Status Report

It's annoying that my hands haven't recovered fully, I'm still having to be careful about using the rotary cutter. I want to cut up piles of fabric and I can't. Well I could, but I'd regret it. I hate being sensible. 

On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to send pieces through the machine  in short bursts, so I've been doing that. My leader-enders have built up into quite a stack, but I still have a lot more to make. 

I've been strip piecing a new project to keep me amused. I can cut some 2" strips with the accuquilt,  and then spend time just feeding them through the machine. They have to be trimmed into the required squares and triangles at some point, but that's what I'm doing so slowly and carefully. 

I like how it looks, and I've earmarked other fabrics to make blocks in different colours. I'm enjoying the change of pace.

In other news, our hot weather arrived with a vengeance, 41 and 42°C days (105° F). Just nasty. I knew I would have to retreat to the AC in the shed, so I prepared by taking my Janome 6500 down there, and setting up Scarlett in her place in my sewing room. That involved a lot of dusting and de-cluttering and putting things away where they should be. I'll be participating in Karen Brown's Declutter Challenge 2026, but I've got a head start on cleaning my sewing table.

Scarlett is very nice to sew on, a lot bigger than the 6500, and her lighting is much better. She's been handling my strip piecing perfectly, producing strips with no puckering or gathering or bowing. I'm glad that I don't have to learn a whole new brand of machine, I think it would make my brain hurt. I have a very sweet little Pfaff, but I still have to get out the manual every time I need to wind a bobbin.

I haven't set up the workroom yet; we had social events yesterday that took up most of our free time. I thought I'd be able to sew down there after tea, but alas, I had vertigo for hours and hours. I couldn't even open my eyes without the room spinning madly. So I sat in a chair and listened to The Quilted Forest videos on YouTube. It was infuriating, but at least it forced me to rest my hands. Silver lining and all. I couldn't even make myself a cup of coffee. I was very sad.  Luckily I recovered overnight, and this morning I'm caffeinated and ready to achieve something.

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Taking It Easy

 I've been good about not stressing my hands with too much work, and I think my wrist is much better. I put a new blade in my rotary cutter and cautiously cut some pieces, with no problems. Then another night I sewed all those pieces together; I ironed them in another session, and last night I trimmed them. 

That wasn't comfortable, so I had to take a break between each set, but I got them all done. I think the message there is to stick to pushing pieces through the machine for another few days, before I go back to cutting. I see people on YouTube videos cutting with left and right hands, and that impresses me no end. If I tried that I'm sure I'd either wreck my fabric and cutter, or I'd need lots of bandages afterwards.

I'm only making one quarter of the units for Bonnie's mystery, and it's much more enjoyable than stressing about how to get them all done in time for the next clue. The half rectangle triangles in this last clue were a doozy; I kept tripping up on the bit that said, stack right sides up, rather than right sides together. Habits of a lifetime are hard to break, so I had a few miss-cuts.

And then I didn't have enough fabric to cut more, so I have two sets that look like this. I'm definitely not going to stress about that. It's a scrap quilt.

We have a spell of hot weather predicted for this week, so I need to tidy up my workroom so I can hide there in the AC. What I think will happen is that I'll go to tidy up the string piecing, decide to just make a few more blocks to whittle down the strings, and then I'll be totally side-tracked and no tidying will happen. I must try and resist that scenario.

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Hmmph!

 I finished quilting and binding the enormous quilt, and it will be picked up tomorrow. 

It all went without a hitch, which I'm very grateful for. Now I need to pull the Statler to bits and give it a spa treatment while there are no customer quilts due. Lots of oil, new needle, pull off the needle plate and clean out the innards, adjust the tension, and maybe order more bobbins. That will keep me busy. 

I'd like to quilt a quilt for myself over the break, so one day will be spent getting the backing and batting prepared for that. By the time I've done all that it will be time to head off to Adelaide again. 

Alas, I spent too much time trimming units without a break, and then binding 2 quilts in one day, and now my right arm has pins and needles and my wrist is sore. The only cure for that is rest, and rest is boring. Super boring. I'm reading, which is fine, but unproductive. I'm tidying up in small bursts, but I can't shift anything heavy, like boxes of fabric, so basically it's just shuffling things around. Even typing hurts. I'm not very patient it seems.

I've dug out some more old fabric for the mystery;

I bet Bonnie herself would recognise these old patterns.

Today I will tidy up the workroom and set up a small jigsaw, and maybe when that is finished I'll be back to light sewing duties. I can only hope.

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Home Again

Back home again, but I've had to dive right into quilting 2 quilts for a friend. One was a Bluey cot quilt, very cute, but the other is a King Size one and it's taxing my reserves. The backing had to be pieced out of three lengths of fabric and it was so heavy I could barely manage it. It took forever to iron too, but at last it was loaded on the frame. 

I ironed the top and put the batting in place, set up the panto and it's ready to quilt tomorrow. Unfortunately I have to bind bind both quilts, but once that's done I don't have any more jobs until after Christmas. Thank heavens.

I was 2 clues behind in Bonnie's mystery, so I have been cutting pieces for that whenever I have a spare moment. I decided that I was going to use some of my oldest fabrics and get them out of the stash drawers at last. I was also going to raid my scraps first, and try to use the ironed fabric hanging on the racks and in the scrap drawers. 

For the HSTs in Clue 3 I decided to use the 8-at-a-time method so that I would have 2 sets from every pair of squares. It was so fast; I know they need to be trimmed, but I choose to trim them no matter what method I use. At least this method doesn't have bias edges, and the initial cutting was really quick.

I'm only making a quarter of the units because I know I won't have time to do them all. But I'll probably catch up after Christmas. I'm wanting to add green into the mix of colours, but I'll need to see the overall design before I choose what I want to replace with green. It's certainly taken the pressure off, with the smaller amount of units to piece.

Trimming, trimming, trimming.....

I was having withdrawal symptoms in Adelaide without my sewing. The closest I got was helping Seonaid with the costumes for Thomas's class for the school concert.

40 pirate bandanas and cumberbunds, all torn because we couldn't find the fabric scissors or the acrylic ruler. Oh well, we had a good afternoon chatting and ripping and clipping all the threads.

I found graph books for the boys, so they could draw up Minecraft figures. Thomas presented me with this.

He's going to be some sort of engineer in later life, he has such a methodical mind. Before he could play with his book he had to map out some colour theory on the first page.  Actually I think he could make a very pedantic lecturer or professor; I can't count how many times I've thought, 'Don't tell your grandmother how to suck eggs' as he explains to me how to butter bread, or make a taco, or peel a boiled egg, or turn a tap on.  But he does it to share what he knows, to process it logically, and organise all the steps needed. He's a very thoughtful child.

And, he's the one who can use the TV remote when Nan is mystified by it; I'm humbled by his superior knowledge.

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I'm away from home again, in Adelaide to babysit while some end-of-school-year events take place.  I deliberately didn't bring any handwork, so that I would be forced to work on loading software onto my new laptop. It's not my favourite past-time, so many usernames and passwords to remember or retrieve.

Before I left home I reworked the measurements of my block so that I had more room at the edges to trim the block without losing my points. It's all much neater now, Im looking forward to kitting quite a few when I get back.

I do like the blocks with more than one fabric, I'll throw in a few of those. The plan was for 42 blocks, so there will be lots of fabric choices to make along the way.

I have 12 on the design wall now, and several kitted. I'm looking forward to using up some of my pink repros; I have a large collection of them and a lot of them are untouched FQs. It will be fun to finally cut into them.

And we've started on the jigsaws a bit early this year, just to keep the kids occupied. There's too much yellow in this image, even the rhino and elephant were yellow. Very confusing for the kids. They enjoyed the zebra; at least that was easy to do😄

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