 Yesterday it was time to get my sewing room reopened and I started by ironing all of my Fab Farm quilt blocks and got them up on the design wall. I started by just putting them up in order and not paying attention to placement.  After lots of rearranging and consultation with friends, here's the current layout plan. I'll start cutting sashing today or tomorrow.  I visited Mom Sunday and she had this donation quilt ready for quilting so it will be the next thing on the longarm. Quilting will be simple since it won't show at all.  I'm going to make some more chemo drain bags for From The Heart so I pulled some fabrics to cut out for bags and I've ordered grosgrain ribbon for the straps.  The weather here is amazing this week so we got outside a bit to work on this. We had a dogwood tree there that died a couple of years ago. We finally removed the edging, the stump and flattened out the area. I now have a better scene from my sewing room window.
Today I have to return shoes to REI and we have quilt club tonight. Yay!
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 Our last visitor left Monday. We had a great visit with him and he even brought me these great fabrics that he picked out himself! he used to work on the high-end garment industry so he's an expert on fibers and colors. One of our earlier visitors is a weaver and, when I get home, I'll show you the beautiful tea towel that she wove for me. Her husband tumbled some rocks for me from Ventana Canyon in Tucson. They were the couple that we visited last winter. He's done sever rock collections for me and I love them.  Since Dave left Monday we have had perfect weather. We hiked Bald and Parkman mountains Monday, kayaked a couple of hours Tuesday and today we hiked our favorite trail, Pemetic. It's not quite as high as Cadillac but a lot more interesting. It's a steep hike full of boler piles to scramble. I talked about it a bit in this post. This time we took the ravine path that required climbing down two ladders.  The views from almost all of the hikes here are amazing. From the top of Pemetic we can see over Southwest and Bass Harbors and out to the ocean and islands beyond. In the afternoons we have been able to pull out the float chairs and relax in the lake for an hour or so. It's all been lovely but it's time to head home on Friday.  In the evenings we have been watching Season 1 of Joe Pickett. The house has Paramount+ so that's been a nice treat. I've gotten lots of crochet in and will have the baby blanket finally finished tomorrow. The big blue blanket is at a standstill because I need more navy Pound of Love yarn. I hope I can find some somewhere. It doesn't seem to be available online. I can get away with another yarn as long as I can find a pretty good color match. With the baby blanket almost done, I realized that I needed to start a new car project for the ride home. It's going to be a donation shawl. I got the first few rows done so now I know the pattern and have it ready to go for Friday morning.  On the sewing front I did finish all of the blocks for Fab Farm! Everything is packed up now. I didn't want to try to cut sashing here so I'll finish this at home.  The last blocks were the bees. So cute!  Here's a look at one set of the blocks. I'm really excited to put this one together.
I'll hopefully have the baby blanket ready to share Friday and then you won't hear from me again until Monday or Tuesday.  We started off early yesterday to get on the trails before the parking lot filled up. If you want to hike in the morning in Acadia you have to get to the parking areas before 9 to be sure of getting a space. We got to the trailhead about 8 and when we returned about 10:30 there were 5 cars waiting for a parking space. We selected the Bubbles for our hike yesterday. This fun trail has two mountain tops in one trail. This is on top of South Bubble looking over Jordan Pond with the ocean beyond.  On the North Bubble we were in view of Pemetic and Cadillac mountains. This weekend my goal is for us to hike one of these. Cadillac is the highest so that's a goal. But if we don't do Cadillac I hope we can do Pemetic, it's my favorite trail in the whole park.  We got back in time to relax in the sun for a while and then get in some sewing time. I'm now working on chickens! I started with the sections that are common to all 4 chickens. Getting these out of the way will speed up all of the other chickens.  I got the first chicken made and I think it's so cute! We have another friend coming to visit today so I might not get the other chickens done before Monday.  The crochet blanket is coming along great. I'm working on the border and only have about a round and half left to go.
 Today we leave Wilton and head to Southwest Harbor for the last 2 weeks of our vacation. We have enjoyed our last 2 days here. Yesterday Chris had a guided fishing trip so I headed out on the kayak for one last trip around Wilson Pond. It takes about 2 hours to paddle around the whole pond and I made it back just as some rain was coming in. Aside from Long Pond on Mount Desert Island, I think this is my favorite pond that we've stayed on in Maine.  On Wednesday we went toward Weld and hiked half of the Blueberry Mountain Trail. It's a very steep trail that gains over 1400 feet in 1.2 miles. I knew that I wouldn't make it all the way to the top but I needed to test out how well my foot is healing before we head to Acadia for a lot more hiking. It seems to be healed as long as I have it taped up with the KT tape. It's a cool trail and, if we come back this way next year, we will definitely hike it again. We saw some interesting flora along the way like these black trumpet mushrooms that are supposedly edible.....but I'm not trying them!  This cool caterpillar is the spotted tussock moth caterpillar. I was thinking that it would make a cool fly lure to tie and actually found one but I can't seem to find it again.  I've also been sewing and got 4 sunflower blocks done. I think these are the least fun to sew but they are really cute and will add some brightness to the quilt. These are the short sunflowers. There are 4 tall sunflowers too.  I got the flowers for the tall sunflowers done before I packed up my mini sewing room. All I have left to make are these remaining tall sunflowers, 4 chickens and 4 bees. I might have the whole top together by the time we head home in 2 weeks.
Today we will spend some of the day in Belfast on our way to Southwest Harbor. We have friends meeting is there to hike with us for a few days. The weather is expected to be spectacular for the next several days.  I forgot to post yesterday but it's just as well, I didn't have much to report. The weather hasn't been great> Monday it rained off and on and yesterday was overcast, breezy and chilly. We went out to the local town and did a little shopping. By "a little", I mean 2 books from a used book store and a few little things for Christmas gifts. But mostly, the last 2 days, I've bee sewing! The horses are done. I thought these would be the hardest blocks but I've looked ahead and I think the sunflowers are going to be the most challenging and there are 8 of them.  Before doing the sunflowers I decided to make the sheep blocks. I love all of the blocks but I think these are particularly cute! Next, sunflowers.  Last night we had lobster for dinner. What a treat! My Mom was quilt to text that she had a peanut butter and banana sandwich. LOL!
After dinner the wind had died down so we (Chris) built a fire. He had s'mores and I had a scotch. It was a lovely way to end the day. Today we are hoping to go on a hike. We have 2 more days here at this lovely lake and then we head to Acadia for 2 more week is beautiful Maine. Like (almost) all vacations, things are going well here in Maine. Yesterday it turned a little rainy and it will be rainy today. But we have books and sewing so we're happy.  On Saturday we got out to the Mount Pisgah Conservation Area and hiked the Tower and Blueberry trails. I taped up my ankle and I have absolutely no pain in my foot. That was a great success! Stepping in dog poo wasn't a great success but I got over it and my sneakers are really clean now. I realized that the hike location was 10 miles from the Maine Cabin Masters store so we detoured there before heading home. It was fun to visit but it's just a tourist retail store with a lot of really expensive things.  Chris is having fun fishing. It's always slow on maine lakes because there just aren't tons of fish here but he's having better luck on this lake than anywhere else we've been in Maine. If he had kept this one it might have been a citation. But he put it back from someone else.  Sewing continues at pace and now the cows are all out to pasture.  Next up are the horses. The horse blocks have strawberries as a component so I made these blocks first. They turned out to be harder than expected because I cut the green pieces and the large red pieces wrong! I didn't figure it out until I was sewing them together.  My little workstation is quite dark so on a trip to WalMart yesterday, I picked up this work light in the hardware department. It was about $30.  I love it! It has 2 lights and the light arms are adjustable in height and angle. There are 3 light strength settings and a flashlight on the end.  It's even magnetic on the base! This is going to be a great travel sewing light for me. It will be good for crochet too.
Today is another rain day. I hope to get enough of a break for a walk to town (1.2 miles) but mostly I will sew horses and we will read.  We have been spending a lot of time in the kayaks this week. The lake is beautiful and there are very few people on it. Our hosts took us on a boat ride yesterday and told us about many of the houses on the lake. There are a surprising number of them that are only occupied 2 weeks a year. That's great news for us! But I have plenty of sewing time and I got my goats done.  I thought I'd share how I set these blocks up for quilting. Next up are the cow blocks and this is one fo the more complex blocks. I start by laying out all of the background pieces. I double check the measurement of each piece and, luckily, I cut all of the cow pieces correctly!  A lot of the pieces are sewn on the diagonal so I draw the stitching lines as I lay them out.  Then, I lay out the animal pieces one block at a time. It looks like a mess but that's really a cow.  Here's my first cow! Just as I'm looking at it here I see that I made a mistake. Can you see it? By the time you read this it will be fixed. Three more cows to go! Yesterday was going to be a hiking day but we had thunderstorms and rain all night the night before and rain in the morning. I don't hike wet trails. Instead it was a relaxing book reading and sewing day. In the evening "crochet season" opened with the Eagles/Patriots pre-season game on local TV here.  Yesterday was going to be a hiking day but we had thunderstorms and rain all night the night before and rain in the morning. I don't hike wet trails. Instead it was a relaxing book reading and sewing day. In the evening "crochet season" opened with the Eagles/Patriots pre-season game on local TV here. My crochet projects should pick up speed now.
 Instead of having more quilt museum quilts today I decided to share my progress on the Fab Farm quilt. These blocks take a lot of concentration and precision piecing and it's exactly the kind of sewing that I love. I have finished the 4 pigs.  Fortunately I brought all of the extra fabric with me. I had made 2 cutting errors, one too large and one too small. Then, on the pink pig I sewed one of the ears wrong. It's all fixed now.  Now I'm on to the goats! This little guy is not wonky as it looks in the photo. The goat is so cute!
Yesterday we went into Farmington to look around the cute little town. There's a nice quilt shop downtown called Pins and Needles. They have some yarn too and I was looking for a H size crochet hook. Unfortunately they only had Susan Bates and I don't use that style. I found what I needed at Walmart and then we stopped by the seafood market to order lobsters for dinner tonight! Back to the museum photos tomorrow. We arrived in Maine Friday evening and I thought I'd post Saturday but I was just too tired for some reason. But we're settled in the cutest small camp and have started exploring around the area.  The trip up is a 2 day trip and we drove up along with the remnants of Debby. Chris was driving. I81 is always stressful with all the trucks and he had added tension with the bouts of rain and fog. I settled into the passenger seat and thought I might finish the center of this baby blanket. But somewhere outside Scranton I realized that the hook I was using didn't match the color of stitch marker that I use to remind myself the hook size. I use Clover Amour hooks with colored handles. The blue stitch marker I used indicated the H (blue) hook. I was using the I (green) hook! I stopped working on it until I could get to the hotel and lay it out to see if I really did make a mistake. Once I laid it out on the bed it was clear that I had used the wrong hook and had been using it for a while. That red circle shows where I was 2 weeks ago and the blue arrow shows how far back I needed to undo. So that's probably all the work I did over the past month. Darn.  I unraveled one whole ball and part of another....almost half of it! But it had to be done and it's a charity blanket so there's no deadline. I'll get back on it with the blue hook this week. The second day took us through Massachusetts and we took a detour to the New England Quilt Museum to see the Paula Nadelstern exhibit. I took a lot of photos and will do a post tomorrow on that visit.  When we arrived Friday it was still raining but this was our view Saturday morning. The camp is just a few steps away from the shore of Wilson Pond in Wilton, ME. This is our first year in this area and so far we are in love with this cute little town and tiny camp.  Here's my sewing space. Fortunately we can eat on the screened porch.  I was itching to get started sewing on the farm quilt and I've already finished 2 pigs. I love my little Janome Gem Gold that's at least 20 years old. It has a perfect 1/4" seam which is really important with these blocks. The eyes are only 1/2" finished so precision is important.  Yesterday we went for our first hike I needed a fairly easy hike to test out my foot after all the pain I've been dealing with this summer. After x-rays, one MRI and 2 doctors it seems that I have 1 old injury that isn't bad enough to do anything about, a couple of "deformities" that aren't bad enough to do anything about and, most importantly, weak muscles in my right foot and ankle. I've been working on strengthening exercises so was happy to test it out on a 2.5 mile hike yesterday. It was a beautiful day and a lovely hike. Near the end we were greeted with this funny sign. The trail is at least 6 yards from the "cliff". If anyone gets that close to the edge I don't think this sign will help. But it was kind of funny.  This is what the trail looked like beyond the sign. No cliff.
We came home and took the kayaks for a long ride and then had cocktails on floats in the lake. It was a perfect day. Chris is off fishing today so I plan on a long kayak on the lake and some more pig sewing this afternoon.  When we go to Maine in the summer I like to have a "big" project to work on and I like to kit it up ahead of the trip. That's where I worked on the Red Sunset quilt. Last year I did some veterans quilts but I wanted something different for this year. I love Elizabeth Hartman patterns and this one looked fun. I think it might eventually used as a fundraiser quilt for a local organization. I dyed some blue fabric for the background because I'm really tired of gray. I decided to pull the fabrics for the blocks this week and see if I needed anything else. I'm posting the groups here just so I can have it documented somewhere for when I start cutting the pieces.  The strawberries.  The horses  The cows  The pigs  The sheep  The chickens  The goats  The bees  The sunflowers
Now that I've seen them against the blue I am thinking that I might want to have a lighter blue. What do you think? |
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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