Catherine

From Little Handfuls of Scraps by Edyta Sitar

January’s project from Little Handfuls of Scraps was not my favourite when I looked through the book. But I’m doing the patterns alphabetically and this one was next in line.

I was pleased that I had enough strips from a neutral-coloured jelly roll to use as the background. There was a lot of tracing, cutting and bonding to do but it really wasn’t difficult.

I originally thought I would machine appliqué the pieces but by the time they were all cut and placed on the background I realized that would be a daunting task for such a small project. I used the mattress stitch on my quilting machine and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Now that it is done and hung, I think, so far, this is my favourite project from the book.

It’s a good tired

Saturday, January 13, 2024

I had a very productive two days of sewing with Stacia and Deloise. I admit my pattern was a relatively easy one but getting it done and moving on in one day was a first for me. When Catherine was done I moved on to the next bonus block for the chicken project. I traced it, cut out the shapes and got them pinned to the background.

On day two I continued with the chickens, this time on the main block. I prepped the background, traced the shapes and applied them to the felt. I’ll trim the pieces one evening while watching a hockey game. In the afternoon I took a short break and walked to a friend’s house. Her kids arranged an Open House for her birthday. When I got home I finished one more Alias Grace block.

This morning I finished off two gift projects I’ve been working on. I’ll get them packaged for the mail tomorrow and up to the post office Monday.

This afternoon while we watched the hockey game I pretty much finished the tablecloth. I got Mum’s squares attached and I’m just doing some edging around them. I brought it upstairs to see if there is anything else I want to do with it.

After the game I baked a cake to use up the pumpkin and evaporated milk I had bought for our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie that never got made. I was able to use my new hand mixer (thank you Kathryn) – so much easier than dragging out the big mixer. I used my new spatulas that Elizabeth included in my 12 days packages. Tonight when we (hopefully) enjoy the cake we’ll be using the cutlery that Christy sent.

No wonder I’m tired – that’s a lot.

Busy Day

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

It has been a whirlwind day but at least a few things were accomplished.

The quilting work I was doing this morning went well. My test project needed a bit of attention and I’ll finish the hand stitching on it tonight. One down, two to go. I managed to get the quilting done on three of the four pieces for the next sets before lunch.

While we had lunch there was a notice from HP that the free ink subscription we got with the colour printer (thanks Elizabeth) was running out. Under that plan we could print up to 700 pages but I doubt I’ll print that many pages in a year. If we continued with that plan we were paying a lot every month. We found a much more reasonable plan for a lot less money but I wanted to get some of the pages I had set aside for printing done before our current subscription ran out.

I managed to print off a few pages and then everything stopped. We changed the black cartridge but the colours seemed to be fine so we didn’t change the colour cartridge. Once the cartridge was changed we couldn’t figure out how to get the queue going again so I deleted everything and sent everything to the printer again. I thought I had it all printed but when I went downstairs to pick up the pages I noticed that the colours were all coming out pink. We changed the colour cartridge this time and I finally got everything printed – some pages printed more than once because this time the queue worked.

After the printing fiasco was sorted out I finished quilting the fourth piece of my project.

It’s time now to get myself organized for two days of sewing with Stacia and Deloise. I’m glad I sorted out fabric for my project because I’m too tired to think about it now. I should clean my sewing machine but I’m going to hope it sees me through the next couple of days.

Happy Birthday Taylor

January 10, 2024

Hearts-a-Flutter (from the Splendid Sampler series)

I didn’t think I had anything in my card bin that would work but I decided to check just in case. After my cleaning-up sessions I had a bit of trouble finding where my card bin had moved to! I was happy that there was still something in there that would work.

In spite of not having the best shopping options in Powell River there is a store that stocks the Dutch sprinkles that are a favourite of Taylor’s. A collection of those went into her gift bag.