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