We've had a run of hot days lately. at the start of it I braved the heat in my sewing room long enough to cut a heap of pieces for the Boxy Bowties and a few QSTs, but then I had to retreat to the workroom.  We've had such a strange, mild, wet summer so far, so I'm grateful that the hot days are few and far between, but still, it was not nice.

That tray hold enough squares for 15 blocks; Bonnie's quilt has 64. I don't think I'll be making mine that big, but it's still going to take a lot of little pieces.  I've about come to the end of the scraps, so I'll be cutting a few strips from the FQ drawers next.

I've been cutting some QSTs every day, and trying to sew at least 10 Hourglass blocks a day. It doesn't take long, I just have to remember to slot them in amongst the other sewing. But then I started wondering about my fabric choices. Were they too dark, too light, too murky, too busy. So I thought I should make a few more blocks, just to check.

And then I thought I should just get busy and do some more cutting, so I would have more choices, and before you know it, there were pieces for another 50 blocks cut out.

The cutting is so much easier with my little ruler guide.

I finger press those seams open, it makes the ironing go much quicker. I could say this was MAD sewing, but it was more like zombie sewing. I just pushed all the pieces through, squashing every thought that might have said, Can we do something else now? It took an hour to do the first seams on 100 pairs of triangles, not bad really.  Ironing them will take 15 minutes or so, and sewing the pairs into blocks will take more than an hour, what with lining up seams and pinning.  But I'm pleased with that bit of progress, and ready to do some fun sewing.

I really wanted to give Isla her first sewing lesson on the machine while she was here. She watched me make her a pair of shorts with a matching shoulder bag for her tablet, then we cut out a little bag for her to sew.

I was in charge of the foot control; she stood in front of me and did what I said to do. She learned how to put the presser foot down, how to guide the fabric along a line,, how to put the needle down in the fabric, how to pivot the fabric under the foot and line up the next seam line. She was enchanted with the word 'pivot', she kept saying "I'm learning SO much, I know how to PIVOT." It was one of the first things she said to her mum when I took her home.

A.n.d I forgot to take a photo of her with the bag she made.  Bad Nan. But safe to say I've given her the sewing bug, she was very proud of her bag and her shorts and her tablet bag. Good Nan.