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.
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