Stitching slowly

Hello all! It feels like fall around here at last, and I am ready for sweaters, hot tea, and some lovely fall flowers.  As it gets a bit cooler, I'm reminded that one of my big plans for this year was to make a quilt for our bed. With everything that's happened this year, I got no further than picking out a pattern and some colors. I would get on it right away but I'm so behind on everything else. Oh, well! I guess it will wait, won't it? No chance I'll freeze with all the rest of the quilts around here.

I'm still feeling a little discombobulated from all the changes in our lives the last few months, and the stitching is going slowly still. The sewing room is still a mess, but it's getting better. And I came across a panel for another baby book that I've stitched up:

These are the cutest things, ans so easy to make.  I haven't put all the pages together yet, because this time I'm hand stitching the turning openings closed and I haven't had much time to do that yet this week. It will be done before Friday, though, so a tiny girl can chew on it this weekend.

I did use two layers of thin batting again, and I like how that turns out. It's nice and soft but substantial enough for a little one to grab on to easily.  If you ever make one of these, be sure to wash the panel first, because they really do shrink.

The other thing I've been working on is finishing up my nephew's quilt. I'm further along than this picture looks, because I've also been putting the sides together as I go. When I finally finish the center, it should go together really quickly.

Other than that, I've just been trying to organize the sewing room. I've been following my own Spring Cleaning advice as I go and once again I've gotten rid of lots of old stuff. Not fabric, though!

This picture just cheers me, and there's so much room for expansion! It's like a license to shop or something. That bottom shelf is mostly empty, after all, and we wouldn't want that fabric to be lonely.

That's where I am this week! I'm hoping to have a nice finish this weekend, and I'm also greatly anticipating the arrival of the plumber tomorrow.  You almost never look forward to something like that, but I really need some clean clothes, so I can't wait until they get here and replace that valve.

Happy stitching, folks!

Just a word

Hi everyone! You know those "word of the day" calendars? The word of the week for me is cash. It's been an expensive week. This week I paid taxes on my car for the *third* time-- when I bought it, when I moved to Delaware, and now when I moved to Maryland. Maryland's taxes were by far the worst, plus they came with a huge fee for a car inspection and the plates on top of that. It's like they really don't want people to move here or something.  Did I mention that the hubs has a car, too?

But I digress. . .let's talk quilty stuff, which is so much nicer to discuss than the time wasted at the DMV. (Excuse me, the MVA.) I did manage to get a few things stitched up this week, in between waiting rooms. First off, I have one last purple block to show:

This is what I made from the purple scrap I showed a bit ago. It was inspired by the block that Angela posted this week. I'm probably not going to make any black blocks, but this one sparked just enough to get me to use up that purple. Yay! And take a look at that lovely mum! I found a farmer's market near here and they had a whole bunch of these, along with some great tomatoes. The plums were awesome, too.

The other thing I did this week was work some more on the letters and words I've been putting together into mini quilts. I promise I did not make any of the words I was thinking repeatedly this week. (Those would be too R-rated.) I haven't decided what to do about the kindness panel yet, but I did finish this new word panel:

This is my favorite one so far! I made some lower case letters and they are actually readable. I didn't want to crop this picture because I love the trees in the background, so you can't really see how rounded the letters are, but I clipped all the points. I think they look great. That little "e" took forever but was so worth it.  Pretty sure that I'm going to go back and round the corners on the "h" as well. That little tail is not working for me.

Speaking of not working, sometimes experiments don't work out. You can see that I tried to make the "p" fancy or something and it just looked weird, so I had to lose the little tail. Not sure what I was thinking, but I definitely want to try some different fonts and ways to make letters.  I have several more words in mind, too.  (Still can't say enough good about Lynne's tutorial, either. It's great!)

That's the news from here. Hope you're having a good and inexpensive weekend! I'm going to drive my car with the very expensive plates to the grocery store and see if I can still afford something for dinner. It's a close call-- we'll see what happens!

Perfect esses

Hi everyone, and greetings from the hot zone. I think someone forgot to tell the weather that it's October, because it's going to be 95 today and I am so done with it. I want to pack away the summer clothes but I don't dare. As soon as I do, you know it will hit 100, right?

Down in my nice cool sewing room (which is still an absolute mess, though I did get new light bulbs so now I can see the mess) I've been working on making some letters. Yes, including some esses, though I'll bet that some of you thought I misspelled that word in the headline. (This is not a political blog!) Here are my fun letters:

I can definitely read that word! And look-- the esses, which have been the worst letters ever for me to make, turned out great! I might go back and "clip" the other corners in them just to soften them a little more, but they definitely look like they should. I am so pleased.

You can see that I also remade one of the Ns. It just didn't look right, so I pulled it out and made another. I saved the first one, though, and I might use it somewhere else.

I struggled with some of these letters quite a bit, and then I finally gave in and bought Lynne Tyler's Liberated Letters tutorial. It helped so much. It was like taking a class, and then it just clicked. And look at that S!  (You can get the tutorial HERE. Totally worth the price.)

Now that I put it all together into a banner, I'm not sure that I want to keep it that way or if I want to break it up or otherwise arrange the letters differently. I know that I'm going to hang this in my office with the little Joy quilt and the banner is awfully long. I'm too lazy to go get the actual measurement, but it's more than 18 inches. I have this idea that I'll hang several of these mini words together, so a long one could go at the top, but maybe I'd rather have it be more square. Not sure. Requires more thought!

These letters are really fun to make, and they do go together pretty quick. I pulled out the string jar and used those, but it does take a *lot* of the background fabric. And it makes a fun mess, too. I was in such a great mood after those successful esses that I started another word in a different "font." Hey, if you're going to play, play! Anyone want to guess what the next word is?

Hope you're all having a great week so far and haven't melted away. Seriously, a cool breeze would feel great right now, wouldn't it?

A few more little things

Hi everyone! It's the last weekend in September, can you believe it? It's still hot, hot, hot here and still dry, so the grass is turning brown and the leaves are falling.  We don't have a lot of color yet, but I have seen a couple of trees starting to turn a lovely yellow.  It's going to be really pretty around this property in a few weeks.

I just have a few tiny blocks to show today.  I thought I would finish something small, but I didn't finish binding it yet. Oh, well! Here are my tiny blocks for the week:

These are the last of the purples, and I love them all. I think they turned out great, but you can see that the lantern block is just a tiny bit too long. The seams appear to be off by about 1/32nd of an inch each, which doesn't show in bigger blocks but certainly shows here. Not sure what I'll do about it, since I don't want to rip it all out and they're off by about the width of the thread. I'll probably trim it and then make it fit. It's still very cute, though! The other two tiny purples are my own and weren't offered by Angela. I think they're cute, too!

Since we're nearing the end, I thought I should pull out all the tiny blocks and take inventory, so I pulled out a small design board (foam core board covered in a batting scrap) and took them all outside.  Here are the reds and yellows:

And then the pinks and oranges:

And last but not least, the greens to purples:

That's 44 blocks, with the Bow tie repeated twice. Not sure how that happened. I think I need more pinks and more yellows, and maybe one or two more reds. I started out thinking that 56 blocks would make a lovely little quilt, and I think I'll still aim for that.

As for a layout, I was thinking about making them shadow blocks, or else there is the striped quilt layout from Tula Pink's Modern Blocks that I like a lot. I'm not sure! How do you plan to set your blocks?

There's where we are-- lots of color in little bitty blocks, with the end in sight. Not sure what I'll do for the "dark" month next month, but I'm pretty sure it won't be brown. Maybe multicolors? Decisions, decisions!

Have a great weekend! Linking up with Angela for RSC19.