Yesterday was a stay home day. It was rainy and cold and I had workmen in house, so I couldn’t leave. While the moldings were installed and painted, I watched the longarm do its thing. I have been working on my Chilhowie quilt, it was ready to go, backing and top. The pantograph I picked out is called Tropical Flowers, it is Plumeria blossoms and leaves. Sort of a weird choice, but I’ll explain. Last year while on a Home Depot shopping expedition, I saw that had Hawaiian Plumeria plants for sale. I had just finished reading a book in which one of the characters had a collection of Plumeria trees. Although they lived in San Diego, I thought it would be an interesting plant to grow. The one I picked out was a green stick with about eight leaves on the top. It lived on the deck all summer and when it got cold, I brought it inside. It promptly lost all its leaves and was just a stick. It stayed green and I thought maybe it is deciduous, and kept watering it every once in a while. While I was away last month it sprouted four new leaves. I was so excited, well, happy it wasn’t dead. I am hoping it will flower this summer, I don’t know what color the blooms are, but I have visions of Leis dancing in my head. Back to the Chilhowie quilt, it is the 2022 Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt, and I seem to remember her talking about the little town named that and the flowers around her, Irises that were purple and orange. So I went with the floral theme, only switching the tropical for the temperate. I used a variegated purple thread, and a dark purple backing. Each row took an hour and fifty minutes to sew out, I got it finished yesterday, sewing out two and a half rows. I had done the other three earlier in the week, but still its a lot of sewing.

While babysitting the computer run panto, I was able to trim up a few more finished quilts. I trimmed the Berties Year quilt, the Botanica Quilt, the Aegean Quilt and the You are loved quilt. I wish I could bind them, but the painters are doing their thing in my sewing room, and once again everything is covered in plastic. I am hoping to get to it this weekend, once the paint is dry. A mass binding session, I wonder if I have ever done five at once before. Maybe three, but it is possible, as long as I don’t have any interruptions like having to eat or shower lol.

Earlier this week I was working on the Dwellings quilt, another one that uses the Nocturnal fabric line. I got most of the block pieces cut and pieced, I need to assemble the 20 leaf blocks. I have them all laid out, ready to go. I also need to sew together a backing for the Dinner party quilt, also a Nocturnal fabric quilt. It should be next on the frame, but maybe I can squeeze a small one on there. The TBQ pile is getting smaller, the Sew Couture top I made last year is only 60″ square. I bet I could do that one in a few hours.

Time to get a move on today.

Be Kind.

I feel like one of those cartoon characters doing the exaggerated double-take move, where they are wide eyed and obviously amazed at what they have have seen. Sort of “Wait…what?”

Last week I had to go out of town unexpectedly. Dropped every thing and went. I got back Tuesday and here it is Thursday and I haven’t caught up with life yet. I think today will clinch it though. Yesterday I did some shopping and cleaning, a bit of laundry and met with the contractor who is replacing the doors. Today I plan on a bit more sewing and cleaning, or maybe just more sewing.

I brought a small cross stitch piece with me, the red-work “Gathering Stitches” project. Didn’t get much done on it, lack of good lighting and time. On the flight home, I was in a middle seat on a very full plane. I ended up listening to my book for 4 hours. I may have dropped off to sleep a few times, I am hoping I didn’t snore lol.

I am ready to sew a bunch this week though. Before I left I had finished all the blocks for the king size ‘Dinner Party’ quilt. I laid them all out on the design floor yesterday, and discovered I had 66, two extra.

All good, I think I got a good assortment and random placement pattern going. I stacked them all into columns and got half of them sewn together.

You’ll notice to the right a few baskets still stacked. These are the contents of my sewing room closet, due to the door replacement project. The doors were installed while I was away, but the finishing trim and painting will be in the next two weeks. So I will continue to look at that pile for a bit longer. Last week I had some extra time to watch TV. I caught a few episodes of a “Hoarders” on Netflix, probably not the best thing for me to be watching with this pile of my stuff taking over my bedroom. I am greatly inspired to sort it and organize it back into my sewing room. I am a bit embarrassed by my fascination with this disorder, maybe because my hobbies require a bit of collecting. I don’t currently believe I am at risk for becoming a hoarder, but it seems like a slippery slope. It’s a good thing fabric and yarn has more than doubled in price since I started crafting, or does that make my stash more valuable? Do I really need more, or do I hang on to what I have in case I need it? I don’t subscribe to the “does it bring me joy?” mind set, as that is still an affirmative. I think I’ll be okay.

I could hardly wait to get back to stitching on the Heaven and Nature sampler. I got more of the red house done these past few evenings. Mindless stitching is what I need before sleep, as I am a little jet lagged after a week in the EST zone. I tried to keep my normal sleep times while there, but a few naps made me adjust a bit.

Off to sew now.

Be Kind.

Pecking away at large projects, a bit at a time. I started the next commission quilt, called Dinner Plate. It is mostly 10″ squares surrounded by smaller rectangles. The pecking part is the folded triangles on each piece that make this quilt a bit different. I wanted to use the constellation prints for the black and white strips, I knew I had enough of the white, but I was a bit short on the black print.

I found a yard on Etsy though, and a few more fabrics jumped into my cart (all in the name of free shipping). There was a cute panel and a 10″ square pack of adorable baby animal prints. I need a few more small quilts in my shop, so these will get in there probably in time for Christmas. I think I have enough in my queue to keep me busy until then. I really have no business taking on more projects at the moment, my to-do list is getting long.

• 7 commission tops/quilts
• Poinsettia HST quilt currently on design wall
• Two BOMs – Message in a bottle and Simple Pleasures
• Quilting on Forest Babies quilt
• Binding on Berties Year
• Binding on Botanica Park
• Applique on baseball blanket
• Work on TBQ pile of finished tops – Chilhowie, Ribbon, Reunion, Xmas trees, +

The baseball blanket is an interesting side project. A friend of mine is an avid fan of the game, and goes to many of the SF Giants games with her husband. San Francisco is quite chilly in the summer, and the stadium is on the bay. A nice cozy blanket helps on those days when the sun is behind the clouds, or when the games are played late in the day. It can start out at 75 degrees and end at 50, and they don’t sell hot cocoa. I am sure there are some very expensive sweatshirts and jackets in the gift shops. Anyway, my friend found this beautiful alpaca wool blanket in natural black and grey and I am going to appliqué the SF logo on it. I found some orange 100% wool felt to do the letters and she asked for a few baseballs in white felt. What I am going to try to do is use a projector to enlarge the S and F letters on to the felt, cut them out and machine appliqué them to the blanket. A fairly straight forward project right? Stay tuned for that one.

I have been adding lots of crosses to this stitchery, I think it’s starting to look like something good. The house just sucks up the threads, I get about 40 stitches per length. I haven’t started the Gathering Stitches piece yet, but it’s all kitted up and ready to go. I decided on 20 count Aida cloth and red 16w thread, I have two spools, probably enough.

Also in the works this week is the replacement of four interior doors, two pocket doors, and two closet doors. Oh, and the door to my DH’s office. Last month the replacement of the sliding doors in the sewing room with a window, kept me out of there for a few weeks. I casually asked the contractor if I needed to empty the closets for the door replacements, thinking nah, there’s lots of room on the outside. Alas, I am spending my day emptying them. The sewing room closet and the guest room closet are the storage closets in this house. The guest room still has a bunch of my youngest son’s clothes in it. He now lives in NY, so it’ll will be more of a purge than a relocation exercise. The sewing room closet on the other hand contains all my yarn and excess fabric. Most of it is in bins and wire drawers, so it is more of an inventory/resorting project. I may even unearth a few things I have forgotten about. This door replacement is something that I have wanted to do for a while. When we bought this house in 2003, it had been remodeled on the late 80’s. Lots of honey oak trim, flooring and cabinets, and sea foam green and mauve colors on the walls. The trims were a fluted style with rosette corners and ornate moldings. Which can be very attractive in a New England or Midwestern home, but my house is a 1960’s Ranch/Mid Century Modern Style. Our major remodel in 2017 brought back that style in most of the house, except the hallway to the bedrooms. This week all the decorative molding is going to be replaced with straight lines and “plain” boards. The eight panel doors, Honey oak with brass handles, will be replaced with four panel, white, shaker/MCM style doors. I am hoping, that this project will be the last for a while, but it is something that I have wanted to do since we bought this home.

I’ll spend my day emptying those closets while I wait for delivery of the new doors.

Be Kind.

Almost done with the Botanica quilt. I left off last night with the last outer top side border. I will be so happy to finish this quilt. It is an intensely quilted piece. Each block has multiple parts and placements, thankfully I didn’t use more than two thread colors. The q-matic upgrade makes it a bit easier to do, but at times it’s just tedious. There are the fill leaves, that are for 2 inch square blocks, which have to be flipped and spun depending on where they go. This map, supplied (thankfully) by Wasatch Quilting helps a lot. I am so ready to be done. I just want to do a quilt with a simple end to end pantograph next.

The current cross stitch project, Heaven and Nature, got a few more motifs this week. I worked on the house steps and door, the flower border and a bird on the roof. Speaking of, we were awoken this morning by the sound of these two landing on the roof, not the usual scampering squirrel sounds.

I did get all the sashing and rows put together for the queen size Aegean quilt yesterday. Now just five long seams until it’s a top. Might make this one the next long arm job. But I may just have to quilt the Reunion or A Ribbon Runs Through it quilt. Like I said above, some mindless set it up, and let it run for a row type quilting. I haven’t decided on a quilting motif for Aegean yet, I was thinking of something owl related. Of course, this would entail shopping, as I have no owls in my collection. I did get 75 new digital quilting designs from Bernina when I updated. I’ll have to look through those, there are some interesting full block ones. I have an idea to use three different ones on the three different block styles. Then the two inch wide sashing would have to have something in it. Must ruminate more.

Time to move.

Be Kind.

I’ve been working on the queen size Aegean quilt blocks this week. Lots of piecing, I am proud of myself for figuring out how to cut the right size chisel pieces and HSTs for the Tulip block. I avoided the dreaded extra HSTs and fabric waste. I used my large Easy Angle ruler, by lining up the lower fabric strip edge with the finished block size measuring line of the piece. The 3 ½ by 8 inch blocks were made with a 3 ½ inch wide strip with the ruler lined up with the 8 inch line along the lower edge. This left the appropriate length on the top edge and a diagonal cut to add the separately cut HST. Flipping the ruler, and lining up the diagonal and the lower edge again, I was able to cut the pieces I needed from strips. All the while having wrong sides together, creating a left and a right leaning piece. I finished all the blocks, 49, yesterday, I’d like to get them together this weekend and start another quilt top.

I got brave yesterday, and up-dated the software on my longarm. The bravery part was doing it during a rain storm. California has been experiencing record rain this year, and frequent power outages caused by falling trees and ancient equipment. In fact, two of the four utility poles that supply my home with electricity were damaged just last week. It took only two days for them to be replaced, I was amazed at this quick response, as there are so many other issues that were in dire need of fixing. I figured that since the worst thing that could happen during an upgrade would be a power outage, and since that already happened, now would be a good time to do it. Things went smoothly, and the computer and machine are working together. Now if I could only get the quilt, Botanica, finished as quickly.

The Heaven and Nature cross stitch project is coming along. I was a little nervous about running out of floss colors, especially the browns, red and greens. The house eats thread by the yard lol. I ordered a few more skeins, and a chart jumped into my cart as well. I have been looking at one from Luminous Fiber Arts, called Gathering Stitches, since it came out at Nashville earlier this month. I have made Gathering Berries, and have the chart for Gathering Snowflakes, but I really like the stitches one. I want to use some of the Sulky 12wt threads I have to stitch it. These smalls are relatively quick to stitch, although the Stitches one looks to have some “other” types of stitches.

Off to sew.

Be Kind.