Saturday, April 4, 2020

I changed my routine around a bit today. I was all set up for quilting so I finished the quilting on my community quilt rather than start with my Covid-19 block first thing. It took until after lunch but the binding is attached and ready to hand stitch tonight (and maybe tomorrow). The quilt is flannel so I gave my machine a good cleaning, oiled it up and I’ll be ready to go with the next quilt (on Monday).

The block today was quite simple so it didn’t take me long to get it done. I think my smaller machine should also have a cleaning as it has been getting a lot more use than normal; it is my Tuesday machine but I’ve been using everyday for three weeks. I’ll get to that when I finish here.

I’ve been a bit uninspired with my knitting project; I like the yarn and it is a nice pattern but I can see it is going to take ages and ages to finish. All that for a donation shawl that will go to someone I don’t even know. But it dawned on me today that I have someone I can gift it to when I finish so that will help to hurry me along.

I think I’m getting a bit cranky (some would say I needn’t think about it); I had to have a rant on Facebook this morning and I just responded to someone’s post when I would normally just scroll on through. As I said to a quilting friend (through Facebook) that I thought maybe I should start “online distancing” myself.

Friday, April 3, 2020

Come on – you know you want to. What’s up buttercup?

For me it is mostly quilting. It is going well but I’m still at least a day away from a finish.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Not much sewing done today; today’s block was just six inches (the size of my cards). It is the first small one I’ve had so it may get added to my bin of card tops when this is all over. I would have liked to have had some bird fabric for that corner, but the picture on the calendar didn’t have any either.

I’ve been cutting and bagging all day. The mystery quilt-along is coming up and, although I’ve had the fabric and cutting instructions for quite awhile, I hadn’t taken the time to do the cutting. Each step is now cut and bagged, which should make it easier to keep up. We intended to do this over two days so having a week between clues probably means I’ll be able to keep up.

My back is sore from standing all day, and my arms are sore from cutting. Woe is me – NOT!

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

I have my energy back today and I’m looking forward to another month of sewing. Today’s block used the same curved template as another block I made but this time I didn’t use any fusible web; I used a glue stick to hold the pieces down until I sewed the seams. This worked well but it wasn’t really a good test as there were no seams to match. I thought I was going to have to join a couple of pieces of blue together to make the right sized square but by including some salvage in a couple of seams I had enough.

The April UFO was announced today – a Christmas project. I would have preferred something different but we got news today that the mystery quilt class the Guild was offering at the end of May has been cancelled. We’ll be doing it as a stitch-along with a new clue being released every Tuesday. I bought the fabric for it in Saskatoon last fall; in order not to fall behind before we even get started I better get it cut out. Which is good timing as I noticed today I had a nick in my rotary cutter blade so I need to change it out for a new one. If the mystery clues are too much to get done in a week (and they shouldn’t be) the Christmas project will wait.

I got started quilting a community quilt this afternoon. It isn’t as easy quilting at my small desktop as it is with my set-up in the workshop on Texada but it will have to do. I thought I might try some ruler work but after I’d done the stabilizing I realized it would be too hard (and cramped) to try anything fancy. I made do some free-motion on it but even that might be too hard without my cabinet for support.

I started weaving in the ends on one of my knitting projects last night and I should be able to finish it tonight. I also have two miniatures that are ready to have the binding hand-stitched down.