Tuesday, April 27, 2021

It’s been another day of That Fairy Tale Quilt. I put the last row together and was excited at the thought of stitching the centre four rows together. I put it all out on the floor across the hall from my sewing room and noticed that the top two rows were just a tad shorter than the bottom two rows.

I took another look at the pattern and realized that on both of those rows I had missed a 1″ border piece. Whew – no ripping out and fudging seams (at least at this point).

I also noticed that I have to put a sashing between each of the rows and, of course, those sashing rows are made up of three or more pieces so there will be a lot more stitching required before any of the rows come together.

I had hoped to get back to some cards tomorrow but I’m determined to get the centre of this finished before moving on. It is my April UFO Challenge project and although it will be far from complete having the centre put together will make for a good stopping place until I pick it up again.

Monday, April 26, 2021

It’s been a long time coming but today was opening day. We haven’t stopped in or gone through the drive-thru but we’ll be big supporters (big in more than one way) soon!

I ran a few errands today but for the most part I’ve been finishing up another row of That Fairy Tale Quilt. This pattern is very poorly written; I know that because even I am finding cutting instructions that are wrong. This is the last row that needs to be added but the borders will be brutal – sky, ground, Rapunzel’s Tower and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Sunday, April 25, 2021

I’ve been working on That Fairy Tale Quilt today. Finally Hansel and Gretel are done – far from perfect but done.

As I stitched and restitched, cut and recut I couldn’t help but think of the actual fairy tale. Hansel and Gretel were lost (or abandoned depending on what version you read) in the forest and discovered by a witch. She may have had good intentions to start with, giving them shelter and food. But along the way maybe Hansel and Gretel just got too mischievous and the witch was driven mad. Granted planning to eat them goes a bit too far but I can understand the frustration if that is what happened.

I started out with the best of intentions. I had Gretel done and a head made for Hansel. But then I decided to switch the head around so the brother and sister would both be looking at the gingerbread house (yet to be constructed). All was going well until I added legs to Hansel and realized that his body would be pointing in a different direction from his head (and that is more like the movie The Exorcist) so I decided that they would face each other as the pattern showed. Fortunately I had a head that was going in the right direction in my scrap bin (and that brings out a definite horror-movie feel) and I managed to get them both finished and good enough.

And just as I was about to put them away I noticed that Gretel had removed her shoe and put it back on upside down. I fixed it but that was the last straw (are you thinking the Three Little Pigs?) – no gingerbread house today!

Saturday, April 24, 2021

I wasn’t able to finish my cards last night. It turns out I can knit and watch subtitles but I can’t sew and watch them. I finished off a scarf and thought my knitting basket was empty but when I looked today I see that I have enough in there for another scarf and a hat. I was looking forward to finding a new project but I’ll wait until these two things are finished.

I had to (emphasis on had to) go out to the quilt shop this morning. They have been collecting money for a farewell gift for one of our quilters and I’m responsible for creating the gift certificate and transferring the money to the quilt shop in Castlegar. I’ve been working on the gift certificate and once I knew the amount I was able to get it sent to Staples for printing. In cases like this I really miss having a colour printer. But I had quite a few quilting pages that were waiting to be printed so I sent them along too. I’m way behind in keeping up with my project book but maybe this will get me back into it.

I finished off the morning by stitching the binding on the cards. They will be ready for the mail next week or, in some cases, the following week. I decided for the rest of the day I would do some sorting out and tidying up in my sewing room. I got about half-way around but now that I’m at the cutting table I have more than a day’s worth of fabrics to sort out, trim up for scraps and put away in various bins and cupboards.

It looks like I’ll be at it most of the day tomorrow.