Stitching again

Hello everyone! Gosh, I really missed you all here in blogland! Feels like it's been months since I've sewn anything.  Our house is now listed for sale and three fourths of my life is packed away in boring brown boxes.  The list of what I've packed and now need is quite long.  Why did I pack the can opener? Also, my favorite quarter inch foot is somewhere in one of the many boxes marked "sewing room." Which box? You tell me and we'll both know!

I was thrilled this week to finally, finally be able to pull out the sewing machine again and get back to some projects. Of course, the sewing machine is stashed in the china cabinet, the project boxes are in a closet, and the scraps are disguised as something else, but I will not be deterred!

What do you do when you haven't been sewing for a while? How do you get back to it?  I chose to make some nice, easy blocks and catch up on the rainbow scrap challenge at the same time:

Okay, the sun bleached a good part of those out, but they're aqua and orange! Is there a better antidote to brown cardboard?

These are the Cut Glass Dish blocks that I am making for the rainbow scrap challenge this year.  Of course I'm behind on all those projects, but I didn't pack them so that I can work on them when I get a chance. Hope springs eternal!

These blocks are really easy, but they do have 24 hsts apiece, which takes a little time, what with the cutting and squaring and all.  For once doing all of that was an absolute joy, just to be able to handle the fabrics.  It's amazing how much you miss it!

Since the RSC has ten colors, May is the half-way point, so here are all of my Cut Glass Dish blocks together, on the very damp grass:

Not sure how I'm going to lay this out yet, but I really like it so far.  I'll have to see if I can find a picture of an antique quilt that uses these blocks to get some ideas. 

Now that I've caught up on those (for the moment), I'll be adding the aqua and orange rounds to the Boston Common quilt, and then I'll pack up the aqua and orange scraps.  This will make my husband happy, because he wants to be ready to move at any moment. 

Over the last few days, we've had some really bad storms, like most of the rest of the country.  We've mainly escaped any bad effects from these, except for this:

Yeah, that's no fun, but thank goodness nothing fell on the roof! The park where I go walking had a microburst, and dozens of trees are uprooted, with some snapped right in half.  Many years ago I taught at the University of Dayton, and what happened there this past week was just devastating.  All my friends there are safe, but if you were affected by any of the storms, I hope you're safe, too.  I'm thinking about you and really feeling for you.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back and hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  Keep your fingers crossed for us, because we're looking at houses again.  Will this be the magic weekend?  Will there be a house that isn't painted gray?  If so, I just may buy that one! (For the record, ours is painted in aquas, blues, and alabaster. Maybe that makes us stand out?)

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC19.

Just for fun

Hi everyone!  How's your week going?  Mine is insane.  It's time to face the facts--it's not possible to continue with the regularly-scheduled quilty projects and work *and* move at the same time.  It just is beyond the limits of normal humans.  I don't claim to be all that normal, but I did pack up most of my fabric and other sewing things this past weekend.  I had 5 boxes, which seems like a lot to me, since this is such a tiny condo.  I may have a fabric problem.


You know I just had to leave some fabric out to play with.  You know, for stress relief purposes. There's plenty of that around here right now!  So here's what I was playing with earlier:

This is a test block for a quilt I drew up for this thing that's going on on Instagram called 30 days of quilt design.  The idea is that you draw out some thing to do with quilty design for 30 days between now and the end of October.  There are prizes, too, but the exercise is what I'm really interested in.  Rachel at Stitched in Color is running this, and her post about it is HERE.  Go read it for more!

A long way of saying that this is my sketch for this quilt:

Just hsts and squares kind of mixed together.  I called this quilt design "Kissy, kissy" because all of the pieces "kiss" in the center of the block.  The colorful parts here are 8 inches square, so the larger block up at the top of the post is 16 inches square.  A few of those would make a fast quilt!

Alternate layout for the individual blocks.

These were fast, easy, and fun!  And relaxing!  Everything I want sewing to be.  I don't have a pattern or anything, but the hsts are 4-1/2 inches and finish at 4 inches, and the square sections are made up of 2-1/2 inch colorful squares, 2-1/2 inch white squares, and 2-1/2 by 4-1/2 strips.  You can make 2 blocks from 3 charm squares, if you have any matching ones,  Or non-matching!  You could make everything smaller or bigger, too, depending on how fast you'd want that quilt to come together.

Another alternate layout!

 As I said, I was just playing around.  It was relaxing.  I have some more fabric out, but realistically I probably won't get much done this week.  There are more boxes to fill and a husband to keep fed--oh, and students!  Let's not forget them!

One last thing for this post--Bernie at Needle and Foot nominated this little blog for a One Lovely Blog award!  I'll say more about this later, but many, many thanks to Bernie, who has a lovely blog that you should definitely go visit!


Everybody have a great week!  I have a post planned next week for the Intricate Stitches quilt, plus a nice finish post for the week we actually move, so I'll still be around.  And you know that I'll be reading your posts obsessively and living vicariously through you, so be sure to pet some fabric for me!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Finished or Not Friday.

Finished moving!

Hello everyone!  Here's my big finish for this week--we are finished moving!  Can you say hallelujah?  We are finally into a rented condo and are starting to feel like real humans again.  Yesterday I even cooked.  It was a moving miracle.  And classes have started and along with them my new job, which I like very much so far.  I totally fail at moving, but things are starting to look up.

Now that we are finished with that, I am really ready to get back into a sewing routine again.  I did have another go at the breakfast room, but I've also been doing some handwork.  Take a look at these:

Hand applique!  Who would've guessed I had it in me? These were back-basted, which I've never done before, but I think they're turning out okay.  I just need to add leaves to all of them and then I can sew them into the rest of the pattern.  Don't worry, I'm sewing the rest of the quilt by machine!  I might also put the rest of the leaves on by machine, but we don't want the quilt police coming around, so don't tell anyone, okay?

There is also this piece, which I have been working on for literally years:

I honestly don't know where to go with this now.  I have some hexies basted for the corners and partial flowers for the end, but after that I think I'm finished with it.

Finally, before I left a friend gave me this bag of little bits:

The quilt shop sells these bags really cheap because they're the really little pieces left after they cut up strip packs and other pre-cuts.  I sorted them out and kept only the pieces that are bigger than 3/4 inch.  Yep, that's really tiny!

I think there are some string blocks in my future, don't you?  Seems like a good way to warm up the machine in its new home.

Everybody have a great weekend.  We are still unpacking and getting things set up, and some time very soon I need to go looking for a new quilt shop.  Anyone out there near Philadelphia, please let me know where to look!

Happy sewing! Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict  and Finish it up Friday.

Hello again!

Hi folks!  I am insanely happy to see you all again! We have had a wild ride for the last couple of weeks, including a literal wild ride from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania that included a night in a hotel where they forgot to tell us (and a whole bunch of other folks, too) that they were shutting off the water at 5 am.  Just ponder all that that means for a while.  At least we weren't as bad off as the families with kids!

Here's the other part of the wild ride--we are STILL in a hotel and will likely be until Monday, which is the day classes start.  My first impression of PA has not been really welcoming, I'll tell you.  I've never been asked to prove I'm not a criminal so many times. And, yes, I know your horn works.

Anyway, in the middle of all this chaos I was missing my machine so much that I finally asked if it was okay for me to use the breakfast room at the hotel for a couple of hours.  No one cared, so I whipped up these:

These are friendship stars for the months-long swap I'm doing with friends.  These make me so happy! It felt so great to sit at the machine again. It's like I have my soul back or something.

In addition to these happy stars, I've been working on some hexies and some hand quilting.  I have no pictures, though, so I'll try to get some for next time. 


Just so we have some more pictures, here is a very good thing about Pennsylvania:

This campus has flowers everywhere.  I've been scouting out good quilt-picture-taking places, which is something I didn't have on my last campus.

And here's a gratuitous campus picture:

Very collegiate, no?  This is the view from my side of campus, and every time I see this I think "I'm Batman."  Clearly, I need to settle down and remind myself that I am a very serious scholar.

Anyway, I'm back, and it feels so good! I may have a little trouble posting on a regular schedule for a couple of weeks, because at some point we will move in to a rental, but at least I am working on something other than moving.

Oh, and here's another thing that happened while I was away--this post became the most popular one I've ever had, with more than 3,000 page views for that post alone!  Somebody want to clue me in to what happened there, or did Blogger have a glitch?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Everybody have a great sewing week.  I'm going to try to sneak in some more time in the breakfast room, and something really fun may come out of that. 

Linking to Let's Bee Social, and WIP Wednesday. and Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Eastward ho!

Hi all! {waving wildly}  Hope you are all having a great day.  I have a very important announcement!  Okay, it's important to me, maybe not so much to you.

What would you do if you were offered a terrific job, much more appealing than your current job, with more money and better working conditions, closer to some family (including your daughters), and the only catch is that you had 4 short weeks to pack up everything, move 900 miles away, and be ready for that new job?  Well, I'll bet you can guess what we've done!  Yep, we are moving. We are thrilled, our family is happy, and we trust that things are going to work out.  It's never a bad thing to choose the bigger life, and that's what we're doing.

Friendship swap blocks that I received last week were the last things on my design wall, which is now only a memory.

There's a reason why "moving" is one of the most dreaded words in the English language.  Everything is a mess!  I've been obsessively making lists, and trying to sort things, and trying to put things in boxes, and trying to use up all our food, and trying to do the paperwork for my new position, and, and, and!

See--a total mess.  No one could work in there!  Everything has since been removed and this room is a bedroom again.

We will miss our home here so much.  We love Wisconsin. It's a beautiful state where we raised our family and lived for a long time. But we trust that our new home in Pennsylvania will be equally wonderful and we will make some great memories there as well.  Here's another wrinkle, though--we are selling the house here and so we will be in rented housing for a while, maybe months! This was never in the plan.  I am really not sure what is going to happen, but again, we're just going to trust that it will be okay.

My quilt books, ready to go!

Of special concern, of course, is packing up the sewing room.  This is when I'm glad I have a small stash, but packing it doesn't seem so small.  I sorted out a bunch of things to be sold, but have no time to sell them right now, so into a separate box they go.

Box o' fat quarters, ready to be loaded up.

The machines are coming with us in the car, of course, and so is some of the fabric.  All of my projects are in their own project boxes, so they are safe and ready to travel.  All of the completed quilts are packed, including my lovely new Odd Fellows.  It made me sad to close up that box, but I'm sure it will be like seeing an old friend when I open it.

So, I will be "off the air" for a couple of weeks while we drive two cars and a trailer to our new place and then carry 45 boxes of books into my new office.  (Yes, you read that right. I was amazed too!)  A tutorial for the new RSC color will post on Tuesday as usual, but after that I'm thinking it will be at least two, and probably three,  weeks before I can get any sewing even started.  Thank goodness I have ongoing projects, so I won't lack for things to do!

While we're in radio silence, I'll be obsessively reading your blogs and living vicariously through you, so be sure to post encouraging pictures!  Maybe I'll find time for some handwork, too.

That's it from here, friends!  Wish us luck, and I'll see you from a new area very soon!

One last look at the formal gardens.

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict  and Finish it up Friday, because this is certainly a finish!