Thursday, April 23, 2020

My Covid-19 blocks come off my Quilter’s Block A Day Calendar. Depending on the size of the daily block it will sometimes take part of the morning or sometimes all morning. There are fabrics to pull and cut, piecing and trimming to do. Often there is appliqué that involves templates which need to be transferred from the calendar to card stock and then traced onto the back of the fabric. The appliqué may involve using pieces of steam-a-seam to attach the shape to the block.

Today’s block had all of that – plus! There were templates involved – a lot of small pieces – and I had to create the bias tape for all those ribbons. And after I had everything pinned to the background all of the ribbons had to be hand stitched.

It’s no wonder I didn’t get anything else done today – and I don’t even feel bad about it!

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

I had a bit of contact with the outside world today – but from a safe distance. The President of the Hall stopped by to sign some cheques so I can carry on with some of the Hall business. Another Board member stopped by to drop off some receipts and pick up one of those signed cheques. And just a few minutes later we got a grocery order delivered.

I worked on cards today but I didn’t get as many done as I would have liked. I have one that needs to get in the mail tomorrow; it is next up to be quilted. Because I was so far behind with my cards I pulled out tops that had already been put together; it was quick work to sandwich, stitch and turn them. I’ll hand stitch the closings tonight. All but two of my May cards are prepped, turned and ready to be quilted.

My small design board is filling up. I didn’t finish yesterday’s mystery clue so I have bits and pieces of that strewn about. There are some leaders and enders that are waiting to be stitched into pinwheels and now I have a stack of cards added to the mix.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day at home; I’ll make progress on something.

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

It took me until two this afternoon to get this block finished. I tried to second guess the cutting to avoid the large striped triangles thinking a smaller triangle and half-square triangles would work just as well. So I made my HSTs and my quarter-square triangles and started putting it together. I couldn’t for the life of me make it “come together” so I reversed stitched (about three times), recut fabric (I was lucky I had just enough of the orange and no extra) and still I struggled. Then I realized what my mistake had been. I made my QST squares the same size as the HSTs and I know (now) that they have to be slightly bigger to start. Once that was sorted I managed with the various combinations of cuttings and seams already stitched to get it all together. Biggest surprise of all is that I actually like the block.

It wasn’t until after a late lunch that I was able to start on my mystery quilt clue. Every week there are more HSTs but some of the pieces from the previous steps are being attached so it feels like soon I’ll be able to see whether or not I like my colours. I know I like my colours but I’m anxious to see if the turquoise I’ve used is going to be the one that stands out in the end project. I’d be okay if it was either the dark or the light but I’m expecting stars of some sort and I’d like them to be turquoise.

Monday, April 20, 2020

Today was a quilting day (after my block was finished). I knew I wasn’t going to do anything fancy on the quilt I was working on but it went quicker than I imagined. Just diagonal lines which I eyeballed so no marking was necessary. I went from border to border all the way around so there were no ends to tie in either.

Since I hadn’t been very imaginative on the quilting I decided to do a machine-stitched binding; usually I machine bind one side and hand stitch the other. It took longer than I thought it would and, although it wasn’t really hard, I didn’t get a particularly good result. I’m hoping once the quilt is washed my issues won’t show as much.

I was thinking that the upside of doing the quilt this way was once I was done I was done. But not so fast – I neglected to stitch the label onto the quilt so that will have to be done by hand.