All posts by Sherry

Happy Birthday Kevin

Cards

February 10, 2021

New Glory (a Splendid Sampler Bonus Block)

Many of the blocks in both the Splendid Sampler series and on my calendar are red, white and blue because both are published in the United States. Normally I would change the colours to something (almost anything) else. I worked on this card on January 20th, while I watched and listened to the inauguration of President Biden so red, white and blue didn’t seem so odd.

There are 53 pieces in this block; I was very glad that it was paper pieced. I tried to do some ruler quilting on the block but there were just too many seams. After two attempts I went back to my tried-and-true star.

I clearly remember standing in the hallway of our Fort Smith apartment when I got the news of Kevin’s birth.

February Postcard

Quilting

February 9, 2021

I was quilting (virtually) with Stacia and Deloise today, working on our February miniature. I was up early and felt just a little bit guilty for starting at 5:30. When we did our initial check-in at eight, Deloise and I both had one block done and Stacia was wondering where she had stashed the bag with her project.

We checked in again at eleven and both Stacia and Deloise were finished their tops. I was still working on my blocks. Our final check-in was at two (my time) and they were both done; I was getting ready to sandwich my project.

Since then I have finished my miniature and tried out a couple of new techniques to boot. Stacia mentioned how she does a triangular hanging sleeve so I gave that a try – works very slick and so much easier than the traditional sleeve.

In the past I have tried to machine stitch the binding on both sides of a quilt but had no luck at all. Today when I was attaching my binding I sewed it to the wrong side so I either had to figure out the machine stitching or rip out all the binding. I chose to suck-it-up and the machine stitching worked just fine. I won’t do it all the time but it is nice to know when I mess up (and I know I will again) that there is a solution.

Positives and Negatives

Journal

Monday, February 8, 2021

I’m struggling (just a little) to get off my regular schedule and into non-schedule where I finish a project before moving on to something else.

Today, when I was trying to finish a small project, I wanted very badly to set it aside and do something else. I was using my quilting machine and trying to use my rulers. I know the rulers don’t work well with a lot of seams but I was using the ruler that was a straight-edge so I thought it might be possible. But it wasn’t and I had to rip it all out.

Then I noticed that my machine was skipping stitches. I thought I could live with the skips but when I started a second round of quilting and the measurements for lines weren’t working out well I ripped everything out again. I rethreaded the machine and that seemed to help with the problem.

When I quit for lunch I thought maybe I’d have better luck after a break. But that little voice in my head said right back to me, “It isn’t luck, it’s skill”. Regardless of whether or not it was luck or skill, I managed to get the quilting done.

The positive of this new non-schedule is that I quite enjoyed sitting in the sunshine this afternoon and stitching down the binding.

Now I’ll move on to prepping for tomorrow’s project. Stacia, Deloise and I will be working on a common project and I don’t even have my fabrics picked yet.