 Today's post is a lot more boring than yesterday. There's no new project just more work on the blue blocks and more quilting on the raffle quilt. I had my physical Tuesday and yesterday was spent dyeing fabric. I've also started blowing leaves. We have at least 10 trees that are over 70' that drop a ton of leaves. I'll be blowing leaves for weeks. It's nice to be outside and it's a little exercise so it's all good until I run out of places to put them! I've had a couple of sewing sessions so I'm almost finished sewing blue blocks. I only have that one little stack and then I can start making bigger blocks and putting the quilt together.  While I was stitching Tuesday I had a visitor to the pond. I love my sewing room view!  Here's a little autumnal color that I caught at my Mom's apartment Tuesday. The red trees are really spectacular around here this year. Sometimes it's an orange/gold year but this year is all about the red. You already know that I'm a very slow quilter. I let myself get analysis paralysis over my quilts. I'm working on the center blocks for the raffle quilt and I'm spending way too much time agonizing over the quilting for a raffle quilt that's meant to be a bed quilt. I finally settled on the pattern for the star blocks and I've finished 6 of 12. I'd like to finish the other 6 today. It would also be helpful if I can get a chiropractor appointment today. My back would like that before I spend too much time leaning over the longarm.
In the evenings I'm doing some crochet and will to share those tomorrow. For the next several days, these are the only projects that I plan to work on but I might also need to make a birthday postcard. I also need to get started on my Christmas card ideas. It's about time to start the annual Christmas card panic!
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 A Little of Everything, 48 x 60 I got permission to share my "Paula" quilt this week! Here's the backstory: I don't buy many commercial fabrics but I buy most of the fabrics designed by Paula Nadelstern. I fell in love with her symmetry fabrics when I took a class from her sometime around 2008. For many years now she has invited me and a few other quilters to make samples from her new fabric line. We used to have to make 36" square wall quilts but now we can make whatever we want. I choose to make 48 x 60 quilts that can become veterans quilts. The fabric line this year is called "What If" and you can see all of the fabrics here. I was particularly excited to see the stripes this time and I plan to stock up on them when the fabrics arrive in stores in the Spring. I hope you have a few minutes to check out the Virtual Fabric Show to see the other quilts that were made. Go to the 35:05 mark to see Paula's section. The other quilts are really fabulous! There's one by Peggy True that I want to make. Hint: it's not the applique wreath! I was on a really tight timeline for my quilt so it had to be simple with 12 blocks and some sashing. My only goal was to use a little of every fabric in the line. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. You can look at each of the blocks in detail by clicking on them. If you look close you will see that they are all very simple. The fabric does all of the work.  I decided to use the two grayscale fabrics for the sashing and border but felt it needed a little extra. That "extra" came with stripe inserts in the sashing.
When it came time for quilting I was down to the wire so it got a quick overall design.  The baby shower was this weekend. Mom and I headed to Chesapeake Saturday morning, went to the shower Saturday afternoon, visited with my brother and SIL (the "thank God you are alive" one) Saturday evening and watched a football miracle (UVA vs UNC) Saturday night in our hotel. Sunday morning we visited James and Ashley (parents to be) and stopped to visit my other SIL and niece in Newport News on the way home. It was a quick trip but very worthwhile. Ashley loved all of the blankets and has designated a use for each of them. I did give them permission to give any of them to another baby but they insisted that they were keeping them. Our visit to their house was the first time we've seen it since they moved and I had forgotten that they have FOUR wall quilts that I've made and they are using all of them. They have requested a set of placemats for the newly remodeled kitchen and they will certainly get them.  We were asked to give the baby a book. I gifted two. One is a new book and the other is a book that my Grandmother gave to me in 1966. At some point in my young life I became very possessive of my things and I wrote my name really large on the front blank page. James was happy to have something handed down from family. It was a nice day and Ashley looks great for someone about to have a baby in 5 weeks!  In the hotel I started a new kid hat. I will make 2 of these for my brother's step-grands. I worked on it more last night when I got home.  Before we left, I got a little quilting and sewing done on Friday. I've started the 12 star blocks on the raffle quilt. 3 are done, 9 to go.  I also got all of the corner blocks trimmed for the blue quilt and started sewing them into bow ties.
Today I have my annual eye doctor appointment and tomorrow is my annual physical. The restof the week should be dyeing, sewing and blowing leaves.  Yesterday involved a visit to Mom and a clothing alteration but I did get the rest of the corners sewn for the blue quilt. Block trimming comes next. The clothing alteration was a black pair of pants, hence no photo. I got them at LLBean on vacation for 60% off but they were too long in the waist and length. It was worth getting the to try because they cost less than $20! They are a very nice knit and I wanted to wear them to the baby shower tomorrow. I got them done but it was almost a crisis because the air threading mechanism wasn't working on one of the loopers.  For you serger owners, here's my tip for the day. When the thread wouldn't feed through this looper channel I figured that there was a blockage in the pipe somewhere. Digging around in my supplies I found a box of these loop dental floss threaders. I split one apart and it was exactly long enough, flexible enough and stiff enough to go through both halves of the channel and it pushed a pretty significant lint ball out of the looper.
Tomorrow we head to Chesapeake for the baby shower so there won't be much creative stuff going on this weekend but I'll be happy to see family, especially my SIL. She's out of the hospital and doing well! Thank you for all of your prayers and good thoughts.  It was nice to get back to the sewing machine and longarm today. In the morning I got half of the remaining blocks stitched this far and should get the rest sewn today so that I can cut and trim them during football tonight. Then the Starlink installer came and we decided on where/how it's going to be installed on the house.  In the afternoon I reloaded the raffle quilt and started the quilting. I want to do a nice job of quilting but I have to keep 2 things in mind. One, the quilting isn't really going to show, except on the back. Second, it's a raffle quilt that is intended to be a bed quilt so I can't overquilt it. I started with the 6 Courthouse Steps blocks and decided on a feathered wreath.  Next I'll tackle the 12 star quilts. I'm thinking some continuous curves and some sort of filler in the background.  One other thing I do is that I usually have a puzzle going. I just like working on one while I eat breakfast or as a break from crocheting in the evening. None of them are really special, except for this one. This is one of the coolest puzzles I've ever worked.  This is what's cool about it. All of the big puzzle pieces are separate puzzles! I've never seen a puzzle like this. You can get one for yourself at Barnes and Noble. It's called Gradient Cascade.
 After putting up with all of the grayscale photos I thought you deserved a sneak peek at the colors. I got the binding and hanging sleeve put on last night. All that's left is a label. usually I do a fancy Spirograph label but not this time. Eventually this quilt will be a veterans quilt so the label will be removed. I'll handwrite a rudimentary label and get that stitched on today and this quilt will be officially done! I'm still awaiting shipping instructions but that might be after vacation.
Today includes some visiting time with my brother but I might be able to get some quilting done on the raffle quilt. PS, Yes, I did remove that stray thread caught in the binding.  We left Greenville, ME Friday morning with this view and it rained the whole 3 hour drive to Mount Desert Island.  We spent the afternoon in Bar Harbor while we waited for the house to be ready and we arrived to this view. Let's be honest, it's still a pretty spectacular view even on a gloomy day! the day wasn't a loss because we had lobster for dinner.  We woke yesterday morning to this view. Now we're talking! Everyone's mood lightened instantly and we quickly planned and set out on our first hike. We usually do a "warm up" hike and this time was no different. We started in Thuya Gardens and hiked through to reach a carriage trail that went around and over the Amphitheater trail. It was about 6 miles but almost all on smooth surfaces. It was just what we needed. Here are a few photos from the day.  Thuya Gardens is not officially part of Acadia National Park but is adjacent and connected through trails. If you are ever visiting Acadia try to visit Atiscou and Thuya Gardens. It's a beautifully maintained property with lovely gardens.  The trail we took has some pretty mossy areas and you can get a glimpse, on the left, of how well manicured the trail is.  There are miles and miles of carriage trails in Acadia. They were developed in the late 1800's by the barons of industry (Rockefellers, Fords, Vanderbilts, Morgans, etc). This is where they chose to summer and the developed these carriage trails so they could travel to the tops of the mountains and enjoy the beautiful views. Now they are used by hikers, cyclists, runners and horse drawn carriages. Most are many miles long so they are good for a long, relatively easy, walk. They aren't flat so there's a lot of up and down hiking to keep the blood flowing. I love that they are mostly all lined with granite blocks. Besides timber, cod and lobster, granite mining was a major industry here.  Even the park bridges are made from granite. This is a small one.  This is one of the large ones, the Amphitheater Bridge. We hiked under this bridge on the Amphitheater Trail last year and it was one of our favorite hikes.  Yesterday afternoon we started getting more settled in and I got my sewing corner set up. I love the view from my sewing room at home but it pales compared to this one.  Before we left Greenville I got close to 60 more block corners sewn along with the offcut mini HSTs. I'm ready to start sewing these into blocks.  I have about 80 blocks cut out and once they are sewn I'll need to do some math and see how many more I need. I'm out of light fabric so I might go shop for some light blue batiks to finish off the blocks. I don't think anyone would notice batiks mixed in as long as they are mottled and not printed.  On the crochet front, I finished these two hats for donation. I had a skein of this dark green yarn that I wanted to use up and a pattern I wanted to try out. It's the Crochet Baby James Beanie and it comes is all sizes. I like working a hat in this way and will use this pattern again.  Laura finished the second veterans quilt top Thursday night before we left Greenville.  She's now moved on to knitting. This is a sweater project that she started in May, the last time she visited the US and it will be her US project until she finishes. She wanted to cover a mistake for the photo.
That's about all from here. I'm hoping for kayaking weather today. It was way to breezy for that yesterday. I have a toe injury (long story about me being a klutz) that I keep reigniting so I will take today off from hiking or even walking much. Plus my friend, Anne, has arrived and we'll plan something that she wants to do. The boys will get to take one of their hard hikes today. I won't go on hikes with cliffs or rungs to climb.  Yesterday brought us better weather than we expected but we still didn't' feel that the trails were dry enough. We are planning to get out on one of our favorite trails today if the good weather holds. I did get the next batch of 40 blocks done for my blue quilt so I have a total of 99 out of 256 done and the pile of tiny HSTs is really growing.  Laura is almost done with her second veterans quilt top. We might have to go to the quilt shop today and get fabric for another kit for her. We've picked a simple pattern and the local shop has some nice woodsy themed fabrics that would work well.  Today's crochet was the baby quilt and I got about 6 more rows done, finishing off a row of dark blue squares. If I crochet today it will be on the sweater. I like to alternate the projects.  The weather was much better than forecast yesterday. Weather forecasts here are really just a total waste of time. I did a pretty hard workout this morning so I was not interested in the 8 mile walk that Ian and Laura took into town. Chris and I drove in to pick them up and make a trip for groceries. While we were having dinner I looked out and realized that last night was our first real sunset since the night we arrived. I rushed down to the pond to capture it.  After sunset I convinced Chris that we needed a fire. After all, we had bought all the makings for s'mores and this was our first opportunity to use them. It was a lovely calm evening for a fire. Isn't the moose cut-out on the fire ring cute?
Here's hoping for a nice hike today!  Yesterday was kind of perfect. It had a morning of recreation and and afternoon of reading and crafts. I'll start with the afternoon activities. I didn't finish any more blocks for the blue quilt but I chain pieced parts for about 40 more blocks. We are expecting bad weather today so I might get this set done today.  Laura started the second veterans quilt kit that I brought for her. I think I'm going to have to go to the local fabric store tomorrow and get more fabric for her. She's got another week and a half here and is about out of sewing projects!  While she was sewing, I added two more rounds to my hexie cardigan and finished listening to Yellowface. I will have a lot to say about that book in my book review at the end of the month. I did not particularly enjoy it and got a totally different message out of it than what I've read in other reviews.  I also finished reading this book and I don't recommend it either unless you are a scientist or mathematician or just want to make your brain hurt. It was a difficult read. I'm digging into a new Michael Koryta mystery tomorrow for something easier.  The one thing that you cannot rely upon here is the weather report. The day rarely turns out to be what's predicted and today was no exception. We did get clouds and a little rain in the afternoon/evening but the morning started out beautiful. Laura and I got in a 4 mile walk and then Chris and I headed out on the kayaks and it was absolutely beautiful on the pond today.  This pond has yellow water lilies. We had not seen yellow ones before and I was shocked to be able to get the bloom and dragonfly in the photo together.  We also saw a few loons. The photo is a little blurry because I had to zoom in so much to get the photo but I was thrilled to get a photo at all. They usually dive just as I'm about to snap the picture. They are such beautiful birds and we just love hearing their calls in the evening.  I've become really fascinated with trees growing on and in rocks. These trees seem to be perched on top of the rocks and have created their own dirt mound within the roots.
The tide has started to turn on the gaming. Ian and I had a puzzle race which I won by 5 minutes, then I finally won a Cribbage set (he's still ahead 5 sets to 1) and I beat him and Chris at Scrabble. I made two separate words off the "z". We'll see if my luck holds tonight. We do expect rain/clouds today but it could change. We'll make the best of whatever it is.  I didn't post yesterday because Friday was an all-rain day here and we used the opportunity to read and sew. I just didn't have enough worth sharing yesterday. But last night Laura finished this quilt top and I made some progress on my blue blocks. The colors in this photo aren't accurate. It's a lot prettier in real life and you will see it again after I get it quilted and bound later in the year. It was a good use of the box of leaf printed fabrics.  I finished 30 more blue blocks. I think I'm really going to love this quilt.  I have 40 dark blocks and 19 light blocks done for a total of 59 out of 256. I also have 118 mini HST blocks.  This was our view on Friday and will likely be part of today too. With rain coming on alternate days we are starting to give up on hiking. The trails here are steep and have lots of areas that collect water. They will be too slippery unless it stops raining for a couple of days. But we can still kayak. Chris and Ian did a long kayak but I decided to do a long walk and a 40 minute HIIT routine. By the time my opportunity to paddle came around I was spent. Today may be my day, depending on the weather.  The Cribbage tournament continues and I still haven't won a match. I (red) was way ahead in this game but Ian came from behind to whip me again.  After Cribbage we drag Chris in for a game of Scrabble. I did win one of those games but Ian won this one with his judicious use of the J, Z and X. The weather isn't perfect but we are having a lovely time.
We had lobster for dinner last night and it will be our last until we get to Acadia this weekend. It was outstanding, as always. |
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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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