Our second day of spring contains rain, all day rain. Nothing to do here but stay inside and sew. I realized this morning that I haven’t blogged in a few weeks. I have been busy though. The sewing room window-redo project was finished last Wednesday. I moved back in there and got to work on the Sparrow QAL. Although this is a six week long thing, I needed to get started on a bigger project, so I got all the blocks done in the first week and a half. Not being able to use my machine for a few weeks was rough, and I got back into it with lots of chain piecing. There are 24 sparrow blocks, 12 face left and 12 face right. Each one has 22 pieces, most of which have a folded corner technique, which creates a bonus HST. I have a bunch of 3 ½ ” HST’s that coordinate with this quilt top. I may have to use them on the back, or a border. For now though, these blocks are cleared away for the next round of custom quilts.

My client found the fabric line Nocturnal by Gingiber, and really liked it. Boxes of fabric started showing up here, I had it all laid out on my dining table to sort. There must be close to 50 yards of it, all so pretty and coordinating. I worked with her and picked out 6 different patterns and will be making 8 quilts over the next few months. There was a lot of math involved and I made a few spread sheets, but I am confident that there will be enough fabric to complete the job. I just hope that I don’t get sick of the fabric line. I still like like the Halloween and Christmas figs and Julie Paschkis lines, both of which I have made multiple quilts from. I am still drawn to their color ways, and the timeless designs. I started on a queen size version of the pattern Aegean, by Nancy Rink.

I have been making a lot of progress on the Heaven and Nature cross stitch piece. I finished the lower three pages, and I am starting the next row of pages which includes the house. The mother of all houses, I think it may be larger than the one in the Pet All the Dogs sampler. My DH calls the red houses ‘the Led Zeppelin Houses’, because they remind him of the album cover from Physical Graffiti. They remind me of the middle school I went to, called Lindell school for the avenue it was on. It was built in 1940, lots of bricks, and a beautiful view of the bay. You can see the NYC skyline clearly from the play yards. I had a tip from another stitcher who finished H&N as to stitching the house. It was to use up any red thread pieces, that weren’t finished in other parts of the design, in stitching the house. Also outlining the house is very helpful.

Not much progress on the Message in a Bottle (a few leaves and berries) or Simple Pleasures. Sadly no quilting was accomplished on the Botanica quilt either. I am very excited that Bernina is updating the software for the Q-Matic system, tomorrow is the day it releases to the public. There are many improvements, a big one is going from 32 bit to 64 bit. Hopefully this will correct the “ever spinning wheel of waiting” issue while loading complex designs. There are also editing features that I wish I had when I started Botanica.

Off to sew.

Be Kind.