Wednesday, September 29, 2021

2021: Week 39 of 15 Minutes to Stitch

 

Last week's photo challenge was A Wild Animal.  This is a difficult subject for me, mostly because I take my photos when I am walking my dog, so I can't sneak close to any living creature without it getting alerted by my dog. He doesn't run or bark, but he does breathe heavily at his age.  I cropped this photo since we were so far away, but it reminds me of the Beatles cover even though the geese are on a sidewalk and not a street crossing.

 


 

Next week's choice is item of clothing.  This isn't my submission, but I accidentally took this picture of my blouse. I like how artsy it looks.


 I didn't spend much time sewing this week. If you remember, I told you a while ago that my oven stopped working. It came with the house and I enjoyed using it for decades.  I tried fixing it, and it worked for about a while and then stopped again. I did without an oven for several (mostly summer) months, but it was frustrating to choose what to make for dinner because "doesn't need oven" had to be an extra criteria. Sometimes you want something just because you can't have it.



I bought a new range, which turned out to be a full time job.I didn't ask for any special service and accepted whatever appointment they gave me. There were three teams of people who were sent on three different days, and finally one last person who knew how to install it, and the last team had to come back to help move everything to position. It also took four phone calls with customer service representatives and each of the teams called the manager. Each of these people told me something different, but I persevered and finally have it set up. Hopefully the range works well and I won't have to deal with it again.

The new range has different strengths of burners (simmer, boil, etc.) so I will have to relearn how to cook. The booklet doesn't explain how to use them so it will be trial and error.

 

2021:  Week 39 of 15 Minutes to Stitch

I cleaned up more of the sewing room this week. I also worked on the Tuxedo Vest, making the columns. I still have to do the trip around the world trade to have the squares be in the right space. I finished making the rows for a Postage Stamp block, and need to sew them together.


15 minute days this week --3 out of 7
15 minute days this year -- 237 out of 269 days
Success rate  = 88%
 

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15 Minutes to Stitch

Monday, September 20, 2021

2021: Week 38 of 15 Minutes to Stitch

 

The theme for this week's photo is "Someone under the age of 12". I took the lazy way out and found an older photo of Zeus in his younger days. It is a digital photo so I couldn't take a photo of it.

2021:  Week 38 of 15 Minutes to Stitch

I didn't spend any time sewing this week. There is usually a lot of debate when a quilt is finished about whether to work on scraps, work on a project closest to completion, work on a new project, etc. and I decided to avoid the debate completely by cleaning something. I went through my gift wrapping supplies and decluttered and organized them. While I was upstairs, I also picked up the sewing room. It is hard to tell how much time I spent cleaning the sewing room specifically, as I flitted from room to room, but I will give myself credit for one day.

Even though this reduces my success rate, I am happy that I was able to make progress upstairs. I bought comic book boards to help me organize my yardage fabrics.



15 minute days this week --1 out of 7
15 minute days this year -- 234 out of 262 days
Success rate  = 89%
 

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15 Minutes to Stitch

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Better Quilt Chart

 

I pulled up my quilting spreadsheet to add the finish of the Quote Quilt. I also needed to add the two quilts I started right before I finished. 

I have modified the chart from the one I showed you at the beginning of the year. This one has cumulative numbers instead of annual ones. The starts and finishes are getting farther and farther apart, but just slightly.

This is the one I showed at the beginning of the year. It shows better how I did in any particular year, but makes it harder to see the overall progress.

I would like to say that I will be able to get more finishes to make the charts look more positive, but I will be busy working the rest of this year, so I don't know how much time I will have.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

2021: Week 37 of 15 Minutes to Stitch and Photo

 


The theme of the week's photo is "Something that makes you happy". This was an easy one so here is Zeus on my porch. I am going to have a hard time with next week's theme "Someone under the age of 12". I am not around young children, and I don't want to be a stalker at the local school! Even Zeus is older than 12.

 

While I am looking at the September photos, I am including more of them in this post.

There were a lot of pinks and purples in my life lately.


There are finally some bees in the garden. Unfortunately, they are making holes on the porch.


I like how the shadow from the fence makes the branch look striped.


I had a productive week, getting lots of errands done.



 


2021:  Week 37 of 15 Minutes to Stitch


I spent a lot of time sewing again this week. All of it included adding a hanging sleeve and label to the Quote Quilt and sewing down those and the binding. I finished it yesterday. I have to de-lint it, and then figure out how to show it to you. I think a video would work better than photos.



15 minute days this week --7 out of 7
15 minute days this year -- 233 out of 255 days
Success rate  = 91%
 

Linked with:



15 Minutes to Stitch

 

Sunday, September 5, 2021

2021: Week 36 of 15 Minutes to Stitch

I really like using my blog to document my thought process of a quilt, to see why I start the quilts I start and how they wind up the way they are finished as compared to what I was envisioning when I started.



I got the American Patchwork and Quilting magazine (Issue 172) in the mail a couple / few weeks ago and have been admiring the Golden Glow quilt. I loved the beautiful cheddar, and the simplicity of the quilt. It looks like something that would be fast and easy to make.

When I looked at the pattern, it looks like they make blocks to put together the quilt. I got the bright idea that it would be easier to strip piece it more like a Trip Around the World, although not exactly since I still wanted to use rectangles in the quilt. Looking at the pattern again now, it is a clever piecing method and they did strip piece, so probably either way would be just as fast. Since I am making the postage stamp blocks, I just don't want to make blocks this time.

Although I bought a bunch of white and cream fabric the last time I purchased fabric, I am hoarding  them since I had been out for a while and they were precious. I decided that I could use the black. With these big blocks, I thought a lap quilt would be better than a smaller quilt, and I needed to find fabric that had enough yardage for a lap quilt. Most of my stash is fat quarter or quarter yards since that is what I buy when I don't have a plan for the fabric and I like variety, but my recent purchases which were bought online or for pick up have more yardages.

 

So this quilt morphed into a nice simple two color quilt to a more complicated color scheme.  As I sewed the strips together, I started to doubt whether they would work together, but after I sub-cut them and laid them out, I can see that I will like the quilt.

I can see that I cut the floral fabric too small, but that will work just fine for a smaller lap quilt - it will provide more room for more diagonal rows going across it.

This color scheme makes me think of a tuxedo with a bright floral vest, even though there is more orange than black in the quilt. I will call it Tuxedo Vest for now since I have to name the quilt for the blog label.

And because starting just one quilt is not enough, I have started yet another one. This is using the pieces that are leftover from the postage stamp quilt. I have to cut two strips of the constant fabric and don't need the entire length of the second strip so I can use it here. Also some scraps are wide enough for the postage stamp quilt but don't have the one and a half inch length I need for the stamp so I am adding them here. I am sewing them together as I go so I don't try to use them in the postage stamp quilt.

I haven't decided exactly how to use these, but I am thinking I will just sew them together to make (maybe different widths of ) blocks and sew the blocks together with all the fabric going in the same direction. 

I will call this Dots and Dashes since the pieces are either very big or very small. This will be a long term project. I've made other quilts this way. Well, they are unfinished so I should say I have made other quilt blocks this way.


2021:  Week 36 of 15 Minutes to Stitch


I spent a lot of time sewing this week, I have been cutting postage stamps and sewing them together.I started two new quilts.

I also sewed down the binding to the Quote quilt. I will hand stitch it to the back after I add a label and hanging sleeve.


15 minute days this week --7 out of 7
15 minute days this year -- 226 out of 248 days
Success rate  = 91%
 

Linked with:



15 Minutes to Stitch


 

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Photography Challenge

 

The theme for this week's photography challenge was "over-exposed." As usual, I didn't think about it at all, so I went through my August folder. I was sure I would be able to find at least one photo that was over-exposed in there, even though I do try to delete the rejects as I go along. 

I figured I could help a photo along by over-exposing it on the photo editing program, but I am presenting the photo to you as I had taken it.


 

Here it is, edited to the max.

Next week's theme is "Something That Makes You Happy." That will make it easy to find the pictures, since that's pretty much all my pictures, but will make it hard to choose one.

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Postage Stamp Continued

 

 
I can't picture what this quilt will look like with an even number of rows, but I had a bright idea. I hopped out of bed and tried pinning the centers to see what the center of four joined blocks would look like.Maybe it will look like diagonals from the center four patch, like Wanda said.I can't tell if that is better or worse than the checkerboard using an uneven number of rows. It's just hard to tell with everything the same color.
 

I made another block. I still can't see what the overall effect will be. It does look different, which gives it a half a point in its direction. It doesn't look worse, so I will continue.



I even put it against a mirror to see if that helps me "see" it. Probably surrounding a block will give me the best idea, but if I am going to make that many blocks, just running with even rows and hope for the best sounds better to me.