Tatting and Quilt Along Announcement

Hello everyone! I feel like a gob of time has passed since I last posted, but not really. I have been busy busy. I have noticed as I age, that the 40 hour work week is no more complicated as it once was. However, the older I get, the more I am slowing down. My energy reserves maintain while at work, but once I relax on the commute home, I am finding it harder and harder to stay active in the hobby. I am apparently a quilting weekend warrior now!

I want to keep my hands busy in the evenings, but do not have the energy to sew. So what does one do? Well I could bind several quilts, and that did happen in the last week.

Citrus, as I have named the quilt above, has been bound and placed in the done pile ready for exhibition.

I have also started binding on another quilt.

Last July, I was trimming the excess from the quilt edges and I felt myself cut more than I should have. No I did not have it all flatted out on a table. I was careless. I accidentally cut into my #embroideryflowersquilt more than a 1/4 inch. This quilt was on my list for the year to get bound. I was uncertain how I would fix this. As this sat on the back burner and at the back of my mind, I have figured out a fix, plus added greatly to the asthetic of the quilt. Be looking for a post soon on how I recuperated this mistake. I am hand binding this now. Amazing how each quilt I make, I learn just a little tidbit from it. I have learned much on this one! Be looking for a video to post about that soon!

Also, in the evenings, I have had the itch to pick up my tatting shuttles and give it a go. Very pleased at my success. A new spool pin doily for the old featherweight!

Isn’t this the prettiest of pictures? The purple backdrop is just all this stuff laying on a bolt of fabric. I tatted the blue one. The other doily was a gift from Gina Butler when I met her in person back in 2018. I guess I am my own worse critic, as I was tatting the replica of Gina’s, I kept thinking my gapsosis was terrible and that I was just not perfect in my hitch knots. And then I took the photo, and that little doily is so photogenic. It looks perfect (but it is NOT). I will retire Gina’s creation and change it out randomly through the year. Nothing like putting a little lipstick on the featherweight to doll her up eh?

This picture however, is not photogenic at all! LOL! I have been working on the Tildas Vase Embroidery pattern. So I am happy to report that I am officially a bag lady with this project, and all my squares have been cut, minus many of the background fabrics. I have announced a quilt along on youtube for this project. Be looking for this to post on youtube as well with tips and tricks as I create the content there. Be sure to go to my playlist to get all the details as they post.

And I cut what interfacing I had left. I will be buying more for this project. I only managed two panels. So the fabric diet will be broken again. However, one could argue is interfacing really fabric? Isn’t it more of a notion? And if I were dieting with food and fall off the bandwagon, I can just jump right back on. So a little diet cheating it is! If you are interested in the pattern for the above video, make sure to snatch the PDF and print this in color to get you going on this journey. You will be glad you joined in.

This is now quilted! My binding pile, as I complete one, another takes it place. Not sure when I will get to this one, and not sure what I will bind it with. I could dive into my kaffe drawer, but those pieces are relatively small. I am still scratching my head on what to bind this with. Once day when I am searching for fabric I need in my stash, I will come across the perfect solution. In the meantime, it can stay as it is.

And may I pose a question to the readers? What are you working on? Please comment below with your details. I love hearing from each and every one of you!

And Thank You for reading my blog!

Advertisement

Scrap Happy March Madness 2023

Well, even though February was a short month, it still flew by! I had to go back to my own post to see what I had been working on. Well, let me tell ya, much scrappin’ is happenin’.

I managed to make a shopping tote. Part of these fabrics was in a scrap bag from Sew Yeah Quilting, the other was given to me about 3 years ago, and I have almost used it all up.

If you are interested in the free pattern make sure to check out the shopping tote post.

I am binding this, glad this UFO is almost over. 🙂 The binding of this is the leftover 7 strips from the jelly roll that did not get used. I have named this quilt Citrus Spinning 9 Patch.

I also finished a baby quilt, a 3D one. I used continuous prairie points of various green fabrics to give the idea of dragon scales. This has been gifted, and everyone loves it! I calculated how many yards I had in this quilt. The quilt measured 43 by 40 and had almost 9 yards of fabric in it. Because of all those layers, it was weighted! Got fabrics you want to move quickly out of your stash, this would bust that nicely. I was a little sad to see it go. I can make another. This is a one of a kind. Please share this video on social media, as there is nothing out there like this.

I quilted what I have named my large gray crumb quilt, 50 shades of gray. A few months back, I just randomly sewed a bunch of large scraps together making this quilt. I finally got it quilted

And now, my binding pile has grown. I will be binding for weeks I believe. When I am not hand stitching, I will be at the machine quilting some Moroccan tiles onto a Kaffe quilt.

This quilt is made from a fat quarter bundle, cutting into 18 inch large squares and then making a 9 patch. Then making a couple cuts to disappear the 9 patch, I always have a hard time to utilize Kaffe. It is beautiful, large and loud. It is very intimidating for me to cut this up, because you may cut it twice and end up with three pieces of fabrics with completely different colors, which may mess with my scrap happiness LOL.

I was in another virtual sewing Bee. Practically Creative aka Melissa invited me to sew along with the group. Make sure to check out Melissa’s, Coleen, Brandy’s, and Sylvia’s youtube channels. And don’t forget to subscribe and give me some thumbs up on my channel. This international sewing bee was a bunch of fun, and it is lovely to connect with these ladies. I have known them for a while, but have smiling faces on screen makes the quilting and conversation special.

And please visit our scrap happy group links below. There are some amazing projects going on all over the world, and these are quick to just click and enjoy the read and eye candy of scraps.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jill, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Debbierose, Nóilin, Viv, Karrin,
Amo and Alissa

And don’t forget, this is National Quilting Month, sew quilt your heart out and move those scraps out! Thanks for visiting and reading my blog!

I quilted!!!

Hello everybody! As you can guess by the title, the weather, mind, and spirit finally cooperated with the hobby! I got three projects moving.

First let’s talk about the prairie points dragon scale baby quilt.

I decided that the amount of fabric I was putting towards this baby quilt was ridiculous on my fabric diet. If I kept at it, I would have no greens left afterwards and may not be able to bind it. I decided to finish it with a QAYG method or quilt as you go. This is probably how the whole quilt should have been made. Even though the theme was green, and I used up some questionable fabrics. I am very pleased how this finished. I say finished, but I still have to trim and put the binding on. I also told more about this quilt top on my youtube channel. Here are more details.

When I went to cut this off the quilting frame, I could not believe how heavy this turned out. Definitely a weighted blanket. And because of the weird construction, I am going to offer advice to the parents of the baby I am giving this to, make it a wall hanging and don’t use it. This thing could suffocate a baby!!!

The very last picture of prairie points are my leftovers and will end up quilted down with the binding at the top edge. I probably will not even use them all.

You will need to watch the video above to see how it all looks! And that is when I realized how heavy a work of art can be. So the temperature when I went home was only 58 degrees. It was rather chilled in the garage. But when you are working, you don’t really notice it. There were a couple of times my hands got cold, and my nose was always cold, it was totally worth it! Gee I have missing quilting. It has been since August since I felt the cushioned handlebar grips in my hands.

Since the dragon scales came off the frame, it was time to load my next top. I have them all right here in the garage with the sewn backings just waiting to be quilted. I went with the Spinning 9 patch. It was my most freshly ironed top.

I selected a pantograph that reminds me of citrus slices. I think I am going to call the spinning 9 patch citrus. The colors on the front, along with the backing I chose, give a tangerine, lemon, orange, and red grapefruit vibe!

This is now quilted!!!

And I decided to load yet another quilt on to the frame, and selected the gray quilt, which I have named 50 shades of gray. The quilt is wonky and not square. The construction is much like a crumb quilt, but on a large scale. Since this really had no rules and there really was no pattern, I opted to quilt a meandering dogbone free motion.

And this, is now quilted!!!! I managed to quilt these between 8:40 am and 2:30 pm. I was very productive!

Today I will be back at it! I can’t wait to get there and start quilting some more! Although this time I will curb my enthusiasm to just a couple of hours. I have many quilts to bind, but will probably stick with my priority, the dragon scales quilt. The parents have been waiting patiently since the end of December when the wee one was born.

It was so nice to work uninterupted! But after I was done, I was pooped. My body was actually sore. This was a workout that I was not used to. Ibuprofin and I became reunited, because it understood. hehheheheehehhehe.

Thanks for dropping in and reading my blog!

March 2023 checklist

Today is the day I announce how I am doing with my goals for the year. Let’s see if I am on track.

Back in December I vowed “watching youtube videos will NOT plant seeds and make my stash grow, nor will it make me switch gears into another project”

• There have been a couple of things that have tempted me. But, I have decided to make a private board on pinterest and pin those items. After the year is up, if I can even remember what project I pinned and want to do, it is not all the way forgotten. This is actually working for me. ✅

So I also said, I would have zero tolerance for spending on fabric…..er….this lasted for two months LOL. Was I tempted way before in those two months? You better believe it. But, in reality, I have used up several bolts of fabric and knew of a couple projects looming that would not be able to start or progress. So, I caved. The fabric diet crashed! But I will still try to conserve and shop the stash as much as possible.

Have I been able to quilt at the longarm? There were a couple of pleasant days this past month, but covid reared its ugly head. I had been exposed by three different people at three different times, so I stayed away from the longarm. I mean I have a baby quilt on there, could I transmit it through the fibers? Maybe not, but I would feel horrible if I did. Also, it would require me to orbit around my parents and that is a definite no. My parents missed celebrating my birthday with me. But they made it a very happy birthday with little details that will make me smile for years. And No, I did not catch the virus. Direct exposure for hours, and did not get it. Thank you vitamin D for keeping me well.

I have not done any binding. I do have one to bind. This is TBD or to be determined at a later date.

Work UFOs

• The spinning 9 patch is in progress and turning out splendidly. I anticipate to finish this over the weekend. I am almost halfway. And I might add, laying this out is kind of a nightmare. I do not have a pattern. I am winging it. I will probably turn these pieces upside down and repeat the remainder at eye level on the design wall so I don’t get turned around. It is called spinning 9 patch for a reason, it spins the maker!✅

Hand stitching on La Passacaglia

• No stitching once again this month. I find it very disturbing to have to many projects going at once. At my day job, this is part of the job and it drives me crazy. I just want to finish one job before I go to the next. So, La Passacaglia is stalled.

I have also failed to donate any quilts. The year is still young and it will happen. It just has not happened yet.

I have managed a planned make for 2023. The deconstruction of a grocery tote and the reverse engineering of this bag was a great success.✅

Last year I also committed to sewcialites2 and the scrappy triple irish chain.

The triple irish chain went together rather fast. Glad to check it off the list!✅

I am now 2 weeks behind on sewcialites2. Will I catch those up over the weekend? Not sure. Making several projects at once is grating on my nerves. I am bothered because I am behind. But at the same time, I make a huge mess of dragging everything out in the middle of another project, which complicates the mess I am already making LOL! Well here are two of the last blocks I made.

And then, this month was the release of the Tildafabrics Embroidery Flower Vase free pattern. I got that printed up and have done my fabric pull. I am not going to work this right away. But I will have to go purchase two measly fabrics, as I had nothing in the stash that matched the swatches close enough (there were 40 plus that I managed to match!). I made do with the rest of the fabric pull. I have not went back and made sure I have enough of the fabrics so the list of 2 may grow.

The Embroidery Flower Vase pattern was going to require lots of yardage of background. This was one of the purchases this past month. Not sure which I will go with. I am leaning towards lavender or a very light light pink. I could even go a nice light peach. I think I need to go a cool tone color as the background is a cool tone. A warm tone may interfere with all the warm tones in the flowers. I think I learned of this pattern release back in Decemeber, but cannot remember if I ever posted about it. I promise, it was planned.

What are my goals for this month?

• finish the spinning 9 patch into a top
• Finish dragon scales baby quilt
• Finish one UFO on the longarm
• Bind dragon scales quilt
• Bind one UFO
• Stay up to date on sewcialites2
• Start Embroidery Flowers Vase quilt

I wonder how I will do? Stay tuned to find out.

And thank you for reading my blog!

UFO work

Do I even bother to post? Well, here it goes. Not much has happened from last week. I am working on this and ready for it to be done. I have most of the blocks sewn, and am piecing the blocks together. I have changed it up from this picture, just a tad.

Some of my pieces were disturbed and fell off the wall. After I get a quadrant sewn on this, I will take a measurement and see if I need to make it bigger. I don’t think this one is going to be very big. I will have more to report soon. Sorry for the meager post. Some days are great for quilting and others, not so much. Wish me luck for great days of quilting!

And thank you for reading my blog!

Quilted Shopping Tote

Hello friends! I finally got around to making myself a better shopping tote. My old one was a bag from Joann’s. And truth be told, it was sturdy, but upon closer inspection the corners were not sealed. And everything was sewn wonky. And oddly enough becuase this bag was commercially made, I did not even notice until yesterday.

Yesterday I reverse engineered the shopping tote. Got my seam ripper out and tore all the components apart to use as a pattern. You are probably wondering, why would you do this? Two reasons, I needed a pattern and patterns cost more than the bag did, and secondly, I carry this bag everyday with all my odds and ends to work. The former bag with handes was not a perfect fit in my desk drawer.

I have failed to snap very many photos during it’s making. I did load the whole making of the tote onto youtube. If you are here from youtube, here are the cutting instructions.

Fabric requirements:

• Outer bag
  • 9 by 31 qty 1
  • 7 1/2 by 12 1/4 qty 2
• Bag lining
  • 9 by 13 qty 1
  • 7 1/2 by 12 1/4 qty 2
• Batting or bosal (optional)
  • 8 1/4 by 30 3/4 qty 1
  • 7 1/4 by 12 qty 2
• Fabric handles
  • 2 1/2 by 24 qty 2 (make comfortable adjustments for you to carry I ended up trimming my fabric to 23 inches)
• craftex
  • 1 1/2 by 21 qty 2
• Bag binding
  • top of bag can be reg binding
    • 2 1/2 by 35
  • bias binding
    • 17 inch square (to make continuous bias binding) at 2 1/2 strips

After cutting out all your pieces, make a quilt sandwich of your batting lining and outer fabrics. Quilt accordingly if you plan to wash your tote. (My cotton batting states to quilt every 3 inches. I did a simple grid or lines)

Bag assembly

Take your long piece of bag fabric with one of the smaller pieces of fabric and match raw edges taking caar that the 9 inch side is the top and the 7 1/2 inch side is the top. Wonderclip and sew 1/8 inch seam allowance. Make your corners by continuing 1/8 seam for the bag bottom and opposite side. Repeat for other piece.

Your bag now has shape.

Using the continuous bias binding method and the 17 inch square, make bias binding at 2 1/2 inch strips. Press this in half. Matching raw edges to bag sides with a little overhang at the top of the bag, stitch bias binding to bag structure, taking care to stop a 1/4 inch away from bottom corners of bag, with needle left down and through the layers, flip the bag to bottom side up and lower presser foot and continue to sew matching raw edges. Make one more corner of the bag in the same method of stopping 1/4 inch from corner with needle down through all the layers, rotate bag to continue sewing. That portion of the video you want want to slow down and watch carefully. I really had no problems keeping all the fabrics true at the corners, and because you are using bias binding, the fabric will stretch and allow all this to happen. You will then hand stitch your binding down. Repeat this for both sides of bag.

Trim the top edge of your bag ensuring the bias binding and all raw edges are flush. I did have some triming to do on the bag lining vs the bag front. I snipped mine off with scissors. Now the top of the bag is ready to bind with your reg bias binding. Place binding on as if it were a quilt and join ends. When stitching binding down, make sure to flatten and center the bias binding that make the edges of the outer bag. You now have a sack with no raw edges.

Using the craftex, center this on your bag handle fabric. Adjust handles for length at this time. Press in 1/4 inch on each short end of fabric and press fabric around craftex. There will be a small gap in fabric around the craftex in the middle. Fold the craftex in half and stitch down both sides of handle.

My bag handle measurements were coming in 2 1/2 inches from middle of bias bound edge and 1 inch down from top binding. Pin handles in place and stitch across handle parralell to top binding, back stitch to starting place, with needle down pivot to sew to opposite corner diagonally, Leaving needle down in the corner, pivot bag to stitch very bottom of handle, I chose to reverse stitch back into the opposite corner. Now make the remaining X to the other corner, backstitch to the previous corner. You have just stitched an hourglass into your bag handle. Repeat for the remaining handles.

I can’t wait to go somewhere and use this bag!

Scrap Happy Feb 2023 Linky Edition

Welcome to ScrapHappy were bloggers come together and share their scrappy projects. Interested in what everyone is working on, click on the links below. Thank you Kate and Gun for hosting this each month! Warning, this blog post is full of links!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jill, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol,
Preeti, Debbierose, Nóilin, Viv and Karrin

So what have my scraps been up to in the last month?

I have been utilizing my scraps for the Sewcialites2 sew along. So far I have plenty of scraps. And in this past month I have played with the setting triangles. Each week a new free block drops at fatquartershop.com. So far I am enjoying the scrap usage.

And if you tuned in last month, you saw I was prepping and getting ready for a sew along with Coriander Quilts and the Triple Irish Chain. This is a free pattern. And boy does it gobble up the scraps. Here is the link to the free pattern.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-mI6XRlXy5WOEhYbi1nQnhJdEk/view?resourcekey=0-5zwWNVGMWsn5IjCcFGL7qQ

I am pleased to announce all thirteen 81 patches are completed! I am also very pleased to announce that the 12 alternating blocks are sewn. But best of all, this 90 by 90 pattern is now a top!!!!

I used turquoise, pinks, whites, stripes, chevrons, a touch of red and lavender! Ye-haw!!!! I love how it turned out.

During the making of this top, I was invited by Melissa of Practically Creative on youtube to join the Feb sewing bee. Melissa is in my top 10 of youtubers for quilting. She is so knowledgeable! I highly recommend checking out her channel.

I was in great company with several other youtubers, one of which, is Coleen who is a hoot and a great person to cheerlead you on with a smile! I adore her and here is the link to Coleen’s channel named Create Sew Share. She is great with Tech and likes the Kansas City Chiefs!

Sylvia, who is over in the UK, joined the zoom meeting/sewing bee being broadcast live and she also has a youtube channel. If you are into foundation paper piecing, she makes amazing patterns! Make sure to check her out!

And Stephanie Stitches also was zooming with us. I have watched Stephanie for years and she puts out great channel content. Don’t forget to hop on over to her channel to see what she has been up to.

And don’t forget to visit my channel too, click here for My Quilt Projects content.

And below you can watch us all laugh and giggle and see the projects in the works!

Lately, I have been reminiscing about all the scrappy quilts I have made. I don’t think I ever posted about this, but did you know I gave away all my Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilts? All that work and I gave them away. I kind of swore them off forever so to speak. The mystery Frolic did me in. Yeah, it made me very mad at the time. I have gotten over the madness, but I will never forget all that precious fabric now laying as pieces in my scrap bins, still unsewn and that was all the way back in 2020.

You know as I age, the blog has become somewhat of a Journal for me. I no longer have to remember a date, I have all the details posted through the years here. All the pictures available at anytime. And this will still all be here long after I am gone. The children will be able to see their momma on youtube. Or they can look at my quilts, and read about the goings-on at the time as everything is documented. Who needs a quilt label eh? LOL

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone around the world!

Photo by Emily Ranquist on Pexels.com

This wraps up ScrapHappy post for Feb 2023, thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

The Legendary Triple Irish Chain

Well, I blew through this project. I still have the blocks to sew together. Can you believe that? When you have your pieces cut and ready to go, sewing goes so fast. I got all thirteen 81 patches sewn with an additional 12 alternating blocks cut and sewn. All of the blocks are pressed waiting for the weekend.

I also completely finished two partial spools of thread. My thread bin was a bit crowded and I though I will just finish off some smaller white spools to make more room. That was very satisfying to throw away the cardboard centers of the thread.

At about 5 of the 81 patches left to sew I decided to cut a bit more variety as I cut just enough to finish, but that might mean a bunch of repeats within a block, which was undesirable for me. So here are the remnants. I have placed those with my tubs of 2 1/2 inch squares and they will be handy for some other project.

My design wall was not big enough to showcase all of the blocks. I am not even sure if my wall height was big enough. So some of the blocks are not shown on the design wall.

After constructing this behemoth I realized why this pattern is called a triple irish chain. A single irish chain is just 9 patches alternating with background, like the quilt below.

A triple irish chain takes three rows of three 9 patches. That is the 81 patch. The alternate patch in the corners has a partial 9 patch which kind of gets lost in the back ground, but the back ground also subs in for where a normal 9 patch would be. Triple irish chain is the triple row of 3 nine patches.

I am absolutely thrilled with how this turned out, and the others that I have come across are all beautiful. Could you mess this up using scraps? I suppose you could. But that robins egg blue was a perfect choice to bring all the colors together. A beautiful marriage of fabrics.

I have the perfect backing for this, but it is not big enough. I have a 108 by 108 backing. I will need greater than 120 by 120. Not sure how I will solve that dilemma.

I had to take this off the design wall and I am a little bummed by that. The kitten we have, daughter named him SPUD, will not leave the one corner of the design wall alone! This morning I got up and saw that the blocks in that corner were all wrinkled up, like he had climbed and conquered! So, I moved my trolley cart in front of it before I left for work this morning. When I got home, I just decided to not risk them by leaving them up. Either I would be sad, or be very mad at the cat. I chose sad because it is temporary. But, my cat radar is on waiting for Spud to mess with my hobby.

Perhaps this weekend, I can sew the blocks together and put it in the done for now pile.

Health wise, I am now feeling better, the cough is still there, but much better. And I am happy to report all of our weather returned to normal as well. Ice and snow are long gone.

An almost finish has me energized and excited for some UFO work. I wonder how far I can get on that? Stay tuned for more quilty adventures!

Thanks for stopping in and reading my blog!

Feb 2023 Check List

January has flown by, jeepers! I have reviewed my accomplishments this month and also setbacks. Let’s see how I am doing.

• No fabric purchases ✅
• 1 UFO is now a top ✅
• 2nd UFO needs a fabric purchase so it is moving to next year
• Do not allow youtube influencers to influence me.
• Worked on Scrappy Tripple Irish Chain ✅
• Stay up to date on Sewcialites2 ✅
• 3rd UFO is out and on the design wall with a few more 9 patches made✅
• La Passacaglia hand sewing project to be sewn on each month
• Work on the prairie points Dragon scale quilt ✅

As you can see my list has some checked off and others not. Allow me to show and discuss all.

This string quilt was actually not that much work. Much of this was in a state just waiting to be sewn in a row. UFO #1 is happily a top and this turned into a nice useable size. It has now made the list of the many quilts I have ready for long arming.

I have determined to utilize this UFO #2 it will require scanning in the actual embroidered blocks to be printed via spoonflower. Back into the project tote it went.

UFO #3 is on the design wall for this photo with a few more yellow and pink blocks sewn. I realized I used up my seafoam green bolt, so I decided to group the nine patches in color coordinated circles. This will be a quick top when I get back to it. It is back in the bin waiting for the next top to be figured out.

I decided to try to get ahead on Sewcialites2. I do not regret this, and have a few more qst blocks to cut out and a few hst blocks to sew. This will make the coming together quicker come April or late march. I learned by laying this out, the simple 9 patch block has too much color and no background. I will be deconstructing to make an improvement on that. I really wanted to see if my vision of the black backgrounds would work as the setting blocks. I am pretty pleased. I will be taking this down directly to get UFO#3 back up and running.

Let’s talk about influencers. I suppose running a blog influences my readers which is a great compliment. I was gifted (sort of) the Tula’s Butterfly2 which I will be explaining how to select a different color way, because not everyone likes rainbows and most pocketbooks these days are gravitating to the stash. I want to dive in, but know I have way to much on my work table. And if this was currently not a sew along I probably would not have even given this any thought. So, eventually I will be posting about the how to’s on Tula Butterfly2. Stay tuned…

I have qty five 91 patches sewn for the Triple Irish chain sew along.

And La Passacaglia remains uncorked for the month of January. I had planned to work a bit on that last weekend and then caught the flu. Still recovering from that.

I was able to get a small window of time in at the longarm. The dragon scales had a few more rows added. But for the most part it has been too cold in the garage. This has doubled in length since this pic was snapped.

• Feb 2023 goals
  • Sew some more 91 patches
  • Stay current on Sewcialites2
  • Get UFO#3 into a top (backing had been purchased long ago but it needs sewn)
  • Work on dragon scales quilt
  • Start filming the process for the Tula Butterfly2 pattern
  • Make a new lunch bag
  • some hand sewing on La Passacaglia

That is a lot for one month! Let’s see how many I can #crossitoffthelist. These are all my goal musings for 2023. And one more thing….I have been influenced! Although I was influenced last year, it will be made this year and looks like March is when the pattern becomes available for free. Last year I made #embroideryflowerquilt, they just announced the release of their next pattern. I am very excited about this one!

Thank you for reading my blog!

9 Patch, Pants, and Put Back

This week has not been a very productive week, and not all of them can be. We all live life, and life gets in the way. This week the hives have showed up. Amazingly they were not bad. And I am so thankful they seem to be gone. I am not gonna lie, the last time I had the hives I was bedridden with them and vowed to go to the doctor right away when they present themselves. This time I had very little itching, and the histamine reaction was low for swelling.

But, being on 24 hour allergy medicine knocks me out. And the doc said to take two 24 hour in one day. I might as well have taken bendryl because that knocks me out but for a shorter amount of time. Through my hiving, I continued to work, only missing an hour and a half for the doc appointment. As successful as this flair was, the doctor told me the stuff I had this time can affect my organs and to make sure I do not have any throat swelling shut!!! He said I really needed to figure out what caused them.

Since I am a creature of habit, the process of elimination was very easy this time. I believe it was something I ate. Last Saturday I made brownies. After mentioning this in my discord server, the ladies ooooed and ahhhhed over my picture. I made a brownie post on my other blog, the cook book project. If you are interested in that recipe, make sure to click the link and make some for yourself.

I have made brownies from scratch around 4 times. This involves a higher than normal amount of cocoa powder than cake which I also make from scratch. The whole pan of brownies was gone by Tuesday morning. Since I don’t make these often, I induldged. I do believe I am allergic to the cocoa powder. I have no other symptoms yet. After looking at the cocoa powder, it had expired 3 years ago. After looking into “does cocoa powder go bad” the answer I got was no. But I think it does. You cannot believe everything on the internet. And because this is a nut or bean that is processed to death, I believe I had a reaction to the high alkali content. I was telling mom when I cooked them on the stovetop, the alkali stained my stainless steel. Turned the pan blue. My mom used to work in a bakery and I was telling her it blued my pan, and she said the cocoa powder was probably good stuff!

Brownies was the only different food I had eaten all week. All of my creams, cosmetics, soaps, detergents, and “beauty” regiment had not changed. Although there was some new gold bond cream that I had been trying out, but had used that for over a week before the hives showed up. I suppose the brownies could have raised my alkalinity enough to react with the lotion???? As the week got farther from my last brownie, the hives disappeared.

So, as life came back to normal, the sewing commenced!

I dug around in my projects determined to get going on this.

And I almost forgot why this became a UFO, I could have sworn it was for lack of fabric in the triangle settings since this was on point. But low and behold as a dug through the bin, I had plenty of fabric. But that fabric just did not speak to me. I have decided to take a scan of these blocks on a copy machine and upload it to spoonflower to fill in the setting triangles. Because I am on a no buy fabric diet, this went back into its bin until next year.

In digging around in the bin, I found the backing for this, as well as several large pieces of white fabrics. Even a lovely gradient I had purchased thinking that would be what those triangles needed. I also found some vintage feedsack fabric in the bin. These bloomers I made eons ago and wore them out. And then they quit fitting. My grandmother was still alive when I raided her small fabric stash. There was half a yard of each print. Not enough to make shorts of one color. So I made each side a different color and contrasted the gathered fabric too. These are so soft, and because the fabric was from my grandmother, I cannot get rid of them. Eventually these shorts will end up in a quilt!

As disappointed as I was to put this away, I got out yet another project bin. Spinning 9 patch it is!

And when I got this out, I realized I used up all of my green bar fabric for other quilts and have very little left. This quilt needs the blocks homogenized so the spin shows up. So I grouped them by color which seemed to do the trick. I will eventually sew some greens to go around the perimeter of this. I think this will work.

When the design wall is full and you need a photo op, who says sewcialites2 cannot photo bomb the spinning 9 patch? hehe

That was last weeks block. And here is this weeks block…

The above block was designed by Doug Leko and I just LOVE IT! This looks complicated, but it is just some folded corners over some rectangles and some flying geese, with a pinwheel HST. I can just imagine a whole quilt made with this pattern. Perhaps this will make my new bucket list page on my pinterest board. Yes, when I have started to get inspired by all the quilty pretty things out there, I made a bucket list for quilting. No, I cannot share it, because I have made that board private.

Additionally, this week I was gifted two major patterns, the Dear Jane book, and the Tula Butterfly pattern. There is currently a sew along going on with the Tula Butterfly. As much as I want to dive into that, I am holding off.

I look forward to making both of these and maybe as a reward for getting some UFOs done I will dive into these makes. The Tula pattern since I Have no Tula fabric, I will have to plan big for the fabrics I have. I am thinking of a theme with the monarch butterfly. So blacks, yellows, oranges and whites….there is a coloring page for this pattern so I will probably play with that quite a bit and may totally reassign colors within the blocks. Believe it or not, this pattern is not hard at all if you just take it one block at a time.

Not feeling good today, feels like I have the flu. Others in the house are sick too. Hopefully I will get some sewing done. Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!