My 790 is back from its vacation/repair in Sacramento. The shop called me on Monday and I drove over there yesterday to pick it up. It’s about a two and a half hour drive each way, but it went pretty fast, as there is little to no traffic. The machine had some issues with the computer assisted upper thread tension and needed a really good clean-out. They also updated the software and now it purrs like it should. I made one of the BOM blocks from the halloween fig quilt as soon as I got it set up. Today I finished the other two October blocks.

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I was a little sad to move my Singer 404 off the sewing table. It has been standing in for the 790 for the past month. I made two quilt tops with it and two blocks for the Botanica BOM quilt. I kinda feel like I should leave it set up, so I can use it to piece with or something. I just don’t have enough room in my sewing space though. When I was thinking about moving across the hall, back in the summertime, I thought I would have room for another sewing table. I thought I could put the 404 and my Sail-right machine on it and that way they would be ready to sew when needed. Alas, not enough floor space, too many fabric containers and too many book shelves. I could use the computer desk in the guest room, then move them when we have company staying. Who knows when that will be though.

I also heard yesterday that the Serger, 890L won’t be here until mid-December. Oh well. When the shops name popped up on the caller ID, I got all excited, thinking it had arrived. No, apparently I had missed the preorder cut-off date. So I have to wait for the next manufacturing run and shipment.

I have been itching to start making Bonnie Hunter’s Appalachian Autumn quilt. I think I could squeeze it in the line up for the next few weeks. It’s a string pieced, large block quilt of autumn leaves with a cream and gray background. After going through my string pile I created earlier this year, I found “enough” to do the string blocks. Now to find the fabrics for the background.

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This weekend BH will be releasing the colors for the up coming Mystery quilt. I will most probably make it, as always, I have only missed the 2018, Good Fortune quilt. I wasn’t too keen on the colors chosen for that one, orange, green, blue and white. Similar to the colors combo of Celtic Sunrise, which is on my bed now.

Linking up with Denise at For the Love of Geese for Put your Foot Down

Be Kind

I have been steadily working on this small quilt made with the left overs from the Good Times quilt. The Good times quilt was a kit made up of 40 FQs and 2 ½ yards of border and binding fabric. I think I’m going to call it Rock Pool, this is what I have so far:

This is the initial mock up, there are a few places where the blocks match and there will be some switching, spinning and trading places happening over the next few days. For now, everything is in the proper orientation, 63 nine patch blocks. These are the three blocks I came up with using the scraps. They are 2 ½ inch square, the two part version is made from the 2 inch wide strips left over from the pineapple blocks.

Here’s what I have left over, I think I’ll have enough of the dark blue for a border, if not, there’s enough for a binding.

I worked on the Costumers ball quilt yesterday. Took it off the frame and laid it on the floor and marked a straight line on the backing that ran parallel to the edge of the quilt. Then I pinned that line to the leader instead of the the backing edge. It helped straighten the quilt edge a lot, I was able to quilt the borders straight. It should be finished this weekend, and then bound with a hanging sleeve. Then on to something else, yay for finishes.

Be Kind

I finished the Good Times quilt top earlier this week. I like it, the colors and the pattern work well together. It reminds me of the cold stormy Atlantic Ocean coasts, like in Maine or Newfoundland. Dark rocks, pebble beaches, the sea and the white/blue sky.

These are the scraps.

On the left are the light colored FQs and strips left over. The pile on the lower right are all the bonus triangle squares I made with the dark scraps. The upper right and middle are the rest of the dark shaded scraps. I dreamed up this pattern for them.

The red patches are the bonus triangle squares I made, the yellow patches will be the dark squares and the white patches are the light colored ones from the FQs. I was going along so well, then I figured out that I didn’t have enough dark batik scraps as needed for the yellow. Hmm. There is enough of the dark blue border left over. I think I will do that, it will bring some order into the pattern if all the ‘yellow’ patches are the same color. I kinda like this pattern, simple nine patches and white. I think it would work as a solid color, say with two shades of pink and white. Or black, gray and white, scrappy too, if you sort medium and dark shades. Based on 2 inch finished squares, this quilt ends up 36 x 54 before borders. Those pen scratches on the right side of the page represent another row of blocks, making it 42 x 54, without borders.

I finished the quilting in the center, top and bottom borders of the Costumers Ball quilt. Got it turned and pinned to the frame to do the side borders and realized it wasn’t straight. Well, not parallel to the rails. I tried to place the digitized border on and it was a parallelogram. I am going to try to straighten it today. I think if I use a ruler and an air erasable marker, I can mark a straight line on the backing fabric six or eight inches from the edge of the quilt. Then pin it to the leader along that line. In theory it might work, it’s a good thing I left the sides of the backing wide enough to do this.

Linking up with Denise at For the Love of Geese, for Put Your Foot Down today.

Be Kind

I was looking through the Design Wall Monday post at Small quilts and Doll quilts this morning. Judy repaired a quilt for her grandson recently and the name of the quilt is Third Week in October. I have had this pattern for a long time, every once in a while I come across it and think about making it. It an autumn leaves quilt, that is sort of scrappy, and I think I want to do it with batiks. The instructions are nicely laid out, it just feels a bit overwhelming to me when I read them, the number of blocks and pieces is large. The finished size is 85″ X 110″, nice for queen bed with a pillow fold over. Maybe early next year.

This past weekend I worked on the Good Times quilt, ugh the theme from the 70’s TV show just popped into my head. I got the blocks done and the pieces for the first border done.

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I put them up on the design wall, trying to get things random looking is hard work, chaos is easier. I didn’t want any of the prints to match, or be too close to each other. A little more shuffling in needed.

I got tired of sewing last night, so I decided to match up the bonus triangle pieces. I found if I sew them together on the diagonal, I can then trim them down to 2 ½ inch squares. They are kinda cute, too bad that the colors are kinda dark, they would probably make for a scrappy baby quilt.

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My goals for the week are to finish the Costumes Ball quilting, get the Good Times (ain’t we lucky we got ’em) top together and get a round tabletop quilt on the frame. Oh yeah, my two BOM blocks came in the mail on Saturday, cut and sew those together.

Be Kind

This past week I pulled a quilt kit out of the stack to do. It’s called “Good Times” the pattern is by Monique Jacobs. I got it from BluPrint last year, on sale, and it looked like something easy-ish to do. As always (not really) I read through all the instructions first, and saw that this pineapple block was made with the “place a marked square over the corner, sew, cut off extra” method. Maybe there is an acronym for that? I think it’s wasteful, and time intensive marking all those lines on the squares, 240 of them. Not to mention the bonus triangle creation. I have a Deb Tucker ruler to use for folded corners, that doesn’t create as many HSTs. It allows you to cut the corner off the foundation block and then cut a triangle to fit that corner, eliminating the line drawing, sewing and cutting. I take it one step further, as the triangles cut with the ruler are a bit larger and once sewn on need to be trimmed, I cut the HSTs with the Easy Angle. The Easy Angle triangle has the squared off tip which makes lining it up to sew easy. This saved me 10 FQs worth of fabric, the kit came with 40 (2 of each color), I consider this a real bonus ;).

There are twenty blocks for this twin sized quilt, and I was sewing them along at a nice pace. Then I got the mail, specifically a letter from my favorite power supplier, PG&E, that they were going to shut our power off for the whole day Thursday. They were threatening this earlier this month, 10/1/20, but never showed up, or called to cancel, or reschedule. Coincidentally, they also shut down many neighboring areas in our county due to the possibility of fires starting due to the very hot, dry weather we have been having. We luckily weren’t in the areas affected, those people lost power for two days. Anyway, they came and did the work, replacing a pole and transformer and finished in the dark at about 8:30 PM. So no sewing was done that day. I did accomplish a few rows of knitting though with the aid of a mini generator powering a reading lamp. Yesterday turned into a no-sew day too. I meant to get in there and finish up another round on the blocks. All of the sudden it was five o’clock, time to make dinner.

I am ready for some fall temperatures, we have been in the upper eighties all week. Too hot, some rain would be nice too, at least the smoke has cleared out. I will sew later today, and tomorrow.

Be Kind.