First Monday in 2021. I had a productive weekend, I don’t know if it was because the weather was rainy and cold, or I was actually inspired to sew and finish stuff. Not that I haven’t been sewing stuff lately, maybe because I had a few things that could be finished. I made the string blocks for the Grassy Creek clue. I made a foray into deep stash and found lots of grays, too bad my neutral stash isn’t that deep anymore. I am starting to think that this quilt will be mostly grays with pops of the other colors. Looking back at the yardage requirements, 5 Yards of grays, yeah, I think I should have read that more closely. But, I have more gray than I thought and the only gray based quilts I have made are Gravity and the Meeting of the Geese. I have to adjust my mental picture of this quilt.

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I got the Thicket 3 quilt quilted and bound. I think it took longer to get it on the frame and the digital design set up than it took to actually quilt it. The design is called modern rounded diamonds, it probably could be a little more dense, but I wanted the quilt to be drape-y and soft. The Santa hat quilt is also bound and waiting for a photo shoot. I want to stage it in front of the tree, and if I’m feeling especially, um photographically inspired, I’ll dig out the other Christmas quilts and refresh their listings too.

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Other starts this weekend were a hat and a puzzle. I gifted myself two puzzles this year, a 2000 piece Thomas Kinkade one called ‘Santa’s – something’ and the ‘Festival of Quilts’ one with 7 Bonnie Hunter quilts featured. The Santa puzzle is really difficult, Kinkade may say he’s a painter of light, but I think this means he actually makes everything else in his paintings dark. I have to work on this with two overhead lights and natural sunlight. I got the border done, and I am working on the cottage and center. I think I may have to sort the rest of the pieces by color, especially the sky and snow areas. The hat yarn and pattern was an impulse purchase from Bare Naked Wools. I am on their mailing list, and the do have nice patterns, mostly to show off their yarns, which are solids of natural colors with some dyed reds, greens, and blues. The yarn is called Stone Soup, I think because it contains a bunch of different fibers:

DESCRIPTION

Stone Soup DK Stone soup is a unique blend of rambouillet, columbia, lincoln, navajo-churro, alpaca, silk, bamboo, tencel, bison, and llama, which offers exotic color, tweedy texture, and crisp stitch definition. This fiber blend is 95% produced and entirely spun in America. 

Sounds good, right? And it is really soft and bouncy and a pretty oatmeal color. My issue is the plethora of tiny sticks, seed hulls and grassy bits in it. It makes it almost itchy, I definitely would not want cowl or close to the body sweater out of it. When I fist started the hat, I was picking the bits out, but they just keep popping up. I’m going to finish the hat, wash it and see how it goes from there. I wanted to gift it to a friend at the end of the month, but who would want to wear a hat that was so scratchy?

I made a little progress on the Cat cross stitch, I am trying to catch all the missing stitches, the random one stitches. They take a while to stitch, threading, anchoring, stitching, anchoring and clipping. But I confess to changing a few, to similar colors, as they were close enough to jump too. Looking forward to finishing this. I had to buy some interfacing at Joanns yesterday, so I perused the stitchery category and found a clip on magnifier for the hoop. I would eventually like to get one that clips on to the Ott light I have, but I haven’t seen any that would work. I could get a new Ott light, but mine is still working well after 20 years, I ordered a new bulb for it too.

My job(s) for today are to get another row quilted on the Hydrangea quilt and get the top pieced for the Jungle fabric quilt. First I have to go to the dentist for a consultation, my first time out and about since last year.

One last thing, I am making a mental effort not to make lists of UFOs, fabric and yarn purchases, stash busting or yarn use for this coming year. I think I’m going to do something easier like “loose weight” for a New Year resolution 😏

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I bought this jungle animal print early last year thinking would be a good feature fabric for a baby quilt. I started to pull solid scraps that matched it from my solid stash. Then I remembered a quilt idea had seen recently at See Kim Sew , she calls it a Low Volume Baby Quilt. Its pretty, with grays and a splash of color that coordinates with the print on the backing. I thought about replicating it, but then I remembered my gray stash fabrics are in a holding pattern for Grassy Creek. I decided to just do a “Postcards from Sweden” front – assorted bright HSTs and the print on the backing. I used the accuquilt to cut all the triangles, I needed about 300, and chain pieced them together. Now they are covering the design wall, waiting for shuffling and balancing.

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I got the Holiday Square BOM block done. It was a little fiddly, I really had to pay attention to the wood graining on the fabric. I don’t like the way the embellishments that came with the block look. They are inkjet printed, and just look flat, a bit blurry. I’m also not a big fan of raw edge appliqué with wonder-under. It reminds me of the raw edge that we used to do in the 80’s, when it was held on to the background with puffy paint (shudder). I am going to add my own embellishments with embroidery and turned edge appliqué. I also have a whole bunch of snow flake buttons that I bought for a different quilt project and didn’t use. I did finish the Halloween figs block the other night too.

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I recently watched a few Floss Tube videos about total coverage Cross stitching. I am fascinated by this technique of working on the diagonal and “parking” the threads while using a different color. I have spent some time looking at Heaven and Earth Designs a lot of time, dreaming about making one of their designs. But in real life, I doubt I would finish one of their beautiful masterpieces. I have to finish the Cat first, and then the Teresa Kogut sampler is next. The ‘Pet all the Dogs’ sampler that started the resurgence of the cross stitching around here.

The 6th Clue for Grassy Creek was released today, lots of gray and neutrals, sigh. I am caught up with the clues though, so maybe these will be the last of the gray. We finished using the gold, and a lot of green and red, we shall see. I’m thinking one or two more clues, maybe some more sub-blocks. I need to dig through the stash to find some more variety for the string blocks.

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The borders are done on the Farm Charm #1 quilt top. The fabric was delivered on Saturday, and sewn on Sunday. I also completed clue 4 of the Grassy Creek Mystery quilt. I am having some trouble with the gray and neutral combo. It is dull, and this time of the year I am craving color, warm colors, bright colors. Maybe that’s why it seems like more work. I finished the hungry animal alphabet quilt today, it is bright and cheerful. I think I have a tossed alphabet letters pantograph that would work to quilt it with.

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This week I also want to get the Holiday Snow village BOM done. The new/next one will be here in two weeks, so I want to get moving on that one. I did get a bit more appliqué done on the Halloween Figs quilt block. As I get more of the cross stitch done on Bright eyes, I take a break and appliqué another petal – only seven more to go. The cat head pattern is pretty intense at times, it is hard to get any bit of rhythm going. Too much start, stop, change color, loose place, find place and make a stitch. I am working with a post it note and multiple markers, but still get lost. I have even tried leaving needles threaded and picking the threads up as I go, but some of the stitches are too far apart, or the threads get tangled (annoying). I have loosened my personal “neat backside stitching rules” a bit for this project. I will take up to a 1/4 inch jump stitch, if it’ll save me from tying off and re-starting a thread. I am making progress though.

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Yesterday I buckled down and made the little nine patches for clue 5 of Grassy Creek. I ended up cutting too many strips, but I did get a lot of variety, wouldn’t you know it though, one set of matching pieces. I still have to make the flying geese and the red pieces, but its only Wednesday, so there is time.

I was reading a few blogs today and started following a blog hop about New Years Stitching Resolutions. Carla at Creatin’ in the Sticks got it together. Lots of good intentions and ideas for the new year to be read about. Me, I think I am going to keep on keeping on. I may come up with a “word” for 2021, but long term goals aren’t my thing, I am more of a day by day minded person.

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Yesterday was border day. I finished the final borders on the BOM Botanica. They were relatively easy, because I had made the pieced blocks in the corners at the beginning of the BOM. In fact I had forgotten about them, and when the pattern read “use the blocks made in month 3” I admit I had a small panic attack. But they were there, in the bin of all the things Botanica. I have a small pile of scraps left from this top, they will join the scraps that live in the 365 block project bin (2017 UFO).

I got the borders on the Savannah quilt, simple enough at 6 inch wide. I like how it frames the quilt top, keeping it soft looking. The Zebra print binding will look cute too.

Next up was Farm Charm top #1. I had four of the animal prints left from the panel, and I wanted to use them in the border. They were two horizontal and two vertical prints, 5 x 7 -ish in size. I used a scrap of paper (old school) to figure out how to use them and with a few rechecks, a bit of pinning and partial seeming, I got it to work. The Farm Charm #2 top has to wait until Monday for its borders, as the fabric isn’t here yet. I am planning on a red inner border and the same print as #1 for the outer border. That top needed something to separate the whiteness of the blocks and the white background of the border. I am hoping I have enough to use for a binding too.

Also, I got the December Halloween figs BOMs done. I still have to finish the appliqué one from November, but lately my hand stitching is cross stitching. I have been making headway on the Cat Head. The real name of the pattern is “bright eyes”, but Cat Head is more descriptive for now.

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Today is Christmas Eve. I have all my gifts made, wrapped, given/sent/received. I didn’t send any cards this year. Kinda lost faith in the PO to deliver, and got a bit lazy, finally rationalized that I was helping the PO by not giving them any more stuff to deliver this month. I am seeing year end tallies on blogs I read and I’m starting to do an inventory of my own. I updated my master Quilt list and I am up to 265 lifetime quilts, give or take a few. I learned how to quilt in 1984, hand sewing, using cardboard templates, I made a pillow out of my patchwork. In 1991 I took my first modern quilting class and made an Irish chain baby quilt using a rotary cutter and ruler. I know my mom still has the quilt, not sure what happened to the pillow though.

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For something completely different. Yesterday I made a pajama shirt with the L890. It was fun and easy. I used the serger to seam the seams, and then switched the threads and needles to hem it with the coverstitch. No swear words were uttered, really. This was a pretty simple pattern, raglan sleeves and a V neck collar. I’m not too happy with the design of the collar, it probably would have looked better with a ribbing. I may even make the pants to match later this week.

I also hemmed not one, but two pairs of jeans for myself. On my 790, as the denim was thick, and it needed a simple straight stitch. I found I was out of the golden jeans stitch thread, and my blues were too bright, black was to dark. Then I saw a bobbin that was just right, except that it was embroidery thread. I went with it, after all it was 100% polyester and a 40 weight. I think it’ll be fine. I have another pair of pants that I hemmed using rayon embroidery thread a few years ago, and that thread is holding up well. I’m happy I have two new pairs of jeans to wear too. I am blessed with a 28″ inseam, so every pair of pants I buy needs shortening by an inch or two.

I finished the center of the Savannah quilt top last Friday. I ordered a yard of the aqua colored print for an outer border and a ½ yard of the Zebra stripe for the binding. Who knows when that will get here. The mail is running so slowly. I sent my mom a package on November 30th, “knowing” it would definitely get there in time for Christmas. According to the tracking, it should be delivered tomorrow, the 22nd. Sigh. This quilt used up the entire charm pack, and a bit of the Thicket quilt scraps. I still have a half panel of the animal print left, so it didn’t make much of a dent in the stash. This week I want to finish the Botanica quilt top, as the fabric for that quilt is in the house. Also, have to finish the appliqué blocks from last months Halloween figs BOM. Oh, and the Holiday snow village BOM block. And clue four of the Grassy Creek mystery, which I haven’t even pulled fabric for. I still want to make a batch of biscotti for Christmas too. Busy week ahead.

Linking up with Judy at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday today. She has a pretty needlepoint angel tree topper to share.

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