…Although much of what I got done I hesitate to dub “creative” as I was just putting together a jigsaw puzzle in fabric.
To start with, I spent most of Saturday baking baguettes.
I’m still using the recipe and techniques from my Artisan Bread-Making course I bought years ago from Craftsy. These baguettes came from a pâte fermentée, or fermented dough. It a similar concept to sourdough but much less time-consuming. When you make dough, you take some of it out before you do the kneading and stick in the fridge, where it continues to rise slowly over time. You then use it within the next few days with more flour, yeast, salt, and water to make a new loaf. It gives it a little bit of richness of flavor.
Loved the flavor, still not getting the airiness I want. Gee, too bad, must keep practicing. (I strongly suspect in this case I’d left the dough in the fridge too long before using it—my week got busier than I thought it would be.)
I did get to use the brand new baguette pan I bought myself, now that I’m back into this whole breadmaking thing. What a crust it makes! Love it!
The process I follow involves four rounds of “stretch and fold” with 20 minute rests between, rather than the traditional kneading. After the fourth “stretch and fold,” you then let it for for it’s first rise for 60-90 minutes. During one of the 20 minutes, I cleaned a bathroom, and during another one, I cleaned the kitchen, but the last 20 minutes and then part of the long rise, I gifted myself some time reading. The book I’m on at the moment is Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram, by Isha Sesay, a CNN correspondent. I followed that story closely until it dropped out of the news (which it did more quickly in the US than in many other parts of the world), so I am glad to get a more in-depth look at what happened. I’m only about halfway through but I highly recommend it.
The sewing time I did get in on Saturday was spent making more masks. I had done five earlier in the week for a good friend of my son’s who is still working retail. He still sees her with some regularity so I figured making her masks was also protecting our family. I also got nine done for my daughter, and four for my mother-in-law. My husband already has a couple so, since he’s only in the office one day a week, he’s doing okay for now. I still need to make him a few more as well as my son and me, but after the assembly line of Saturday I didn’t want to face another mask for awhile.
Sunday, though—oh, Sunday! What joy Sunday brought!
I “attended” worship at one of our region churches that was celebrating a significant anniversary. They livestream to YouTube so I set myself up so the sanctuary was conveniently close to my sewing machine. Yes, I paid attention, sang along to the hymns, and stopped for the prayer times, but meanwhile I got all the blocks for Stratford done—woo! (It was a two-hour long service so I had some time.)
It felt good to be able to just knock out the rest of the blocks.
I have to admit, this fabric collection/colorway never really grew on me. I had chosen it specifically because it wasn’t my usual. I thought this would be a good way to see if I could push myself in new directions.
Not so much.
That being said, I do know a few family members who would probably love it so as I’m finishing it up I’m thinking through gifting possibilities.
Now…true confessions: I do actually have this much further along at this point, as I also made it a significant way into the process of assembling the top. However, as I was debating whether I had enough energy left to do the last few steps, I realized a design choice I was questioning turned out to be sewists error, and I’m not entirely sure at the moment how much I’ll have to rip out to be able to fix it, so I called it a day.
That being said, I’m telling the story out of chronological order.
I got the Stratford blocks finished right about at the same time as worship concluded, so my next project was to piece together top to Baby Quilt #2 so I could move it off my design wall to have room to assemble Stratford.
I only had about three or four fabrics that were at all close for border purposes, and this butterfly fabric worked the best of my options. I didn’t want to go to the expense or time of trying to order new border fabric and I’m really into using stash at the moment. I’ve had this butterfly fabric for quite some time—it came in some box or another—and it’s great to get it off my shelves. It does overwhelm the center, though—a bit too dark and heavy for the feel of the quilt.
In other words, I don’t love it. In fact, I kind of don’t love the whole quilt at this point as I had to make too many adjustments along the way and ended up with something significantly “less than” for me.
However, “baby quilt baby quilt baby quilt.” I intend this to get beat up, and I figure the less adorable it is, the more the parents are likely to use it in a variety of messy settings, like on picnics as a ground cloth for the baby, or as a playmat under her baby gym, and so forth.
I did get to play with another new AccuQuilt die. I realized the best width for the border was a 2 1/2” strip so I was able to cut everything I needed on one pass through—beauty! However, doing a 2 1/2” strip that’s width of fabric meant cutting the fabric on the wrong grain. It works fine for this usage but it definitely would’ve been better had I done shorter strips to get the grain in the right direction. I imagine I have to figure out a different way to fold it or something…anyone with tips? Guess I should watch the tutorial on using the die.
I wanted to get Baby Quilt #1 squared up and bound today but I’ve pretty much hit my sewing wall. I’ve got a little time before dinner so I think it’s back to the Tamarind Tree for me.
Hope you had a great weekend too! What are you working on?