Fuzz and Stuff

Good morning, my friends. We're just getting started on a week of nasty weather. Matthew and I were hoping to get in another walk this Thursday, but I think we're going to opt for an indoor venue instead. We're expecting plenty of wind and rain through Thursday at least. Looks like our rainy season is here to stay for now. We'll get some sunshine here and there. Mainly, it'll be wet. The kitties are bummed.

So it was a good day for sewing. Sadie was my helper cat. If she can't go outside and kill something, she might as well keep me company.

With her help, I made the last two blocks for the second row of the Stair Steps quilt. I needed one more block with a row of pink.

And I needed one block without a common color.

Since there's a color pattern to these blocks, I decided to sew them together, rather than try to lay them out properly when there are 25 to work with. Now I can start to see the pattern of colors running diagonally from corner to corner. The blocks are time-consuming to make, and I'll need three more rows before I'm finished.

So I don't have a lot of sewing to show you today. Each one of those blocks takes about an hour to make, not including the time I spend cutting all those little squares. As I'm cutting, I'm creating extras, and trying not to duplicate any of the fabrics in a single block. I'll admit there are some cheaters in there. But as I'm making them, I'm accumulating more squares for the next block, and so the cutting gets less as I work my way across a row.

Since I don't have much to show on the sewing front, it seems like a good time to share this tip with you. Maybe I'm the last one to learn about this, but here goes anyway. Working with scraps always leaves a lot of lint in my sewing machine. It seemed a good time to take off the throat plate and clean it up. Ugh...look at all that fuzz.

It's been a long time since I visited Mes Amis quilt shop in New Orleans, Louisiana. I spent a good amount of money with the friendly women in the store. As a parting gift, they handed me a few of these little "lint swabs." They're made from one of those skinny straws you find in coffee shops and bars and a folded over piece of a pipe cleaner.

These have been very handy for cleaning the lint from my machine. You can see that my yellow one above has been well used and dirty. Also, the straw has split at the top and the pipe cleaner wants to fall out as I'm using it.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I wondered if I could just use a folded over pipe cleaner and dispense with the straw. So, for ease of holding and controlling it, I folded a pipe cleaner in half...

And then I used it just the same. (I actually ended up folding it in half again. Shorter is better.) I like this because the lint clings to the pipe cleaner and doesn't fall down into the machine as I'm swabbing it out.

It does a good job of cleaning under the feed dogs and in all the other little nooks and crannies. I have a basting brush I can use for this too, but it tends to just shove the lint down into the machine rather than sweeping it out. It's the clinging power that makes this method preferable. So you can file that under the for-what-it's-worth column. I like this method. I can recommend it if you have some pipe cleaners among your supplies. 

All right so we have a grocery shopping trip ahead of us. Our list is blissfully short this week. When we get home, I'll get to work making another row of blocks for the Gumballs quilt.

These are laid out in a pattern too, and so I'm thinking I might start sewing them together as I go. Also, I'm making a gift for a friend. Since I think she reads my blog, I'll have to keep that project under wraps for a bit. Of course, I'll give you little peeks as I go.

So that's all I have for you today. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Try to stay out of the rain if you can. 

Morning Light

Good morning, my friends. It was nice to wake up to a glimmer of light this morning. It's been so dark in the morning here, I'll admit to being glad we're back to standard time. Of course, in tomorrow's post I'll be whining about how dark it is at 4:30 this afternoon. It's probably best if I just stay in my basement sewing room and hide the truth from myself.

Yesterday started with me taking the first stitches on the fourth block for Le Jardin. My first stitches on any piece are mainly selected so that I can clean off the little bits of floss left over from last time. I really love these blocks. 

I had some things to do around the house, and I managed to talk myself into doing a Bowflex workout. When I finally made my way to the sewing room after lunch, Smitty was waiting for me. He thought we were going to trace some embroidery designs.

But then I talked him into helping me make two more blocks for the Stair Steps project. These are time-consuming to make because there is so much cutting. I cut just enough patches to make a single block, and then I sew that one together. This one has a blue row running diagonally from the upper left to the lower right.

Of course all that cutting inevitably leaves some extras I don't use. Smitty helped by using his tail as a pointer to select the patch I'd use next.

And with his help, I was able to sew together a second block for the day. This one has a yellow stripe.

This was Sadie's contribution.

So that's three blocks down, and two to go. I'm hoping I can finish off the last two today. After that, I'll be ready to make another row of blocks for the Gumballs project. These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

There's not much on today's agenda. I want to take a walk on the treadmill, and I need to make up a shopping list for tomorrow's grocery shopping trip. The first Tuesday of the month is always senior discount day at our regular grocery store. Senior discount day didn't used to be much of a draw because the savings was minimal. Last month, we saved nearly $10 because of the senior discount. So...that's nothing to sneeze at. Of course, with everything so expensive these days, it makes sense that a percentage of a lot ends up being more than expected. Ya' gotta do your grocery shopping sometime. Might as well try to snag a few extra pennies while we're at it. And all of that to say there isn't much standing between me and my sewing today. No excuses. I should be able to finish those blocks.

So, okay. The sky has brightened considerably since I've been sitting here. It's looking like it'll be a rainy day. Rain? In the Pacific Northwest? No way! Good sewing weather, though. I'm not complaining.

Mostly Slow

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to November! We had to turn a calendar page since the last time we chatted. Also, we fell back an hour! Did you remember? 

Sheesh...so much excitement in such a short period of time. If I were a southern girl, it might have given me a case of the vapors. 

Before I go on, I want to thank those of you who stopped by to admire Mermie's Cabin yesterday. Thank you for your kind comments. I had fun making that little quilt. With that as my post yesterday, I have two days of sewing and cooking to catch up on. My stitching was slow, and I was slow. It rained hard yesterday, and that always has me feeling lazy.

So just what have I been stitching on? Thank you for asking. July's block for A Year in the Garden was pretty close to being finished on Friday morning.

Then yesterday morning, I spent a little extra time on it and finished it off.

Here are the seven blocks I have for this quilt so far.

When I made my way to the sewing room yesterday, I first needed to trace the next block for Le Jardin. I'll get started on it this morning.

These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And those stitch up pretty fast, so I decided to select the next "short" project for my embroidery dance card. Mr. Random selected this one. Either I printed this from the website for free, or else it was a gift given to me during a class I took with Meg Hawkey.

It's fairly detailed stitching, but a small piece. I have some white fabric to use for the background. Yesterday, I spent some time choosing floss colors. I had some of the colors listed. For others, I substituted something similar.

Also, I went to work cutting pieces for the next row of blocks for the Stair Steps quilt. Most of the blocks have a common color running from corner to corner. I cut those first. I needed 16 pink patches (for two blocks) and eight of each of the others.

That was as far as I got on Friday. Then, yesterday, I cut the remaining neutral pieces for the whole row: ten rectangles and ten squares.

And then I went to work sewing together the first block. I still needed 32 scrappy squares to complete it. By day's end, I had a single block. That's one down, four to go for the second row. It might not be obvious, but this block has a row of pink running diagonally from the upper left to the lower right.

Also, since there's a pattern to this, I've decided I'm going to start sewing together the rows as I make them. It'll save me trouble down the road.

The only other thing I have to tell you about is this new recipe I tried last week. This is called Marry Me Tortellini. This was so easy...all made in a single skillet. I love a dish that doesn't make a lot of dirty dishes.

We had this with some breadsticks on the side, and I'll make it again for sure. It's easy enough to make in the RV.

Okay so today's agenda will be mainly making more blocks for the Stair Steps quilt. I'm just at the beginning of the WIPs section of my white board. I want to work my way through those, and I'll need to make November's Kitten in a Cup. Here are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

November's and December's block color will be my choice. I usually pick from my multi-colored bin when nobody tells me what to do.

Also, I'll need to start on my next art quilt for The Endeavourers fairly soon. The reveal won't be until February, but we'll be heading south at the end of December, so I have less than two months to work on it. The prompt should be announced by Monday.

Oh yes, and I have an update about my Paypal dispute. As I mentioned in a previous post, I received an email from Paypal telling me the seller had increased the amount due by $4.50. After that, I looked more closely at the site itself. It’s started looking  fishy to me, and so I attempted to update the dispute I'd begun with Paypal. Although Paypal gives instructions on the website for making changes to an open case, none of it worked. Their links just took me in circles, and so I kept updating the case with "more information" more days than not. Yesterday, they updated my dispute by refunding the original $4.50 and closing the case! Obviously, no one had read the "more information" I'd written wherein I told them it was a scam and that I wanted a "refund on the entire amount of $34.55 without delay." As if that made a hill of beans difference. Dream on. 

Since then, I've done more clicking round and round on the website, and eventually put in a call to customer service. There, I had a very frustrating repetitive session with an "AI assistant." Again...I went round and round eventually repeating over and over again, "I want to talk to a human being." After about four tries, I actually did get a chance to speak with a human. He was very polite and cheerful, and he reopened the dispute to refund the additional $30.05. More time will have to pass now, but I'm confident I'll be refunded the additional amount. 

Probably I should have just given up. I don't care that much about the money, but I really, really, really don't want the thief to get to keep it. It'll probably be at least another week to ten days, but I'll continue to update you with whatever happens next. Okay, and just typing all of that made me mad all over again. 

Just now Smitty showed up to let me know that my lap is required downstairs.

Slow stitching is next. That'll help calm me down. Enjoy your Sunday. You get an extra hour today. What will you do with it?

Sashiko Reveal: Mermie's Cabin

Good morning, my friends. The day has come to reveal my newest art quilt for The Endeavourers art quilt group. Our prompt this time around was "Sashiko." If you're unfamiliar with sashiko, the word is Japanese for "little stabs." Wikipedia defines it in this way:

[A] type of traditional Japanese embroidery or stitching used for the decorative and/or functional reinforcement of cloth and clothing. Owing to the relatively cheap nature of white cotton thread and the abundant nature of cheap, indigo-dyed blue cloth in historical Japan, sashiko has a distinctive appearance of white-on-blue embroidery, though some decorative pieces may also use red thread.

Before I show you my finished quilt, let me tell you first about Plan A. When this prompt was announced, we’d just returned from our trip to Alaska…our 50th state, visited just after our 50th wedding anniversary. We called it the Fifty-Fifty trip. That’s beside the point. You probably already knew that, but I’m mouthy, and I like telling that story. Anyway…while we were in Alaska, we were fortunate to be among the 30% of visitors who actually get to see Denali. This was a picture I took when we pulled off the road.

I spent some time perusing Pinterest, looking for inspiration. If you’re a regular follower, then you know I love hand embroidery. It’s an important part of every single morning. Some of the images I saw on Pinterest made me wonder if I could recreate my image of Denali using the sashiko technique. So I printed my image onto a sheet of Sticky Fabri-Solvy and went to work on it. I’d planned to stitch parallel running stitches in the various colors from the image.

After stitching on it for a few days, I started having doubts about whether this was going to work. Without some kind of outlining, I didn’t see how it would ever look like anything other than a bunch of random stitches. I hadn’t decided to give it up yet, but I was thinking about what else I might do. Randomly one evening, I was in our spare bedroom where this watercolor painting hangs on the wall.

It was painted by Mike’s grandmother. I’m wishing I had a good picture of her. Her name was Olive Riddle. Mike called her "Mermie." She's second from the left in the picture below. It's not a very good picture of her, and her eyes were closed. 

She was a very classy lady and drove a sporty Camaro when she was in her 80's. She was in her mid-70's when her husband passed away, and she soon took up watercolor painting as a way to fill the empty hours. She clearly had a passion for her art, and she was very prolific. In the same way the walls of my sewing room are covered in small quilts, her living room walls were covered in her beautiful watercolor paintings. About half a dozen of them adorn the walls of our own home.

Obviously, the picture above was taken on our wedding day. At the far left is Mike's great aunt Gwen. That's Mike's mom and dad on the right. You can probably figure out the bride and groom, but I can't miss this opportunity to add that Mike worked for a flower shop before he became an engineer. He made my bridal bouquet, and it was beautiful. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my mother lovingly made my dress and veil.

So, as I looked at the watercolor on the wall, I could envision it in stitching. I had an idea to outline the main subjects in stem stitch, and then fill in the interiors with different sashiko patterns. I took a picture of her painting, and then printed it as a photograph. 

In preparation for this project, I'd already purchased some sashiko templates. I used them for inspiration and then as guides to help me trace the stitching patterns I wanted to use.

Then I traced the design onto fabric.

And then I just stitched and stitched and stitched until it was finished. I only had a loose plan about how to stitch various sections, and made some decisions as I went along.

When it was finished, I trimmed it very close to the stitching, and then added borders. The pattern in the gray batik seemed just right for this piece dedicated to sashiko.

And then I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine by stitching very, very close to the stem stitching. The quilting is mainly functional, but it also gave some texture to the piece.

When the quilting was finished it looked like this from the back.

All that was left to do was to add the binding. Here is my finished quilt. I measures 15 x 17.5 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Here’s a closer look at the stitching.

And now, it is hanging with the watercolor cabin that Mermie painted.

I consider myself fortunate to have some of these treasures from family members who passed on long ago. If you’re a regular reader, then you know some of my other projects have been made with bits and pieces of handwork from my mother and my grandmother, and it feels a privilege to “visit” with them and collaborate on these projects. I never had a chance to sit and make quilts with my grandmother. She was long gone by the time I learned to quilt. I never had a chance to sit and do embroidery with my mother. She'd abandoned embroidery in favor of garment sewing by the time I started stitching in earnest. Certainly, I never had a chance to paint watercolors with Mermie. But when I work on these kinds of projects, it somehow feels as if I’ve had a little taste of what that might have been like.

Thanks for visiting today. I hope you like my quilt.

One Day, Two Finishes

Good morning, my friends, and Happy Halloween!

Halloween is a non-event around here. Where we live, we don't get any trick-or-treaters. That doesn't mean we don't treat ourselves, though. We do have emergency candy in stock in case we need it. Smitty hasn't told me what he wants to be for Halloween. Sadie is going to dress up as a black cat. 

I'm happy to say it was a day for slow yesterday. I took care of a few domestic things in the morning, and then I plopped myself down in a chair and spent the day stitching. After a while, I'd turned all four corners of It Takes A Village.

And then I had just about 15 inches to finish it off. Ta-da!

Here's how it looks from the back.

And since there was still time left in the day, I spent the next 45 minutes or so finishing off Autumn's Harvest Pumpkin.

And here's how that looks from the back.

And that took me straight to dinner time. I had in mind to try this recipe for Marry Me Tortellini. This was so easy and so tasty. It's made in a single skillet. It's easy enough to make in the RV, and so this is definitely a keeper. 

The only thing I did differently was to forego the fresh basil in favor of a little sprinkle of dried basil. Fresh basil spoils so quickly that I usually substitute dried unless I'm going to use the whole amount I'm forced to purchase. I've tried growing my own, but it never does very well.

So I don't have a lot more to tell you today since I spent the day perched on my derriere. However, I realized I'd forgotten to post the pictures I took of every blooming that at our vet's office. Their Black-Eyed Susans were very pretty.

Also, a hedge lines their parking lot, and it was all abloom with these pretties. My phone tells me this is "Redclaw."

Today's dinner will be made this morning. I'm starting some chili in my slow cooker. It seems like a good day for chili. And chili also requires cornbread, so I'll bake up some cornbread to go along with it.

On the sewing front, I've reached the section of my whiteboard dedicated to WIPs. Next up, I'll get to work making another row of blocks for the Stair Steps project.

This one requires a fair amount of cutting, which often makes my wrist hurt. I'm going to try putting a splint on my wrist today to see if that helps. I hate it when my passion for sewing breaks my body.

Also, tomorrow is the reveal for the Sashiko piece. If you're curious to have the mystery solved, be sure to check in. Here's the last picture I showed you.

I'm excited to show you the whole thing. It has special significance, which will become apparent when I can tell you about it. 

So that's all I have for you. I'll leave you to your day. Watch out for spooks!