to triangles. Wow, were those flying geese pieces easy to sew together. Loved it.

I will have to pay attention to the directionality of the words in the corner blocks now. I’ll either have to make sure I have them all going in the same direction, or I’ll have to switch them every-which-way so it looks random. Only having a couple going the wrong way will just be annoying.

But that’s a problem for tomorrow morning, when I’m progressively even more tired from evening conference calls. That’s an exciting thought.

Time to start getting ready for my work-day. Happy Zooming to all of you!

Saturday Doings

May 2, 2020

This isn’t quite as exciting for y’all as you didn’t see the “Before.”

This morning, I took all the fat quarters out of this drawer and took them down onto the kitchen table for my family to choose which fabrics they wanted me to use for their masks. When I brought the stash back up to my office, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to restore order in what had become an extremely dysfunctional drawer.

Over the last couple of years, as I’ve been getting Sew Sampler boxes and other things but not having time to do much with them, this upper drawer got stacked. The few times I rummaged through the fat quarters themselves they’d gotten every-which-way and I’d not been good about putting them back systematically.

Now they’re separated and sorted by color again within their categories, as they used to be: batiks in the far left; regular cotton fabrics on the far right; and a few collections that I wanted to keep together plus neutral batiks in the center. Much easier to use. I also sorta-kinda took a pot-shot at cleaning up the drawer below it so at least I can open and close it now. But the only help for that drawer is to actually use a bunch of the scrap strips, jelly rolls, and charm packs that are crammed in that one. Now that I’m back to sewing, I have hope!

In other news, I’ve spent most of the week in EQ8 finding or drawing the blocks from the Eleanor Burns GoCube Sampler book that came with my AccuQuilt. The blocks were super-easy to draw as they’re all based on traditional grids. I just had to move lines around from one block to the next. Now I’m just doing the tedious work of importing them into my Favorites library so I have them ready for easy and fast quilt design. I’m hoping to have all of that done by the end of the weekend.

Meanwhile, I scanned into my fabric library one of the sets of fat quarters I’d rediscovered, and played with designing a small baby quilt/playmat with them, using some of the Eleanor Burns sampler blocks I already had in there. I went for something that would be really fast to put together, and it turned out kind of adorable. I’m ready to rock n’ roll on this cutie!

Off-topic, I finally bit the bullet and did my own in-home hair dye job this weekend. I have vivid memories of my Mom doing her own hair when I was young. I hated the smell, and I could see what a mess it was for her to do, so I’ve always avoided it like the plague. When I started having my own hair colored, I was stylist-done all the way. Things have been getting desperate, though, so I “put on my big girl panties” as a friend of mine often says, ordered my color kit online, and tackled it this morning. It was relatively easy and turned out great and I can’t recommend Madison Reed hair color enough! My hair looks fantastic. The gray is completely gone, and my hair is so shiny! What’s best? NO SMELL. And no, I don’t get a kick-back. Just always happy to pass along a recommendation when I have one.

*The family’s choices of mask material.*

And yes, I spent more time on masks today. This time, though, I tried a pattern that includes a pocket for adding filters. And then I looked at another pattern—the proportions are different on each. I’ve finally ended up doing a pattern mash-up using a modified pocket instruction from one with the rest of the design from the other. But now…I’m almost out of elastic. I have enough to do one more tomorrow (I ran out of steam today), and then it’s pause for a bit.

And yes, I know I have options, but the 1/4” elastic ear loop is my preferred style and my family prefers them as well. And we’re not in a rush.

So I’ve got a handful done but a boatload more I need to get done just to cover the immediate family and my mother-in-law. I guess I’ll just have to stay inside until we get enough elastic to get everyone else’s done, and then mine!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

April 25, 2020

I was able to grab about an hour and a half in my sewing room today, which was enough time to finish piecing the top of the baby quilt I had set aside in order to play with the AccuQuilt. No sense in making myself new projects while I still had the baby quilt guilting me from its place on the design wall.

If I’m in the mood tomorrow, I’ll do the backing and basting on it. I hate hate hate doing on backing, although for a baby quilt it’s not as bad. (I hate dealing with large pieces of fabric.) I hate only slightly less the basting process. So I’ll have to stay on top of myself to keep myself from procrastinating at this stage.

And then it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve machine quilted so I have to do a couple of practice sandwiches first just to make sure I’m back in the grove. I think I’ll just be doing a mid-sized meander on this puppy. We’ll see what I get in the mood for once I’m working on the practice pieces.

I used this as an opportunity to test out some pins I’d gotten in a couple of Sew Sampler boxes recently. One was a small collection of double pins for doing seams. I’ve never used those before, so I figured, what the hey. The only seams I was trying to match were with the cornerstones.

I’ve decided I hate double pins.

I went back to the way my mommy taught me to pin seams.

Then I tried another set of pins, this time with cute unicorn tops.

There were only 10 in the package, and they’re somewhat thicker than the pins I typically use.

They’re cute, but not particularly functional in my sewing life. I could see, someday, if I ever make any of those adorable pincushions I keep seeing patterns for, sticking these in it and gifting them. So I’m not getting rid of them, just not using them much.

Anyone have cute ideas for what to do with them in the meanwhile?

Lock-down Day 35 (and I finally spent significant time in my sewing room)

April 18, 2020

Yep, it’s been over a month of almost total self-isolation (with a couple of weeks of quarantine thrown in there to boot). Finally, my energy level and my mental bandwidth were at the point this weekend that I could get into my sewing room for a couple of hours at a stretch!

One of my daughter’s two cats, Copernicus, made herself right at home immediately. The other cat, Nikola, is hanging out on the top step of the basement stairs hissing and growling. Since he’s a black cat and the lights are off in the basement, ther… — One of my daughter’s two cats, Copernicus, made herself right at home immediately. The other cat, Nikola, is hanging out on the top step of the basement stairs hissing and growling. Since he’s a black cat and the lights are off in the basement, there’s a bit of a Halloween atmosphere in that area of the house.

My daughter came home last night to bunk in with us for the forseeable future. We talked back and forth for a couple of weeks about the risks but it came down to the fact that, if any of us is going to get sick, she’d rather be here with us than a three hour drive away. It’s nice having both my kids under my roof during these uncertain times. Plus they both know how to cook now.

With my husband still being sick, and my son spending most of his time in his room gaming with his buddies, it’s nice for me to have someone to talk to in the house again. And she was suitably excited for me about the AccuQuilt.

Once I get my delivery of 1/4” elastic and some interfacing, she and I will be making face masks for the immediate family. I thought about making some for donation but until we know we’re a virus-free house, I don’t think that’s a great idea. I know I can wash them, but there are so many steps between getting them washed and having them wrapped for delivery in a sterilized environment (especially with four furries now in the house), I just think it’s too risky.

Anyway, back to the sewing report!

You may recall awhile back that I’d cut a bunch of fabric for a baby quilt for my newest little baby niece. At the time she hadn’t been born yet, but she’s with us now! She was born the same weekend we all went into lock-down so we haven’t been able to give her hugs or kisses yet—just a wave from 10’ away when I dropped off some diapers in their driveway, and a bunch of photos. Not knowing exactly when I’ll be able to get this to her, I decided this weekend to at least get the top pieced. Today I got the blocks made. Each block took me—literally—5 minutes to piece together. So stinkin’ easy. I didn’t even bother with pins.

When I first started laying the pieces up on my design wall I was all sorts of sweating the randomization and the directionality of most of the prints until I remembered, “Sashing! There’s sashing!” So that takes a lot of the pressure off fabric placement, although I managed to avoid having two next to each other anyway.

As for the directionality? I decided to lean into it and intentionally put the prints going every which way. There’s no “top” or “bottom” to this quilt.

The photo shows the completed blocks laid out and the sashing strips just laid into the rows (not sewn yet). When I squared up the blocks I lost a little bit so I had to trim up the sashing strips to match. Once I get those sewn in I’ll take new measurements for the horizontal strips because there are cornerstones which will also likely need to get trimmed down.

I’m hoping to get the top fully pieced tomorrow, and then work on finishing up next weekend. Felt really good to dig into some serious sewing time!

#CVSI Coronavirus Sew-in and some reading

March 15, 2020

Too soon?

As you may recall from last week’s post, I had expected to be busy with work events all day yesterday and most of today. Then we had our first couple of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Rochester.

Bam. Everything cancelled.

To be honest, I’m more concerned about the repercussions if I pick it up and then spread it than I am the consequences of getting sick myself. But after the last few months in which I was sick for a significant period of time in December, then again in January, and then again in February, catching every single bug that made its way through, I am feeling a bit fatalistic about the fact that I likely will catch this. My theory is that working from home for nearly 20 years lowered my immune system and now that I’ve been “released to the wild” with this new job, around boatloads of people every week, my body doesn’t know what to do with itself. And, frankly, I’m just sick of being sick. So I’m doin’ it hermit-style.

I also have one staffperson with a compromised immune system and a second one with 5 kids under 10 at home so, after the school system in the suburb in which our offices are located announced their closure for the next two weeks, I told the staff to work from home for the foreseeable future. They’re both very grateful. I’ll probably still go into my office on occasion because heck, I’ll be the only one there, and I’m taking advantage of all this “found time” to work on finally getting my filing system into shape.

In any case, yesterday (Saturday) I mostly read. I was oddly sleepy all day. I finished The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan. It’s a cute enough chick-lit book. Although it’s partially a romance, it focuses more on the main character herself, her relationship with her son and other children who come into her care, and her friendships. The romance almost an afterthought, which I prefer. Good characters, fun writing. It’s a sequel of sorts to The Bookshop on the Corner, also cute. Both are good reads for when you just want to relax, enjoy, and not be challenged.

I also read most of this morning. I’m still reading Children of Virtue and Vengeance, by Tomi Adeyemi. I actually hope to finish that this afternoon. So good! As soon as I finish that, the next book on my library stack is Amazing Grace: William Wilbeforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, by Eric Metaxas. This one has been on my to-read list ever since I read Metaxas’ Martin Luther last summer. He writes a great biography. I actually wasn’t all that interested in Luther until someone recommended the book to me so I thought, “What the heck.” And I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. I’m also about halfway through The Bat by Jo Nesbo. This is a highly reviewed mystery series with a Norwegian main character, detective Harry Hole (pronounced Ho-lay). Since I’m really into wonderfully noir TV mystery series from various Scandinavian countries available on Acorn TV, I thought it would be fun. I’m having a little difficulty really getting into it, though. Fortunately I got it through my local library (using Libby) onto my Kindle so I don’t have any money invested in it. We’ll see how it ends. If it ends well, I’ll probably read the second book in the series to see if character development brings it up a notch or two.

And did I sew? Yes, I got about an hour in this afternoon. I’m not as sleepy-tired as I was yesterday so I thought I’d be able to get a solid session in.

I got month 4 of the way-overdue BOTM done.

I know—as a block on its own it’s fairly wild. But I think I can imagine how some pieces may come together in the end. I like doing a BOTM this way rather than other ones I’ve done where you do four of one block one month, 2 of another one another month…this has me intrigued. “How is that weird-butt piece going to fit in?”

I then got started on month 5. But my husband came in to talk to me partway through and after I finished piecing the second step, I realized I’d done it backwards. And immediately it stopped being fun for me. So, abiding by my new rules, I put it down and walked away.

After all, I’m going to be home all week now…

A little bit on a Saturday

March 7, 2020

So the nice thing about having a clean sewing room is that I can actually sew for a few minutes when I get them. Today I did my usual morning Saturday things but by the time I got home from the grocery store and had lunch, I was ready for a nap. No idea why—I feel like I’d slept fine last night and I didn’t overly tax myself this morning. However, since I didn’t have any pressing reason not to take a nap and since tomorrow will be a full work day again (visiting a church in the morning and doing a Q&A with them during adult ed time, then attending a church dinner with a different church tomorrow night), I succumbed. I didn’t nap for too long but it was somewhat helpful.

However, it did cut into my planned sewing time.

That being said, after doing the easy Tetris puzzle work of the die-cut blocks of the month yesterday, I felt ready to tackle something very, very complicated: a baby quilt that’s all big squares and rectangles, LOL. The baby is due next weekend, if she’s on time—which her mother is anxiously hoping she will be at this point. I’m doubting I’ll get this done by the time the little one comes but it’s a quick-to-piece pattern so it shouldn’t take all that long.

I got about half the cutting done today. Isn’t the sloth on the left just adorbs? That’s the fabric that grabbed me—I’m using it as the backing too. I just went with the rest of the prints from the line and added in a couple of tone-on-tones for the sashing. No real thought went into this. In fact, I think I’m even using the pattern that was hanging as a store sample above the line, although I’ll give myself a little bit of credit as the sample was done in other fabrics. See? I can think for myself, at least a little bit. Still, it’ll be stinking cute and I don’t feel the need to have a ton of pride in the “Lookie what I can do” department when it’s done.

After all, as I said a couple of posts ago, my main goal is to just have fun these days. And this is fun, mostly because I keep grinning at the ridiculously cute fabric.

Okay, time to figure out what I’m making for dinner—probably one of my “open the package and toss it in the oven to cook” pre-fab dinners from Wegmans—I’m still a little sleepy. Besides, that way I can get to the sit-with-a-novel-and-tea-while-it-cooks part of dinner preparation a little faster.

Not sure what my schedule is this week but I’m going to have to grab some time off at some point as I’m booked all next weekend. So if all goes well, stay tuned for Random Sewing Reports in the middle of the week!

Progress on the "Hunting and Gathering" front

August 4, 2019

So I spent most of this week moving our offices to a new location. In 90 degree, 90% humidity weather. Although we had some volunteers, I was still lifting and hauling furniture and cartons and such for a few days straight as I packed, we moved, and I unpacked. Needless to say, when the weekend got here, I was toast. It was time for a relaxed, straight-up weekend off. I even cut errands to the bare minimum.

(Top pic: old office mid-packing. Middle pic: new office after moving in. Bottom pic: panorama shot of new office with everything put away. Eventually the side with the round table with be set up for teleconferencing and the side with two chairs in the upper right corner will be set up as more of a living-room feel for smaller meetings. My actual workspace is all in the far right—same amount of space as I took up in the last office, despite this being four times the size! The administrative office is separate, and smaller, but still bigger than we used to have, and we have a small reception area leading to both offices. It’s a great space and I look forward to when we’re finally able to afford to fully furnish and decorate it! One step at a time….)

I did manage to get in some much-needed friend-time. I’ve recently reconnected with a high-school friend, who had married another high-school friend right out of high school. I actually knew her now-husband better than her in high school because he and I were in several classes together starting in elementary school; I saw her less often. Now that we’ve reconnected, though, I said to her, “I’m wondering why I wasn’t closer friends with you in high school!” It wasn’t that we weren’t friends—we were more along the lines of friendly acquaintances. When we were together, we got along great. We just weren’t together all that much. We’re fixing that now. She and her husband raise Siberian Huskies. They have 18 adult dogs and do their own breeding, very carefully, and only once a year or less. They have very strict rules about only having one female have two litters total, if that, because it takes such a toll on the mom’s body. They’re also very careful about who gets one of their puppies. They’re basically dog-lovers first who then offer some very loved, cared for puppies into the world on occasion.

They currently have a litter of pups who are about 3 or 4 weeks old and in need of socializing. And I was in need of puppy breath. So my BFF/BQF Katie (another one of our circle who all grew up together), Katie’s daughter and I went out to visit the puppies on Saturday.

I discovered that Husky puppies aren’t quite as face-oriented as Springer Spaniels (the puppies I grew up with) or Golden Retrievers (the puppies I’ve had as an adult), so getting my fill of puppy breath was a little more work with these little guys. But going nose-to-nose with them garnished enough nose nibbles and face licks that I got enough to get by. They were absolute sweeties. And hearing their carers/owners talk about their pack was a joy—they clearly love them so much.

Boy, did I need that puppy breath.

But this is not, all signs pointing to the contrary, a dog blog.

Because I was toast, I just couldn’t get my mojo up for any actual sewing again this weekend. Instead, I managed to push some UFOs forward in a non-sewing way.

I dropped the two jelly-roll race quilts off at an LQS for machine quilting. It felt good to get them off the hanger in my sewing room.

I looked at the LQS for fabrics for backings for the other two pieced tops I have ready to go, but didn’t find anything that appealed and I was running late for meeting my friends for Puppy-a-looza so I bagged it for then. As I was driving home, my face covered in puppy licks, I realized it was too late to stop at any other quilt shops that afternoon. Given how little time I have to actually go shopping, I decided I was going to have to risk doing it online.

This afternoon I did a little looking around at various online fabric places and finally found what I think will work at The Fat Quarter Shop. It’s tricky trying to match colors in a physical quilt with what you’re seeing on your computer screen, but since I wasn’t going for an exact match and rather a “coordinate with” type of fabric, I think it should work. Plus, it’s only the back.

I’m not 100% convinced I have binding fabric for either of these two quilts but I decided that’s a problem for another day. I didn’t have enough puppy breath built up in my system to try to take care of that today too.

Trying to re-enter the quilting world with limited success

December 8, 2018

So my last post was entitled “Survived my first week” and then you didn’t hear from me again. I guess that’s about as descriptive as I can be about life in my new job. Still loving it, but it has been busy! I took yesterday (Friday) as a comp day for the fact I’d worked most of the last weekend and realized it was probably the third full day off I’d had since I started five weeks ago. I’m slowly learning how to control my schedule better. Yesterday I spent running some errands and doing some Christmas decorating.

I decided to bag doing housework and such today (which has also fallen behind a bit) and focus on reading Michelle Obama’s Becoming (loving it!), and getting back into my sewing room.

Unfortunately, the sewing room part has been a bit frustrating. I have been sadly reminded of why I gave up doing blocks of the month. The first one I tried many years ago kept sending me incorrrect sizes of fabric to cut my pieces out of, and I ended up giving up and cancelling about four months into it. This time around, last year I bit on the Cotton Cuts puzzle mystery quilt. I loved the fabrics and the idea of everything being die-cut so all I had to do was assemble seemed tailor-made for my busy schedule while I was finishing my doctoral work.

However, I’ve had multiple go-arounds with Kim at Cotton Cuts trying to correct mistakes—I was sent the wrong size piece for month 6, then when she sent me the correction I received the same wrongly-sized pieces. We finally got that straightened out but, today when I went to finally assemble the quilt, I’ve discovered I was actually sent the wrong month 6 altogether. Each month we were instructed to label our completed pieces by some letter/number combination, which I did faithfully. The layout for the size I’m working on requires blocks labeled F. I looked over my stacks of blocks. “F? Where’s F? I have no F!”

I spent about 15 minutes going back through everything, laying them out in the order of the months I received (I did always keep the instructions each month, thank God, or I’d have been totally lost), and came to the conclusion that nope, I was never instructed to make blocks labeled F. Also fortunately, the last layout “clue” includes a list of which months we were supposed to make which blocks, so I could pinpoint the exact month that went awry—yep, the one I kept getting the wrong sized pieces for. Strangely, though, my instructions for month 6 are labeled for the correct size quilt I’m making, but the blocks are distinctly not what’s needed. Stranger and stranger.

I’ve sent yet another email to Kim at Cotton Cuts with photos of the two blocks I ended up with and instructions for month 6 to point out how messed up all this is, and then said that I had originally been thinking I’d join the new BOM mystery puzzle quilt that just opened this week but am now hesitant to do so because of these problems. It’s frustrating that something I was enjoying should have this kind of an end-story. Especially frustrating that I get so little time to sew and I was stymied at the get-go.

So I have it all laid out on my design wall with big gaps where block F is supposed to go. I can certainly start sewing together the pieces that form the borders and such so I’m ready to finish it when I get the corrected month, but at this point I’m already a little worried they’ll be out of the fabrics needed. Fingers crossed I won’t end up with a slew of orphan blocks all for want of month 6.

At the moment, I’m also not keen on the fabric they sent for the binding. I’m going to wait until I get everything assembled and then decide final steps. But that’s a small thing. I would just love to finally be able to have a finish under my belt, for the first time in months!

Meanwhile, I am happy to say that my desk got assembled and my office is finally put together!

The panoramic style makes it look a little bigger than it is, but it’s a comfortable space for me now. Note the space heater—the radiator under the windows is finicky and often needs help.

The quilt on the wall is one my mother made. I don’t know the origin story although it’s a sampler that smacks of a block of the month or class or something. But one of the blocks is a church and most of the rest are either crosses or biblically-related blocks (ie Jacob’s Ladder), and the office really needed some warmth and color in it, so it seemed fitting.

And no, I can’t put an area rug under the conference table because it’s strategically placed over a large old-fashioned metal outlet box that protrudes up from the middle of the floor. I do now (after this pic was taken) have a small quilted Christmas table-topper on the round wooden table at the side. Eventually more little bits and pieces may make their way into the office but for now I’m comfortable for working and have room for people to come visit and drink tea or coffee with me. And that’s happened a lot!

After 17 years of working from home, I have to confess that I’m enjoying having an office.

Now, back to my sewing table and figuring out what I might actually be able to accomplish today, that’s not under the control of external forces!

Letting Fabric Live

November 1, 2018

So I was all ready to “off” another jelly roll by whipping up a second jelly roll rug today. I even had in my head where it might go in my house. And, of course, since I’d already made one, this second one would go ever so much faster and turn out even better. At least in Sandy’s Make-Believe World it would, and that’s a happy place to live.

But I never got the chance to find out.

I started my sewing retreat day this morning by pulling a jelly roll out of my strip drawer that’s been in there at least eight years. Remember Moda’s Portobello Market from 3 Sisters? It was all the rage back then. I figured I’d had it so long and had never found a use for it that I might as well whip it up into a rug.

As I was pressing the strips (those darn wrinkles in the fold again!), though, I totally fell in love with the fabric all over again. I kept trying to picture it as a rug and thought, “I just can’t do that to these strips!” Too many of the gorgeous prints would totally disappear.

So after I got them all pressed, I pulled one of my many jelly roll pattern books off my shelf and flipped through it for awhile, and now this is happening.

I’m using another fabric that’s been in my stash for eons as the background. All in all, it feels good to be using up some fabrics, especially ones that have been haunting me for so freaking long.

Of course, this is going to take longer to finish than a rug would.

And, of course, I’m totally ignoring all the UFOs I’ve already got stacked up.

Oh well.

I think I’ll be making besties with a long-armer soon to knock out a bunch of those UFOs. It’ll be money well spent!

I do still plan on making another rug—but I think I’ll use a bunch of my scrap strips on it instead and focus on color designing rather than just using a packaged jelly roll. Might be more fun, even. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, Auggie had a couple of days at his new doggie day care this week (one only 5 minutes from my house), getting ready for when I’m back to work next week. The day care owner had told me that Tuesdays and Thursdays were her “puppy days” and Augs would probably find lots of friends to match his energy levels, so that’s what I’m shooting for. Once I’m at work, though, it’ll all depend on my schedule in any given week. He doesn’t need to be in every day—I’m mostly doing this to burn his energy so he’s not pestering Old Princess Doggie (who just turned 14 a couple of weeks ago) out of boredom. I can alternate days because it takes Auggie a full 24 hours to sleep off a day in day care, LOL. The owner texts pictures of the pups every afternoon. After several pictures of these two wrestling, I particularly enjoyed this one where Auggie (right) and his new buddy have clearly worn each other out. Yay!

Speaking of which, time to go pick my day care doggie up, bring him home, and let Princess Doggie spend 10 minutes sniffing him. Basically, Auggie being in day care is also bringing Spencer some in-home entertainment for her nose.

Look, Ma, I’m Sewing!

October 23, 2018

90% caught up on Cotton Cuts BOM! The one on top is the one I’m waiting for the missing pieces; I think it’ll take me 15 mins to finish once they arrive. On to the next project!

Woohoo Wednesday! (Something involving thread and fabric, finally!)

March 1, 2017

Too bad I didn't get this done in time for "Making It Monday" post, but maybe I'll have more progress to show next week.

I finally got my embroidery out again! Yes, I'm still plugging away at the Postcard Cuties Halloween Block of the Month embroidery kit that I should've had done by last Halloween. But there are more Halloweens where that one came from.

Month 4/Block 4 done.

I'd actually gotten it mostly done several (ahem--weeks? Months?) ago. I only had a few little bits to finish up, so I got it done on one lunch break yesterday. It's hung out in its hoop for awhile so it'll take some serious pressing to get it back into shape. But it's done!

Month 5 is going to take a little longer, however...