A Good Start

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast again this morning. I was writing fast yesterday in anticipation of Scott, the window guy, coming. It was past 10:00 a.m. when he texted and asked to reschedule for today. He said he was "having a morning." Frankly, I know the feeling. No problem. So today's the day. Hopefully he'll have a better morning.

Expecting him to show, I hurried and did my slow-stitching before getting myself around and dressed. I finished another name and place for the Shop Hop 4.0 quilt. Now I'm ready for the next go-round of these blocks.

Also, I started and nearly finished the 6th Sewing Room block. I might have finished it, but I was a little worried about the time. I'll finish it this morning.

When that's finished, I'll get a start of the first block for "Home is Where my Flock Is." It's traced and awaiting my hoop and needle.

My task for the day was to tackle the laundry. I had three loads. When I had that sorted and started, I could make my way to the sewing room. Sadie was my helper cat for the day. Knowing a bad man was coming to wash our windows, she decided to help from the safety of her Clubhouse. Smitty likes to call this the "He Man Woman Hater's Clubhouse." Sadie thinks that is purrposterous.

Okay, so the background was made for the Canoe block of the Northern Wilderness project. I started on the applique with the two water pieces. Easy enough.

But then...look at that. The next piece is positioned in such a way that proper placement is essential to avoid throwing off the rest of the design.

I decided to make the canoe and the Eskimo as a separate piece on my Teflon pressing sheet. I could see the placement diagram if I placed it under the pressing sheet. In that way I could ensure everything was where it should be.

When it was finished, it looked like this:

Some of you have asked me how this works. The applique can be "fused" to the Teflon pressing sheet, and then peeled up, leaving the fusible in place.

It can be peeled up in one piece.

And then moved to the block where I could fuse it down permanently. Ta-Da! Now this one is ready for top-stitching.

I'm making this quilt two blocks per go-round. Next up is the Dragonfly block.

These were the pieces I needed for the background block.

When all the component parts were made, it looked like this:

When the background was finished, it looked like this.

When I went to do the applique, I realized I'd made the background block wrong. If you look at the image from the book above, you can see that I rotated the four corners 180° from how they were supposed to be. Oh well. It works as it is. I'm not changing it. Don't tell anyone, okay?

Now both blocks are ready for top-stitching, and that will be my sewing goal for the day. 

With those finished, it will bring me to the "Quilter's Choice" section of my Whiteboard. For this turn, I'll work on the "Sashiko" art quilt piece. I've been kind of stuck on this because I'm waiting for an order of embroidery floss to arrive from an Etsy shop. These are precisely the colors I need for my project.

They're coming from Ontario, Canada, and they are taking positively FOREVER to arrive. I ordered them ten days ago. They didn't even ship until four days later, and now the tracking info shows me they've been "in transit" from the same location for the past six days. If they come on time, they should be here on the 22nd, but I'm not holding my breath until then. Either way, I have some things I can do with my art quilt project between now and then, and so I'll work on that. Sorry...no pictures...and no peeking.

All right. That's all I have for you this morning. Hopefully I can report clean windows tomorrow. 

Some Progress

Good morning, my friends. Our window guy is coming today. It's been over a year since he's been here. With all the dust stirred up when Mike mowed our overgrown field recently, the windows can use some work. Our "window guy," Scott has been washing our windows since 1990. He's kind of like family. Still...I'd like to be dressed and showered when he gets here. It'll be nice to have clean windows.

Yesterday's slow-stitching had me finishing up the 11th of 12 blocks for Grandpa's Bridges.

There's just one more to go. Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

I hadn't used up all my stitching time and so I started stitching the names and places for the next go-round of the Shop Hop quilt blocks. There's one more of these to do.

When I made my way into the sewing room, I found Smitty ready to help. But first...a little catnip, please.

Sadie was on standby in case Smitty was too baked to do any sewing.

My first goal was to finish two more blocks for the Shop Hop 4.0 quilt. This fabric came from Quilting B Fabric Shop in Dawson Creek, B.C., Canada. I selected it because we'd seen an elk on the previous day's drive.

The next one was from Sew 'n Bee Cozy in Seward, Alaska. I chose this fabric for...what else? The mosquitos!

I'll set this aside for now. There are four more blocks to finish it off. Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

It seemed too early to stop, and yet to late to start anything new. So I decided to start reading the instructions for this new project. I'm kind of excited to get started on this.

Removing it from its envelope, I realized it is a book rather than the loose sheets I was expecting. The instructions are very good. There are 16 blocks. If I'm to finish it before I die, it makes sense to make these two blocks per go-round. The first one in the book is this next one: The Canoe block.

It's a pieced block with applique over the top. I decided to cut the pieces for the pieced block.

There was still time in the day, and so I sewed together the component parts.

And heck...I might as well sew the whole thing together.

And then, I added borders all around as well as the background for the applique at the bottom.

While I was finishing it off, Matthew called, and we chatted for a while. It was a nice way to end my sewing day. I'll get to work on the applique today. 

Before dinner, I took a walk to the far side of the field. A few days ago I couldn't see any changing color on this tree. Yesterday, I noticed a few red leaves.

We planted this tree for its bright red fall color. It's a treat when we get to see it all aflame. Often, we get a big windstorm in October that blows all the fall color away.

Also, the plums are purpling nicely. Matthew will be joining us for dinner a week from this Saturday. There's a good chance the plums will be ready by then. An Original Plum Torte would be a very nice dessert.

Okay, so that's all I have for you today. It's going to be a busy morning with Scott arriving soon. We need breakfast and to get our ADL's taken care of. (ADL: It's a term we used in mental health meaning, "activities of daily living." When you can no longer manage your ADL's, it's a bad sign. Just sayin'.) I'm always trying to stay out of Scott's way while he's here doing the windows, and so I'll stick with laundry and sewing today. Sounds like a good way to spend the day. What are you up to today?

Prep Work

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to Monday. It was a busy and lazy day yesterday. I had baking to do for our dinner with the neighbors last night. My first stop of the day was to bake this Skillet Cherry Cobler for Two (times two). This was one of my mother's friend's recipes, and I've scaled it down to one-third its original size so that I can bake it in a 6-inch cast iron skillet. 

I've linked to the recipe back there. If you want dessert for a crowd, you can triple the recipe (using 3 cans of cherries), and bake it in a 9 x 13 pan. That's the way my mother made it. It can also be made using canned peaches.

Okay, so I'll finish Grandpa's Bridges this morning. I might have finished it yesterday, but I was getting tired of stitching. For sure I'll finish it today. That meant I needed some other stuff to stitch on. I decided to return my attention to the disappointing 2025 "Sewing Room" project started by Jenny of Elefantz, but discontinued when she closed down her blog. (Sigh.) I've been mulling over what to do about the blocks I have already. 

I like the embroidery for this project, but I've never been happy with the pieced blocks. As some of you have pointed out, the colors are too bright for the delicate embroidery. So, I've decided to add the pieced blocks to my zip-lock bag of orphan pieces. I keep zip-lock bags of orphans and cut-off bits from half-square triangles. They make good projects to take along when we head south for the winter. There is limited space for sewing in our fifth wheel, but I can fiddle around with these and turn them into something fun. Here are a couple of examples of quilts I've made from those cut-offs and orphans. I like to refer to them as my "Trashy Series."

Trashy Triangles:

Broken Hearts:

Waste Not Whatnots:

I had fun with the quilting on that one.

Also, Chicken Feed:

Those were all fun to put together from my "leftovers." I can turn those pieced blocks from Jenny's project into something fun too. I just need to spend some time messing with them. And nothing says I can't cut them into something else. 

For now, I decided to finish off the sixth embroidered block. Jenny's looks like this:

She's doing needle-turn applique. I decided long ago that needle-turn applique is to fiddly for my sewing room. It's pretty, but I'm sticking with machine applique for my projects. So I considered how to make that little patchwork quilt, and decided on a method. I first selected eight fabrics and cut them into 1-1/2 inch squares. Then I sewed them together patchwork style.

When it was sewn together, I needed to trim 1/4 inch off the edge all around. Then, I added some Heat 'n Bond to the back and fused it to the background piece.

She "hand quilted" hers with embroidery stitches. 

If I were quilting an actual quilt like this, I'd use a diagonal grid, and so that's what I did here. When that was finished, I traced the remainder of the embroidery design onto the background piece. I'll get started on the stitching today or tomorrow.

That isn't going to take very long, and so it also seemed like a good idea to prepare a block for "Home is Where My Flock Is." As it turns out, I selected this pattern to fill in an opening on my embroidery dance card. I thought I'd started it, but apparently not. As you might know, Crabapple Hill Studios is no longer. She retired this past spring and shut down her website with a nice 50% off of everything sale. I've made many of her patterns, and so I wasn't really in the market for anything. Still, this one caught my eye, and so I decided to buy it.

These are the floss colors I'll be using:

After studying the pattern some, I traced out the first block. Cute.

Nothing was finished on my Shop Hop blocks. Nevertheless, as long as I was in a tracing mood, I decided to trace the next two shop names and places. When the Shop Hop project comes around again, I'll be ready with the embroidered pieces I'll need.

And I didn't get a single cat helping me in the sewing room yesterday. I found Sadie hiding underneath the covers upstairs.

Smitty was snoozed out in his favorite napping chair.

So today will look a lot like yesterday. I need to do some more baking. We need some muffins for our morning pre-breakfast snack. There's one housekeeping chore to do, and then I can get started on the next Shop Hop blocks. 

If I can get those finished, I'll be starting another new project...this one I purchased just before we left for Alaska called Northern Wilderness.

When the pattern arrived back in May, I decided to start on it when we returned from Alaska. And now, its time has come. 

You might recall I purchased some backing fabric at Bear's Paw Quilts in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Sadie really likes this fabric.

So I have a head start with the backing fabric. Now, all I need to do is make a quilt top to go along with it!

Okay, so there's plenty to do. Time to get going. How's your week going so far?