monday, monday...

The boys' naptime yesterday was taken up with house stuff (offer #5...) so I didn't get stitching time until the evening, when I did get the second line of quilting on the alternate spiral done.  So now I need to tuck away the Rocketeer and haul the 15 and its table into place for some free-motion quilting on the geese spiral.  I wish I could say I made more progress on the embroidered tablecloth, but Squiddle's speech therapy session is just about the right length of time to do my writing class homework (editing my classmates' submissions).

I am pleased that my boys had their dental check-ups yesterday and have no cavities!  And especially that Jazzy's spacing issues are resolving themselves and his last baby tooth is just coming in, right on schedule.

I'm still keeping up on my Swedish and Japanese practice on Duolingo.  As I'm half Scandinavian, it feels a touch shameful that the Japanese comes so much easier, but then I did get a BA in the language once upon a time.

Oddball thoughts: if this offer on the house does go through, I'll be missing the workshop with Edyta Sitar by something like two weeks.  Alas!  As soon as I know one way or another I need to let the guild know so they can see if someone else wants the space.  On the other hand, it means I'll be up in the Seattle area in plenty of time for the PNW Treadle On Gathering, which is something I've been curious about for a couple years now....

A Tiny Bit of Quilting

Yesterday's two house showings turned into four - two in the morning, two in the afternoon.  So in between I put the walking foot on the Rocketeer, discovered the smaller bobbin tire does indeed make winding bobbins faster (though I still haven't gotten the handwheel clutch loosened), and filled a couple bobbins.  Then I set to the first line of quilting on the alternate (black/white/blue branch fabric) spiral of the Spiraling Geese quilt.

Except that I was quilting in the wrong direction, so that more and more of the bulk of the quilt was getting stuffed under the arm of the sewing machine, it went well.  The tree trunks on the branch fabric are straight, so they made for a wonderful guideline.  And for the second line of quilting on the alternate spiral, I'll be going the "correct" direction, so it should be much easier.  After that I'll switch over the the 15 and do free-motion quilting in amongst the geese.  I'm still debating between feathers and outline quilting.

I've also started going through the old quilting magazines (Traditional Quiltworks, Quilt, Miniature Quilts, and some of the old Aunt Martha's booklets) I got at Road to California.  Swoon!  So many exquisite vintage/traditional designs that you just don't see in today's magazines because they're not easily strip-pieced....

All Roads lead To Quilting

Woohoo!  Yesterday I went out to Road to California for the first time!  Despite the four-plus years I've been quilting, I've never managed to go before, and I had a good time, going with some friends from guild.  I spent too much, but I love the patterns and templates I purchased, and I only bought two small bits of fabric, both for gifts.  There were lots and lots of lovely quilts, some of which blew my mind to the point where I got into sensory overload and couldn't process them for a bit.  I did take plenty of pictures of quilts which had color combinations or patterns I really liked, so I have a reference catalog for future inspiration.....

I have also gotten the Spiraling Geese quilt basted, and I've fiddled with the Rocketeer so hopefully it will wind bobbins faster.  I have also unboxed the slant shank walking foot I bought for it, so hopefully today, after the morning house viewings happen, I can start getting it quilted.

One Step/Stitch At A Time...

Yesterday my mother and I resumed our usual Thrift Store Tuesdays.  Which surprised me, as she's only a week out from surgery.  But she broached the idea, and felt up to it, so off we went.  I was good and got no fabric!  She bought a new sun tea jar, while I got two blouses, some Lego for Wonderful Husband, a pair of unopened wooden alphabet puzzles (one a giraffe, the other a dragon) for Squiddle, who's starting to learn his letters, a new pair of shoes for Jazzy, who has recently outgrown two of his three pairs, and a couple of Muppets/Sesame Street Little Golden Books that we did not have.  By the end of the store, though, Mom was feeling pretty winded.

I've got the label written out for the Spiraling Geese quilt, so I should get that sewn on and get it basted.  And I've also started catching up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge Tiny Tuesdays blocks.  I somehow fell three weeks behind!  But I cut, pressed, and hand-stitched on Block 2 yesterday:

The red circles fabric was initially used to make Squiddle a pair of pyjamas (which Jazzy has since inherited) and every time I use the scraps I think of those PJs.  Two more blocks to go and I'll be caught up!

Treading Water

Haven't been here in a few days. I apologize.  Life kind of got away from me for a couple days between my boys' classes at the community college starting up again, and my mother going into the hospital for a few days for surgery.  (All is well, she's out and recovering.)  Plus Friday I twisted my foot while going down the steps to the laundry room, and between that and a nice emotional stress breakdown I had to cancel going to Disney California Adventure on Saturday with my sister and niece.

Today is better.

Over the weekend I got a good deal (though not all) of the trimming done on the trees in the backyard and the bush in front of the electrical box.  I need to do more, but that has to wait until the yard waste gets picked up Tuesday morning and the bin is empty again.  I also got the backing pieced together for the Spiraling Geese quilt, using the extra blocks and a three-and-some-yards bit of blue fabric from the thrift store.  And I made cupcakes for Niecelet's birthday - cupcakes from a box, frosting from scratch.  Her birthday was actually yesterday, but we're celebrating today since she was at Disneyland yesterday.

A Finished Flimsy!

I sewed on the last two strips of the branch fabric, and the spiraling geese quilt is now officially a quilt top!

I've put together the extra geese for a strip up the center of the backing, and I have pulled out the two blues I'm going to use for the backing, so I can get that prepped tonight or tomorrow.  I'm thinking straight-line quilting in the branch fabric, and either feathers or outline quilting for the geese....

Cosmic Coincidence

Amusingly, the same day I posted a picture of my Spiraling Geese quilt, Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting posted a picture of hers!  I didn't even know she was working on one, so clearly this is some sort of meant-to-be thing, no?

Since we had an afternoon house showing yesterday, I didn't get much sewing done.  Everything got cleaned up and put away in the morning, then Wonderful Husband and I left our boys with my parents for a couple hours and went to see Mary Poppins Returns.  It was good, but felt different than the original.  Emily Blunt's portrayal of Mary Poppins felt much closer to the books than to the first film.  That said, there were two costumes of hers that I absolutely loved.  I must see if there's an artbook, or something, with details!  I was also charmed that Karen Dotrice (Jane in the original film) had a cameo!

And, somewhat relatedly, I submitted my class proposals for Costume College.  I had been e-mailed asking if I might reprise my blackwork class, and last year I was asked if I could teach a free-form embroidery blackwork class in addition to the counted-stitch class, so that was two, and for a third I offered to teach the Beaded Fringe Evening Bag class I haven't taught in a couple years.  As I'm expecting to have moved out of the area by then, classes with easily transportable supplies were on my mind.  Well, I'll know in a couple months what I need to prep supplies for.

Trudging Along...

I'm slowly trudging along with assembling the Spiraling Geese quilt, with 8.5" red string blocks as my leader/enders.  Here's a picture of where I was yesterday afternoon:

It's about as scrappy as I could make it: most of the duplicate blocks have been banished to the back.  I think I like it...?  Looking at this picture I'm less sure.  But regardless, I have three more strips to sew on, and then the top, at least, will be done.

I need to clean up the small heap of stuff by my sewing desk before the house showing today, but I did at least manage to take the old Comic-con booklet I had and cut it into foundation papers for more string blocks.  It's significantly lighter weight paper than the printer sheets I had used for the first two, which will make it much easier to tear the paper off the back later.

The boys (well, Jazzy, but since Squiddle isn't in kindergarten yet he comes with) started school again yesterday.  And while Jazzy's circle time attention span still isn't great, at least for part of the time where he wandered off to play on the rocking horses etc, he was actually still paying attention to the teacher.  Which is a good development.

After we got back from that, I started sewing the top for the Spiraling Geese quilt together.  I got maybe about a third done with it, but forgot to take any pictures.

I also started back with my schooling last night, with my novel-writing class starting up again.  I'm happy to still be here and attending it.  (I'm also kind of hoping that my burst of writing last week can be repeated with my novel as the focus.)  The teacher and her husband recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.  How's that for relationship goals?

January Guild Meeting

Yay, guild meeting last night!  I dropped a large bag of stuff (fabric, books) on the freebie table and most of it got taken.  I took a few new-to-me back issues of magazines to peruse.  I also turned in round two of the Round Robin project, and picked up my third round.

Here's what I turned in:

Apologies for the wonkiness of the picture - it was breezy this morning.

The center appliqued block was what was turned in.  Last month one of my guildmates added the blue and green diamonds border.  I flailed about until I found the pale grey marble remnant in my stash, then I machine-appliqued the scrolling bias vines, and pulled the leaves out of a bag of leaves and hand-appliqued those.  Looking at this picture now, I'm not entirely happy with it, but it's out of my hands and I have another to work on this month.

I did take in Jazzy's Galaxy Quilt and Squiddle's Tinkerbell quilt for Sew'N'Tell.  Good thing, too; the walls were pretty bare this month.  I guess most quilts that my guildmates might have made for Christmas presents probably left their houses....

Express Yourself

Haha!  No pictures today (maybe tomorrow), but I have been working on the round robin that's due back to my guild on Tuesday night.  Just two more leaves to hand-applique....

And I also realized I can't make the day guild this month. :(  It's Wednesday morning, which is when one of Jazzy's classes starts up again.  We're #2 on the waitlist, and I know the teacher will add us, but we have to actually be there for that to happen.  So I'll make the February meeting instead.

But!

Long before I ever started this blog, I was a fanfiction writer.  A relatively good one, I like to think, though never a BNF (Big Name Fan).  That mostly ended when I had children.  Leaving off in the middle of a seam to answer a child's need, it's easy to know where I wanted to go next.  Leaving off in the middle of a paragraph?  Not so much.  In writing, at least for me, momentum matters.

A few weeks ago, however, I got a review on one of my stories (left incomplete one chapter from finishing) that ended "even tho, ya know, this is never getting updated ever again and whatever".  Which, on one hand, it'd been four years since I updated it, so fair dinkum.  On the other hand, spite is a powerful motivator.  I pushed through, and in three nights wrote about 3,500 words, finished that last chapter, and posted it to both my Dreamwidth account and my Livejournal account.  I'll let it sit a few days, see if I spot any more errors, then post it to fanfiction-dot-net, and upload the whole story to my Ao3 account.

I've always been happy with my creativity, but it feels really good to have my oldest outlet for it (writing) active again alongside my newer one (quilting).

Sewing Days!

Realizing that guild is this coming week and I needed to get off my kiester and get my work done, I spent Friday working on Block of the Month.  I took inspiration from this quilt:

Which is an image I saved from a Goodwill auction sometime in the last couple years.  If you look at it closely, the blocks are made a couple different ways (and I can think of at least one more) but I needed to make it easy for my guildmates, so I drafted a uniform way to do it from 2 1/2" strips, stitched up a sample in red and another in pink, and wrote up the directions. Here's the red one:

Unfortunately, we're having printer problems at the moment, so while I normally get the color printout for the board done at Office Depot, I'm going to have to get the thirty handout copies printed as well... so I'm planning on stopping at the copy shop near my parents' place tomorrow.  It's roughly half the cost.

Blocks

No sewing done yesterday, though I did work some on the Endless Embroidery Project while Jazzy was in his speech therapy session.

Instead, I cut!  I got all the alternate rows cut for the spiral geese quilt, and didn't need to piece any of them!  Fortunately.  I also got the lights cut for another Wheel of Fortune block.  And I stopped at JoAnn's after Jazzy's speech therapy and picked up some wider elastic to make the waist of Wonderful Husband's Christmas PJ bottoms fit better.  I only had 1/2" elastic on hand at the time I made them, and he's said they don't stay up as well as past ones for which I used 1" elastic.

But I did trim and depaper both of the string blocks I made yesterday:

The one on the left is 5" and the one on the right is 8.5".

I also took a picture of the latest Wheel of Fortune block:

I'm somewhat snarkily proud that not only do all the lines on the light fabric run the same way, so do all the lines on the dark blue.

Baby Steps....

I did a bit of sewing last night.  I finished another Wheel of Fortune block, and got the last strip of the giant flying geese sewn together.  I also sewed the first Tiny Tuesday block for this year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  And then, since I had red strings strewn all over my sewing desk, I cut a couple 8.5" foundation squares and sewed a red strings block for the Moda String-Along.

I also wrote a couple hundred words.  Easing back into writing stories.  Baby steps....