noun

whimsy

US   /ˈwɪm.zi/ UK   /ˈwɪm.zi/

unusual, funny, and pleasant ideas or qualities: 

Add a touch of whimsy to your room with these cat sculptures.

Yesterday I was starting to get a description together for the Mad Masquerade quilts. I did a cut/paste from a previous quilt, but it sounds a little stiff. How do you describe the funky, spooky, weird, mystical zombie-like things that J Wecker Frisch draws? They aren’t cute, they aren’t really Halloween, but the orange and black lends itself to that. Non traditional halloween? Ghoulish, not really, but sort of “uncomfortable” in an acceptable way? So whimsy comes to mind, weird whimsy? Serendipity? must think on it. I did get the two quilts bound, cheddar for the win/finish.

This week was one for finishes of all the things I have been working on.

• Sold and shipped four quilts
• Shipped completed client quilt
• Delivered completed dog beds
• Bound the two Masquerade quilts
• Finished memory quilt top
• Appliquéd memory quilt backing

Last night I cut the pieces for the blocks in the Shine and Conquer quilt. There are many 1 ½” strips to make the outer blocks. The instructions are bare-minimum, which I take as a challenge, others may not, this kit should have come with a warning, not for beginners, because if I was, I probably would have struggled.

I had a day of appliqué, for the memory quilt. After watching a video from The Fat Quarter Shop, I was ready to fuse and sew. Who knew you could fuse Minkee? I used lightweight wonder-under and a pressing cloth. They recommend setting the iron to synthetics, but it wasn’t hot enough on my iron, I went with the silk setting. I cut all the letters out and carefully lined them up, ironed them on and went to work sewing them down. I used a universal needle, 40 weight thread, and a blanket stitch. There was no tunneling, or stretching, which was my main concern in attempting this. Two of the most important steps were finding the grainline of the fabric and keeping the nap going in the same direction. I thought I would have to use tear-a-way stabilizer on the back, but it all worked out. Quilting this is going to be “fun”. Clients are choosing a panto, maybe sea shells.

Tuesday I did not stitch any “X’s”, I went to bed a little early and knitted a few more rounds on the Good Morning blanket. Last night I added a few more rows of barn, its mindless stitching (70 across), once I get the orange floral motifs stitched. Maybe I’ll stitch a cow today, break up the red stitching.

As I was packing up the sold quilts, I found the Morning Glory quilt, it is still waiting for a binding. Not sure how that happened, but I’d like to get that done this week. I seem to remember wanting to bind it with green. Maybe the green checkered fabric I got and didn’t use for the Strawberry Fizz quilt series. That leads to another tangent thought, I have a few more quilts to photograph and get into the store. I have been wanting to up-date a few of my listings with new/better photos too. That’ll be a project for next week, my DH is going out of town for two weeks. It’s going to be quilting retreat time for me, might even make a few crock-pot meals to last a few days.

Be Kind.

Somedays I can’t think of a title, and I don’t want to reuse one from past posts. Is that possible? I could number them, Add Title 2, 3, etc. but I’d probably forget what number I was up to.

This past week I got more work done on the Punch Bowl quilt top. I worked on a layout in EQ8 yesterday, so much easier than pinning the blocks to the wall. I figured out I would need three more B blocks and made them. I’m not sure about the center of my version, I may make the dark legs bracket the center, rather than the Maltese cross in the center. The cross is the same as the original pattern, a nod to it? I’ll still have five A blocks left over, and the large B block that I made for the original layout. I could use that on the back, but centering it wouldn’t be fun. I am going to try to get the top together today, or this weekend.

I started the House Barn of the Fabulous House series. I like the sunflowers, and the way the stems make up the side borders. I ordered a few extra skeins of the red flosses used in the barn, lots of stitches there. I belong to a face book group for this stitch a long, out of 1.6k members only three, me included, have finished (posted photos) six houses. I hope to be an inspiration for the rest to keep stitching on this huge project. I may be a bit fickle with quilting projects, but the cross stitch is different for me. This project is dense, and interesting, I find myself complaining about it, but at the same time wanting to stitch more. It is becoming a tapestry, much like the Pilgrims Progress piece from Long Dog Samplers. I sort of miss the sampler I was working on before, Consider the Lilies, it’s waiting for me though.

Long arming was accomplished this week too. Got the two J. Werker Frisch quilts stitched. I was able to fit them onto one backing and stitch them side by side. I used the same design, but made it a little smaller for the Costumers Ball quilt. The stars and swirls pattern works well, it’s a quick stitch out, ten minutes a row, and it makes these quilts Halloween but not traditional pumpkins and witches. I’m happy to have these finished, as the backing for the memory quilt should be here soon, it was in KS three days ago. Does anyone remember the days of waiting four to six weeks for delivery? A week to ten days? Amazon has spoiled me, I expect everything in a day or two, and free delivery. It is pretty amazing though.

I have another baby quilt kit (S&C) that needs to be made and I’d like to start the special Tilda Anniversary quilt kit. The Fall Foliage pattern is calling too. I feel like I have enough quilts in my shop at the moment, although I need to get a few more Christmas themed ones in there. I really want to start the Be Colorful quilt -Enchanting Stars- by Jacqueline De Jong. Maybe when DH is on vacation next month.

Be Kind.

I have been busily working on the Tree House of the fabulous house series. It is taking forever, and the pressure to finish it is that the next house pattern will be here soon, maybe even today. I need to rip out a few stitches, as I miss counted with the roof tiles. The next house is a barn, it looks pretty dense also.

I made some headway on the memory quilt, I got 36, ten inch blocks done. Some are just plain, but they are colorful. I ordered the minky backing, happily I found it on sale at Missouri Star Quilt co. It should be here next week. I was thinking of doing appliqué letters with the minky. The client wanted UCSB on it, I will experiment with some scraps first. I may just end up making a gold stripe through the navy minky and call it done.

Just to keep myself from starting something new, I pulled out an UFO. This was a kit I got from Craftsy, called Punch Bowl, and I wanted to use the Creative Grids ruler for it. However, I think I made the “A” blocks and then made one “B” block to find that they weren’t the same size. Meaning that they didn’t fit together like the pattern. I sewed all the A’s together, but didn’t like how it looked and put it all in a basket for time out. Time in started yesterday, I pulled it all out and tried to make sense of it all (Note To Self “TAKE NOTES”). I took all the block A’s apart and decided to make as many block B’s as I could. My new block B is the same size as the A, and the layout is a bit different than the original pattern. I think I have enough fabric to make 36 blocks total. The original pattern was for a 90 inch square quilt, mine will be 60 inches square.

Still knitting the Good Morning blanket, and I didn’t get to longarm quilt this week. I did set up the two Wecker fabric quilts though. I just need to cut some batting and que up the machine. This past week I also posted a bunch of new quilts to the store. I haven’t gotten to posting any in the new Go Imagine store yet. I’m putting off learning the ins and outs of that chore for a bit more.

Be Kind.

I managed to accomplish things this week, in spite of a mini heat wave and chores that needed to be done. Window washing, and such, meh.

My biggest accomplishment was the quilting of the Split Nines quilt. I decided to make it a gift for someone who has a birthday at the end of the month. I hope they’ll appreciate it, and use it. I went with the Bayside pantograph, each row was ten minutes, on a huge quilt thats pretty quick. I used a new-to-me thread, Madeira Aeroquilt, it’s okay, a bit linty for polyester wrapped core, but it plays nice with the pre-wound Fil-tec bobbins.

I did a big photo shoot of the finished quilts from last week. I even got a few posted to the store. I am considering opening a new store at GoImagine, as I am becoming less enchanted with Etsy. I have been at Etsy for over five years, and I feel it is becoming an Amazon Clone. There is little to no human interaction available for help with running the store. Automated AI responses are exasperating. Plus the massive influx of POD and drop ship “crap”, way to take the handmade out of crafting Esty. There are over nine million Etsy shops, yeah, nine. So each month I get a note from a very nice AI, congratulating me on the 33 or so visits my shop got this month. GoImagine is small, only US based – but I don’t do overseas sales- and gives all of its profits to children’s charities. Sort of like how the lottery started out, lol. Most importantly it is run by people, actual humans that oversee applications and product submissions. The costs are comparable to the big E, a little less per listing, and they use Stripe credit card processing. They also collect the taxes for you, Etsy does too, but it can be a pain if your provider doesn’t. One thing I would have to start doing is promoting a bit more, probably on Instagram. My LOS account is a bit dusty over there, but occasionally I will post something.

The client quilt I took in is quilted, needs binding, so it’ll be finished next week. I am hoping to get the rest of the clothing disassembled for the memory quilt. I have a few more shirts to do. There is a mix of satin, flannel, and cotton knit, why/how do I get myself into these things? It is supposed to have a minky backing too. Just say no…except to friends and family.

The Treehouse is still being stitched, I can’t seem to make any headway on it. I am spending an hour or two a day on it and still, I don’t think I am half way through it. Maybe once I start the roof, it’ll go faster. The next pattern has been released, but I have not gotten it yet. It’s a Barn, a big red striped barn with cows around it. Thank you designer for the small size of this piece. I’m thinking of importing the barn into Pattern Keeper and seeing how it works on the tablet. The only hard part of that is getting the pattern page (bigger than 8 x 11) to fit on the scanner to make a pdf. Maybe I could take it to the local print shop, hmm – they may not do it because of copyright. PK has a function that uses a photo to convert it, but if you don’t keep the camera still, it messes up the lines and PK can’t do it.

The black backing fabric I ordered for the Halloween themed quilts arrived yesterday. Hoping to get those on the frame Sunday. We are hosting a party Sunday day, but maybe once everyone is gone I’ll be able to do that.

Be Kind.

Today is the last day of May 2024. I tend to think of May 31st as Memorial Day, not just the last Monday in May. Memorial Day was always the day the town beach opened when I lived on the other coast. So exciting to get all the beach things together and walk down the street with chairs and umbrellas in tow. Claiming your spot on the sand and daring each other to go into the water, too cold usually. Fond memories of sandy baloney and mayonnaise sandwiches, sunburned shoulders and the scent of cocoa butter.

Today I am going to start a different memory trail, for someone else. I have a bag full of baby clothes and little girls dresses to use. It is going to be fun, I keep telling myself, yesterday I came up with a plan/pattern. That was bugging me, that I didn’t have a plan, I wasn’t going to fall into the puzzling together pattern. I had thought of doing the potato chip quilt pattern, but when I showed the client, they encouraged me to make the pieces bigger. The “chips” are rectangular 2″ x 3″, but that scrap quilt will have to wait for another day. I decided on 10″ squares made up of smaller pieces, 4″ squares being the smallest. I recently made a quilt, I’ve been calling it Sage baby quilt, and it is a random pattern of such blocks. What I need to do this weekend is get the clothes organized and see what needs SF101 stabilizer applied and get cutting pieces.

A few days ago I came across this blog post from Krista Moser at The Quilted Life called Just Four Fat Quarters. I had four FQs plus a few scraps left over from the Sage baby quilt, so I was able to make a cute top, quickly. I added borders and voila! all the scraps from the original two 4-FQ packs are gone. I am looking forward to making another of KM’s quilts called Fall Foliage. I recently found some ombre fabrics that I hope will work for leaves and a sky blue grunge type for the background. Also purchased this week, a few more Cotton and steel fabric for the clamshell quilt top. The color way of those fabrics is a bit different from the ones that Moda, Riley Blake and most of the other big fabric houses use. I keep trying to get to the bottom of that box of scraps, but end up adding to them. This box started out as a bargain fat quarter pack, rabbit hole.

The treehouse is being built, board by board. The Good morning blanket is being knit row by row. I just got into section E, lavenders and purples. There are nine sections, so I am about half way through now. On the long arm this week is a client quilt, a Christmas jelly roll strip quilt. This client really likes to iron and this top it so well pressed and pieced it is like quilting a whole cloth top. After this is done I’ll get the two Halloween tops on and hopefully have them done when I get a chance to do a photo session next month-ish.

Speaking of Sage baby quilt, it has been quilted and bound. It joins a pile of finished quilts for this week. Yesterday I bound the last quilt, Morning Flower of the pile from last week’s picture of quilted tops. Funny how things you are procrastinating doing get pushed to the front of the to-do list when other projects are behind them in the line up. I would like to get these quilts photographed and on the shop site. But that may not happen until next week, I have too much going on this week to spend a day snapping, editing and posting.

This morning I am planning on washing some windows, as I think the rains are done for this year. I turned on the garden drip system so the summer has begun here.

Be Kind.