Rain today

Journal

Saturday, August 13, 2022

It rained overnight and has been cloudy and cool most of the day. I can see a bit of blue sky out right now so I expect the forecast is right – we’re in for more hot weather next week. Sitting on the deck this morning for coffee didn’t happen and I was all set to go out and eat my lunch on the deck but there were spits of rain so I came back inside.

I’ve taken care of some Guild business; I made arrangements for an out of town teacher and did a bit of work with the costs to see how much we’d have to pay for her class. I think it is reasonable and I hope the rest of the Guild does as well.

We have a show at the Hall tonight. It is one of the groups that Pat and I had to cancel at the very start of the pandemic. It is a Hall-sponsored event tonight so I have work to do. I think I have done everything I needed to and I guess if I missed something we’ll manage. I’m looking forward to the time when going to a show simply means going to a show.

With the rest of my day I’ve finished a card and made a start on my next calendar block. I haven’t followed the block suggested in the sew-along; I hope this one turns out better than the one I did last month. Much to my surprise I still have two card blocks left in the series; I think they are multiplying inside my book (much like scraps multiply inside their bins).

I’ve got a bit more time before supper so I’ll get back to sewing.

Catching up

Journal

Friday, August 12, 2022

I am ever so slowly catching up on my task list. With this week’s finish of Ashford Square I have completed everything that was listed on my January UFO list. The quilt with Mum’s fabric is done (scrappy), the Guild Challenge placemats that were supposed to be done for June are ready to quilt (piecing) and Gavin’s Log Cabin was ready in time for his birthday in April (quilting). Now, on to February’s list!

It has been awhile since I spent any time out in the yard. It was cooler today so Pat and I worked outside most of the morning. He pulled a few weeds and sprayed one side of the patio with weed killer; I cleared the weeds from the other side of the patio. I’ve more or less given up on the gardener as far as helping with the weeding; I’m okay with that as long as he will do the blackberries in the rose wall and keep the boulevard mowed.

After lunch I came upstairs and got a card top finished. I thought this was going to be the last one from the book but there is one more to do. I have lots of cards required for September so I expect I’ll get to that last one soon. Last night when I unwrapped my Sashiko sampler I was disappointed to see I have four more sections to do, not the two I thought there were. I know math can be an issue for me but I used to know how to count!

I’ve been making phone calls this afternoon lining up leaders for the Guild classes and demos. All but one have been settled but I had to do some convincing for a couple of the sessions.

I’ll head downstairs now and do some more work on my sampler.

Ashford Square

Quilting
Ashford Square from the Fabric Café (~ 43″ x 62″)

When Stacia, Deloise and I were planning our Panorama trip both of them were going to work on a pattern that would use fabrics from Mum’s stash. I have always planned a second quilt with the scraps of her fabric that I still had. Some time ago I purchased a set of templates for making scrap quilts and I thought I’d make use of them.

I started cutting but it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to have enough variety in the fabric to give me the designs that I was hoping for. But I had enough yardage to use in a 3-Yard quilt so I picked a pattern and finished the top when we were together.

I have tried in the past to do a pieced backing and I was never very happy with the results. But a fellow Guild member had been doing something called crumb quilting where you take the tiniest pieces, stitch them together, stitch them to more tiny pieces and finally, after a long time, you end up with enough fabric to make a block. I started doing that but realized it was going to take forever so I gave up.

I still had a few larger pieces of Mum’s fabric so I started with that and eventually made up enough blocks to do a pieced backing. I’m so pleased with the results; to me it looks so much like the patchwork quilts that Mum made.

I used my go-to star pattern for the squares and the mattress stitch to outline those blocks. I used a wider mattress stitch for the diagonals but they didn’t direct the eye to the diagonal as much as I expected. I used a straight-line spiral in the half of the half-square triangle that was opposite the diagonal.

This purple fabric is my favourite.

Back to sewing

Journal

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Finally I got back to my Thursday sewing. It has been almost a month since Gail and I got together and, as you can imagine, there was a lot of catching up to do. In fact all we did was catch up; neither of us did any sewing. I wasn’t there for long so I didn’t plan to do anything. Pat’s truck has been acting up so he wanted to take the car out to Lund for his performance tonight so I had to be home early.

I finished up the last of the 10″ blocks yesterday and today I got another 12″ block done; just one more postage stamp block to go and then they will both be ready to put together for my Circle of Nine class. After the samples are done I may try to get one of them quilted before the “reveal” at the end of September.

I have to start thinking soon about any quilts I want to get done for the quilt show – very soon in fact. I have two that I really want to put in the show and neither one of them is finished. Hopefully when I actually step down from the Hall I’ll have a bit more time for myself.

I’m off now to do some more Sashiko stitching in the cool of the basement.