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.
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.
Good morning on this beautiful day in the neighborhood!
Actually, it’s raining and gloomy, and all I wanted to do this morning was stay in bed reading a book I’ve been struggling to put down. (Don’t you love it when a book is that good?!) Plus, it’s 65 degrees in the house, and staying under the covers sounded nice and toasty. (We should not have to turn the heat on in mid-September, right? I refuse to do so.)
I forced myself out of bed. Partially because I try to maintain some sort of image of a mature, responsible adult, but mostly because the dogs needed to go out. Except they weren’t too keen on the idea of going out in the rain. Luna took one look at the water pouring from the sky and her forward momentum out the door (which wasn’t too fast to begin with) stalled. I had to give her a gentle push on the rump to get her moving. Nevy, meanwhile, was being his usual ornery self and hadn’t even come down from upstairs. He likes to make me climb halfway up before he charges down toward me. Once we finally got outside, he took care of business with more speed than usual since he hates rain. (See photo below showing his disdain.) He didn’t even try to pull me toward the neighbor’s house as he usually does in hopes of catching a glimpse of his hero: neighbor dog.
Rain is the worst!
The rain, which has been falling off and on, for the last few days, has put a damper on all of the outdoor fall tasks that need to be completed before winter. Not that I’m complaining. Clearing out flowerbeds, hauling logs in from the woods (which I did for what felt like eons last weekend), washing windows, and finally getting to some painting (a couple outside door frames) are not high on my list of Things I Can’t Wait to Do. However, they’ve got to be done soon because once the leaves start to fall there won’t be time to get to them.
Between fall tasks and kids being home for the weekend from college and a college scholarship awards banquet and a housewarming party for our oldest daughter and a church community service project, my sewing time has been at an all-time low.
But I wanted to share the little bit of progress I’ve made on two projects over the past week.
First, my English paper-piecing quilt has grown by a few “flowers.”
Each “flower” takes me approximately one hour to piece and add to the project, as I’m not the fastest hand-sewer. I’ve not yet decided how big this quilt is going to be. But, at the rate I’m going, I should finish it in about fifty years. I like to put a show on Netflix while I work (currently Virgin River) or listen to audiobooks with Hubby (currently Picture of Dorian Gray). Since this is simple work, neither is distracting.
A hint I would like to share is to purchase moleskin to use in place of a thimble. Usually, when I do any hand-sewing, I find that the eye of the needle pushes painfully into my middle finger, sometimes even piercing the skin. I don’t like the inflexibility of thimbles, but find that moleskin works wonderfully. You can buy it by the roll on Amazon.
The second project I’ve been working on (usually at night while Hubby and I watch television) is a cross-stitch project I started early in 2020. I’d had the pattern for years, and, though it isn’t really applicable to my current life (not too many ASAPs or SOSs in my life, although I do have a bit of piled-up work to do in the form of logs in the woods), decided to work on it since I had everything I needed. I’ve completed all of the regular stitching and have started on the backstitching. (Some of those things that look like blobs right now will actually look like something once I get the backstitching finished.)
Though it doesn’t really fit my life right now, I do like all of the bright colors.
My sewing room has been a bit lonely the past few weeks. I’m still sharing it with Hubby, who works from home most days. The dogs still wander in to have a snooze while I sew, but someone is missing. My sweet girl Rosie, overseer of all the projects (as you can see from the photo below), crossed the Rainbow Bridge a few weeks ago.
The sewing room was her domain, my chair her favorite bed. (I’ll probably never be able to sweep every last hair from the seat.) Whenever I moved her from the chair to her bed to work on anything, it wasn’t long before she had her face right up in my face, hoping for a few snuggles.
Rosie and her sister Belle who died in early 2020 came to live with us (and our other two cats…yes, that made 4) when they were a day old. We fed them with pipettes and, later, bottles. We burped them and, at the risk of too much information, we wiped their fannies with damp cotton balls to simulate a mamma cat cleaning them which makes them go to the bathroom. We got up in the middle of the night to do all these things for several weeks. It was just like having human babies in the house again.
It’s a strange time we find ourselves in. We are cat-free. Other than for a few months after we got married and a few months after we moved into our new home 20+ years ago, I’ve had a cat in my life since I was 5.
It’s not like we’re without any pets now. We still have two dogs and two tiny potatoes with legs (guinea pigs who actually belong to our daughter), but it feels strange to be cat-less. There is nothing quite like snuggling with a cat, no sound like a quiet purr in your ear. There is nothing quite like being woken up in the middle of the night by a cat stepping on your neck, no comfort like that same cat curling up next to your cheek.
But for now, as we enter this stage of life where our kids are heading into (or are already in) adulthood, and we think about traveling a bit more while we are still young enough to enjoy big adventures, we’ll probably stay cat-free for a while.
I did venture into my lonely room for a bit this past week to work on an English paper-piecing project. This one has been in the works for several years. As you can see, I am moving at a snail’s pace. I’m not much of a fan of hand-sewing, but adding to this project was a relaxing way to spend a couple afternoons. I should probably keep at it now that I’ve got some momentum going. We’ll see.
I was looking for something quiet to do while timing my son’s ACT practice, so I pulled out my English Paper Piecing WIP. (The ACT is a big deal around our house. Our other two children earned full academic scholarships to the college they chose based on their high scores. We are having our son do lots of prep, are keeping our fingers crossed, and are hoping he scores well also.)
I can’t recall when I started this project. I received a small bag of paper hexagons at a quilt shop during a shop hop and decided I would give it a try. I am NOT a fan of hand sewing. It’s tedious, and I always seem to stab myself with the needle. But I do enjoy getting this project out once in a while to add another hexagon flower to it. I assume that at my present rate of completion, my grandchildren will finish this project sometime after I die. (My goal is to make it lap quilt sized. We’ll see how that goes!)
I’ve also been quilting a project I started last fall. I ordered a lot of what I call “I Spy” fabrics from Missouri Star Quilt Company and received a free Charm Pack with my order. There were not quite enough pieces for the project I decided to make, so I pulled a few fabrics from my stash to add to the quilt. Once completed, this will be the second WIP I’ll have finished in 2020.
Lazy Saturday Quilts 