Snow Day Activity on a non-Snow Day

I expected to have a snow day yesterday, so I was mentally preparing for a lazy day of sewing and watching the weather from the safe, warm confines of my sewing room.  But, the 4-8 inches of white, fluffy snow the weather forecasters predicted for my area turned out to be about 1/2" which all fell before dawn.  So, I have no excuse to sit inside and sew.

But, then I remembered that I'm retired and I don't need weather as an excuse.  So, after making a couple of needed phone calls and doing one chore that was on my to-do list, I spend the most of the rest of the day sewing, ironing and sewing some more.  I nearly finished all of the latest steps to Scrapitude.

I was looking at the pieces as I sewed them together thinking that I had lots of really unattractive fabrics in this quilt.  I feared that all this work was going to make a really ugly quilt.  But, each of the blocks are nice.  The uglies just blend together.  I'm looking forward to seeing this top completed.

Happy New Year

I start with a finish.  I feel like I've been working on this forever.  In the grand scheme of things, it's probably only been 1 1/2 years since I bought the templates.  I made one star and stopped because I found it difficult.  But, I convinced myself that I should make something, and rather than aim for a full sized bed quilt, I thought a smaller piece would make a good purse.

I'm very pleased with the result.  Each of the steps was difficult, but the result is terrific.

Finishing the bag left me with a void in hand work.  I still have the spools that I've been playing with.  I spend a few evenings hand piecing a few more.  I spent an evening going through my scrap bucket and choosing new fabrics to cut.  My goal for this project is to make it a "charm" quilt.  This quilt will not fit into the strict definition of charm quilt because I'm using duplicates on the background pieces and each of the three pieces of the actual spool will be the same fabric.  I'm calling a charm quilt because I am using different fabrics for each of the spools.  Each spool is 3" square (I think.)

Last week, DH found that there was heavy solar activity that may product vivid northern lights as far south as Boston.  It's been on his bucket list to see northern lights and since we're retired and looking for new adventures, we headed north to Presque Isle, ME to see what we could see.  The best time for viewing the lights (at least for this time) were predicted between midnight and 4AM.  So, we left the hotel in Presque Isle at headed north to Madawaska - the northern most town on Route 1.  Madawaska at 2AM was pretty quiet.  And cold.  The thermometer in the car read -9 degrees F.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any lights.  It was overcast and the forecast for the lights changed while we were on our way.

But, we had a good adventure, went to someplace I had never visited before, went further north than I had ever been before, and got a great view of Mt. Katahdin on the way home.

Lastly, I got a FitBit for Christmas.  I'm trying to more more and get back in shape.  If you have one, too and would like to link up and offer each other encouragement, let me know.  I'd love to be your cheerleader.

Merry Christmas!

It's the morning of Christmas Eve and I'm spending the day just puttering and relaxing.  I made cookie dough yesterday for peanut butter blossoms (peanut butter cookies with a Hershey's kiss on top) and sugar cookies.  I baked some of the peanut butter cookies, but the dough was too soft and the cookies expanded too much.  So both dough batches went into the fridge overnight.

Apparently this poor guy got into a nasty fight.

Now I'm back down to 3 projects in progress.  I finished the wedding quilt for John and Regina and presented it to them Saturday night.  

They were both excited by the gift.  It seems, though, that they were expecting something much smaller.  Regina commented that this would not fit on a wall.  I told them it was theirs to do with as they like.  I've never had a quilt recipient look over a quilt as closely as they did.  It made me a little nervous.

I guess I'm out of practice in machine quilting because this quilt gave me all kinds of problems on the  free motion quilting - needles breaking, thread breaking, thread bunching up.  I have one large quilt that I will machine quilt in the coming year, so I guess I will get more practice there.  Perhaps I need to plan a smaller quilt to do free motion quilting on before tackling a larger quilt so I can get practiced up.

I also finished the socks for DD for Christmas.

This was a more complicated patter than I usually do, but again, once I was practiced on the stitches, it went OK.  I love the texture and will probably make a pair for me in the future.

I still am working on Scrapitude, the hand piecing for my purse and hand quilting the charity quilt.  So, I guess I'm down to 3 projects.  I won the block of the month block at my guild in December.  I really like he pattern and was hoping to win these.

It will make a really bright and cheery quilt.  I just found out that a family friend is expecting, so I think this will turn into a baby quilt for her.  That is project #4 right now.

Merry Christmas!  I hope this finds you all happy, healthy and enjoying the day.

Did I Say Limiting to Four Projects?

Shortly after my last post, I found myself without any sort of mindless sewing to do.  I've finished the wedding top and am waiting for the backing I ordered to arrive.  I've finished the latest Scrapitude clue and won't get another until January.  I have a few blocks to make to keep up with my guild's block of the month and 9-patch exchange, but they will only take an hour or two to complete both.  I wanted something I could pick up and sew on without much thought.

My only complaint about this quilt is that either the person who marked the quilt has much better eyesight or lighting than I do.  I have to darken all the markings before stitching because I can barely see them.  but, remarking is easier than doing it the first time.

So, My current project list has been increased to 5, and we'll see if I can hold there.

Productivity

My quilty life has been pretty productive lately.  This is what I've been working on ...

Wedding Quilt for John and Regina

They were married last year the weekend between Christmas and New Year.  I offered to make them a quilt and asked for a general color scheme and a mattress size.  Since they were 'savoring' opening their gifts, I didn't hear anything from either of them until August.  She wanted something very neutral, leaning towards sage green.  It took me another month or so to get my head around what I wanted to do with these colors (not my normal palate).  Since this photo I've put on three plain borders and ordered a solid backing material. Once that arrives, I'll machine quilt it.  I think I have a good idea for the borders, but not the body of the quilt yet.  I may just go with something geometric.

Socks for DD

My daughter made some suggestion that she may like some hand knit socks at some point.  I've been knitting socks for me, but haven't ventured out to give as gifts because not all people like hand knit socks.  This was a pattern that looked interesting to me, would be a bit of a challenge and came from a book that DD gave me as a gift.  They were turning out OK until I got to 1 row before the heel gusset.  I somehow lost a stitch.  I figured out where the mistake was and carefully ripped back, tried a repair and started back with the pattern.  Then I found there were 3 missing stitches.  I tried to fix it a number of times and eventually frogged the whole thing and started over.  Two rows into the pattern I found that I was missing a stitch somewhere.  I decided to just create a new stitch and be done with it.  I can't find the extra increase in the pattern.  Lesson learned ...

New Summer Purse

This little tea leaf pattern are made from Ardco aluminum patterns that I found at the Vermont Quilt Festival.  I made one flower and thought that was too difficult, so put it away.  I've been wanting a summery purse and have a pattern.  I think I have to make 10 complete flowers and some fill-ins around the edges to make the front and back panels.  One panel in nearly complete and the other has most of it's components done.  This is all hand sewn.  This is what one panel looks like so far:

Scrapitude

This is part 3 of the Scrapitude project going on in Sandy's Blog .  I still need to trim the blocks.  I'm enjoying pressing blocks more (it was job I never used to enjoy and skipped) but I still dislike the trimming part.  I know I get better results when things are nicely trimmed and I try to make the process more enjoyable by listening to podcasts.  Perhaps I will tackle that this afternoon.

Well, there they are - two machine projects and two hand projects.  I've got a bunch more things lined up to do, but I am limiting myself to these four projects at the moment. When one finishes I will pick up the next thing that strikes my fancy.

Scrapitude Part 2

I had been anxiously awaiting the next part of the scrapitude instructions and completed it quickly.  

It's not terribly exciting to look at the pieces so far.  I think I have a lot of red and blue in this quilt.  I'm hoping that everything just blends once all the pieces are put together into a top.

Updates

A brief posting to show off what I've been doing lately.

The first is a quilt my sister asked me to make for her first grandchild.  My niece's pet name for her husband is monkey, so I ran with that - monkey wrench block and the middle monkey is holding a monkey wrench. This came together quickly because the baby was a surprise.  Imagine getting a phone call (nearly a year after applying for adoption) that a baby is being born and it is yours if you say yes.  So, the have a brand new son with about 12 hours notice.  He is adorable!

The next is my progress on Scraptitude.  Sandy from "Quilting for the Rest of Us" blog and podcast is sharing a scrap mystery quilt from one of her guild-mates.  I was planning to do something my my ever-growing scrap bag when I saw her blog post and decided a planned project would probably be better than just cutting everything up into 2" squares, which was my original plan.  I've gotten everything cut up and the first set of 4-patches sewn together.  I'm anxiously awaiting step 2 now which is not due for another 2 weeks or so.

I think the project is planned to make a queen-sized quilt.  I'm amazed that all the cut fabrics for a queen-sized top will fit into a single zip-lok bag.

Otherwise, I'm still knitting socks.  This pair will be for my Mother-in-law for Christmas.  My sock enthusiasm is slowing, however.   I started these socks in August and expected them to be done by now.  I like the yarn, the color and the pattern.  I find I'm having to push myself to pick them up to work on them, though.

Lots of other projects occupy my thoughts, but nothing concrete enough to report on yet.  I'm trying to get my head around a sage green, mostly neutral quilt for some friends.  I'm itching to get going on it, but I haven't figured out what pattern I want to do.  I just know I want a pieced project that flows as an over-all design (rather than individual blocks and sashing, for example).  I've been looking over my clippings and quilt books but nothing has really excited me yet.  But, the search is part of the fun.