One Step Forward, One Step Back

Wonderful Husband found a cable to connect my phone to my computer, but it still doesn't work.  The first thing on the troubleshooting site he found suggested "try another cable"!

So, in order to get the Block Party display and handouts done for guild on Tuesday night, I e-mailed myself all five photos I'd taken of the block construction sets.  For November I offered batik butterflies:

I love the block, but I'm not expecting to get a great many turned in on Tuesday.  Applique blocks never seem as popular as pieced.  So for December's block I chose the pieced Northwinds block, in either red or green:

It's 9" finished, so none of the pieces are small, but, honestly, I'm not expecting a blockbuster response to this one either because of all the half-square triangles.

Meantime, our house buyers dropped out because their loan ended up being declined.  So we're back on the market! :/  Ah well, at least that means the house is pristine and being kept that way.  And since the kitchen counter is clear, today I cut out pieces there for the Giant Geese block exchange (this is the final month).  Oh my I love cutting at that counter height!  Even better than at the dining table. I have made a mental note.

I have a hankering to be piecing, but I have three quilt tops that need to be turned into quilts first.  So I have a plan:

1. finish the geese blocks
2. label, baste, quilt, and bind the autumn quilt
3. piece and label the back for the next Ugly quilt
4. piece and label the back for Niecelet's Christmas gift quilt
5. piece Block Lotto blocks.
6. acquire more batting
7. quilt the Vintage Ugly
8. quilt Niecelet's Christmas gift quilt
9. feel free to proceed on whatever I want to sew next

Of course, you know what they say about plans....

Argh.

Has it really been a month since I've posted?  I'm going to blame it on house-selling stress (which I am not going to rant about here/now/yet again) and on the cord that lets me transfer photos from camera to computer going walkabout.  (Still haven't found it.)

Let's see... after season 4 of Octonauts dropped on Netflix, we discovered that there is in fact a Gup-S.  But it's based on a narwhal, not on a snake.  I liked Squiddle's design better!  He continues on telling me stories at bedtime, some obviously cribbed from the Golden Books we read him, some less so.  Donald (Duck) and "his three boys, Huey, Dewey, and who's the other one?" are frequent central characters.  Squiddle has also coined the portmanteau term "holication" (holiday + vacation), which I think is a keeper.

Jazzy is very clever but still not speaking.  I'm hopeful that his weekly speech therapy sessions will start bearing fruit eventually, because his four-months-younger cousin is very verbal, and he's nine months behind Squiddle starting to talk.  But he has the loveliest laugh, and I think has impressed his speech therapist with some of his cognitive skills, so it will come when it comes.  He has figured out how to get a cup of iced tea from the fridge when he wants some... which works better when he's not trying to use a juice box as a "cup"!

I've finished sewing two quilt tops and turned one of the two vintage tops I picked up at the guild's garage sale into an actual quilt.  I don't know why I like the uglies as much as I do.  But there's something bohemian in their mismatched make-do charm.  I can't make quilts like that, but I can certainly love them!  I also sewed about half of Squiddle's Halloween costume.  Wonderful Husband took the boys trick-or-treating this year while I handed out candy.  Including them, seventy kids came around this year.  We were definitely among the best-tricked-out houses.  I want to continue that, adding a little more every year.  It's just FUN.

Blocks, Blocks, Blocks

The house-selling saga is a rollercoaster.  After about two weeks of keeping the place spic-and-span and vacating for showings at an hour's notice, we finally got an offer! And went through with escrow and an inspection, etc....

And today the buyer withdrew the offer.

*headdeskheaddeskheaddesk*

Back onto the rollercoaster.

I have in the meantime finished the Christmas wallhanging and given it to my mother (I need to get a picture) and have been powering through three sets of blocks this weekend: the October block of the month (Postage Stamp Baskets) for the Wednesday morning guild, the giant flying geese for the group I'm exchanging them with, and inventing the November block of the month (Beautiful Batik Butterflies) for the Tuesday night guild.  Amidst which my vintage iron died. ;_;  I need to find if the sewing machine repair places would be able to fix it, because I really really like that iron.

Also, Squiddle (age 5) has just invented fanfiction! Tonight as I was rocking in the darkened bedroom with him and his brother for a few minutes, he told me about Octonauts, and how Tweak invented the Gup-X and gave it to Captain Barnacles for Christmas and made him climb the seamount to test it... which is one of the episodes.  Then he told me about Tweak inventing the Gup-S and how it was like a snake.  There is no Gup-S in the show.  Kiddo has told his first fanfic.  Mummy so proud! ^_^

Bold and Bright

Argh. When I woke up this morning (half an hour before the alarm because Jazzy couldn't find his paci in his bed and therefore decided nursies were in order), my right arm ached. Too much work yesterday!

Since I'd finished the Tumblers quilt, yesterday I decided to move on to the next project: a braided wallhanging top in Christmas fabrics that was in a bag of strips I got at Costume College.  I pressed that and the backing, and made a Frankenbatt of three strips of batting from my basket of batting scraps (I hand-stitched them together).  I also cut strips for the binding and hanging sleeve from the excess backing fabric.  Got the quilt layered and basted, hauled the Singer 15 table over by my sewing desk, and spent a good portion of the evening doing free-motion quilting.  Project quilted!  Following that, I trimmed it up (more rotary cutter work), hauled the 15 table back to its place, and tidied everything away.  Now I just need to put on a binding... and a label... and a hanging sleeve....

In any case, here's the tumblers quilt!

Bright and scrappy, with some dark to let the eye rest.  There are actually two spots where the same fabric meets up to make hourglasses.  Oops!  I made this one nice and wide and long so neither of us ends up quiltless.  I don't tend to make my bed quilts long enough for pillow tucks, though.  I like to see the pillows!  And the pillowcases do actually kind of go with the quilt... well, I used a bit of the main fabric on the scrappy binding.  Good enough!

And then, of course, as soon as Mummy and Daddy abandoned the bed this morning, it was seized in the invasion of the bed snatchers....

Bright Tumblers, Done!

I just took the last stitches on the binding and finished the Bright Tumblers quilt.  No pics for now - it's dark!  But I made it of three-inch finished tumblers, sized to fit our bed, so I'll take pictures of it on the bed tomorrow.  My wonderful Mother-in-Law asked, so I calculated: at thirty rows of forty-one tumblers in a row, there are 1230 tumblers in this quilt!  And the back is (mostly) made of two lengths of fabric left over from making the boys bedsheets and pillowcases.  When I started the quilt as part of Bonnie Hunter's 2015 Leader and Ender challenge, I showed some of the inspiration photos to Wonderful Husband and he liked one that was mostly brights with some darks, so that's what I did.  This quilt was always intended to be for him, and I finally gave it to him a few days ago, mostly finished, as one of his birthday presents. ^_^

We're keeping the house tidy and showing it to about eight people a week (mostly on weekends).  So far I have managed to not be here when someone is touring it.

And Jazzy has of late been tucking himself under the quilt on Squiddle's bed, or under the sheets on my and Wonderful Husband's bed, so tonight, for the first time, I tucked him under a quilt in his own crib.  He seemed to like it!

Busy busy busy busy / there's so much to do!

So, the house got cleaned within an inch of its life.  (Except, please don't look in the garage.)

And photographed on Tuesday.  Tuesday night was quilt guild.  I had 69 blocks turned in for Block of the Month!  And 29 out of 30 instruction sheets taken for next month's.

Wednesday I took a workshop with my guildmates: My Basket Collection by Sandy Corbin.  It was so much fun!!  I wish I'd taken a workshop with this guild before.  I got a quarter of the project done.  But I was so fried from stress that I skipped writing class that night.

Thursday morning Jazzy had one of his classes.  That afternoon I hauled the Singer 15 over by the sewing desk and started quilting the bright tumblers quilt.  Screw the meandering loops I was pondering - I just went for two straight lines across every row.  Get it done.  I got 35 of the 60 lines done.

Jazzy had another class this morning.  And the house's MLS listing went up today. If you want to see where I live, the house we've lovingly restored from a wreck over the last ten years, it's here.  Anyone want to buy a nice mid-century house three miles from Disneyland?  (You can see the fireworks from our front door.)  And I sat back down and finished quilting those last 25 rows.  And hauled the Singer 15 back by the front door to resume being the entryway table.

Now to trim the batting and backing and invent some binding.  But first, I should invent dinner....

Back Up And Running

I'm finally recovering from post-yard-sale lurgy, the stress over listing the house and getting Jazzy speech therapy, yet another birthday (I am now the answer to life, the universe... everything!), and that time of month.

Over the weekend, I actually finished a quilt top (Bright Tumblers, started in 2015), pieced together the fabric I had designated for its backing, pieced together batting from my bin of batting scraps, and got it basted.  But before I rearrange furniture and drag the 15 over in front of the 401 to do the quilting, I have a couple other things I want to finish.

Last night I did one, which was making the Giant Geese for this month's block exchange.  My parents gave me an alpaca wool pressing mat for my birthday present, and I used it on the geese, and oh my!  The seams pressed so smooth and flat! *happy quilter dance*  The other thing I need to do before switching into quilting mode is to sew up sample blocks for the October block of the month.  Maybe today?  But probably tomorrow.  Tonight is the board meeting for quilt guild. *prints up copies of the minutes*