Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

I went to Adelaide to visit family for 10 days, and now I'm back. What a hectic time it was, and Isla turned 10 years old. It's so hard to comprehend that 10 whole years have gone past since she arrived and made me Nan. She's an inch shorter than me, and growing like a weed, such long legs! That is because of her grandfather's genes, not anyone on my side of the family. We're all like hobbits, and DH was a man of Gondor. It's a Lord Of The Rings thing.

 I succumbed to another $1 FQ sale at Spotlight. Isla scored another lot for her stash, and we used some of the new FQs to make pajamas for her teddy.  I showed her how to sew the top by hand, and we did the pants on the machine. She's much more comfortable with the machine than with a needle, but we'll work on that.

Finn was his usual energetic self, but we had some good times reading. His siblings have been lording it over him because he couldn't read and they could; we spent a lot of time together going through his school readers and something clicked. He knows all the sounds and the theory and the sight words, but he just wasn't putting it together and then suddenly he made sense of it all. When I left he was reading cereal boxes and the toothpaste tube and the instructions in the games he plays. I said to Seonaid, it's sad when they are able to read the headlines on magazines and papers in the supermarket, and become aware of the news. They get to know a whole lot of stuff you wish they didn't.

My brain was fried by the time I drove home, too much energy and movement from the kids, too much traffic, too many people in my space every time I left the house. I'm so glad to be returning to my quiet life for a spell. I sincerely hope I haven't jinxed myself with that statement.

I left these blocks on the design wall when I left, so yesterday I sewed them all into a small top, probably just lap size. 

There are leftover bright squares, but I'm working on a plan for those. What I also have are 214 bonus HSTs from the snowballed squares. They finish at 1.75", so I will have to come up with a plan for them.

Instead of using 2.5" squares to snowball the white squares I used  3" squares.  

That gave me a larger bonus triangle to work with, and subtly changed the block without affecting the overall look. It also meant  that I didn't have a big lump of seam allowances to deal with, so it was a good idea.

I'm looking forward to getting back to these scrap blocks. I've gone from thinking these blue and green strips were garbage to loving the look of these blocks.

They are so easy and fun to sew, and they look a lot more complex than they are. Proving yet again, that no scrap is too small to use.

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Closer to a FInish

I got a bee in my bonnet about finishing This And That, and sewed steadily on the blocks, sure that I would have units left over. Imagine my horror then, to find I actually need another 5 units. It felt like making those 10 extra HSTs would take forever and I would never get it done. 

Once I put the histrionics to one side it actually took less than half an hour, and I could then sew them into the required blocks and get them on the design wall.

It took a whole evening to sew the blocks into a top. There was much nesting of seams and pinning, but I really enjoyed it.

Because the unit and then the block seams were twirled, every seam nested perfectly, and it was a pleasure to pin and sew. Even if one piece was a little long or short, I could contain that within a 2" area, so the whole thing is flat as a tack. It was very satisfying. As far as choosing borders for it, that wasn't so pleasant; it was a struggle to find something acceptable, but I won that little battle after a few hours.

What have I been doing since then? Sewing on this bright project. I had a mild memory problem calling it Arkansas Traveller, which of course is an applique sampler quilt from the 1800s.  It's actually an Arkansas Crossroads, which I suddenly remembered while I was cooking dinner one night. It's very strange how minds work sometimes.

This will only be a single bed quilt, because I just want to use the leftovers from those bright strips; I don't want to cut a whole heap for this and then have to plan another quilt to use up the excess. What is on the design wall is half of what I need; I think another few nights will see this done and the box of squares emptied out.

I've been playing with another scrap design from Americana Quilting.  I have a box of blue and green scraps from a Bargello quilt and a Many Trips Around The World that I made probably a decade ago.

I knew I had more, and then Mereth unearthed another box of them from the scrap containers.

 Yep, that's a lot. They've been cluttering up the place since 2015, and I was close to putting them all in the bin, but I saw this video first. 

I made sample blocks, and I think it will be a wonderful way to get rid of these entirely. The blocks are a lot of fun to make, and I'm keen to get sewing on them.  I love how the internet can supply all these inspirations that are a solution at last to long term scrap problems. But it would have been a lot quicker to bin the lot of them......

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A Bit of This and That

I'm stalled on this Fox and Geese top.  First up, I sewed a row in the middle backwards, so my carefully arrangement of fabrics and colours went out the window. I did contemplate un-pulling 2 long seams, but I was too miffed to do it. I was so cranky that I hung it on a rack and didn't look at it for two weeks. I guess I shouldn't concentrate on speed above accuracy, but it was late at night and I was determined to get it in one piece.  Well I did, but I wasn't happy.

I've decided that it doesn't really matter, and that I should just put borders on it and call it done. But now the top is being bolshie, and refuses to tell me exactly what it wants.  A big sprigged  cream floral such as the left strip, or a warmer, denser floral like the right strip. I've tried everything I can think of in my stash, and it won't give me a yes or no. It can go back on the rack and think about it's attitude.

When I started to feel better in the early days of this cold I decided I just needed something easy and mindless to sew, and the kitted This and That blocks fit the bill.  

I sewed like a machine, 48 quadrants in one night, and the final count the next afternoon was 72, That's enough for 18 blocks, which is most of what I need. I'm aiming for 56 blocks, and later today I will do a count of what I have and finish the remaining kitted pieces. This is yet another example of a leader-ender fail; I always get to a certain point with them and then it becomes the primary project. But at least it will mean a free project box, which is very welcome.

Incidentally, I found this unit in Blockbase.

No 1326, Cotton Reels. Not seeing it myself, but that's what it says.

My prolonged cutting extravaganza of 2.5 and 4.5" strips produced a flurry of blocks, 50 Square Within a Square blocks, 48 Happy blocks and the blue top in the last post.  This is all that's left of that huge pile of strips.

Not very much. I ended up with a lot of 2.5" squares from the ends of strips, and I'm toying with the idea of an Arkansas Traveller in those brighter colours.

Of course I modified it a bit, and working out the changes kept me interested, and it will definitely become a project. I feel like I need to cut a heap more strips though, so that might happen in the next few days.

It's trying to become Autumn here, but our days are still very warm. I decided it was time to harvest some jalopenos and capsicums.

There are loads more jalopenos on the bushes, but I think the capsicums are over. Considering the bushes are 3 years old I think they've done well. I plan to pull them out and plant anew next year.  My tomatoes struggle on, with about 35 small fruits, but their days are numbered.  Then I can think of planting a few winter things like spinach and snap peas.  It's only a few pots, but it keeps me interested.

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Plague Edition

 Ach, I have a doozy of a cold, flat out misery making.  The last 2 days have been horrible, I slept for long stretches and tried to give myself time to recover. I feel marginally better today, all dosed up with cold medication and stuff for my headache. This is the first time since 2020 that I have a cold that wasn't passed on from my family. I'm always so careful when I go out, but I attended a lot of appointments last week, without a mask, and some germ moved in.  I will get a batch of chicken soup in the IntantPot and that will help I'm sure.

What were some of these appointments? For a start there was a sale at a sewing shop featuring $5 a metre fabric.  Most of the cheap fabrics were panels, and even at that price not a lot of people were interested. Mereth and I certainly weren't, so most of what we bought was $9 a metre.

You can't ever have too many blues or greens.

These are cheerful colours, very welcome, but I wish I'd bought more of that map fabric. Sometimes being sensible is regrettable. 

 I kept within my budget, buying mostly half metres of useful blenders, but there were 2 Martha Negley fabrics that I grabbed. 

Such beautiful colours and patterns.

 I really want to make a Mathemagical quilt, using my Kaffes and other splashy bright fabrics. but I don't have very many now. I need 12 FQs, and I would be scratching to come up with that many, so these gorgeous fabrics will fill the gaps.  I absolutely do not want to walk into a quilt shop and buy more Kaffe FQs, after working to get them out of my stash.

There was also a trip back to the closing sale of a craft shop, because he's now offering a 40% discount.  He's a bit pricey, so such a big discount still leaves some things not cheap enough, We went for widebacks, scissors, some magnifying aids and some spinning supplies.  

Next month, the discount goes to 50% off, so I will have a look at more spinning stuff and some cross stitch supplies. 

What else have I been doing? I got the borders on the blue Square within A Square top, and it looks very nice.

 Snowballing all those corners took so much time, but I do like the look of it. I got the idea from a picture on Jo's Country Junction, one of Ray's charity quilts. It's the 4th photo. There are so many ideas out there, and it was a great idea to make a quilt a bit special.

I think that's only my 3rd finish this year, I've been sewing, but not completing much. I made dozens of blocks from my 2.5" strips, but I don't feel compelled to sew them into tops. I need to have a big shake up when I feel better, and decide what to work on next.

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