Sister's Choice Quilts

Light At the End of the Tunnel (in more ways than one!)

I have been sewing! I wasn't completely sure what I was going to share with you today, because there are choices! My number one priority right now is to get the rows of Moda BlockHeads 3 together and get this monster off my design wall. 

Naturally, I had forgotten all the details of what size lattice strips I needed for the various sized blocks in this quilt. It took me a moment to get back on track. There was some ripping and some trimming, but all is lining up nicely now and I have completed almost four vertical rows! It is coming together and I could not be more thrilled. I hope to wrap this up this week. 

My summer schedule is also falling into place, and it seems I will have some large blocks of time for sewing, which is what I have been craving. Grabbing an hour or two is great for sewing blocks for a sew along, but I need hours of uninterrupted time to actually complete something.

I sure hope you all had a great weekend. It was a long one for us in America, and I understand that many of you in Europe had a "bank holiday weekend" as well. 

I haven't shared this until now, but my husband has been in the Bay Area five days a week for the past month undergoing radiation treatments for cancer. He has two more weeks to go, and he will be finished with his treatments. It has been worrisome for sure, but his spirits are great and we are both looking forward to him being home and regaining his health. My plate has been very full with his illness, caring for my dad, and homeschooling my granddaughter. I am so looking forward to a more carefree summer. I will still be spending weekends with my father, but the schedule for the rest of the week should be easier.

Happy June everyone!

Siderailed By Fabric Related Injury

As I told you all last week, I spent my free time this weekend sorting out my sewing space. That was such a great dialog we had in the comments. It seems a disorganized sewing area is something a lot of you struggle with as well.  

My organization included hauling a lot of heavy tubs of fabric around. Somehow I managed to sprain my thumb! I must have stretched or torn a ligament. It hurt right away and has gotten progressively more painful, swollen, and bruised. We went out first thing yesterday morning and bought a thumb brace, which helps matters considerably. I am immobilizing it and taking Aleve. 

It turns out there are so many things you just cannot do without a thumb. Brushing your teeth is a real challenge, as is typing. I can't seem to manage the space bar whatsoever. Using scissors is completely impossible. I can use the rotary cutter briefly for small pieces, but cutting out a project, starching fabric, and pinning things just isn't happening. 

But look! Here is something I managed to do with my left hand. I could tear the paper off Fat Quartershop's new Square in a Square foundation units without any trouble. That is indeed a testament to how great those papers are and how easy they come off.

I did make some progress on my room organization and will share it with you tomorrow. If any of you were inspired to tackle tidying up your sewing rooms, I hope you managed to do it without injury.

Hope you all had a great Mother's Day!

Clean Your Room

Not that she ever did. I remember my mother standing in the doorway of my room saying, "Your room is a mess. You need to stay in it until it is straightened up". And that was that. I had to apply myself to the task and make it happen. I was on my own then, and I'm on my own now.

Deja vu. My sewing room is such a cluttered, unorganized disaster, that I cannot even concentrate on picking up a project. Some serious re-organization must take place, pronto.

My husband is not available at the moment to build me a wall of shelving, so I am on my own to figure out what to do with all this stuff. I don't even want to share a before picture with you as I am so disheartened by the state of things. It took a while to get to this state, and it's going to take a minute to put it to rights.

I plan to tackle the issue this Sunday, so with luck, I will be in a better state of mind by Monday!

So, how are things in your sewing space?

Oh Yes I Did

It's been a couple of weeks since I worked on the Serendipity Sew Along. I had a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, so I thought I would put Kimberly on my iPad and stitch along with her on what they are calling "Release Two", which is the second row of the quilt. (Remind me to clean my iPad screen). I got my 40 flying geese units all cut out and began happily sewing away.

But for some reason, it all felt kind of familiar. Deja vu, you know?

Oh right. I already made that row of 40 flying geese a couple of weeks ago. Much head-slapping went on for a little while, but then I realized it was ok. I hadn't wasted all that fabric after all. It turns out there is a second row of flying geese just the same as the first one later on in the quilt.

Whew.

I need to keep up with these things a bit better. Maybe, just maybe, I might have a bit too much going on? Yeah, I think so too.

Then I ran out of my starched background fabric and had to make more.

It was a lovely warm afternoon. I just lay out a thick towel and spray until the fabric is soaked with my Faultless Heavy Starch. On a nice warm day, it is dry in half an hour!

Wish me a mistake-free day today, because I hope to sew!

Maybe You Should Finish Something

My husband and I were sitting in the living room visiting with each other while dinner cooked. We do that most nights. Take some time at the end of the day to sit together with a glass of wine and connect with one another. He asked me "So what project are you working on right now?"

Sound of crickets....

"Well," I said finally, "I have five or six different projects spread out all over the place at the moment".

"How is that working for you?" he inquired. 

"Honestly, not great", was my answer. "I feel very disjointed, unorganized, scattered, messy, and kind of frazzled". 

"Maybe you should finish something", he offered.

Wow. Imagine that. Finish something? Really? 

The next time I was up in my sewing room, I took an honest assessment of all the unfinished, half-started projects I have in various states of disorganization throughout my sewing room. The major project that I would like to get done is my Moda BlockHeads 3 quilt. Those blocks have been on my design boards for well over a year. A lot of excitement, fabric, time, and effort went into making those 50 some blocks.

I have been dithering over how to set them in a way that shows off the blocks rather than a busy, confusing, mess. When you make a quilt with several different sizes of blocks, finding a setting that works is extremely challenging. I wanted those blocks to be set apart from one another so the eye has a place to rest when looking at the whole quilt.

Julie Lloyd at Julesccreates on Instagram had a brilliant setting for her MBH3 blocks. I commented on her post and asked her if she would share the size of her lattice strips because I wanted to recreate her setting with my blocks. She very kindly responded with her measurements and I ordered lattice fabric in Bella Solids Porcelain (which matches my 3 Sisters fabrics). And then the fabric sat on the shelf and the blocks stayed on the wall and nothing got done.

Until yesterday. I took my husband's words to heart and got to work. This quilt is sewn together in vertical rows. Each block has a lattice around it, which is trimmed down to size when you sew the blocks into rows. You can see my first row on the far left in the photo. I am so pleased with how it is turning out.

I plan on having 7 rows. Four rows will have 12", 6", and 4" blocks. Three rows will have 8" and 4" blocks. I do not have quite as many blocks as I will need, so there will be a bit more block construction before I am done. This quilt is going to be very large and will cover my queen-sized bed with a good amount of overhang.

I am so excited to turn these blocks into a beautiful quilt. 

Cataracts

I've been blessed with pretty good eyesight during my life.  I need readers to magnify the print when I am reading, but my distance vision has always been all right. In the past few years, I have experienced a gradual worsening of my vision.  I walk three or four days a week with a friend.  I began to notice that the individual leaves I used to be able to see up in a tree were now a blur of indistinguishable green. And when I read a page of a book, there would be a blurry area in the upper left of the page.  I could always shift the page around so my eyes could read the blurry bits, so I didn't worry too much. Then threading needles became really difficult.  I kept wanting more light for whatever task I was working on. More light always seemed to be the answer to my issues. And it helped. Up to a point.

I went to the eye doctor yesterday and she confirmed I had cataracts in both eyes, worse in the left eye.  The good news is, it is fixable. No rush.  I think I'll wait a few months until the COVID issue is more clear, then schedule my procedure.  I have never met a person who has had cataract surgery who has regretted it, so I am pretty excited for good results.

My husband is having some health issues as well, of a more personal nature.  I don't think he would like me to discuss them specifically, so I will respect his wishes.  Let me just say, a general wish of good luck would be welcome on this end right now. Getting old sure is the pits. 

On a lighter note, Eva was having homeschooling with her dad Monday and Tuesday of this week while her grandpa and I were away seeing doctors.  She is such a creature of habit.  She kept texting me, "Nana, can I have my morning break now?  It's 10:30."  "Nana, can I have lunch now?  It's noon".  Good heavens. I will be home soon and we will be back in my kitchen doing homeschool and the Earth will keep spinning on its axis.  

Hope you are all well.  A random quilty thought popped into my mind: have you heard of Joanna Figueroa's (Fig Tree Quilts) new Winter Solstice quilt along? It looks very interesting.  Eight-inch blocks with a dark background.  I do miss the nice big PRINT HERE button for printing the patterns, but you can copy and paste and work around it.

Hope your week is going great. Not long until Christmas.  I just want to get back home and stay put until mid-February.

Coming Together in Fellowship

 Thanks for bearing with me while I took a short break.  Last week was a rough one for many of us and my outlook on life was not the best.  A few days finding joy in small close things has helped me tremendously. 

Something that occurred in my neighborhood this weekend has made me so happy.  What you see in the photo above is a Truck Concert.  A local musician named Grover Anderson performed songs from his most recent album for friends in our small community.  Folks brought their own chairs out and sat in their driveways while he sang from the back of his truck.  It was unbelievably lovely to come together and see other people after such a long time of staying at home.  I assure you that proper social distancing was observed.

I am still feeling the warm glow that experiencing fellowship, kindness, and friendship gives.

A Quarantine Story

I hope you all had a nice weekend.  Our weather turned cold and rainy, so I spent a lot of time inside reading my books.  I zoomed through a couple of them, so at the end of the month, I should have a decent number to review for you.  

My husband had a hankering for Potato Leek Soup, so we indulged ourselves in some of that along with our home-baked bread.  From the comments I received last week, it sounds as if a lot of you are bread bakers too!  I also had bought some fresh cherries and made a delicious bar cookie called Cherry Garcia Brownies.  I will definitely share that recipe with you this week.

Speaking of sharing, I meant to share this with you all last week but got sidetracked.  A reader of this blog named Dianne and I have been corresponding recently, and I think a lot of you will be so interested in her quarantine experience.  Dianne and her husband live half the year in California, and half the year in Australia.  Her husband's mom is still with them and they like to spend time with her.  This is their typical time to return to their home in Australia, and have they ever got a travel/quarantine story.  Australia requires all persons who enter the country to shelter in place for two weeks in a hotel when they arrive.  Fourteen days and they cannot stick as much as one toe outside their hotel room!  She and her husband have been put up at the government's expense at a five-star hotel in Sydney. Dianne has shared her adventure on her blog Calfornia GIrl in Oz, and I invite you to hop over and read her adventure.  To my knowledge, she and her husband are on day 10 of their lockdown at this point in time.  After 37 hours of travel and fourteen days stuck in a hotel room, I'll bet she'd be real glad to get some comments.  Be sure to start on Day One and read through all her posts.  They're so good!

No Words

My son in law's stepdaughter is a college graduate this month.  Of course her graduation was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, so the family decided to host a special celebration in her honor regardless.  There she is, in her back yard, watching an old Steven Spielberg Commencement address on her stepdad's lap-top before the special dinner he had made in her honor.  

After the recorded address, some of the family made celebratory remarks, but that was pretty much it.  She decorated her mortarboard cap, as you can see, and wore her school colors.  We did our best for her, but it should have been so much more.  

I think this is one of the saddest pictures I have ever taken in my life.  It was a proud day, but she looks so isolated, so alone, on what should have been a day of celebration with other friends and family members she loves but can't see.  How many graduates are forgoing a day that should be full of so much meaning and shared joy?  It makes my heart hurt.

Typepad Issues

Typepad (the company through which I publish this blog) is having some major problems the past couple of days.  My posts are not publishing at the set time, and I am not receiving your comments.  Comments are being published on the blog itself so I can see them, but not respond directly to you.

I have submitted help tickets and have my fingers crossed that these issues will be resolved by Monday.

Have a good weekend everyone!