Saturday, August 31, 2019

My Favorite August Photos

I haven't been carrying around my camera lately, so my photos for this year are limited in terms of variety.  I have already shown you most of the best ones throughout the month, but there are a few left, and while they are pretty common for me, they are probably not common in your part of your world. Plus, I like looking at the summer pictures on my blog when it is wintertime.

It was a dry summer so there weren't a lot of blooms.  Besides quilts, the passion flowers that grow profusely in my yard and Zeus were the main subjects of my photos this month.







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Wandering Camera

Friday, August 30, 2019

Quilt Reveal: Black and White Neighborhood Mini Quilt




Bev at Flamingo Toes shared a pattern for the cutest little Black and White Neighborhood Mini quilt, and I just had to make one for my mini quilt of the month. Due to deadlines and commitments, I did not add any embroidery to mine, or chimneys, but I did add the window detail and a couple of doorknobs.


As usual, I just grabbed a piece of scrap fabric and batting and the size of the mini quilt was determined by the size of the pieces. Unfortunately, the batting I picked up was a polyester that I was saving for trapunto because I really don't like using it as batting. The good news, is that I think this is the last piece of polyester batting I have so there is a good chance I won't be making that mistake again. It makes the background puffy which takes away a little bit from the houses.


Since the size of my quilt was not the size of the quilt in the pattern, I just eyeballed the pieces to use. Plus I wanted to keep it free spirited. So please don't blame Bev for any of my mistakes. Hopefully there are enough contextual clues that those green blobs are plants of some kind.


I really like the houses, and I found a beautiful black and white fabric that made a great roof.


It also worked well as a sidewalk. This reminds me of the solar lights some of my neighbors have going up their sidewalk. Maybe I should color them yellow.


The backing is leftover from the backing of the Fuschia Fairy quilt. The people in this neighborhood will not go hungry.

I decided to use this piece to learn how to face a quilt.  It took some seam ripping, because I watched the video yesterday and thought I had it and incorrectly put the triangles on top of the facing fabric.  When you turn it to the back, it is in the wrong order. Next time hopefully I will add the pieces in the right order instead of just repeating what I did this time.  The video says to hand stitch it in the back, but hinted that there was a way to stitch it by machine. So, I just stitched around the edges by machine. This seems like a pretty easy way to get out of hand stitching the binding, although I'm not sure I did it the way I was supposed to. I can always hand stitch it down if I get ambitious.

I will write my name, city and today's date on one of the corners and the quilt will be officially finished.  Easy binding, easy label. Win, win.



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Peacock Party
Moving it Forward

Friday, August 23, 2019

Online Quilter's Meet & Greet

I am going to be taking part of the Online Quilter's Meet and Greet on September 3. It is basically a blog hop with big prizes! I hope you will join us, and hopefully get lots of inspiration and maybe win a prize!



I am working on writing the blog post that makes me sound more interesting and spectacular than I really am. Please play along. What they don't know won't hurt them! They will find out soon enough if they take the time to read any other post on my blog.


In the meantime, I have stitched the blocks for the batik quilt for Stitching Sisters.  I still need to press the top and add the border.

I've also been working on a massive clean out of the sewing room, fifteen minutes a day, consolidating things and reducing the number of containers I am using. It is a long process, but I have found as I worked through the rest of the house that shorter bites of a big project work much better for me than a massive session all at once.

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Changing Thought Patterns


I've been thinking differently lately, as an experiment, or maybe because my mind has melted in the heat..


First of all, when I was making the Fuschia Fairy quilt, I didn't plan it out.  I thought of an idea, implemented it, and waited for the next idea to show up so I could implement it.  I embraced each idea as it came along and did it without thinking about other possibilities.

That is the same way I am quilting the Drunkard's Path quilt. Yes, I am still quilting that monstrosity of a lap quilt.  I think it is possible that I will wind up using a whole spool of light thread and a whole spool of dark thread when I am done. I am having fun, but it is slow progress, waiting for the next idea, and finding the motivation to quilt something warm in the summer.



The other change has been a thought I had about the nature of quilting.  When I think of daily or frequently occurring tasks as compared to projects, I tend of think of quilts as projects.  After all, when I paint a railing, the railing is painted and I won't have do it again, at least for a very long time. When I make a quilt, I wind up with a finished quilt and once it is made, it generally can't get undone.

The change is the shift of quilting from project category to recurring category. Since I enjoy the process of quilting, once a quilt is finished put away, the quilting isn't really done, because I will pick up another quilt to work on. Sure I will celebrate the completion, but I will move on quickly to the next quilt.


 My goals for the summer has to be working on completing projects, so that when the busy time at work happens again, the unfinished projects don't rear their ugly heads at me. I can rest assured that progress does get made when I am not as busy.  This doesn't mean I won't make quilts. After all, the recurring tasks do have to get done. It just means that I can't spend hours quilting, since I really need to be spending that time getting something done that will stay done.


All of this explains why the drunkard's path quilting is not finished, and the charity quilts have barely been started.

The current big project is to go through the bedrooms and touch every single thing to see if it sparks joy, and if it does, to give it a comfortable home. I've already done the downstairs, the master bedroom and the bathroom, so it is turn for the other bedrooms.  I had been debating about which other bedroom to start with, but each one seemed to become a bottleneck for the other, so now I have decided to work on both of them simultaneously as needed, while focusing on the sewing room. There are lots of things in there, and the progress is slow as I want to think through properly what to keep and where to put it, and decision making is tiring.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 33

These two weeks, as the days and weeks blur together, I have been working on quilting the ethnic drunkard path quilt, and have started my mini of the month and one of the charity quilts (the batik one). I have also been cleaning the sewing room.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 14 out of 14
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 193 out of 230 sessions
Success Rate: 84%

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Squirrels

A couple of my coworkers have been side tracking my quilting efforts.
   

Textiles

First was a person who offered to give me the inside scoop of thrift stores in the area. She is really good at finding bargains and let me know of a place that had clothes for 50 cents each, but it was out of town.  She said she would keep a lookout if there was something I wanted. Since I have all the clothes I need right now, if I went to a thrift store, the only clothes I would want would be ones I could cut up for crafts - things with laces and embroidery.

I decided I didn't want to go to the sale, because I have enough projects to keep me busy.  She did manage to find a blouse that was made up of pretty laces that she thought I would like. I met her at a local thrift store to do the exchange. The blouse is gorgeous and has different layers of crocheted lace designs.  We did not find anything we wanted to buy at the store, since the items I wanted were pricey and there was a 50% sale off everything on Wednesday.

I even skipped the Wednesday sale because I have plenty of quilts that I still need to finish. Then on Thursday, I found a blogger who makes gorgeous quilts out of vintage textiles. Of course I can't find the link right now. Her gorgeous quilting really made the quilts.  I regretted not going to the sale.

Then I spotted a yard sale on my way to the grocery store and was able to buy textiles at a good price. They are not hand made and I don't know if they count as vintage, but they are pretty textiles. So now, I guess there is a textile quilt in my list. I'm not sure how they feel about me cutting up their things to make a quilt.

Charity

printed panels

Another friend invited me to join her at a charity sew in. There is an organization here, Stitching Sisters, who makes quilts for various people in need.


I went there and helped them package up 127 quilts to go to women undergoing radiation and chemotherapy. Apparently 127 quilts is how many will fit in the car!  I also picked up some kits of quilts to make so I can help them out from home.

Why did I pick up four instead of just taking one at a time, I have no idea. I couldn't decide and I figured I didn't have to get them all done at one time.


I'm still working on finishing up the drunkard's path quilt so they may have to wait, but if I get one pieced by the next meeting, I can learn how to use their long arm.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 31

This week, I worked mostly on quilting Ethnic Drunkard's Path. I also packaged up some quilts for Stitching Sisters and went shopping for textiles.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 179 out of 216 sessions
Success Rate: 83%

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15 Minutes to Stitch