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A Scrappy Finish
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A Scrappy Finish

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While I was tying threads on the morning of May 1, I’m considering this quilt my finished project for April. Why? Because all I had planned to finish for April was the quilt top, but, with the weather not being hiking-friendly and Hubby being a bit sick, I found A LOT of weekend time (and a few weekdays) to devote to this quilt.

This is scrap quilt #5, and though I’m sewing up scraps faster than Cookie Monster eats cookies, my scrap box is not getting any less full. This is a phenomenon that I simply cannot understand.

I had originally planned to sew scrappy quilts until my pile of scraps was a more manageable size (like barely enough to fill a shoebox), but as this doesn’t seem to be happening, I may shove that big box of bits and pieces back in the closet and start on something that uses fabrics I’m not absolutely sick of at this point!

Along with using up a fair amount of more medium-sized scraps, I also used a good amount of yardage of 5 different fabrics for the backing that I wasn’t all that fond of anymore and which were of a lower quality fabric than what I generally purchase now. I also sewed together three scrap chunks of batting to make a piece large enough for this 72″x72″ quilt.

I’ll admit that I didn’t take as much time with the quilting as I ordinarily might and that there are drunks who can walk straighter lines than some of my quilting lines. But finished is better than perfect (especially for a scrap quilt) and a quilt with wonky quilting is just as warm as one with perfect quilting.

I also finished another quilt in April–just a small wall hanging that had been hanging out in the closet for a few months–but you’ll have to wait until next weekend to get a look at that one!

Irish Moss Stitch Afghan
crafts · knitting · sewing

Irish Moss Stitch Afghan

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Knitted socks complete, it was time for a new knitting project! I could have chosen to knit up the rest of the sock yarn in my stash first, but I’ve had three skeins of Caron One Pound yarn calling to me from my knitting basket for months. They were just begging to be knitted up into a cozy blanket.

I love making quilts and love having them draped over the back of the couches, arms of chairs, and the quilt rack we found at a garage sale for cheap and hanging on the walls of our home but our kids have always preferred snuggling up under knitted afghans. And, I must admit, so do I.

Having made several afghans in the past, I knew making one would be quite a time commitment. I also knew that any pattern utilizing the moss stitch would be an even bigger time commitment. Knit. Purl. Knit. Purl. Knit. Purl. Repeat over 200+ stitches. UGH!

So I was definitely not choosing any pattern that involved moss stitch.

Except that’s exactly the kind of pattern I chose.

And not just a row or chunk of rows of moss stitch amid chunks of all knit rows or all purl rows as I’d done in the past. Nope. Here’s me, a glutton for punishment apparently, doing the ENTIRE thing in Irish Moss stitch because I liked how it looked.

Heaven help me. I’ll be still working on this thing when I’m 80.

I’ve chosen blue, cream, and rose pink for my colors. (Not the blue you see above. Those are just markers so I know if I flub up the pattern.)

Also, may I present, as our daughter calls them, our pervert-proof curtains, another project I worked on this week:

There’s quite a story there.

You see, for the past 21 years, we’ve lived in the middle of nowhere. Except it’s the middle of nowhere with neighbors. We have one neighbor to the north and a neighbor across the pond. Now I’m fairly certain that the people who live across the pond cannot, unless they have superior eyesight and an amazing set of binoculars, see into our upstairs bathroom, and, up until a few years ago, we never worried about the next door neighbors being in their backyard. Then a, shall we say more mobile (as in younger) person purchased that house. I still wasn’t worried.

It wasn’t until this past week, as I was heading toward the bathtub au natural, that I got worried. As I went to step into the tub, I spotted a flashlight beam bobbing around in the dark next door. It was our neighbor. He was taking his puppy out to go potty.

I immediately ducked down below window level. Then I peered over the edge and watched as he headed toward his basement door. I’m sure my cheeks were flaming with embarrassment. Probably ALL my cheeks, if you get what I’m saying.

Could he see anything? I don’t know. I sure hope not, because that will make things very awkward when I next run into him when we’re out walking our dogs.

Did I, almost immediately, head to the store for some curtains? Yes, I did. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything the right length. We did, however, find a nice pair of sheers at Walmart for less than $20 that I could shorten.

It’s never dull out here in the middle of nowhere.

A Finish…Finally
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A Finish…Finally

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As I’ve been languishing in a state of eunie since “First Winter” arrived with its gloomy grey skies, I made finishing a project one of my goals for March.

(Judging by the state of our car, we are somewhere between Mud Season and Actual Spring, but I don’t recall passing through Fools Spring or Spring of Deception yet. Those must have occurred sometime during the night when I wasn’t awake to enjoy them. My sister-in-law believes we are on Sixth Winter, but as that isn’t listed on the generally accurate “11 Seasons of Michigan” list, I assume she has counted incorrectly. Or else I’m in denial. That’s probably it. I’m just thankful that the sun is shining even though there’s more snow predicted for the weekend and the road in front of our house is muddier than…I don’t know what.)

(And, by the way, don’t search for “Muddy Things” online when you’re looking for something innocent to compare a Michigan seasonal road in spring to. The top few results were totally innocent, then WHOAH! Not at all what I was looking for. And now you’re probably curious.)

(Also, if you don’t know what a seasonal road is, it’s a road that the county refuses to take care of even though the people who live on that road pay more than their fair share of taxes. What that means is that we, the residents of our neighborhood, are totally responsible for road maintenance and snow removal.)

Anyway…back to my March goals.

I listed two unfished objects as possibilities, and finally settled on completing a pair of socks as I knew finishing a quilt was probably not going to happen.

I’m actually pretty impressed. After making note after note to myself in the margins of my sock pattern, I, for the first time ever, got through the entire pattern without any major problems, creative cursing, or much stitch-picking-out. (On the second sock in the pair. The first one still gave me some troubles.) I think writing “Don’t be an idiot” in a few places on the pattern made a difference.

This is my third pair of knitted socks. As it generally takes me quite some time to finish a pair, I have an aversion to actually wearing any that I’ve made! I’m vowing right now that I’m going to rectify that situation when Spring officially arrives (weatherwise, not date-on-the-calendar wise) and I can put away all my wooly socks.

Project note: I made these with Premier Serenity Sock yarn that I purchase on clearance at Joann Fabrics for $2.97 a skein. I bought two skeins and have enough left that I could maybe eek out a second pair of socks. This yarn worked up just as well as the vastly more expensive sock yarn I previously used. It will be interesting to see how both types wear.

This past month, I also made a teeny tiny little dent in my scrap pile by sewing up a lot of scrappy triangles. I am still many triangles away from having enough for a quilt. It’s fun to watch these scrap projects come together, though I am more than ready to move on to some different fabrics! I feel like I’ve been staring at the same patterns for decades.

Which I have, as my scrap collection spans 25 years of quilting.

(Do you see that dark blue fabric on the right side forming the point of the triangle? That was one of the first fabrics I bought after I purchased my sewing machine. It was used in a bed quilt that took me 19 years to finish. In case you’re curious, that wasn’t 19 continuous years of sewing. It probably would have only taken 6 months if I hadn’t kept getting distracted by other projects. One of the pinks was used in the first project I ever finished: a baby quilt for our first daughter.)

Now, ask me about my progress on the rest of my March goals.

Or, better yet, don’t. It’s embarrassing.

More Scrappy Things
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More Scrappy Things

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I’ve not had a lot of time to spend in the sewing room lately. Our middle daughter has been home from college a lot this semester due to participating in a local internship and I seem to get next to nothing done when she’s home. (Other than cooking more.)

I spent a few minutes recently just playing around with scraps while I waited on Hubby to be ready to do something. I can’t remember what we were going to do. Shopping, skiing, clearing snow? Who knows? My memory doesn’t seem to be quite what it used to be.

A few years ago I made a scrappy quilt made up of triangles. You can find that quilt here: https://lazysaturdayquilts.com/2020/06/19/triangle-madness/ . I thought making another one would be a great way to use up more of my massive scrap stash.

But I didn’t want to do exactly the same thing I’d done before. So I started playing around with an idea I’d had a while ago.

For this project, I cut 4″ x 6″ rectangles out of paper and then cut them on the diagonal to make triangles. Then I sewed random strips of fabric on as one would do for paper piecing. I’m hoping to get a few more sewn up this weekend so I can see how I want to arrange the triangles.

Earlier this week, I also took an afternoon to give the sewing room/office a good cleaning. What sparked this tidying frenzy was high-speed internet. Weird, right?

Here’s the story:

We’ve lived in the Dark Ages for a long time. When we moved to our neighborhood in 2001, we were using dial-up. Dial-up was dying a quick death at the time, as it wasn’t sufficient for loading fancier websites. When it became ponderously slow, we ditched that. Our internet options were seriously limited. We spent A LOT of time at the library, using the free internet available there, when the kids were young. Then satellite internet became available. Unfortunately, it had very low data caps. Once reached, we’d be throttled down to slow speeds again. Then it was back to the library for the rest of the month. Then we got phones with Hotspots that we could use to connect our laptops. The only problem: We only had 10 GB available. It was something, but it wasn’t perfect. Then we switched phone companies and got 40. (Still not enough for a month of TV watching, so we were still stuck paying for satellite TV.) First World problems, am I right?

AND THEN…

Miracles do happen, folks. We saw strangers hanging wires and weird stuff from our power poles this past fall and we could finally be like the “cool” people in town with high-speed internet. AMAZING!

So anyway… This past week we had the fast stuff hooked up and decided that now that we weren’t limited to how we could arrange our living room due to needing to keep the tv tethered to the satellite cables coming in through one wall, we would turn our entire living room around.

And then…

We took a look at the old television cabinet that we’d been using as a clutter catcher (clutter being my knitting stuff and board games) and thought we could maybe find a new home for it. (We’d started using another piece of furniture to hold the television a few years ago.) After thinking and pondering for a while, I had the idea that I could repurpose that cabinet in the sewing room.

Voilá! It makes the perfect place to store our files, my scrapbooking supplies, and random office stuff.

Scrappy Strips
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Scrappy Strips

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Last week, in the midst of normal schedule upheaval, I actually managed to make progress on a project. Our week was bookended by an apartment-hunting trip downstate with our middle daughter on Monday and a funeral downstate on Friday. As Hubby didn’t take time off for these activities, choosing instead to conduct business from his temporary home office of the passenger seat, I was forced to drive…which meant driving three times through a city I hate driving through. (He drove back on Monday saving me from the city once.)

Knowing that this week was going to be equally tiring–with a trip downstate to visit our oldest daughter, another funeral, and a concert to which we were taking our younger two in the cards–I chose to spend the middle of last week taking it easy.

There were naps. There was time for reading. There was time for sewing. There was time for knitting. I chose to recharge so I wouldn’t go into this week with my batteries already drained. Sometimes you have to think about yourself and know your limits. I am thankful to be in a position to be able to take time to rest. (As an introvert, all the people-ing and hugging and socializing like we had last week sometimes makes me want to curl up in a quiet cave somewhere.)

I spent the week working on my current scrap project. I have enough blocks finished and sewn into strips to almost double the size. Which means I’m about halfway finished. This one is going to be pretty large.

Once I ran out of the strips I’d cut at an earlier time, I spent a couple hours one day refilling my strip box.

Now that my box is almost full, it’s time to sit down and sew.

Project notes: Strips are cut between 1″ and 2-1/4″ wide. I cut them longer than 5.” I sew the strips together into a rough square of just over 5.” Then I even it all up to 5″ square.

1 UFO Completed. 3,496 To Go.
crafts · knitting · Uncategorized

1 UFO Completed. 3,496 To Go.

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I don’t really have 3,496 UFOs lurking in my sewing room. It just feels like I do. And I’m not sure I can truthfully say that I completed one in January, which was my goal. It was more like one-half. As in, one-half of a pair. As in, more specifically, one sock.

With the completion of that sock, my sock tally is now at 5. Which is 2.5 pairs, in case math is hard for anyone. Considering how long each sock takes me to finish, I think they should be counted as individual projects. And, also considering how long each sock takes me to finish, I will save them for special occasions. Which I know we shouldn’t do, because life itself should be a special occasion. (The black and colorful stripey pair is my favorite.)

(For the record, I’ve typed the word occasion approximately 5 billion times in my life and still don’t know how to spell it. Thank goodness for autocorrect, am I right? Except for last night when autocorrect told my daughter that we would be “dining” out this weekend when I thought I had typed that we would be “finding” out this weekend. She was confused. I was confused by her confusion. Then I looked back and realized my words had been taken over by AI.)

As soon as I dealt with the Kitchener stitch to sew up the toe area of the sock (using this tutorial https://nimble-needles.com/stitches/how-to-do-the-kitchener-stitch/), I immediately started on the second sock of the pair. I had such big plans, as I always do, and thought if I got it started I’d be inspired to knit feverishly so I could have the pair completed. Guess what? I put that begun sock in the bushel basket I use for my knitting projects and haven’t looked at it for a week.

A Slow-Blooming Garden
crafts · Quilting · Quilts · sewing

A Slow-Blooming Garden

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I always start each month with the best of intentions. Then something happens. Or lots of things happen. And then nothing happens, especially anything related to my intentions and carefully made plans.

My goal for January, as I mentioned last weekend, was to finish up one unfinished object. Will that be happening? Nope.

I pulled an unfinished project from the closet, cut lots and lots of strips of fabric, sewed up several blocks, then got bored of cutting and sewing strips. So I put that project aside and pulled out my English Paper-Piecing flowers. You know I’m bored when I pull out anything that involves hand sewing.

The photo above is the one I shared last weekend. The bottom photo shows the progress I’ve made over the past week. Clearly, this is not a speedy project. Or, clearly, I’m not a speedy hand-sewer. It’s probably the latter.

Each flower takes me approximately 1 hour to sew. So, doing up the math quickly and probably totally inaccurately in my head, I’ll probably have about 4 bazillion hours into stabbing needles through paper hexis by the time this thing is big enough to cover anything bigger than a baby.

As for how big it’s going to end up being…who knows. Least of all me.

UFOs
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UFOs

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With the holidays over, my enthusiasm for finishing the Christmas “Joy” wall-hanging I previously wrote about has waned. It has joined the other UFOs (UnFinished Objects) in the closet. These, and my fabric scraps, seem to multiply like rabbits every time I turn my back. I’m almost convinced there’s a little sewing elf running wild in my sewing room at night cutting up new scraps to replace any I’ve used.

Since there are so many scraps, I’ve forged into the New Year, once again, with a goal to tame the pile. (I think that was my goal for last year.)

But there’s one problem.

I’m so bored with my scraps! I’m practically knee-deep in scrap quilts and scrappy pillows, but my fabric pile (mountain, is more like it) doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller. The pieces are, but the pile is not. It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries.

However, I will persevere.

With my January goal being to finish one UFO, I pulled out this easy one:

Over two days I put together around a dozen new 5″ squares. Each square consists of strips ranging from 1″ – 2″ wide. I’m not certain I’ll be able to complete this project in January, but I’m hoping to at least have the quilt top finished. I have a ways to go as it is only about 40″ square at this point. (Then I’ll procrastinate the sewing of the backing, the pinning, and the quilting for a few months because those aren’t my favorite parts in the process! I had this wild idea of quilting stars on it. We’ll see.)

With boredom setting in after cutting strip after strip, I also did a little hand-sewing and added a few more EPP flowers to the quilt top that, at the rate I’m making progress, will probably not be finished in my lifetime.

Easy-Piecing(??) Grid
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Easy-Piecing(??) Grid

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A few months ago…actually, now that I think about it, it was July…my mom and I went to an Inspiration Day at Interquilten in Traverse City, MI. (Time is just passing so quickly!) The theme of the day was Christmas in July, and as it was “Christmas,” there were presents involved. Our gift: a panel of Ten Sisters Easy-piecing Grid and a Christmas pattern.

My first thought was, “I’m never going to make that.” At the time, I wasn’t a fan of the pattern, mainly because I already had a couple of Christmas-themed hangings and wasn’t certain where I would put another one. I also thought that the Easy-piecing grid was just an unnecessary step to add to the quilt-making process.

That pattern and that grid laid on a table in the sewing room for months until mid-December when I looked at it and came within inches of depositing it in the garbage. Gasp! I know. I should have found a quilter to gift it to, but I was suffering from a room full of scraps and piles and was in a tossing mood.

But I ended up giving that pattern a second look. I had Christmas scraps and I didn’t know where else to use them. I figured I might as well give the project a try. I surely had enough scraps and wouldn’t need to buy anything, so I’d be able to whip the whole thing up super quick. It did use “Easy” grid after all, right?

Ha! Ha!

I ended up purchasing a yard of both a red and an off-white fabric as I didn’t have just the perfect fabrics in my stash to make the project look the way I wanted. (Luckily, I got both on sale)

And “Easy?” Lies. Lies. Lies. I’m not going to blame the product totally. We were given it free, so it’s possible it was old and the shop was trying to get rid of it and the glue wasn’t quite at its peak of gluiness. I ironed and ironed and ironed, but I still had squares of fabric falling off left and right. So…zero stars for ease of use. I do give it ten stars for creating near-perfect seams. Would I use it again? No. I think all the ironing and replacing of escaping pieces took way more time than just doing it the normal way.

My goal was to finish the hanging before Christmas. Unfortunately, due to some good-natured grumbling, I ended up spending my sewing time leading up to the holidays making three more stockings. I’d originally made four–one each for our daughter’s boyfriend and his son, one for our middle daughter’s fiance, and one for our son’s girlfriend. Then our son pointed to his sad, droopy stocking and wondered why his looked so bad and why he and his sisters did not have stockings with their names on them. So I made three more stockings. (They were a great way to use up leftover denim scraps and some knit I’ve had for over 15 years.)

Now that the holidays are over, my enthusiasm for a holiday project has waned just a bit. The question is, will I finish the hanging now or will I wait until next December when the Christmas mood strikes again?

Halloween Fabric Haul!
crafts · Quilting · Quilts · sewing

Halloween Fabric Haul!

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After an incredibly rainy start to autumn, we’ve been enjoying a bit of warm, dry weather.

Well, perhaps “enjoying” is too strong of a word. “Enjoying” would involve hiking miles and miles every weekend. And, while it’s true that we did spend several days hiking in Pennsylvania and walking along beaches in Georgia and Florida in early October, all we’ve been doing outdoors lately is working, working, working. The list of fall chores seems endless. We’ve cut down trees. (No “we” here, actually. I’m not really trusted to handle things that can cut off fingers or other important body parts after a rotary cutter incident several years ago.) We’ve hauled wood, stacked wood, raked leaves, blown leaves–burnt up a leaf blower and bought a new one–turned over the dirt in the garden, and painted the trim around two front doors. We’ve got more wood being delivered this weekend, so guess what will be going on next week? Yup. More wood stacking.

On the plus side, I’ve not had to “exercise” for a week and I’ve lost 3 pounds despite eating my way through half a dozen Oreo cupcakes. (What can I say? Fresh air makes me hungry!) On the negative side, I’ve not really had any time to sew.

I did take a day last week, though, to go to Inspiration Day at Interquilten in Traverse City with my mom, where I was excited to find Halloween fabric on clearance! I’ve wanted to make a Halloween lap quilt for a long time, but with fabric prices edging over $14 a yard and a stash that I probably shouldn’t be adding to taking up space in the closet, I’ve been resistant to purchasing any new fabric.

But that Halloween fabric was on sale for less than $9 a yard. Yea! I had no pattern in mind when I made my purchase and still don’t (mainly because I haven’t had the time or energy to devote to any projects). I ended up buying a couple fat quarters, 1-1/2 yards of most of the fabrics, and 4 yards of what I plan to use for backing. What’s really thrilling is that the images printed on the fabrics glow in the dark. I can’t wait to see those creepy skeletons glowing at night!

I also found some rolled 1-yard cuts of fabric in the “Last Chance” bin. So much for not adding to my stash. Ha! I couldn’t resist them at just over $6 a yard and hope I can find something to pair them with that’s already in my stash.

I noted to Hubby that, while we have some cute turkeys to hang on the wall for Thanksgiving (Doesn’t the one on the left remind you of Flo from Progressive?), we don’t have a Thanksgiving runner for our kitchen table, which is an oversight I think I should rectify this year.

What a conundrum I find myself in now. Do I finish one of my bazillion unfinished objects? Do I start on my Halloween quilt? Do I find a cute turkey table runner pattern and get sewing so it’s ready to display for Thanksgiving dinner?

I guess we’ll find out what I’m going to choose when I finally get all the fall work finished and get back in the sewing room.