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?