Thursday, October 19, 2017

I spent most of the morning on my computer – paying some bills and booking my flight to Saskatoon in November. Before my lunch break though I had time to trim my Twinkling Stars quilt and cut out strips for the binding. I’ll attach the binding at the bee on Friday but I wanted to have the cutting done ahead of time (often there are too many distractions at a bee for me to concentrate on my measurements). That particular project won’t take long but I have another community quilt that needs borders attached. I dug out the top and found the border material; once the border is attached I’ll have the other bee workers sandwich it for me. We have several stations at these Community Quilt bees so people who don’t want to sew do the pressing and the sandwiching. I think this one will be mostly straight-line quilting but I think I will bring it home to quilt. My project for the second day of the bee will be to continue with my Leader and Ender project. I have enough blocks ready that I think I can sew them together and at least get the centre part of the top done; if not done it will at least be better than the hundred blocks I currently have sitting in a bin.

But before all that happens we have a demo night at the Guild tonight. I packed up the fabric and bits that I need for the project and they are ready to go.

Since I’m doing a lot of sewing this weekend I decided I should clean and oil my machine. That was almost a disaster as when I got it apart I had a hard time getting it back together. And the part that really should have been oiled was missed but I didn’t dare take it apart a second time! It is very noisy when I’m stitching but there will probably be enough chatter in the room that I won’t offend anyone.

Pat went across to the studio this afternoon so I’m on my own for a few days. I know I need lunches for the next two days so I’d better get some eggs boiled and find something for my dinner.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

I know you think everyday is a quilting day for me – Pat certainly likes to spread that rumor around. But today was “real” quilting, not just cutting, piecing or sandwiching.

I’ve been working (in very short burst) at quilting a Community Quilt I’ve had on the go for a couple of years. The stabilizing was all done and my goal, before Friday (our Community Quilting day), was to have it ready for binding. The free-motion in the centre of the quilt went really quickly. I used my standard looping pattern. The thread I used in the centre of the quilt hardly shows at all. In fact I had to feel the top to be sure I had all the blocks done. The backing has a pattern on it and you see even less of the quilting on the back.

I looked for something different for the borders but since getting it done was the priority I decided to loop the border as well. The quilting shows up more in the borders but, from a distance, my errors blend in well. By my lunch break I had one side of the border done so, as long as my machine behaves, I shouldn’t have any trouble getting it finished tomorrow.

Gail, the woman who hosts our hand stitching afternoons, has a long arm quilting machine and has said she would rent time on it. Today four of us spent the afternoon with Gail for a brief introduction to the machine. By the end of the afternoon we had all had a chance to “drive”. I’m really going to like this option for larger quilts, but I’ll start with something small (which I don’t have made yet). We are going to work in pairs, one quilting and one watching and learning. I’m pairing up with a woman who does feathers and I’m hoping to learn from watching her.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

I usually take Carola with me when I go to sewing as she doesn’t drive. Last week I was asked if I would contact one of our more senior members who no longer can drive to offer her a ride to all our events. I said I would but when I called her yesterday to see if she wanted to come to the bee today she said she was going to Vancouver for a few days. So I was on my own.

Its a good thing I took several projects with me. I finished off my Row-by-Row block for one of the monthly challenges at the Guild. I had already done the hard part, and the cutting for the rest was done, so it didn’t take long to finish. I’m hoping the rest of the rows will also feature some places around Powell River. The water wheel on the highway advertising their campground is very visible, but it wasn’t until last year on my birthday that we actually investigated the beach.

Once that project was done I started in on my mini for the next Mini Meez meeting. Yesterday, as I was packing up, I cut the strips I needed for the project and read the first page of the tutorial to put it together. It was too long to remember so I saved the pages onto my iPad and intended to take it with me to the bee today. As with many of my good intentions I completely forgot the iPad so didn’t get any further than sewing the strips together. It is a Hallowe’en-themed project so, if I want to use it this year, I’d better get it done quickly.

Luckily I had a third project with me – my hexagon sewing kit. This project was taught on a series of two Tuesday at least two years ago but, like so many of my class projects, it never got done. My attempt this year is to finish off some of those old projects and over another week or two of bees I just may get it done.

I have one ball of yarn left to knit on my baby blanket and then I can move on to something else. Sadly I’m on a reverse knitting pattern just now as somewhere in the pattern I lost a stitch. After that is done I think I’ll call it quits (for this year) on Salvation Army donations because I have two other groups I want to knit for. As soon as I can get the proper yarn for Jennifer McKnight’s Twinkle Star project I want to knit up a few for her. The church where we sew also has a Prayer Shawl ministry and I volunteered to do some work for them; one of our Guild members gave me a few books to pick some patterns from so I’ve copied out three patterns and hope to use up some of my worsted weight yarns.

Monday, October 16, 2017

I had a lovely weekend at the studio – my first solo visit. Getting up and down the driveway wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be – in fact I think going down was worse than going up. I spent most of my time indoors working on various projects, but I did drive down to the market on Saturday. And we had our first visitor to the studio.

Don’t think my heart didn’t stop for a moment or two when I heard a knock at the door. But I knew my car was parked outside so there could be no doubt that there was someone at home. So I was very brave and answered it. Our visitor was Jamie from a couple of doors down; his wife saw the red car (and we usually have the truck) and I think they were just checking to be sure whoever was in the house should be in the house. Nice to know they keep track of the place.

I got a lot done over the weekend. I finished a couple of donation sweaters, I finished the ornaments for an Advent calendar and the biggest task of all was cutting down all my scraps. I cut them into squares or strips of various widths because someday I’m sure I’ll find a way to use them. Some of the small scraps go into a bag for a friend and the smallest pieces get set aside for stuffing dog pillows. I took a sewing machine with me this trip (and left it there); I sewed on the kitchen table but I’ll have to find a small table or, if I’m very lucky, someone will be getting rid of a sewing machine cabinet.

When I got home not only did I have to put away all my weekend work but I also had to unpacked my Thursday afternoon sewing projects. I’ve done a bit of prep work for the sewing bee tomorrow although I have one more project I want to do some prep work on. Three projects will no doubt be more than I need but since I was on such a good roll over the weekend I don’t want to run out.