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....

Wheels and Spirals

I'm currently working on two projects, using them as "leaders and enders," as Bonnie Hunter would put it, for one another.  The first is sewing the giant geese together into rows for the spiral quilt.  Here's a teaser picture of the layout, with the fabric I purchased to be the alternate row in the spiral:

I'm amused by the alternate row fabric.  According to the selvedge, it's called "Branching Out."  Which is the title of my guild's quilt show this year! :)  For this project, I'm on the second-to-last row of the spiral, and then I get to start cutting the alternate row fabric into strips and piecing the whole top together.

And while I've been working on that, I've also been working on these Wheel of Fortune blocks:

Can you tell that the blue one has two different blue fabrics in it?  I ran out of one, and this is very much a using-up-the-last-scraps project, judging by how many of the centers I've had to piece thus far.  I cut the light pieces out for the next block, and all that was left over was a 1.5" square for that project bag.  Gotta use it up!

Some Sewing, Some Fandom

No pictures today, but some sewing did get done.  I laid out the Giant Geese (4"x8") I received in the block exchange I ran with my guild today, and discovered that my counting skills are shite.  Rather than the 90 I needed for the spiral layout, I have... 111.  After weeding out as many duplicates as I could while still maintaining something of a light/dark/light/dark distribution, I figure I can use the extras on the back.  So I started sewing those rows together, as well as working on the Wheel of Fortune blocks.  I finished the first WoF block and cut the light pieces I need for a second.

AND I went to see Bumblebee.  I've been a Transformers fan since the 1980s, but I gave up Bayverse after seeing Dark of the Moon, because that was the tipping point when the series went from "not good, but interesting" to "this is bad, you cannot make me watch any further."  And I ended up with FEELINGS about this movie, because it was actually GOOD.  And a love letter to the cartoon series.  And a love letter to those of us girls who weren't supposed to like things that were for boys, but did anyway.

GAH.  I wish LiveJournal hadn't gone to heck after being bought by the Russians, because right now I am really REALLY missing the community of female Transformers fans who found one another there... I want my fandom friends back.  I want to talk with them about this film, and analyze and dissect it with them, and remake our community to what it once was.  I hate the diaspora.

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.