Stare Down

Kicking up my feet after a walk to the grocery store. It's a new one and it takes me less than an hour to walk there, shop, then walk back, all on paved surfaces if I choose to use them (there are alternative routes). The Loud has started accompanying me, making it a bit slower but the companionship is nice. He brings his own backpack and between the two of us we can get quite a few groceries schlepped home on our backs!

I finished the final Woven Log Cabin block yesterday, then hauled out and erected the big ladder so I could get up to the ceiling and finally adjust the roller spring on my second design wall, so it will roll all the way up. With that done, I can put an entire twin-sized-worth of blocks in one area.

Each block is 18.5" unfinished

This 'n' That

It's been a fraught couple of weeks, filled with new challenges to lose sleep over (but ultimately meet successfully, while filled with dread at the newness of it all). I've found myself retreating not to my usual Killer Sudoku puzzles (Expert level, thankyouverymuch [she says smugly]) but to rereading fondly-remembered Dick Francis mysteries (fondly- but not always fully-remembered. The bad guy is often a surprise all over again!)

Still, I have done some sewing and will have four quilts and a block to present tomorrow at the Community First! Quilters' monthly meeting. The quilts have been discussed, but the block only mentioned briefly. I had the presence of mind to photograph it this afternoon.

The Chapel photo . . .

. . . and the raw-edge machine applique block I agreed to make (all the pieces already drafted by the instigator of this project, bless her!):

This will be trimmed down, so I hope the unfinished stone path at the left will be truncated in the final product. If not, the assemblers have scraps of the stone fabric.

New Queue!

Fans of Eddie Izzard will hear his excitement in the phrase "New Queue!"

That's what the orphan legacy scraps (left over from this quilt and this quilt) and my bulging string bin have decided to form: a new queue of projects.

Another finish!

Wow! I'm impressed, even if nobody else is. This is Elaine Adair's Rebuilt Log Cabin, a pattern I had an itch to try, and this satisfied it.

71" x 91"

And then there was one

One piece (out of many), that is!

Left column cut out from picture--really 7 x 9 blocks for a finished size of 70" x 90"

This sews up cuter than it originally looked on the design wall, so I'm glad of that. Having done one, however, that satisfied the itch and I can go on to other designs.

I feel fine! I think I'll go for a walk!

Well, not quite that fine, but I can feel daily improvement. The next phase of recovery is "I feel happy! I feel happy!"

Pictures!

It's a look, that's for sure.

Glitterati

"Glitter is the herpes of the craft world." John Heffron

There's another expression along the lines of 'If you want to find a Sweet Adeline, just follow the trail of glitter and sequins.'

These days, that trail will lead you straight to my dining room.

Nothing finished, but plenty done

So we've managed to slide head-first into the first week of June!

After finishing the last log cabin, started by someone else and supplemented by me, I wanted to make another one right away using Elaine Adair's "Scrappy Rebuilt Log Cabin" pattern. It's intrigued me for years. I also had a drawer still crammed with scraps and strips gleaned from the CF!Q bins during The Great Reorganization, and felt they'd be perfect for this kind of project.

Many days were spent cutting 1.5" strips into the proper lengths for a traditional log cabin block. Having just worked with 40 blocks that seemed to have been constructed using the 'sew it down then trim it off' method of building, and not being terribly impressed with the results, I wanted to make blocks using known lengths.

Another finish . . . ish

Last month the CF!Quilters were asked that we not wash our quilts before donating them, as it created some question as to whether they were new or used.

I like to wash everything before it leaves my house, because not only does it get rid of markings, chalk dust, cat dander, and general griminess (that looks like it should really be spelled "grimyness", but the red squiggles under the second spelling suggest otherwise), but it also sends the message that 'Yes! This can be washed just like your sheets and towels.'

Apparently, that message wasn't being received.

So, when I put the last stitch into this . . .

. . . I threw it into my new dryer and put it on Air Dry. Remembering my research into dealing with a down comforter (2021, helping out my parents), I threw in 4 tennis balls to keep things agitated (and, I hoped, knock some of the chalk markings out of the top). It also gave me an opportunity to learn what the dryer thought was long enough for Air Dry (30 minutes--now written on the control panel with a black marker). After an hour there was a satisfactory amount of lint in the trap, and no discernible chalk lines.

Yay!

Pinning! That always seems like such a great landmark to reach in the construction of any quilt.

In all the strings and strips and scraps I pulled from the CF!Q bins last month before taking them to the retreat, I found lots and lots of the red-with-white-dots fabric, cut into wonky 2.5" strips, that I ultimately used to make the border (trimmed down to straight-ish 2" strips). I also found and grabbed four 10" squares of that fabric, fortunately, because most of one of those squares was needed to complete the perimeter.

I'm so pleased that all of this (except the batting) was created from the donated fabrics. Very tickled, indeed!

Unstuck in Time

I was sitting with The Loud at the top of our driveway the other morning, telling him about the crammed-full Saturday I was about to have: quilt meeting in the morning, Memorial Service at 1 pm, with an effort to fit in a visit to my mom after that. When it got too humid to enjoy the outside, I settled into my studio for the remainder of the morning for some sewing. I hadn't been doing enough sewing, and I felt it in my psyche.

Accounting

I've been awash in numbers lately, some tedious, some fun.

The tedious numbers were the 260+ costume items (that's just the clothing) I needed to count (there's still a section in one of the walk-in closets holding black pants that haven't been individually counted and sized) and account for, not only for the final report to Sweet Adelines International as part of our physical assets, but also so we can post the deets on social media in hopes that another chorus (or 501(c)3 organization) will want them. 

These 70 costumes are NOT being included in all that:

because it turns out Time was not kind to the silk tops, ruining the fabric while they languished in members' closets over the past 19 years:

That's fine by me--seventy sets of tops and skirts I needn't worry about counting/sizing/valuing or packing up for shipping. I'm hoping a local organization (Austin Creative Reuse) will look beyond the silk and see potential in all those beads and sequins. Another box on my "Go Around and Visit/Talk to Real People" list that remains unchecked at the moment.

Triangles mean...

Not a needle is stirring.

 

Triangles are strung on the ironing board with care.

 

This all must mean a big project was just finished!

Final Two

Two shopping days before Christmas, not that that's relevant to my life other than peripherally. Ninety-seven days ago someone on the Heartstrings group noted there were 99 days left until Christmas Eve, and wouldn't it be fun to challenge ourselves to complete a task a day? I chose to interpret that as 'make daily progress on something sewing-related and stay accountable by reporting it to the group'. In that time I've completed the Twin Hugs, my Mom's wall-hanging from my Dad's shirt, and my brother Steve's quilt started by my Mom. I've made progress on other WIPs and started a new top as well. But while I'm encouraged by and happy about all the forward motion this challenge produced, I'll be so glad to end the challenge and stop holding myself publicly accountable every day!

One of the Big 2 under the needles lately is my latest idea of what to do with my rolls of scraps. This is how that unnamed one stands right now:

It's 86.5" by 36.5" currently, seen here at right angles to my original idea in which this would be a middle panel with large sections above and below to be filled with something later, when I determine what that 'something' will be.

There's every possibility that I'll decide 86" is a nice length (instead of width) and will end up doing something completely different from my original idea.

Hubris revisited

Back in June 2020 I started in on the Hubris quilt, working steadily on its construction until I was called away in August of that year.

After all the quilts I'd recently finished for others had been delivered, this was what 'floated' to the top when I cast about for my "what's next?" project.

Oh, crumbs!

 I don't collect "crumbs". I don't! I'm content to toss bits that measure smaller than 1.5" x 1.5" into the trash. Others might save those bits to stuff pet cushions, or sew them together to make "found" fabric, but I've better things to do with my time. And besides, there has to be a line, you know?

Except: guess what? I've been collecting crumbs for years and never realized it.

When I got to the end/bottom of my string blocks and string bin, I realized that the pieces I've been saving/rolling over from project to project, the ones that fell into the at least 3/4" x 2.25" category but under 4" in length, were too small to use in a standard string quilt but too big to throw away guilt-free. They were, in fact, crumbs.

Some of them could be used to build onto the rolling 2.5" scrap border.

I knew the shorter pieces could probably work at the ends of triangle blocks such as spiderwebs, but I had no immediate plans for that kind of string quilt (nor were there enough to really make a go of it). The thought of saving them without an ultimate, imaginable purpose was surprisingly stressful.

Back to pinning, pinning to back

The backing to my hubris log cabin was finally cobbled together earlier this week, and at the moment I'm taking a break from the pin basting I've been doing on it for the past 3 hours.

The wood grain section would have been much easier if I hadn't worried about the directionality of the (initial) two pieces of that fabric, but of course I did. I wouldn't be me, otherwise!

A finish, and more!

Steve's Ts is Steve's lap quilt now. These pictures aren't much different than the previous ones, other than the borders and the binding.

Taxing

Incoming!!!!

Sorry.

Income Taxes are due in a few days, and this helps relieve the stress.

The Loud and I do them together--we catch each other's misconceptions, mistakes, and general mis-ses that way--and that was our goal and achievement today. After that, my biggest accomplishment was to sew the top half of the design wall layout together, then put up the next stage of layout:

I had to turn this half 90 degrees to fit on the design wall, so here it is turned to its eventual finished position (give or take 180°):

These applique blocks are going to be dwarfed by the log cabin blocks, but at this point I really no longer care. They're being used, and I'm finally, finally! making a log cabin quilt!

Design Wall progress

All the Y and Z blocks have been constructed and the applique blocks fleshed out to 24.5", so I placed what could fit onto the design wall.

I see it. I just didn't want to lower the design wall, again, to fuss with that corner, again, before taking this shot.