Slow Going

It's Sunday and foggy and lots of rain is blowing in on the wind as I begin this post. It's nice to be indoors where it's cozy and warm. Today I'm linking up with Kathy at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching. We also link up with our church on line for the Sunday morning service and are so glad in this time of Covid 19 for the technology available to make this happen. But it's early yet and I have a little time to write about my slow progress this week on Abigail's quilt.

I contemplated long on how to quilt Abby's Roman Square quilt, I had plenty of time to think about it while I waited about a month for the backing fabric I ordered on line to be delivered. In that time I made a sample quilt and came up with what I thought would be a good quilting pattern and tried it out on the sample. It didn't turn out well at all. I still like the little quilt I made, but I don't want to look too closely at the quilting because it is so disappointing. The design was inspired by one recently posted on Lori Kennedy's blog. I had tried doodling her design but my doodling didn't turn out well until I changed it up to the design shown here. Sadly my free motion quilting experience is very limited and this simply didn't turn out as I had sketched it. Anyway it was back to the drawing board, so to speak.

Abby's middle name is Rose and I originally wanted to use a continuous line rose pattern for quilting but I couldn't find the pattern. I knew I had one, it's part of the set Follow the Line Quilting Designs by Mary Covey for That Patchwork Place. It was visible in the little instruction book that comes with the pattern packet, but the page with that design wasn't in the packet and I didn't know what I'd done with it. Fortunately I happened across it while looking for something else recently. I really need to keep things where they belong! It could have been a very long time before I found that pattern.

Anyway, I was happy to find it and to find that the dimension fit the rows on Abby's quilt perfectly.  I changed it up a little bit, deleted some loops and simplified the center then made three stencils for the three parts of the rose. Over the weekend I made a little table runner to use as a sample for the quilting. The stencil worked out nicely though my placement could have been aligned better. The marking took a long time, but once it was ready the quilting itself went quite quickly.

So Monday of this week I began tracing them onto the quilt. So far this week I've spent somewhat over 12 hours tracing the pattern onto the quilt top and have 9 rows left to mark. The good news is that each row gets smaller as I go along. I started marking in the center of the quilt where the rows are the longest, marked four or five of the longest rows and then moved off in one direction toward one corner of the quilt.

Now I'm back to one of the longer rows, 17 blocks, but as I said each row will get smaller by two as I make my way to the finish. The marking is tedious and my back gets sore from leaning over my cutting table for such long periods of time. So though my week hasn't been taken up with slow stitching it's certainly been S L O O O O W.

So today I think I want to take a break from marking and actually work on some slow stitching, and I have many options for doing that. I still have about two inches to finish on blanket stitching around the outside edge of my little needle book that has come to a standstill because it is so tedious. Next needle book will be done differently. There is the purple witch's boot project to work on, and a small purple whole cloth quilt (pictured here) that I started hand quilting many years ago that has fallen by the wayside. I've recently pulled it out of hibernation and have done a little work on it over the last couple of weeks. Each of those projects feature my favorite color, purple, so I'll leave off there and not go into the yellow, green, blue, or hexagon UFOs that await my attention.

Well, this post has been rather slow going too, I've had some trouble with the new blogger format and had to revert to the original version to make my post. I've taken time out for our church service, which was on REST and very welcome and timely. The fog has lifted and the rain has stopped but the sky is still cloudy and gray and the wind is still blowing, a perfect day for sitting in a comfy chair and stitching. Guess I'll get to it. 

I hope you are well and enjoying this day.

I'm linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching at https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/

Maybe in May

Roman Square Quilt / May OMG 

My monthly goal for April was to be at least half way finished quilting this Roman Square quilt. However I didn’t have fabric for the back and mail orders are snail pace slow these days. But today I got notified that my order has shipped. Hurray! Or is that hurry!? It’s posted to arrive on the 11th. So now it’s time to get the top down off the design wall and get it marked so it will be ready to layer when the backing fabric arrives. My One Monthly Goal for May is to get it done. Abigail’s birthday is early in June and I’d love to have it ready for her by then.

Suzette checking out my stash

I spent some time last week rearranging the storage system for my stash while waiting for my order to be shipped. I don’t have a large stash because I try to refrain from buying fabric that I don’t have a plan for, though sometimes I do splurge and buy fabric I just love hoping that I’ll figure out something to do with it. I’ve had my fabric in plastic storage bins since moving it into Flo’s studio because the studio was known to sometimes have unwanted critters on the loose. Having it in bins also made it very easy to store while the place was for sale and to transport to the new house. And it was organized in the bins so I left it that way until last week. Every time I wanted to look for fabric I had to pull out one or more heavy bins and I was getting tired of it. Now it’s all visible at a glance and the only critters in my sewing room are my cats. They may be curious but they leave my stuff alone unless I’m actually working on it. Then of course they want to be in the middle of it. The picture only shows part of the stash.

Boot Quilt Beginnings

One of my newly emptied bins will make a good project box for the boot quilt I started over the weekend. It’s intended as a Christmas present so no real need to work on it for the moment. I don’t have a suitable background fabric for it so can’t do much more now anyway. It can wait while I work on Abby’s quilt. Having chosen fabrics reserved in the project box will be good. And having block dimensions and my general plan for this quilt noted in my database will be very helpful when it’s time to pull it out and get it done.



I’m linking up with Patty at Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal.
https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/05/one-monthly-goal-may-link-up.html

These Boots Aren’t Made for Walkin’

The RSC color for May is dark green. I knew I had a good supply of scraps that would work so I pulled them first thing this morning. But I had no idea what I was going to do with them. So I went out to the living room to drink my coffee and relax hoping to come up with an idea at some point today.

I read a few posts on the blogs I follow while enjoying my coffee. Barbara at Cat Patches mentioned a pattern that she received in the mail from a friend. It’s a boot pattern called Crazy for Cowboys.  It looks like a fun quilt and reminded me that I made a boot quilt long ago for my niece Hannah, with a pattern of my own.

If you aren’t familiar with Cat Patches check it out. I always enjoy Barbara’s posts. https://catpatches.blogspot.com/

Boots from dark green scraps sounded like a good idea so I went to the sewing room, dug out the pattern, and got started. I will likely include other colors but this is a good beginning. Some of the patterns were already traced onto fusible web leftover from the original quilt so I didn’t need to do much prep work today, though some of them gave me quite a bit of trouble so I may have to switch over to newer fusible. I got three pairs of boots done today. I don’t have a suitable background in my stash but just learned that our local quilt shop is open for limited hours during the week. I may have to pay them a visit.

Here is a shot of the original quilt. I plan on doing a very different layout for the new one. I will also change up some of the boot design details, and won’t be using any wild bright colors. I wish I knew when I made Hannah’s quilt, but I have no notes on it at all. I’m glad I have a picture of it. I asked Hannah about it and she thinks it was 2006, the year she was into horseback riding.

I’m linking up with Angela at So Scrappy for the 2020 RSC.
https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Speaking of boots. I pulled a rather old project out this week and have started working on it again. As I mentioned above I like to have some quiet time in the morning while I enjoy my coffee. Hand work is ideal for that time of day. When the weather is cold I like to knit and crochet, but when it warms up I want a lighter project and embroidery is just the thing.

The  piece is actually further along than what’s pictured here. Maybe I can get this part of it done by October. This is the center piece of a quilt called Which Witch’s Boot by Meg Hawkey of Crabapple Hill Studio. I chose all the fabric for the project when I bought the pattern and have been saving it with the pattern so it will be ready for me when I finally get the embroidery done.

I’ll be linking up with Kathy tomorrow for Slow Sunday Stitching at https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/