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.

It seems as if the font has been changed by WordPress, again. I am going to try “Cormorant”. The window replacement in the sewing room isn’t finished yet. Just need the paneling, trim, and some paint, it’s never that easy though. The wood paneling in the room is original to the house and 60 years ago, they used seven inch wide planks, which aren’t standard anymore. Isn’t that the way of remodeling though?

I have been stitching on the Heaven and Nature cross stitch piece, and got a bit done on block four of simple pleasures. I may have to dig out the Message in a Bottle blocks and work on that, this months installment is on the way.

I also signed up for the Sparrows Quilt-A-long at Pen and Paper patterns. The fabric is here, the pattern is downloaded, but there is no room to cut and sew in. It starts on the 10th. Truthfully, I could get the cutting done this week, as the cutting table is just covered in plastic sheeting.

I did work a lot on the Botanica Park quilt. It has been back on the frame for about a month. I had taken it off to fix the errant blocks back in September 2022. I re-mounted it in February, after I finished quilting The Berties Year quilt. I had quilted about a third more, when I realized I had another block out of place. It was in the border, one of the diamonds was turned the wrong way. I couldn’t fix it on my machine, so I carefully removed the stitching and then carefully restitched the block into place with needle and thread. It was a bit awkward, but I managed it. I finished the quilting on it last night, took the quilt off the rollers and turned it. Now I have two more borders and a final check for any missed parts. This is a heavily quilted piece, every inch has a motif in/on it. Each motif needs to be re-sized, flipped, placed, or combined before stitching it. It’s good practice though, and I feel much more able to use my software effectively now. The other Wing and a Prayer quilt I have made, Forest Floor, was similarly quilted and finished 3/01/19. I thought that one was involved, LOL, it is really pretty though, and it gets its chance on the bed for a few weeks a year.

Be Kind.

Started on January 24th 2022, on 32 count lugana using 12wt Aurifil 6738 Peacock blue (356 yards). I used about 1 and ½ spools. Started on scroll frame, but switched to hoop with stand because it was easier to start and tie off threads.

I had planned that this would be my main project, and I would be able to stitch smalls ones when I got bored with the monochromatic Pilgrim. I did stitch and finish seven others while doing this one. I feel like this is the largest (23″x18″) cross stitch piece I have done to date, others have been more intricate, but this one held my interest over the past thirteen months.

When I restarted my cross stitch habit, in July 2020, I thought I would finish a few UFOs, that had been in a drawer since the mid nineties, pictured below. I had seen a bunch of new designs I wanted to start, but “made” myself do the UFO’s first. My rational was, if I really wanted to restart this craft, I could get the two UFOs done and see if I still wanted to do more. I quickly realized that cross stitch supplies had greatly increased in cost over the 25 year hiatus I had taken. Although I had been buying DMC floss for hand stitching projects, the linen and hand dyed flosses seemed pricey. Chart prices have increased too, understandably, as it is a product that requires a lot of hours to produce and market, for little profit. I appreciate the move to PDF patterns, and have pattern reader software that helps immensely.

Be Kind.

Last week work was started on the replacing of a sliding door with a window in the sewing room. The workmen carefully covered everything in there with large sheets of plastic. I am grateful that the dust and such won’t be all over my stash, but I can’t get to anything in there.

I have been steadily making headway on the Pilgrim though. I finished page 1, the upper left corner, most of page 2, and pages 3 and 4 are about 70% done. Most of the stitching is the “sky” above the houses, this piece has a 305×367 stitch count. I was checking to see if I missed any motifs last night and I found I forgot a squirrel (?!?) and a butterfly under the crow. I might just leave the squirrel for last.

Speaking of cross-stitch, the annual Stitch-Market in Nashville is coming up. Many stitchery stores are having presages of upcoming patterns too. I was looking at a few new ones from Teresa Kogut, Two samplers, Nature and Remember Me, really appealed to me. I pre-bought them, they aren’t that big, and I was going to “kit them up” for the future stitching project pile. Then I remembered that the DMC and linens are not accessible at this time either. So all I have is these pictures.

I guess I’ll just have to work in the garden this week.

Be Kind.

This week was a handwork week, although I did turn on the machine a few times. I worked on the Message in a Bottle BOM, completed month two and set up month three. I got the fabric kit for month seven in the mail yesterday, I am very behind. Each monthly section has a main appliqué block and a few 3 ½ inch blocks for fillers. Month two and three have large pieced backgrounds behind the appliqué. I am glad that the finished size is 52″ square, as there are so many pieces, and anything larger would be too much.

Stitching on the Pilgrim has been taking most of my sewing room time. In my last post I was considering starting another large sampler, Heaven and Nature (a Teresa Kogurt design). I got it all kitted up and had sat down to stitch, as I was removing the hoop from Pilgrim, I thought to myself, maybe just finish up this motif…then it became this section, then page. I have less than two pages left to finish, I want to do that more than start a new piece. In the photos below, the one on the left is from October 2022, and todays is on the right. My ulterior motive is that once pilgrim is done, then H&N can become my new “big” project, and I can start a new small(er) one too. Win-Win!

The HST poinsettia quilt is still on my design wall, but I have made a digital copy of it in EQ8. Moving pieces around on screen is much easier than on the wall, plus the dogs can’t help. One swipe of the tail, and hours of placement are lost.

Off to sew.

Be Kind.