April's I Aten't Ded Yet Post

So.  What have I been up to in the last month-and-change?

Stress and falling behind on things, mostly!

That said, hmm... I've been plugging slowly along on my Old World Map cross stitch.  I'm on the final corner!  Then I have all the borders to do.  And after looking at schedules and such things, I bit the bullet and will be attending Costume College again this year.  For the first time in four years!

Squiddle is finishing vision therapy on Thursday, due in part to his vision therapist (Miss Leann) retiring.  Her successor has to pick up her child from day care, so can't do the 5pm appointments that work for our schedule.  Between that and the 50% price increase earlier this year plus the fact of diminishing returns, we're stopping.  Squiddle will miss his weekly milkshake and fries from McDonald's (his reward) but he will love having back more free time.

Since a retirement seemed worth celebrating, I've made Miss Leann a quilt.  More on that tomorrow.

For today... y'all know that I run the charity scrap block drive for one of my guilds?  I just finished all the prep work for April's block.

I knew I wanted to present a 12.5" (unfinished) X block, but I couldn't find the instructions for one!  So I found a tutorial that finished to 14" and rejiggered the measurements.  Here's the instructions for my version, should anyone want them:

For each block, cut:

• One 10 1/2” square of background fabric
• Four 3” x 8 1/2” rectangles of “X” fabric
• One 3” square of center fabric

To make the block:

Cut the 10 1/2” square in half twice diagonally, making an “X” with the cuts. Sew the resulting triangles on either side of one of the 8 1/2” rectangles, using the short side of the triangles! The resulting two pieces will look sort of like the rectangles have wings extended on either side. Press the seam allowances outward, toward the triangles.

Sew the remaining two rectangles onto opposite sides of the center square. Press the seam allowances in, toward the square. This will help with matching seams.

Align the two triangle/rectangle/triangle sets to either side of the rectangle/square/rectangle set, matching seams, and sew. Press the seam allowances as you desire.

Centering the now on point center square as best you can, trim block to 12 1/2” square.

A variation of this block, with different dimensions but more construction pictures, can be found here.

Pi Day!

I made these for Squiddle's class:

The upper two are apple, the lower two are blackberry (from the berries I picked last summer).  I am a little disappointed in the other parents, because out of 39 sets of parents, only myself and one other parent signed up to bring in pies for pi day.  (And she only brought in one.)  I get that not everyone bakes, but surely it's not that hard to buy one from the grocery store?

(I would have done two more - pumpkin - but I literally did not have any more pie plates.)

Old Quilts and Modern Activities

So in the process of going through antique malls and shops with my mother, there have been a couple quilts that caught my eye.  It's funny how few quilts there are in such places nowadays!

Snowball isn't an uncommon design, but I loved how the center ones were scrappy and then there were three rows of controlled color border.  I think the finished size of the snowballs on this one were about 2 1/2".

A largeish block, but one that could be fun to make in a scrappy assortment

And an applique sailboat design that I'd not ever seen before.

Let's see... what else has been going on?  We went to Emerald City Comic Con a couple weeks ago, the first convention Wonderful Husband and I have gone to in what must be close to six years now.

Jazzy and Squiddle held up marvelously, far better than I had expected.  Jazzy got an articulated 3D printed dragon, Squiddle a Litten plushie and keychain (each of them spending their own money), Wonderful Husband a dice game, and I found a flight of actually spicy hot sauces from Gindo's.

I am now considering whether or not I (we) also want to attend Norwescon in a couple weeks.  There are an awful lot of writing panels I'd like to attend....

In between now and then, Wonderful Husband and I have tickets to see Rent at the Tacoma Little Theatre.  Unlike Cats a couple months back, we decided this one is not age-appropriate for Squiddle and Jazzy.  The last time we saw Rent was in NYC when he proposed to me!

Clearing Things Out

So among the mess atop my sewing table was this bundle of 9 1/2" Friendship Star blocks, which I had apparently won from the Orange Grove Quilter Guild... at least six years ago.

Seventeen blocks doth not a quilt make.  And even after I made three more red stars, I was still going to have one extra blue.  Oh well, put it in the corner, no one will ever notice that the last diagonal stripe is blue not red.

Ramen has taken to his role as the household's new quilt inspector quite well.

I had a nearly-a-yard remnant of red from Joann's Fabrics that I had intended for some other purpose, now forgotten.  It made the sashing.  Plus I'd picked up a couple yards of red and blue stars on white print from St. Vincent De Paul for a mere $.65, which was probably the impetus for finally working on these blocks.  That fabric became cornerstones and, eventually, the outermost border.

I dug through my blues to find one which looked good for the middle border.  You can't really see it, but unlike the red, it is hella pieced.  Very weirdly shaped scrap!  But it's mostly used up now.

And finally I did math to figure out how wide to make the outer border to use up as much of that stars fabric as I could.  It looks kind of dingy in this shot; it's better in person.  The final measurement is 69 1/2" x 59 1/2".  It's currently folded and hung up in the closet, waiting its turn to be quilted.

Too. Much. Stuff.

The weight of all the stuff heaped on (1) my sewing desk, (2) the ironing board, and (3) my desk desk have conspired to keep me from creating.  Too many different projects in too many different stages competing for attention, and thus I work on none of them!

So I've decided I'm going to clear out one project a day, one way or another.

Friday I finished sewing the four pillowcases that go with the Legend of Zelda quilt top for Squiddle, and hung them on a hanger in the closet next to that quilt top.  (I am certainly not going to be getting up to any quilting until I can at least see the surface of the quilting desk.)

Yesterday I finished cutting the last fifteen sets of four white muslin side triangles for a red/turquoise stars quilt.  So that is all kitted up, the ziploc bag sealed, waiting for the next sewing day.  If nothing else, the Gig Harbor Quilt Guild will be doing an all-day sewing day next month!

Today I am working at cutting the last sixteen blocks for a very scrappy Double Four-Patch quilt.  The only constant for that one is the chain, which is unbleached muslin.  Two blocks down, fourteen to go as of this writing!  Then that ziploc gets sealed and set aside like the stars, waiting its turn for a sewing binge.

Other things heaped on just the sewing table: blocks, possible sashing, and fabric for alternate blocks for a patriotic quilt; I won the star blocks at a block exchange many years ago at the Orange County Quilt Guild.  (I ran the exchange, so I never put my name in, but one month I was out and someone else ran it for me, so they did put my name in, and I won.)  Let's see, what else.  A Christmas tree skirt.  Two bags of scraps to be cut up into strips and squares.  Piles of strips and squares from that cutting up process.  Some old dinosaur fabric that might become a quilt back for Jazzy.  That, I can actually probably return to my totes for now.  The box with the completed blocks and some pieces for last year's Treadle On Block of the Month.  And a couple miscellaneous pieces of fabric that, like the dinosaurs, can probably get put back into stash for now.

Then there's the stuff heaped on the ironing board and my desk.  We'll get into those another day, because if I list those out too, I'll get depressed!  For now, I go back to cutting blocks and getting my one task a day done.

Plodding Along

Grief comes and goes in waves.  I think I'm fine, and then I come downstairs in the morning and look over at the white Ikea fake sheepskin on the sofa, expecting to see a white cat on it, and there... isn't.

I'll be picking up Sushi's ashes tomorrow, and then at some point, probably in the spring, will inter them in the ground, probably planting them under a rosebush.

But I'm not in a constant state of grief, so things move on.  I've been working on the Olde World Map cross stitch, and have repigmented the figure in the lower left corner.  Given he? she? is clearly supposed to represent Africa and maybe Asia, having them be lily-white rubbed me the wrong way.

So I went through my box of floss and pulled out three shades of brown that seemed to work well together, and voila!

I've also been seriously thinking about attending Costume College this year.  For the first time in... four years?  Thinking about it seriously enough that I've finally washed that 15 yards of lightweight muslin and found a pattern or three I want to start working on.  (The first two are corset/chemise and bodiced petticoat respectively; the third is the gown to go with them.)  That said, the patterns are download-only so I'm going to need to transfer them to a thumb drive and take them to Office Depot and say "large scale print plz!"

No Crafting - Just Grief

So this has not been a good week.

My cat of 15 years, Sushi, had not been doing great.  I'd taken him in to the urgent care a week ago yesterday, and they gave me some anti-inflammatories and painkillers to help with his limp, which we  think was the result of Ramen, the kitten (catten, now, I guess) wrestling with him too enthusiastically.  And they helped.  A little. But he kept not eating and barely drinking and by the time our regular vet was open yesterday morning, he was not doing well at all.  Nothing came up on his bloodwork except that he was cold, and very dehydrated.  So they were going to keep him through the day, getting fluid and electrolytes into him through an IV, and I was supposed to pick him up before they closed at 6.

A couple hours later, I got a call that he had just... slipped away.

And nothing had come up on his bloodwork or the x-rays the urgent care had done, so we don't even know why.

I keep telling myself that he was warm, he was being cared for, he knew he was loved... but it's hard not to think I could have done more; I should have done more.  Given that we don't even know what he died of, though, that's probably objectively not true.

Adding to my grief is the fact that Squiddle, at 10, is now also processing loss at an adult level, and this is the first time he's lost someone.  (Jazzy, at 7, is sad but not grieving.  There's a difference.)

And, cherry on top of the Shit Monday Cake, my uncle has been diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer.  Five year survival rates are 5-10%.  Realistically, he probably has a year or less to live.

2024 had better be front loading all the bad stuff for me, and it had better be done, is all I can say.