Lunch at the Beach

Journal

Sunday, May 23, 2021

If you happen to go to my website you will notice some changes. I’ve been wanting to do a make-over for quite awhile and I needed to change my mailing system; it seemed like a good time to make all the changes. I now have a search field; I mostly wanted that for my books so I could look up by author. I still have some work to do to categorize them but for the ones I have done it is working well. I don’t often search on other pages but I can now if I want to.

Pat helped me out with some of the design work so I took him out for lunch. Covid makes eating out tricky and on top of that it is Sunday where many of our favourite spots are closed. We settled on A & W; we sat on a bench at the beach to eat it.

I wanted to get two projects sandwiched today but only one got done – my Guild challenge. It won’t take long to quilt it.

The second project was a Christmas quilt. I washed the flannel backing and had it all nicely pressed. When I went to look for the quilt top I couldn’t find it anywhere. I went to my inventory spreadsheet and found out where it was supposed to be stored; not there but I found a bin with only one quilt top in it so I combined two bins into one. As I went through the bins looking for my top I updated my inventory listing and combined two more small bins into a larger bin. Still no Christmas quilt.

I was going through the pile of bins near my quilting machine but before I got too far in I spied my quilt top in one of my two-drawer bins. There were also a couple of table-toppers in the drawer so they went into one of the larger bins that held other quilt tops.

So I have two good-sized bins clear as well as a large drawer empty. That will allow me to start on a colour-coordination project for sorting scraps. It just never ends for me!

I knew I was going to have top piece the backing for the Christmas quilt. I had it out on the floor for measuring but when I put the quilt top over it I decided that I’d like to put a border on it. So no more sandwiching today.

The table have been put away for now. I guess I’ll see what kind of a mess I can make trying to organize my scraps into the empty bins.

Magnolia Mystery

Quilting

I ran this mystery project for the Guild. This was a free quilt-along so all the clues were already online. I got permission from the designer to use her pattern for the Guild program. I’ve been a fan of Meadow Mist Designs for a long time and have purchased and downloaded several of her patterns. 

It was a fair bit of work to remove all the information in each clue that could lead the members to the online page. If they saw the quilts it wouldn’t be as much fun in seeing the quilt come together as each monthly clue was released.

There was no place in the house that I could lay the quilt out for a good photo so the photos were taken bit by bit. It wasn’t until it was bound and on the bed that I saw the entire picture.

Quilting was not easy. I knew it had to be straight-line stitching but even at that there was a lot of turning necessary and by the time it was finished my shoulder and arm were quite sore.

I used two different design stitches on my sewing machine for the centre portion. Then I mimicked the magnolia block and quilted it in purple thread for a bit more contrast although it doesn’t show up much on the finished quilt.

Finally, both edges of the quilt were done in a variety of straight lines. In some cases I had a plan but while I was stitching I found a different way to do the lines that would avoid burying in ends. Some of the designs I like better than others and some were done just “to get it done”.

I’m very happy with the results and I think most of the Guild members were as well.

The designer will have a new book out at the end of the month and I’m on the list for a pre-order.

The Great Alone

Books

Author: Kristin Hannah

This is the fourth book I’ve read by this author and I have a fifth one on order at the library. With the exception of one of them (Fly Away) they have all been good and each one was very different – no formulaic writing.

This novel takes place in Alaska, although the story would be good no matter what the setting. I loved her descriptions of the long summer days and nights.

Leni and her parents have moved to Alaska for a fresh start. Her father is a Vietnam vet, clearly suffering from PTSD. Although Leni and her mother settle in very well to their small community her father isn’t well liked. Survival in the Arctic climate is no more difficult than survival in their own cabin in the woods.

Goodreads Rating: * * * *

Where did the morning go

Journal

Friday, May 21, 2021

I went out this morning and picked up my printing from Staples. Some of it was for the Guild but most of it was for my quilting project book. I hadn’t updated anything since October of 2019. I stopped at Kathleen’s to drop off the Guild work and we sat out on her deck and had a nice visit. When I got home I couldn’t figure out why I was so hungry. It wasn’t until I started to eat my snack that I realized it was 11:30, not 10:30.

It took longer than I expected to get the last three borders on my Log Cabin but they are done now. I’ll put it away and quilt it at some later date but I’ll have the top for our June wind-up at the Guild – if we are allowed one. Our orders change next week but the most I’m expecting as far as outdoor gatherings is possibly an increase in the number. We would normally have close to 40 at our wind-up party and I doubt very much that we’ll be allowed to go that high.

I think for the rest of the afternoon I’ll go out to the patio and read. My sewing room needs a good clean-up but I’ll do that tomorrow.