Still unpacking

Hi all! I feel like I have to ask how everyone is doing every time I speak to someone now, so-- how are you all doing? I am feeling better than I have since March. Not only have I been out a few times and seen some lovely friends and picked out my own produce for once, but all this time I've also been teaching a summer class, which is now done. Done! I turned in the grades today and I am so remarkably happy.  It's been a long haul, and now I get a (somewhat shorter) summer vacation. Except for the fact that a few weeks ago we cancelled our vacation because of this stupid virus, so. . .

I'm not letting that get me down, though. I have six weeks to work on things at my own pace, so of course the first thing I did was go down to the sewing room and start cleaning up. That place was a wreck. And how is it possible that I have not yet finished unpacking? I still have some things in boxes in the sewing room, so I started emptying those. I found some great stuff in there that I almost forgot about. Which of course distracted me from cleaning up, so, yep, still a wreck.

I found several small pieces that need quilting, including this one:

This is a free pieced version of Joan of Arc chapel at Marquette, which has a great deal of meaning to me. I made this a while ago and I can't believe I haven't quilted it yet. Clearly, I am behind.  So of course I pulled it out and pressed it and basted it right away. I am apparently sometimes good at leaving myself notes, because I had a quilting plan sketched out and stored with the top. Yay me! I'll be working on this very carefully over the next couple of weeks. Now that I've found it, I really want to finish it and hang it up.

I also found the other free-pieced churches that I've made, but that's a post for another time. . .

Also basted was this little piece, which strikes me as quite cheerful:

He never got quilted, either, but-- wonder of wonders-- there were also quilting notes with him. So that's really my next quilting project. It's a small enough piece that I can finish it off myself, maybe even with some free motion quilting? I'll never know until I try!

Speaking of quilting. . .I had lunch this week with a very nice person named Lisa who not only made me a great mask (and later sent me instructions to make my own), but also clued me in to a place not far from here to rent time on a long arm. I had tried to do this before we moved, but that got cancelled and I never rescheduled. So you can be sure I'll be trying that out as soon as I can! (Thanks Lisa!)

The only other things that I've done this week is start on some RSC projects:

Dark blue is the color of the month, and these scraps are destined to become a blue scrap basket. Blue is not my color, and I don't have a lot of it, so I hope I can eke out enough blue scraps for the basket.

Not very interesting, but that's what's going on around here! For those of you who are alarmed, I am still mostly staying at home, and when I'm out I am definitely following all the social distancing protocols, including masks and lots of hand sanitizer. Lisa and I had lunch outside, even though it was in the 90s, and it was warm but lovely. We haven't beaten this virus, and my heart goes out to those of you who live in areas where it's exploding. Please, please do what you can to keep yourself and your neighbors safe. We've lost enough people!

Sharing at Midweek Makers

Basting away again

Hi everyone! Well, it's still January, the longest month ever. It looks like today is starting out very gray, but I was definitely promised sunshine later. We'll see how that works out.

I am basting away again, but alas, not in Margaritaville.  I am trying very hard to make progress on the many unquilted tops I have in the closet. I have recently sent out four of them to be quilted, and then I have some smaller ones and more personal ones that I am quilting up myself.  First up is this one:

This is a quilt top that I made back in "the dark times" when we had first moved to the East Coast and were living in that tiny condo while searching for a house. You can read the post about the top HERE. All of these blocks came from a swap that I did with some friends. (That's also the last swap I did. Hmmm. . .)

I'm just walking foot quilting this in straight lines following the ribbons. It's not imaginative, but it will get the job done.  After this one is finished, I have another quilt ready, with the back all made. I just need to cut some batting to baste it:

Yes, it's past time for this one, too. This was promised to Bernie for Mercyful Quilts and I made the top but didn't ever quilt it. I'm so embarrassed by this that I'm planning to send both of these quilts to Bernie. This one will be walking foot quilted, too, but I'm not quite sure how. Diagonal lines, probably. My main goal is to get this one quilted and off to the promised recipient so it can do its job of giving some comfort to someone in need.

If I get bored with quilting straight lines, you know I have plenty of piecing to do, and my daughter called a few days ago and said, "Did you know there are still some of your boxes in our basement?" So we retrieved those, and here's one of them:

A box of fabric pieces and fat quarters! It's like I have new fabric all over again. So I'll be sorting those out and playing with them-- and getting one more box out of my house. Have I mentioned that I'm never moving again?

That's the dispatch from here! Hope you are all having a good week. Happy Wednesday!

Sharing at the Midweek Makers link party.

Blowin' in the wind

Hello, and happy last day of September! Am I wrong, or has the weather been crazy the last few weeks? We had a beautiful summer weekend, except that it's September, and we just had a 15 degree temperature drop in the space of an hour. When I got home, it was 78 degrees and blowing like crazy outside. An hour later it was 63 degrees and still blowing. Gave me a big headache. I'm sure there's rain not too far behind it, too.

Lots going on here. Still working on those same two quilts. Yeah. . .I don't know why I decided to make two of them with so many pieces each at the same time. But there is progress, and that's keeping me going. Let's see if I can get one done by Friday. Could be a challenge, but I'll try.

In addition to those quilts, there is this:

Yes, that is the fields and furrows quilt being basted in my kitchen. I refuse to crawl around on the floor, so I basted it in sections on the table. The backing is taped under the table and clamped to the table as well with these babies:

Very handy! I also basted the Dancing Nines quilt and both of these are now ready to go! Not sure exactly when I'll get to them because my sewing table looks like a thread bomb went off, but I'll have them done sometime in the next couple weeks. (For those who are interested, Wanda Hanson has a nice thread basting post on her beautiful blog HERE. I do pretty much the same thing she does.)

After the success of the polar bear paper piecing, I pulled out two more projects that I've had for a while that also use large pieces. First there is this one:

I figure this would be good for the rest of those orange and/or yellow scraps I have. There is also this one, which is slightly larger:

Both of these are from Quiltmaker magazine. I was all set to start cutting pieces of fabric and making kind of a "kit" of fabrics and traced patterns so I would be ready to go. Then I discovered that I had not a single thread of gray fabric anywhere in my stash, either solid or prints. Not a thread! How can I make a squirrel and a raccoon without gray? So I guess I have to go shopping. Oh, the hardship! But at least I have most of the patterns for these projects traced and ready to go as soon as I procure some gray fabric. (Yes, I know the squirrel in the picture is brown, but the squirrels that live in our backyard are gray, so I want gray.)

The last thing I got done this weekend also involved getting ready for another project. This one is a hand applique project that I think will take a long time. I've been wanting to try back basting applique, so I spent some time this weekend prepping the pieces. Look how big they are: 

They're huge! That can only be good for me, though. Easier than the tiny ones. I'm using these fabrics:

I bought these at a rummage sale for $10 this past spring. Never used them before, but I figure I can't really go wrong. I also got some greens from Vicki Welsh's shop to use for leaves and stems. With all the dark cold nights that are coming, I think this will be a good project for the evenings this winter.

Anyway, that's what's up here! Really going to try to finish up one of those quilts this week. They are both thisclose, so keep your fingers crossed!

Happy sewing all! I'll be back Friday, which will be in October. Can you believe it? I can't!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. Stop by and say hi!

Basting and prepping

(Today's post is a bit late because we're having "Internet connectivity issues." You'd think they would have figured most of this stuff out by now.)

Have you ever taken any hand sewing out with you and worked on it in public? This weekend we went to the ballpark and I took a hexie project with me to stitch on during the game. I really like baseball, but four hours sitting at the park? That's a LOT. I got pretty far along on this project:

I had the rosettes made and joined them up with the white hexies during the game.  As you can see, I worked on it in two pieces because the bigger one just got too big to handle in that tiny seat. People kept making comments (mostly nice comments), and the only real problem I had was that it got all wrinkly and a little dirty because I was crazy enough to take white to a baseball game. I should know better.

In case you ever want to take your sewing somewhere, here is the best tip I ever got: thread a bunch of needles on to a full bobbin, like this:

This way you don't have to try to see to thread a needle and can just pull off a length and the needle is already threaded. This and a pair of tiny scissors and you're all set! You can tape the thread end to the bobbin, but I just wound my thread back on and it stayed just fine. A zip lock bag is a good idea, though.

Today is basting and prepping day because later today and tomorrow I plan to quilt up all the little projects that I have laying around waiting to be quilted. This weekend I cleaned up in the sewing room (I even vacuumed!) and there were more than I thought, so it's time to get those finished up. I don't have a fancy quilting machine, but I do have this:

 

This was my mother-in-law's machine that I inherited when she passed away last year. She bought it new in 1968. We miss her terribly, but this machine is a fantastic gift that she left for me. This is the best machine I have ever sewn on. Really. It has a perfect stitch and is a joy to use. And 8 inches of throat space! This is a lot of space in comparison with my more modern machines. The only thing that I don't like about it is that it weighs about a thousand pounds. Okay, only 33 pounds. It's all cast iron and not really what I would call "portable." But the great sewing on it more than makes up for that one problem.

This is one of the quilts I'll be finishing up:

(Ironing board shadow in the corner!)

 It's about 45 inches square. To get it ready, I am basting it to the backing and batting. I only pin-baste when I have very small (less than 12 inches square) things to stitch, and I never use basting spray. I don't want glue in my quilt. The pins are. . .well, I just find them a mess to work with. They're hard for me to put in and harder to take out while sewing. I just don't like them, so I hand-baste using a big needle and hand-quilting thread to make big stitches, like this:

I think you can see those. It's a big running stitch made about every 5 or 6 inches across the quilt. The hand-quilting thread is easy to take out and you can sew right over it. Hand basting is easy, but it does take some time. I think it's completely worth it, though.

So, that's what I'm doing today. I have at least 7 projects to prep, so I better get started! Hope you're having fun, either in the sewing room or out in the sunshine!

Linking with Connie at Freemotion by the River and Judy at Patchwork Times again. Come on over and take a look!