April Finishes

April Roses

Well April is nearly gone and my OMG for the month has not been met. Not only not met - I've done no work on it since I posted my April goal here early in the month. My goal was to get the quilt for my niece Abigail layered, basted, and at least half way finished quilting.  However after posting that goal I realized I didn't have enough fabric for a backing and with stay at home orders in place in California I couldn't go to our local quilt shop to buy fabric. My only option was to find and order fabric on line, which I did right away. It hasn't come yet. I got an email from the company over a week ago asking me to be patient, that they had to reduce their work force to maintain a safe distance in their work environment. They promised to get my order shipped as soon as they could. Their email came two weeks after I placed my order. I haven't gotten any notice yet that my order has been shipped.

Saturday Blues

Happily Abby's birthday isn't until June, so I still have some hope of getting the quilt done, if not right on time, at least not terribly late. I'm glad that the company is working to keep their employees safe from the virus, so I will continue to wait and hope. In the meantime I've been busy in the sewing room. Today I finished and hung my Saturday Blues quilt for the April RSC in the hall outside my laundry room. In the old house my kitchen and laundry room/pantry were blue and white. This house however doesn't lend itself to that color scheme so the only place I can put my blue things is the laundry room. But there's no wall space for it so the quilt brings the blue out into the hallway.

Nigel

Nigel came to keep me company while I stitched down the binding on the back, which was fine while he stayed put and watched. But being the big sweet boy he is he decided he wanted to "help" me stitch. Of course I didn't want his paw to get damaged by the needle, nor the thread by his claws so I had to resort to a little deception to move him along. I managed to make my thimble tap loud enough on the underside of the table to make him think someone was knocking on the door, which did the trick. He got down and went to investigate and let me finish my task on my own.

Pinwheels Quilt

The Saturday Blues quilt is the second finish I managed this month, I also finished  the Sparkle Stars quilt that I started in February. It's a little quilt for Nigel and you can read about it in my post Sparkle Stars Finish. I've also gotten some work done on the dark blue and tan pinwheels UFO that I ran across in February when I organized my scraps and rearranged my stash. The blocks are sewn into rows, but the rows still need to be sewn together. Then I will have to figure out what I'm going to do to it next. As you can see Abby's quilt is still on the design wall, I'm now just pinning other things over it. Orange bits on the pinwheel quilt are just row markers.

Spring Tablecloth

Lastly I decided I wanted a tablecloth in spring colors, so I spent a couple of days last week working on that. It still needs a couple of borders to get it to the right size for my kitchen table, so it will keep me busy for a while yet unless the back for Abby's quilt shows up. The pattern is Afternoon Delight designed by Ann Laure for Grizzly Gulch Gallery. I have a tablecloth in fall colors from this pattern and have another top finished in Christmas fabrics which is just waiting to be quilted. I used my favorite colors in this one. It is also pinned over something else on the design wall waiting for my attention.



 I'm linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts at
https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/04/one-monthly-goal-april-finish-link-up.html

Sparkle Stars Finish

Sparkle Stars is my second 2020 finish. These little quilts go so much faster than the large ones I typically take on. It feels really good to have accomplished something, even if it's small. This little quilt will live on our antique dresser. Nigel loves to hang out up there, it's by the window where he watches out for the neighborhood cats that often track across our front yard. We've had an old ragged blanket up there but it looked pretty shabby and I wanted to make a whole quilt using the Sparkle Stars pattern after making a sample block in teal, the RSC color for March.  A small quilt was all I wanted to do, so decided that the top of the dresser would be an ideal place and a good size for the piece I wanted to do. It also gave me a good place to start practicing free motion quilting. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, even though a couple of the points got cut off when I put the binding on.


 

I wanted to get a picture of Nigel on his new quilt, but he has disappeared, most likely under a bed. So instead I've got Suzette on her Strawberry Basket quilt.  It's a little scrappy quilt I made the summer I got to work in Flo's studio.

There is a little swallow's nest in the eves just above the window there. Suzette likes to come in the afternoon and watch the swallows fly, she also likes to sleep in the sunshine and just hang out with me while I work in the sewing room. It's not sunny today, warm but overcast, kind of dreary. But I hear voices wafting up from the neighbors, so some folks are enjoying the outdoors.

The RSC color for April is light and bright blue, so last weekend I made another little sample quilt with my blue scraps so I could practice some more free motion quilting. It's a little larger than the Sparkle Star quilt. Today I got it basted and ready to quilt. I just have to figure out what design I'm going to quilt.  That is turning out to be a challenge.

I've been doodling for a little while trying out different motifs but I'm not very good at drawing so they all turn out looking pretty funky. I would like to do an all over pattern, something that could just skate up each row. I really do sorta mean skate, Abby's birthday is in early June and her quilt is queen size. I need a pattern that is not too fussy or detailed, something that will work with the Roman square blocks. I'm open to suggestions.


Well, I think that's enough for today, I need to get back to figuring this out, more doodling ahead.


I'm linking up with Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2020 at So Scrappy at http://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Location, Location, Location

One of the things I love about my sewing room is it's location. In our house at Shibui my little sewing corner was the northern most corner of the house, Dan's office was the southern most corner of the house. Now his office is just down a short hall from  the sewing room. Sitting at my sewing desk I can look right out the door and see him sitting at his computer desk.

Dan teaches on line classes at our local community college. He's fortunate that he didn't have to scramble like so many of his colleagues did to get his classes on line in a hurry because of the virus. What is new for him in this time of stay at home orders is that all his meetings are now also on line instead of on campus.

I'm very much liking having him home all the time. I know that will change when the order is lifted but for now that's one thing about this situation that I am not complaining about.

I spent the weekend working on a little sample quilt with fabrics from my scrap stash. It's small so I got all the blocks done Saturday afternoon. I had to do the layout on the bedroom floor because the design wall was already full. But since it was small it wasn't so bad. It only took a few minutes, I got a picture of the layout I wanted and then stacked up the blocks and returned them to the sewing room where I put them together yesterday.

You would think that having just finished piecing a queen size quilt in the same pattern that I would be able to get this little thing together without a hitch. How about sewing right sides together - every time! I missed that on one of my long strips while making the blocks. Sewing rows together wasn't any better, I sewed one of the longest rows together top to bottom instead of side to side. So I made good use of my seam ripper both days.

The top did get done though and now it's time to find a backing piece. I've prepared the binding in a pretty bright blue fabric. You can see it pinned around the outside of the quilt in this picture, though it looks like a border, it's just pinned up to make sure I have enough of the fabric in three strips so I don't need to cut a fourth.

The large quilt behind it is for my niece Abigail. I hope to have it done by her birthday in June. I am waiting for the backing fabric to arrive and hoping I don't have to wait too long. In the meantime I'm going to use the little blue sample to practice the free motion quilting pattern I want to use on the large quilt.

The remaining portion of the design wall is taken up by a crib size quilt waiting for me to piece it. I love the ladybug fabric, but the colors of the four patch blocks between them don't do much for me so I'm not that motivated to get it done. 

Another project hanging around waiting for me to get to it is pinned up on a piece of foam core board. I've had the pinwheel blocks hanging around forever and have finally decided to do something with them, but I'm not moving too quickly on that project either. The pinwheels are hard to even see in this picture - they are turned on point. I have lots more of them to add side triangles to, the little piece of foam core won't hold too many more of them, but I wanted to make them visible in the room in hopes of getting me to move on them. The square blocks that look black are actually a dark navy with a small tan print.

Well, that's what's on the design wall this Monday. If my backing comes in for Abby's quilt it will free up lots of space on the design board for other things that are waiting in the wings.

Speaking of wings, there have been many outside my window as I've written this post. The swallows have arrived and are nest building - some of them in our eves. Most of them on the houses higher up in the neighborhood. They make a mess, but I love to see them fly and the sounds they make are endearing. They move too fast for a picture and I won't bother with a video, so I leave you with a picture of wings of a different sort. This is my angel wing begonia. I was afraid that I had killed it last year and am so glad to see it coming back. It will fill the pot and trail over the side with sweet little orange blossoms. I'll post another picture when it's in bloom.


I'm linking up with Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com

Saturday Blues

The most precious thing I have from the Shibui studio is Flo's Bernina. It's by far the best sewing machine I've ever had, there's no comparison on quality or performance. It hums, it makes beautiful consistent stitches. It's the easiest thing in the world to thread.  So you can imagine my dismay when I put my foot down to start stitching and heard nothing but a whir, and saw no movement. Flo's words came immediately back to me from the first time she allowed me to use her precious machine, and I quote, "If you break it I'll kill you." Those words did not in any way represent her normal way of speaking. She was more likely to tell me I was perfect and that there was no such thing as mistakes, just happy accidents. An accident with her Bernina though would not have been happy. 

How does one get one's machine fixed while in the midst of a mostly national shut down? I'm in California, we are still under stay at home orders. What was I to do? I didn't even know where in normal times I would take it to be fixed. There used to be a Bernina dealer in Paradise, but he died and the shop went up in flames when the rest of the town burned, though he was already gone by that time. I've had it serviced in nearby Magalia, someone comes once a year and you have to make an appointment to have your machine serviced. This year she came the first week of the lock down, and I had already been in stay at home mode for over a week by that time, so I missed getting it serviced this year.

I texted my friend Kathy and asked where I might get it fixed. She said the person who used to service her machine lived in Paradise and was probably no longer here because of the fire. So I stepped back from my plan for the day and and worked on marking the outer edges of my Sparkle Stars quilt. Just as I was finishing that up my husband came in and I told him about his mom's machine. So being the guy who wants to be a fixer - he started asking questions. Have you unplugged it and plugged it back in? The first question he always asks. No, so I did, just to humor him. Still just a whir and no movement. So he started asking what's this? and this? and What's that? pointing at the bobbin winder. I told him and as I looked it at I noticed that the bobbin winder was what was whirring. There was no bobbin on it but it was spinning and making the whirring sound I had been hearing. So you know the rest of the story, right? The needle doesn't go up and down when the bobbin is being wound. Somehow it had been bumped and as soon as I pressed the release button my machine began doing what it's supposed to do. I felt like such a dummy, and was so grateful that Dan had come in and started asking questions.

So my day started out blue because thinking the machine was broken made me very sad. And then my day continued blue, but it became a scrap happy blue because my plan for the day was to finally get something done with the the blue scraps that have been sitting out for the April RSC since the month began. So the afternoon got spent making Roman Square blocks for a small sample quilt that I want to use for quilting practice before I try doing any quilting on Abigail's quilt.

I have 34 blocks for the little sample and have gotten the side triangles cut. I also have lots of scrap strips set aside for the binding, it's fabric from a dress I once made, not left over fabric either - I cut up the dress. I wore it for quite a long while before I did that though. If I think it needs a border I will have to pull some fabric from my stash - but to get this much done just from my scrap drawer I thought was pretty good. I'm glad to be actually using my scraps after having hung onto them for so long thinking that maybe someday I would use them somehow. I'm grateful to Angela at So Scrappy for the RSC challenge that's gotten me using them. This month is light and bright blue. About half the scraps are from my floral log cabin quilt and about half from the scraps left from Flo's stash. I hope by next Saturday to have it put together and start my practice quilting. My OMG for April was to get Abby's quilt to the point of being at least half quilted but I found that I didn't have enough fabric in my stash for a back, so ordered some on line and am still waiting for it to arrive. I'm thinking I won't be meeting my April goal. I'm glad Abby's birthday isn't until June. I hope I can have it done by then.

I'm linking up with Angela at So Scrappy for the April RSC at https://superscrappy.blogspot.com

I hope you are staying safe and well!

Morning in Paradise

                        

    Sunrise on the canyon.

                                 A rainbow in the distance.

I love mornings. I’ve always been a morning person, it’s when I have the most energy, and the day is fresh and new. I enjoy the quiet and stillness, and the birdsong when there is some. I realize that many households have a very different experience of morning, rushing to work, getting breakfast and lunch ready for kids before the bus arrives. That is just not my reality though rushing off to work to care for other people’s kids has been a big part of my experience. It just isn’t now. Not because of this virus though.

I wonder if the stay at home orders have brought anything other than anxiety to families that are used to the morning rush. Have there been any positive effects to not having to run out the door and be away from each other for most of the day? Some families are spending much more time together because of all this, and some are forced apart, they don’t live together so they can’t see each other, except electronically. I’m about an hour and a half distant from my dad who is in his 90s. I had planned for more frequent visits now that I’m retired and have the time to go, but that will have to wait. I have other family there as well that I also miss seeing, and family farther away. I’m grateful for the ability to stay in touch electronically. 

                                 In the meantime I quilt. 

My OMG for April is coming along. Only one corner area left to piece. Most of the rows are already sewn together. I hope to have it together by the end of day tomorrow if not today. There are other projects waiting in the wings.

                         

                             A baby quilt waiting to be pieced.

 RSC blue scraps waiting for a design.

Lots to do, guess I’d better get busy. The sun is fully up now and the morning is glorious. I’ll leave you with one more glimpse.

                     Sunlight and raindrops on the maple leaves.

April Goal and TaTa Teal

It's gray and dreary with a bit of a wind and light rain in Paradise this morning. The sewing room however is just as cozy as can be, a great place to spend time indoors whether because of the rain or because of social distancing. There may be a gray sky out my window but in the sewing room there is no lack of color. The queen size quilt for my niece Abigail is on the design wall and brings me delight every time I walk into the room. I'm going to miss it when it's finished and gone. I'm more than half way done with the piecing and it's going relatively quickly now as each row is getting shorter since I've passed the half way point. Abigail's birthday is in June and I'd like to have it finished by then. So my OMG for April is to be at least half way finished with the quilting by the end of the month.

I missed posting to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last Saturday, but did have the top of the teal and purple Sparkle Stars table topper done by the 31st. I'm practicing some free motion quilting that I want to try out on that little quilt. I've never done any free motion quilting before and am anxious to try, and this little quilt seems like a good place to start. A practice piece for a free motion feather is pictured below. I've been taking lots of classes from Bluprint this last week or so since they are being offered for free until the 16th. There are a bunch of great classes and teachers. I’ve always been intimidated by the thought of free motion quilting, especially feather motifs. The classes I’ve been taking are giving me the confidence to try. You can check them out at:  https://www.mybluprint.com/cr_maid=120946&cr_linkid=20200403_SVOD_WTW_hero&vpe=true&cr_source=Bluprint&cr_medium=Internal%20Email&st_id=19890224&cuid=20948247

A couple of weeks ago I found and printed out the Quilt Project Planner from Hello Melly Designs, available from Quilting Digest at:  http://quiltingdigest.com/print-this-planner-to-keep-track-of-quilt-projects/.  It has a good number of things listed that one would want to keep track of when planning a quilt. I used it as a jumping off point for my own planner. I love working with and designing databases and don't know why I haven't made one for my quilt projects before. It gives me a greater ability to track every detail of a project than a print out could. It also gives me a space to attach pictures which will be a great help with future projects. I've found that as I'm pulling out UFOs to work on I don't remember which fabric I had chosen for which part of the quilt. I've sometimes made notes about quilts I've started but have not had a single place to keep them, had any consistency in what was noted, or been able to attach pictures or even samples of the fabrics I intended to use. Now with the database everything will be in one place and notes made on the fly as I work won't get lost. It's also a place to keep notes on quilts that I've completed over the years. I've been surprised by the number of quilts I've done because I've never had a list of them before. Both the Roman Square quilt for Abigail and the Sparkle Stars table topper are in the database. I’m anxious to move them both onto the completed list.

I'm linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts at: https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/04/one-monthly-goal-april-link-up.html

I’m linking up with Rainbow Scrap Challenge at SoScrappy at: https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/