Tiny Chunks of Time

The past weekend was the sale.  Let's just say we sold a lot which was great.  Bad thing is that it was cold, rainy, and I didn't have much time for sewing.  Sunday DH sent me home around noon so I had some time to myself.

I have been struggling to finish the blocks for this quilt.

I have had a tough time with this block.  So of course it makes sense to just put the whole quilt aside since I couldn't wrap my head around this one block.  Right? 

The pattern was made using an accuquilt drunkard's path template.  There are no directions for cutting if you do not have one.  I did realize that some of the pieces are two half units put together so I know that I will be piecing these.  I thought at one point if I started out with HST that it would work.  Lets just say giant fail.  I actually drew the block out several weeks ago to try again.

That way I knew where I wanted to put each color, and could figure out each piece I needed to cut.  I finally got brave and started cutting Sunday. 

Five hours later this is my pile of parts, nothing is sewn yet, but they are all marked so that they can have their halves put together.  I have a curvemaster foot which I need to use to put this together without massive amounts of pinning.  DH said he would move the machine I need this week so maybe I will get this one done. 

Tuesday I got home earlier than usual.  We had lots of little chores to do in the kitchen.  We eat a lot of salad because of my diabetes, and we have discovered that it is cheaper, and the food last longer if we prepare our own.  No bagged salads or cabbage for us.  We usually make a huge bowl of a green salad with baby spinach, romaine, and red leaf lettuce which lasts us the week for dinner. I made salad because we had not had the opportunity to go grocery shopping and do the salad over the weekend which we usually do.  Then DH started chopping cabbage to make slaw.  We have a cabbage type salad daily for lunch, so we chop up 1 very large head of cabbage, and a smaller head of red cabbage as well as 1/2 a large bag of baby carrots.  This usually yields us 3 half gallon jars, and one gallon ziploc which lasts us for the week. We vacuum seal the jars which helps  keep the slaw  for the week. While DH was chopping slaw I started cutting parts for this block, and while he sealed the jars I finished up sewing the block.  I had to take a few minutes to review a Youtube video on how to use a Tri Recs ruler set. 

I know this block as 54-40 or Fight, but it is also known as Grandmother's star.  This makes 15 blocks sewn together, one cut out, and I have patterns for 5 more.  I still need to choose 3 more blocks to have a total of 24 which I will need to make my quilt. 

Doesn't it seem silly to put a quilt aside because of one block?

October Goals

October 6, and I have not made any goals.  I have thought about many different things but just can't settle on anything.  I don't want to commit to anything new, but then I have a lot of projects that are in the stage where it is kind of boring.  I also know that my weekends are committed to doing wood so we have heat for the winter.  So not a whole lot of time for sewing, so maybe that is a good thing.

I am going to try to be good and work on at least finishing up some things to a flimsy stage.

1.  Ripples and Reflections BOM.  I am to the point where I am doing borders, but there are weird angles in it.  I would like to get all the borders on, and put it in the waiting to be quilted pile.

2.  My Quilt Place BOM.  I have been stuck on a block. It is more mental than anything else.  I would like to finish all of the blocks for this month.  I have 5 more connector blocks, and 9 more blocks.  I have special plans for the border on this quilt. 

3.  Farmer's Wife I would love to finish putting this together with the cornerstone, and sashing.

4.   Embroidery on the Barns.  I have one partially done. 

The next couple of things are related to the fact that I am trying to get a handle on my scraps.  I have been working at cutting them down.  I make 2 1/2 inch squares,

2 1/2 inch tumblers

3 inch squares to make yoyos if the fabric is red, white, blue, or red/white and blue. 

1 1/2 inch squares and 1/2 inch hexies.  These will be like a postage stamp quilt.  No pattern, just using up scraps. 

5.  I am also working on a Dresden turkey table runner.  All I have so far are some squares and a couple of dresden wedges.  Nothing to really show.

6.  I would love to work on the red and white drunkard's path.

I need to have a machine moved. 

7.  I have some Christmas presents to start. 
8.  I have a lot of quilting to do.  I just need the time, and decent light.  :D

I keep wondering how my time got so out of control regarding time to sew. 

September Recap

Wow the month flew by!  I may have said this before, but my great grandmother that raised me used to say that the older you got the faster time flew by.  Of course being a little girl I didn't really understand, but as I age I understand the sentiment more and more.

My goals were:

1.  Quilt and bind the Christmas Table Runner.  I have it all sandwiched.
Finished it up and was so proud of myself!

 2.  I think it is time to finish up this BOM.  I discovered I only have a couple months left to finish.  There is a lot of cutting, and I hate those odd sizes but it will be worth it to have it done.

I fought to get this together.  I still have the borders to do but after taking it apart multiple times this is as far as I got for the month.

3.  I would love to get a couple more blocks from the BOM done after I figure out this one.

Nope didn't even touch it.
4.  I have a ton of quilting to get done.  We need to bring the quilter in!
I got started and didn't even get one pass finished yet.

5.  I am going to start to work on some Christmas gifts for the family.


I have been planning but nothing solid done yet. :(


Extras-


Attended the police auction and purchased a truck.

Then my car started to go on the fritz once again so DH bought me a new car!

We canned about 20 quarts of spaghetti sauce, and about 17 quarts of tomato basil soup.

So far we have stacked about 2 1/2 cords of firewood.  We are about 1/3 of the way.  Lots more to go.

I wanted something small to work on and finished a row by row from Sauder Village.  I think I am actually going to sew the laser cut down.

 

 I have been working on cutting up scraps after I had the scrap block explosion.  I made this Kite table topper in fall colors and quilted it today!  I will put it in the upcoming sale.

The dark fabric was purchased a JAF a few years ago.  I discovered they still carry it. :D

I did this tiny stitchery and then used a hex and more ruler to make this little table topper too.  It will go to the sale also.  

I made a couple of bookmarks from scraps.  DH likes the one on the left because it is more finished looking than the one with the pinked edges.  I may be able to make a few more before Saturday.

I have made a bunch of tumbler blocks from scraps.

Also oodles of yoyos.

I need to work a bit more diligently on getting things prepped over the weekend so that I can work on some sewing during the week.  Since I haven't been getting much prepped I have been reading a lot.  I have read 13 books this month.  I am just a chapter or two short of 14 books.

How was your month?

Somethings Just Not Right

Do you have certain sounds that you listen for and when you don't hear them you actually wake up?  Or if you hear something out of the ordinary you wake up?

I know that between 2am and 4 am our road is very quiet.  Not so on Friday night.  There were people drag racing up and down the road....not that our road is that spectacular.  It is pretty beat up and full of pot holes, barely 2 lanes wide, no shoulder, and it will only be a matter of time before someone is in the ditch again.  The constant speeding woke me up. Then I heard voices.  People walking up our road in the middle of the night is not a good thing.  Of course I was awake then, listening, and could not go back to sleep.  So at 3 am I was up reading, sewing, cutting scraps, doing laundry, dishes, and prepping so I had stuff to do once DH was up and out the door to work.  I got a bit done, but was dragging all day, and finally took a nap around 3 pm for a couple of hours.

I did start quilting on my charity quilt for guild.

DH played with a free motion foot and made it so I can use a ruler, so I have nice straight lines for my stars.

These are my 2 1/2 inch tumblers.  I am amassing quite a few.

Saturday night I was exhausted and knew that Sunday DH and I were going to be working on wood.  At midnight one of the neighbors in one of the McMansions behind us started their Karaoke party.  Music you can't quite make out the song, and really bad singing.  Let's just say I was up the majority of the night once again.  DH and I managed to get about 3 face cords of wood split, and and stacked in the woodshed.

Sunday night, I was so tired.  Between two sleepless nights, and a good hard workout doing wood, I was so ready for bed, after a good long shower.  My head hit the pillow, and a dog somewhere began barking.  Normally that is not a sound we hear.  I then started listening to make sure that it was not out by my chickens.  I am not kidding when I say that the dog barked all night long, because soon my alarm was going off and it was time for me to get up and going.

I have been working on helping the quilting economy though.

I found this at Craft Town Fabrics.  They have a daily "flash" sale, and the grunge charm squares were one of the items one day.  I also spied this patriotic looking striped fabric and thought it would be great to use as a binding on my charity quilts since they all seem to be red, white, and blue (patriotic looking)

I wanted to put a wide border on two sides of the yellow brick road quilt and I had been looking at Summer Breeze for a while.

I now think that I will do a thin yellow border on the two sides, and then the fabric above with a yellow brick road square in the corner.  I wanted to make the border in a continuous cut so I purchased 4 yards of the Summer Breeze fabric and found it on sale at 40% off from Thrifty Needle a couple of weeks ago.

I have a bloc loc TID set.  I have been playing with it and finally settled on sewing one thing.  I had some scraps of this autumn leaf print.

I had some of this shimmer fabric left over from a Row by Row I completed.  Unfortunately they did not tell you what color it was.  I thought that the print would make a cool TID piece but I needed more.  I tried doing an image search, but came up with nothing.  I tried matching and purchased this piece.

Yep not even close.  But it doesn't look too bad with my fabric.

It kind of looks like the color of the veins in the leaves.  I am kind of iffy about it. 

Finally I jumped on the Massdrop bandwagon.  There have been several drops that I have watched but never committed to.  I saw this one for a quick curve ruler, and 3 patterns. So far I am impressed with how

quickly the drop was shipped.  I can't wait to have time to play with this, and with the pricing I was very happy with the drop. 

Finally there are a bunch of QAL, and blog hops going on right now. 

The Splash of Color blog hop, which is ending tomorrow.  It is sponsored by Martingdale to celebrate the release of the quilting book Splash of Color by Jackie Kunkel.  Love the quilts that were made for the book! 

The Gypsy Queen QAL by Cora's Quilts.

The EQ7 Seasons Row-A-Long.   You can find the information about the rows here.

The Elm Street Quilts Harvest QAL.

Just to name a few.  I won a pattern from Morning Glory Designs from the EQ7 Seasons Row A Long.  How fun to choose a pattern from a store.  I chose a pattern called Indian Blanket.

So while I may not be doing a lot of sewing, I am doing a lot of planning. 

Finn's Stash

I watch the grand kids every day, Monday through Friday.  I get to their house a little before 6 am.  I get the two oldest kids up at 7 am.  They get dressed, brush their teeth and are out the door to catch the bus.  I don't have to feed them breakfast, or make them lunches because the school district provides free breakfast and lunch for all students.  I then get the middle boy up, he attends a different school, and he gets dressed, sometimes he eats, sometimes he just hangs out until it is time to go catch his bus. Then it is just The Finn and I.  Most days Finn is up when I get there. 

Finn is a bit of an insomniac, he wanders the house all night long.  He is put to bed around 7:30 pm every night.  The nights he sleeps 12 hours he gets up happy as a little clam, he is easy to get along with, and behaves.  Nights he is up and down, Oh boy!  It is a struggle between us both all day long. The biggest kids get home at about 4 and the middle boy about 5.  I make sure homework is done, some nights I make them dinner, and make sure they get their chores done.  Many nights their mom and dad don't get home until well after 8 pm.  Long day for all of us. 

Where is this going you wonder?  Well I don't cook hardly at all at my own home.  I text DH on my way out the door to let him know I am on my way, and he has dinner ready for me when I get home.  So imagine my surprise when I opened the pantry the other day, pulled out the shelf with the pots and pans and discovered this.

A necklace (not mine), a couple of Allen type wrenches, and a toy T wrench.  Why Finn would put a stash of objects in here I can only imagine.  I am sure it was done while he was staying here this summer while we were on vacation.  Do you like my excuse for not doing a whole lot of sewing? 

I get wee bits done every now and then.  I got my hexie table topper sewn together.  What do you think?  Should I finish it off with some half hexie rounds? Or  leave it as is, and put a backing on it?

I did get my bag lady block done for the month.  I was not a fan of her homespuns.  I think that they would be something that you starch the bejeebers out of.  so it doesn't distort.

I also threw together some bookmarks which I had seen on Facebook not too long ago.  I just have the backing and to kind of bind them. I think they will end up maybe going to the sale for a couple of dollars a piece. 

All from scraps of this and that.  I may have a couple of more that I can throw together before next weekend. 

While I am watching Finn I do handwork.  I have been making yoyos.  I have a plan, I need to draw it out better, but I know I need a whole bunch of these. 

These are just a very few of the ones I have made. 

All I know is like so many others lately I am just too busy, and tired to sew.  Do you miss it when you don't have time to sew?  Even if it is only a few minutes a day?

Tons of Tomatoes

You say tomato and I say tomato.....I am so ready to call the whole thing off.

Last week we took a quick inventory.  We only have a couple of quarts of green beans, but green beans were hard to come by in Michigan so we are going to have to wait and hope for next year.  Last week we used up  our last pint of spaghetti sauce.  DH and I experimented with spaghetti squash and spaghetti sauce with meat and I will say it was yummy, so definitely needed more tomato sauce!  DH also informed me we only had 9 quarts of tomato basil soup.

I had an e-mail from one of the farm stands where I shop that tomatoes were still coming in, so Friday the Finn and I headed out early in the morning to get some tomatoes.

We purchase 4 boxes of Roma tomatoes, and I started blanching.  I didn't have to remove the skin because the tomatoes would be run through a Victorio food mill. You can see a pic of the food mill I use by clicking the link, since I am absolutely in love with it!

This is our turkey fryer kettle it was the only one big enough to hold a bushel of crushed tomatoes, and all the other ingredients for Spaghetti sauce.  You can see that I am blanching the next box of tomatoes beside the pot. 

We ended up with 20 quarts and 1 pint of spaghetti sauce.

DH and I finished up cooking the tomatoes and made 14 quarts and 9 pints of tomato basil soup.

DH and I were talking that it would be nice to have a second canner/pressure cooker so we wouldn't be waiting as much.  When we canned tuna at the coast in Oregon we ran 2 canners and it was so nice.  The MIL called last Saturday night, she had broken the door off a cabinet and needed it fixed, which meant that my Sunday would be spent at her house.  I was not thrilled.  I asked DH if his mamma had a pressure cooker and he said he thought so, and she had never used it.  All I can say is S-C-O-R-E!  A brand new 22 quart pressure cooker still in the box and unopened from 1993.  It is nice to be able to run a couple of canners at the same time. 

While working on the canning I got a wee bit of sewing accomplished.

This is the row from Sauder Village for the Row by Row.  I love the colors but the laser cut was not easy to peel off and was a bit frustrating.  Now to sew it down. 

I got all the portions fixed that were wrong and it all sewn together.  Let's just say that while I like the quilt, my skills have increased immensely since I started working on it, there are some lost points, the persnickety odd cuts with 1/8th inch increments  which ended up with lot of biased edges made me crazy.    I have some borders and they have bias triangles set within them. 

I have had some fabric acquisitions lately too.  I have been working on some yoyos and I wanted red, white, or blue.  This layer cake from Moda by Minick and Simpson called Polka-Dot & Paisleys.

I think it will just fit the bill.  I need to figure out how many yoyos I need so I can continue my mania.  Why does it feel like I have less and less time for sewing?