Rainbow Mermaid Baby Quilt Reveal

Word count: 819.  I needed to research pre-Industrial Revolution yellow paints, then didn't even end up using a paint name in the scene!  I'll eventually have to have a more painter-ly friend look it over and tell me if the scene is plausible or not.

I finished the Christmas Stars wallhanging today, and tossed it through the washer/drier.  I also found out the name of my CA guildmate's baby, and wrote out and attached the label for his quilt, as well as finding my spools of yellow thread for that project.

And!

I took pictures of the Rainbow Mermaid Baby Quilt prior to folding and rolling it up and tucking it in a box.  (Still need to get a card to go with it, but that's what Dollar Tree is for.)

Front!  I like how the rainbow stripe binding works on this piece.  Though in hindsight, perhaps I should have had that last white border the same depth as the others, or quilted it more intensely.

And the back.  I've had that pink British monuments toile in my stash forever.  (And still have like half a yard left).  But I figured since there was no pink on the front, but there was pink in the binding, and it's for a girl, I could get away with a pink back.  Here's to hoping my cousin likes it!

If it falls in the night, does it make a sound?

Word count: 501.

We got caught up in the atmospheric river hitting Washington and Oregon last night.  Wonderful Husband and I were up late enough that we caught it when the power went out.  I thought it was a large truck rumbling past the front of our house, but then realized the various plugged in things were not throwing off their usual miniscule lights, and Wonderful Husband said it was probably our local transformer going.  Which makes me wonder where it's located, that we could hear that.  We only lost power for about two and a half hours, though, which is much better than my parents and sister experienced, over on the other side of the Sound.

There's small branches strewn all over the lawns today, but no major damage except for this:

A copse of trees between us and the neighbors came down on our side.  I texted them about it, and I think they're in agreement that we need to take the trees out.  (We certainly weren't going to do it without asking them, but it's good that we're in agreement.)

Got all my homework done, and got through writing class relatively unscathed.  Other than some of my classmates' confusion at who some of the characters were (which is fair, it's been two years, and my summary was not all-comprehensive), I ended up with only two minor edits to my five pages.

The rainbow mermaid quilt got washed and dried, and I'm about three-quarters done with stitching the hanging sleeves and label onto the back of the Christmas stars wallhanging.

Staying on track

Word count: 481.  Backtracked one card, added on another page from another PoV, and suddenly I could work on that next plot thread card that was giving me difficulty.  And it looks/feels like the next one up will slot neatly into place also.  I'm dumping a whole bunch of separate near-disasters on my characters' heads at once.  Well, if nothing else, I've got the tension and conflict down for these scenes!

I also finished the rainbow mermaid baby quilt.  And got Squiddle to his vision therapy appointment, and doing his exercises this evening.  And cooked dinner.  So overall, a win-win day.

Tomorrow is going to be a Zoom call with one of Jazzy's teachers, editing six entries by my fellow writing students, so roughly thirty pages, and then writing class in the evening.  Oof.  I'm tired already.  Will have to see if I can get my writing done earlier in the day tomorrow....

Stuck

Word count: 512.  Stuck on the next plot thread card.  Don't think there's anything I can do right now to move it along, may skip to the next one.

Have the binding halfway finished on the rainbow mermaid quilt.  Have started hand-stitching the hanging sleeves on the Christmas stars wallhanging.

Bit by Bit

Word count: 416.  Leaving off in the middle of a scene because it's meaty, conflict-filled, and I need to ruminate a few more hours on what bombshells are getting dropped in the middle of it.

I took the boys over to my parents' for a few hours today so they could play with Niecelet, who my parents care for a couple days a week, as my sister does several days of back-to-back 12-hour shifts.  It all went mostly well, until it was time for us to leave and Niecelet threw a small fit because she wanted to go home too.

I also finished the bulk of the quilting on the rainbow mermaid quilt.  I was failing at figuring out what to do for the center section, with the mermaid panel, until Wonderful Husband suggested quilting waves - literally just wavy lines - into it to simulate water currents.  Brilliant man!  So next is trimming it, making the binding, sewing on the binding, and then finishing quilting that outermost white border.

Writing, History (Horrible), and a Bit of Quilting

Word count: 531.

It's been... an eventful few days, historically.  Which have left me too stressed to write.  Let me just say that (a) I am thankful Trump's reign will be over soon, (b) I am thankful that social media platforms have finally gotten off their lazy asses and stopped promulgating his hatefulness because it's become socially too expensive for them, and (c) I hope he gets impeached again and barred from holding future public office.  He is not fit for it.

ETA: I forgot to mention the actual tears of relief/joy I cried when I learned that Georgia's races both went to the Democrats.  A nice parallel to that night I spent crying when Trump won in 2016.  Stacey Abrams and her people are amazing and incredible.

Beyond that, on the quilting front I got all the straight-line stitching done on the rainbow mermaid quilt, as well as the free-motion quilting on the red, orange, and yellow rows.  I'm a quarter of the way through the green, but stopped for the night since I don't like to be running the sewing machine while the boys are trying to sleep.  I'm still debating what to do with the center purple mermaid panel.  Outline some of the motifs?  Do clamshells?

And, there.  I have just submitted my first set of pages to my writing class in... well, ages.  Since before we moved, certainly!  See, this writing resolution is a good thing for me.

The One That Got Away

Word count: 692.

I didn't get much sewing done today, because it ended up being a non-rainy afternoon, so I did some gardening.  I got the tulips my neighbor gave me a couple months ago finally planted in the rhubarb bed, and I took the strawberry runners I've been rooting and planted them, turning last year's tomato bed into next year's strawberry bed.

I did, however, get the label written out and attached for the rainbow mermaid quilt!

So now that's ready for quilting.

But today's story, however, is about what happened a week ago today!  I had gone up to Port Orchard, to find more of the green fabric for the rainbow mermaid quilt at JoAnn Fabrics.  And since I was there and it's very close by, I popped into Goodwill.  Where there was this:

A Singer 27, in a seven-drawer cabinet.  I checked the drawers and they were empty - no sign of the missing front slide plate or bobbin shuttle.  A moderate amount of wear on the table and on the decals.  But both the machine and the treadle moved freely, and more importantly, when I checked its serial number, it dated to 1894.  A 126-year-old sewing machine.

It was $100.  Not out of budget.  But did I have space for it?  Where would it go?  I walked away and debated and agonized on it for three days.  I arranged to meet up and go thrifting with my mother and sister on Tuesday, and told myself if it was still there, I would get it.

They got to the store first, and were going to place a hold on it for me.  But as they walked in, a sales ticket was being written up for the machine.

Beaten by ten minutes.

So, the one that got away. *points up at post title*

I'm a little wistful about it, but not crushed.  If it was meant to be, someone else wouldn't've been ten minutes faster.  (Still, sewing on something that old would have been awesome!)

And I'm thinking about where I could put the treadle I do have, so I could finish converting the Singer 201 in it to treadle-ability, and sew on that.

Family Quilts, Far and Near

 I finished the quilt top for my cousin's child.  I give you Rainbow Mermaid:

I don't like it quite as well as Squiddle's Rainbow Quilt (maybe the black made that pop more for me?), but I think it's a good quilt for a baby/toddler.  And, hey, in a few years her parents can use it to teach her colors.

Actually, on further consideration, maybe it's just that I don't like the above photo, because it was taken at night with indoor lighting.  I think the quilt looks better in person and in daylight.

Also while going through the photos on my phone, I found these pictures from the quilt I gave to my mother at Christmas:

I laid out the quilt on my queen bed, so I know it's a good size for my parents'.

A closeup of the feather wreaths I quilted in the open squares.  I'm quite pleased with them.

In the pieced squares I went for a simpler motif, yet they were more difficult to do, simply because of the extra bulk at the seams and especially the intersections.

And I made a pair of matching pillowcases!

Christmas and Baby WIPs

 So!  A couple of days ago I mentioned a couple works-in-progress.  The first one is this:

I got the stars in a miscellaneous box at some point.  They're hand-sewn, about 15.5" square each, and done with very dated fabric.  That said, I couldn't just let the poor things languish!  So at some point in the past I'd pulled and cut the sashing fabrics and bundled them together with the stars.  I'd actually sewn the center part together, so all I did on Christmas Day was sew the borders and nine-patches for the corners and put it all together.  It's only 38 1/2" square, so it will fit on a single width of fabric - which I've already dug out from my Christmas stash and pressed, so the next step involves batting and basting.

There's a bit of bulk in the center of some of the blocks, so I'm thinking maybe feather wreaths for the quilting motifs?  That would allow me to avoid fighting with the bulk....

Also in progress is this:

Gosh I wish I had more of that mermaid print!  But since I only ever had the one fat quarter of it, clearly it was meant for this project.  It looks a little odd here, with just the first row of color added.  But I'm up through the orange row now, and it's looking like it makes more sense.  If my math is right, it'll end up at 58 3/4" x 55 1/4".  Odd size, I know, but the FQ wasn't precisely square to start with, and trimming it so it was left it odd.

Of course, my cousin's child that I'm intending this for is now 9 months old... but given how much of this year I lost creative impetus for, it can't be helped.  Plus I prefer making toddler-sized quilts anyway.  They'll see years more use than crib quilts ever will.

(And in between the rows and pressing, I may have been leader-endering a tree block for my Christmas Trees wallhanging.  It'll get done... eventually.)