Wednesday, May 27, 2020 (Day 72-for those who are counting)
Country Roads
Last evening, before stopping for supper, I came up with a method for some straight line quilting on my project. I tested out three blocks and I was happy with what I came up with. I added a bit to the plan this morning and I think it works well – almost as if this is what I planned in the first place (before the free-motion fiasco). It involves a lot of knots to be tied in but anything is better than all the reverse stitching I had to do yesterday.
The project is slowly getting done but I don’t think I will get it finished tonight. Pat has an online “thing” tonight so I can work into the evening but my thread containers arrived today so I may sort more thread instead of sewing.
Today has been a nightmare. I was trying to do some free-motion quilting on my Guild challenge and nothing went right. I should have known it wasn’t going to be a good day when I broke a needle halfway through my warm-up. But I carried on. I broke more needles and my thread broke; new needles, new thread didn’t help. By noon I realized that at the rate I was going (almost a third of the way done) I wasn’t going to have enough needles to finish the job.
I decided to take out all the quilting I had done and find a way to do some straight line stitching. While ripping out the stitching it seemed like I had done way more than almost a third.
So it took me all morning to do the quilting and all afternoon to rip it out. If it hadn’t been for my daily block (and it was probably the easiest one in the calendar) I wouldn’t have accomplished anything.
Today’s block is very appropriate. I spent some time last week sorting some of my thread and planning for the next step in organizing. I was looking for a particular thread case and I finally found one that is very close the the one I already have; Amazon of course and they will be here on Thursday. I was thinking today that if this self-isolation thing lasts long enough I may get several corners sorted and organized.
This morning Pat asked me what I was going to do for the day. My reply was that I needed to get the masks out to the mail box, get the Hall minutes circulated and then I was going to continue to quilt on my Guild challenge. I was also going to do the laundry, make the bed, change the towels in the bathrooms, bake a cake and knit this evening. I also jokingly commented that I wasn’t sure what I’d do with my spare time!
All those things have been accomplished and I managed to sneak in a few more things in my spare time. I loaded some cans into the trunk of my car so if sometime I’m passing the bottle depot and it doesn’t look too busy I could stop and do some returns (my drive past today still showed a full parking lot).
The depot recycling was getting out of hand so I emptied a yarn bin and repurposed the bin for recycling. I sorted through the recycling and managed to fill the bin; I stuck it on the back deck along with the other two bins that are stacked up. There is still a lot of recycling but at least I’m not tripping over it when I’m in the laundry room.
While I waited for the cake to bake I loaded up the rest of the bottles and cans and took them out to the car. They can rattle around out there without being in my way. I also managed to put a few stitches in my cross-stitch project while the cake baked.
I got started on some Hall business while I had my morning coffee. I’m a bit late getting out the minutes from the last meeting but so far no one has complained or offered to take over so I guess it’s okay. I’ll review them tomorrow morning while I have coffee and get them sent out.
This afternoon I’ve been making masks for Elizabeth. I didn’t have any more of the quarter-inch elastic I used in the first batch but I heard that ponytail elastics worked. I tried a couple using them but they were a bit thick and difficult to stitch over. I had some narrow elastic (one-eighth inch) so I tested a mask out using two strands. It worked okay but it was difficult to keep the strands in place as I sewed around the mask. For the final two masks I stitched the elastic into the corners before putting the second layer of fabric on; that seemed to work better for me. But now that I have the method figured out I’m out of even the narrow elastic. I still don’t have any masks made for myself so when I get around to making them I’ll use ties.
The masks are off to the laundry and they’ll be in the mail tomorrow.
