Stitch by Stitch

Wonderful Husband is back home and on the mend.  Squiddle and Jazzy are almost fully recovered.  So back I go to sewing as stress relief.

I've pulled out the block I got in my guild's Round Robin exchange and have been working on it.  I framed it in black, and put three 3" stars (pattern from Civil War Remembered) in two corners.  I showed it to Wonderful Husband and he thought my asymmetrical design needed something in the other two corners.  So I got out my chalk pen and drew some swoops on the empty space and once they looked decent to me, pulled out the #5 perle cottons I got at the thrift store the other week.  A little more running stitch in gold and white, and it'll be done.  One more project checked off my list (for this month).

On Hiatus

No quilting for the last few days, or for the next few days.  Wonderful Husband is in the hospital (nothing serious-serious, just they want him on a medicinal IV drip for 48 hours and not infecting the public), so I'm effectively single-parenting it for a few days....

Sewing and Sick Babies

Waiting for the washing machine repairman to show up.  I have one more seam to sew on Jazzy's Christmas pillow, but I need to press the last seam first, and I don't want to haul out the ironing board right now....  I've been being good and putting it away every night.

That said, the current set of blocks got finished last night, so my next step anyway is going to be pressing and cutting more fabric.  Sigh.  I've got four Wheel of Fortune blocks (goal: 36) and ten Purple Star blocks (goal: 26) done, as well as twenty Ugly Nine-Patch blocks made up for this month's exchange.  Plus I counted up my current leader-and-ender project and somehow I've got eighteen finished Idaho Square Dance block in that stack. (Goal: who knows?)

Squiddle has been sick (he's now in the probably-still-infectuous-but-feels-fine stage), and Jazzy has caught it.  First fever, then sore throat, then lasting red spots.  It's not the chicken pox, and the doctor said it was probably a virus and we just have to ride it out.  Fortunately Jazzy is napping at the moment, because he hasn't been happy.  (Understatement.)  He and I got to bed at a quarter past two this morning.

Sigh.  In anticipation of it getting worked on today, I cleared off the washer, so the stuff that was on it got put on the dining table this morning, and has been being moved to its forever homes.  I should finish that task first so that I can have the table clear for other tasks.

That and I should "debone" the shirt I got at the thrift store yesterday, to use in the Wheel of Fortune project....

Back in the Saddle

It's been a couple weeks.  Part of that time, I was incommunicado.  You see, Wonderful Husband and I had promised ourselves that when our boys were big enough, we'd start going camping.  So we used up the tail end of his paternity leave window and took Squiddle and Jazzy and up to Yosemite!  We hit kind of a sweet spot so far as weekday reservations just after school started, so the park wasn't too crowded.  Though that was tempered by the smoke haze from wildfires outside the park.  Still, a wonderful vacation and one I hope we can repeat.  An annual camping trip during our family's three-week birthday period would be a nice tradition to start.

Since we got back, I've been on fire with sewing!  Last guild meeting I turned in the finished Animal Baby Quilt as well as two pillowcases to the Quilts for Kids group, and I've already got another pillowcase done for next month.  Plus I sewed one for part of Squiddle's Christmas present and tucked it away, and have the one for part of Jazzy's Christmas present on my lap being pinned at the moment.  I just need to find the right fabrics for one for Niecelet.  And then start pondering pyjama patterns and fabrics for all three, to go with.  (Another tradition I'm thinking of starting.)

I'm doing my guild's Round Robin again this year.  I turned in my block with a whole bundle of fabrics for the others to use if they choose, and am currently pondering what to do with the Hunter's Star I have to border this month.  I've also been sewing some star blocks from this pattern by Country Threads Chicken Scratch.  They're very easy to do and satisfying to make in pairs.  I need to decide how many I want to make.

But at the same time, I've been feeling like I need to start stretching my piecing skills beyond what is easy for me.  So, inspired by the whole whock of quilting books I've acquired lately, I've dug into Betsy Chutchian's History Repeated (a birthday gift from my sister-in-law) and started making Wheel of Fortune blocks.  I've also been going through Barbara Brackman's 2015 series of posts about 1800s fabrics and using them to help me pull fabrics for the Wheels of Fortune.  I... have a surprising amount of fabric that is (at least to my untutored eye) acceptable.

Also, I took my Singer 101 in to the Sewing Center of Orange County to see if Steve could get it working for me again.  We picked it up today.  It now bypasses the knee pedal and has a foot pedal, but it sews again, which is the important thing.  Hooray!

Anyhow, that's what I've been up to.  Back to pinning so I can get to bed soonish.

September Starts!

I vanished for a whole month~!  Ugh, sorry about that.

Let's see.  What did I do for the month?  I took my boys and the three of us flew up to Washington to visit my sister and her baby.  Just like her mama, Niecelet is so cute!  And my sister and I did a great deal of thrift-storing and not a great deal of jamming.  The former is much easier than the latter with two babies (one very mobile) and a preschooler.

How does that relate to sewing, you may wonder?  Well, I may have needed to borrow a duffel bag from my sister to haul all my new books back.  I swear, one thrift store in particular, someone must have dumped their entire stash of quilt books.  And the Venn diagram of their tastes and mine had a LARGE overlap.  Plus I may have been collecting row-by-rows as we went along.

After returning home, we've all been struck down by whatever got caught on the airplane.  And it's been miserable hot.  But I've been trying to finish a few projects to donate to the Quilts For Kids group at my guild.  I've finished one pillowcase that has been lingering on my desk for months, and sewn a label onto the veterinary scrubs triangle baby quilt.  I've also pulled out the Jaws fabric I got at Costume College's Bargain Basement, used that to sew up my Ugly Fabric 9-Patches for the month, and realized I had a block of it big enough to do up another pillowcase, so that got cut out and sewn as well.

I would <i>like</i> to be quilting.  But it's just too bloody hot.  Furniture is actively warm to the touch!  So the Jacob's Ladder quilt top I got for $10 at Costume College is waiting.  About 1/6th finished.  Where it's been since our guild demo day at the OC Fair.

In other news, I had my 41st birthday, which, in light of the miserable weather and all of us being different degrees of sick, kind of wasn't.  Though I got lots of lovely books!  Including a couple quilting books I've been coveting.  And Wonderful Husband bought me a couple more row-by-rows as a gift from my boys. :)  So I have things to sew.  But I'm trying to be good and not chase rabbit down their holes until I've knocked another few WIPs off my stack.