Stitch, Cough, Clean, Sniffle, Stitch

Well, it's Day 9 of the Mystery Viral Disease from Roanoke. (I swear, if that man brings something back from Dover he will be taking up residence in the garage.)  I just want it to end. I want my energy back. Today worked out to be a waste of a perfectly good Saturday...I started cleaning, wound up in the studio, repotted one of the plants, started to dust, daughter brought over some mending so I did that for her, then mended my own basket full of stuff, then I wound up rearranging my button boxes and watching news coverage of the crash landing in San Francisco. Here it is, almost midnight, and I've got maybe an hour's or two worth of work to show for the day. Hopefully tomorrow turns out to be more productive. Maybe the trick is not to sit.

Oh, I did label the '6th of Jul'y table runner for my daughter. Printed a label for mine, but didn't bother to sew mine on since it's not going anywhere.

And I have managed to 'sew every day' so far this month. This is the second block in the Aiming for Accuracy Quilt Along:

I was pretty excited earlier this week when the Fed Ex guy came and he wasn't delivering any boring old cover artwork for work...

Wowsers! The Aurifil Thread Collection I won arrived. And just in time too because as I was pulling together the supplies for my Mariner's Compass class on Friday I realized I didn't have the right shade of blue in a 50 wt in my thread drawer... but this collection saved the day, because it had just what I need.

And speaking of thread, I've had this itch to quilt with 'glitter' thread. I've got a table quilt ready that is likely going to my daughter's classroom, so that seems the perfect opportunity to practice/try this out. If it doesn't work out, it's not a big deal...these 4th graders aren't going to be doing any critiques. I stopped at JoAnn on my way home from the office on Wednesday to take advantage of their 50% off thread deal, and I picked up this Sulky holographic thread.

And those rayon blue spools in the back are bonus purchase....Sulky is apparently discontinuing a bunch of colors so JoAnn has them marked down to $1.97 a spool. I walked to the register with about 20 spools of thread, but then I was able to wrestle control of my mind and body from the thread crazy alien possessing me and I only purchased the 3 spools of indigo rayon to use on my indigo quilt....or maybe on my mariner's compass.

I'll let you know how quilting with that holographic thread works out. I have a suspicion that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Waiting for the Robitussin to Kick In

So, the hubs brought back some 'crud' from Roanoke which, according to the doctor he saw is viral, so it's a suffer through it for a week and a half, cough your brains out at night, sound like that lady in the anti-smoking commercial kind of illness for which there is no cure. I'm on Day 3, so I've got at least another 5 to suffer through, if the hubs is any kind of indication. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Unlike men, who must take to bed when they are sick, unless there is a golf match or a softball game, in which case they are well enough to participate, as long as they come home and moan and fall directly onto the couch unable to unload the dishwasher or assist with the daily feedings, women must continue to function. That means errands, cleaning, cooking, and attending theater performances you purchased tickets for 5 months in advance. At my worst, I was sitting in the front row for a performance of "One Night With Janis Joplin".

For the rest of the weekend, I pretty much played catch up on the Jingle BOM quilt. I was behind 3 pieced blocks, so it was definitely an incentive when the designer put pieced block 4 up on her site. And of course, shortly after that I realized I had missed applique block 4, putting me even farther behind --sigh.

 

My experience with HSTs is pretty much limited to using Thangles, and I think I could count the flying geese I've made on one hand, so these fairly common blocks were pretty challenging to me.

 

Especially when the cutting directions for a lot of the pieces called for 3/8" cuts. This taught me that one really needs to use a clearly gridded ruler lest you start cutting 2/8".

 

And then you wind up with a block that won't measure what it's supposed to, after you've spent hours wrestling with that triangular border (they are not geese), so you find yourself wielding a bottle of Mary Ellen's Best Press and trying to iron/block it to the proper size.

 

So once you finish the last one that was uploaded on Friday, you evaluate your OCD tendencies and CAREFULLY cut new 3/8" pieces and remake that damn third block.

 

 

What a difference accurate cutting makes.

 

And while we're touting accuracy, on Day 1 of the evil throat crud, in between naps, and checking in at work (though I phoned in sick), I began Block 1 of the Aiming for Accuracy quilt project.

 

 

It's not much,. but hey, it's done the day after the instructions were posted. Let's hope I can keep up with that pace.

 

I've covered up the Bernina and plan to spend any free time this week on handwork. What are your plans? Those of you in the Southwest and the West are surely taking advantage of the air conditioning to put in some quality time with your sewing machines, yes?

 

 

 

 

 

Prepping, finishing, multitasking

Over the weekend, my good intentions for marathon quilting gravitated more toward 'part of one day' quilting.

Between Saturday night and Sunday morning I was able to sandwich and pin the two table runners and a table quilt. I busted on the mystery quilt when I went to lay out the backing and realized that it was still 'off the bolt' and hadn't been pieced together, and as I had the sewing machine all geared up for quilting, that one went back in the 'to do' pile.

On Sunday afternoon I managed to spend 2 hours each quilting those 4th of July table runners. Pulled out some stock Wrights binding (can you say LAZY?) and got that sewn to each. Then the daughter came home to pick up the Grandpup, followed by the hubs, who was returning from a 4-day softball tournament, and that killed any hope of finishing.

On Monday I attempted to speed things along and MACHINE STITCH that binding down. Ooops....bad idea. I probably spent as much time as it would have taken to hand stitch it ripping it out. I've done this before...you would think I had learned my lesson. (Apparently not). So now I've got to find some time to hand stitch about 30 feet of binding down by the weekend so I can get these on their respective tables in time for the 4th.

Got up early this morning to prep some more for the Aiming for Accuracy Quilt-Along project. I started out identifying the colors I wanted to use and where and marked them on a layout grid of the quilt.

 

Once I had identified so many turquoise, orange, yellow, pink and green areas I started pulling what looked like it might be compatible from the Kaffe stash (aka 'hoard')

 

 

I narrowed it down to 20 different prints, three of which are not Kaffe (I know, it KILLS me, but I didn't have enough turquoise/green Kaffe selections so I had to improvise....it will be ours (and Kaffe's) dirty little secret.

 

 

And late yesterday afternoon, during the hellacious thunderstorm, I unplugged the sewing machine and the laptop and took a few minutes to cut and bag and tag the black background fabric for this project.  The first block will be posted online Friday, so that gives me a couple nights to bind and maybe play catch up piecing the Christmas quilt. (though I suspect that there may be another applique block posted .... let me run and check.....phew, no, I'm still just 3 blocks behind. :)

 

Aiming for Accuracy Quilt Along

As if we don't already have enough projects hovering at the edge of the Black Hole of UFO, how could I possibly resist this beauty?

I'm thinking raid the Kaffe Fassett stash, throw in a few yards of a Kona black (which I may have in the closet already), and I'm good to go.

Won't you join me? There's a link on my sidebar to get you started. Even if there weren't prizes to be awarded throughout this project (prizes? did I mention prizes?), the quilt itself is well worth the journey.

You'll find links to the fabric requirements, and a couple ancillary posts on tools and technique already uploaded to the Quilting Gallery site, as well as cutting instructions to get you pepped and prepped.

The project officially kicks off this coming Friday and continues weekly through October 10th. Wouldn't this make a lovely Christmas gift? Double your efforts each week and you'll have one to gift and one to keep for yourself.

I hope you'll join me.