My quilting journey.
I was so proud last week.
I had Esther’s Bloomers on the design wall ready to call it a finished
top. Well, you know what is said about
pride going before a fall. I had taken
my picture…
It took several days before I felt like I could trust myself
with a seam ripper.
NOW it’s a finished top.
Live -- My 2021 Word
Falling
down is part of life. Getting back up is
living – Jose N. Harris
I delayed writing this post because just showing more petals
being appliqued wasn’t very newsworthy, but it’s time to document that I am
still working on Esther’s Bloomers and gradually making progress.
The center has grown, and two of the applique borders are
ready to be attached.
I had a small diversion when a neighbor asked me to hem a
dust ruffle. The quilt was made by an
aunt, and the dust ruffle added by her daughter so it could serve as a
bedspread. I stitched the hem when we
could see just how much fabric we had to work with.
Our area is rated as being in moderate drought, so we were
very happy when we had four inches of rain last weekend. I love sitting at one of my vintage machines while it rains.
Now that hubby and I are fully vaccinated, life has loosened up just a bit. We are still being cautious, but I have had a haircut (yippee) and we even joined our neighbors for a backyard barbeque Sunday night.
Live -- My 2021 Word
We choose
our life every day. We don’t necessarily
choose our circumstances every day, but we do choose the person we are going to
be. —Becoming Minimalist
The final borders for Esther’s Bloomers are coming
along. After I finish appliqueing the half
circles to the remaining two strips, I will need to add 180 leaves. Also, not shown is a fourth pieced strip.
The latest fabric splurge arrived last week. I think it will work as a border fabric on a
blue/green/neutral top I began last year.
Julia kindly gifted me with pink flamingoes on my birthday
last November. I’ve decided to continue
with the pink theme in my patio plantings.
These little violets are pretty right now, but are so
invasive, I’ll be fussing about them later this spring. As a young woman, I was perplexed when my
mother asked for a grubbing hoe for Christmas.
Now that it’s a lot harder for me to get up and down, I’ve come to
appreciate a hoe when weeding flower beds.
We finally decided that it is warm enough for Maddie to be
groomed. Believe it or not, this is the
same dog. Who would have thought she had
ears? She does clean up rather well.
And finally, following the lead set by Wanda at Exuberant Color and Julie at Me and My Quilts, here’s what hair that hasn’t seen a
stylist in 13 months looks like. Never ever have I had hair this long. I had
my second Covid shot this week. So, I’ll be
thinking about a hair cut in two weeks or so.
Live -- My 2021 Word
Decide to live your life.
Stop comparing yourself to others. You were not born to live their life. There
is no sense in wasting yours being jealous of theirs. Instead, you were born to
live your life – determine today to be good at it. After all, you only get one
shot. – Joshua Becker
I delayed this post in the hopes that I would have something
to report other than just cutting and prepping for Unit 6 of Esther’s Bloomers. Alas, I’m still chugging along in that early
stage. After I finally finish turning
the edges on the 180 leaves, I will still need to prep 60 small, medium and
large half circles for applique. I may
have to put is aside for a day or two just so I can get some machine stitching
therapy in.
We have definitely thawed out and the highs this week have
been in the mid and high 70s. Trees are
beginning to bud, and our live oaks are dropping leaves like crazy. They are great trees, but messy this time of
year.
I received my first Covid vaccine last Saturday and was
pleased that I had a very mild reaction.
The second shot may be more potent, or maybe not.
My grandson gave me a gift card for my birthday and I
decided to celebrate the thaw with an indulgence. It was wonderful.
And, I guess possession truly is 9/10 of the law, sigh.
Live
-- My 2021 Word
For the first time ever, the entire state of Texas was under
a winter storm warning Sunday night. In addition, we had a wind chill warning,
another first time event for our immediate area. Depending on
which report you choose to believe, it was either 5, 8 or 9 degrees when we woke
up Monday. Tuesday wasn’t any
better.
Our community is pretty much shut down and the
state’s power grid has been seriously threatened. I confess, we Texans don’t know how to deal
with this, but experience is a great teacher.
When I opened the Washington Post web site this morning, I saw these
headlines.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blames wind turbines, Green New Deal policies for outages. Critics call that ‘a lie.' -- By Katie Shepherd
Volunteers race to save thousands of cold-stunned turtles washing up in Texas -- By Teo Armus
Texas mayor tells residents to fend for themselves during power outage: ‘Only the strong will survive’ – (NOT our mayor! I understand this person has since resigned.)
The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn’t see the need to prepare for cold weather -- (The back story is our wind turbines froze during the ice storm and solar panels were blanketed by snow rendering them ineffective.)
And in quilting news…
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -- Thomas A. Edison
I’m rather disappointed by how much time I didn’t spend in
my sewing room last week. It got off to
a good start with being able to quickly die cut more than 500 1 ½ and 2 ½ inch squares
for Unit 5 of Esther’s Bloomers. Then
the week seemed to dissolve into interruptions and distractions. I don’t understand how that can happen when
we’re pretty much homebound due to the pandemic.
Here is the stitching I managed to complete. There are several more steps in this unit
including flying geese. At least this
unit does not have applique.
I also managed to complete five anti-ouch pouches for the
January drop off and have five more in the works.
Live -- My 2021 Word
God invented love, and it is therefore perfect, and dogs are better at celebrating this perfection than we are. When in doubt as to how we should feel, we could do far worse than trying to live life like the dogs. -- W. Bruce Cameron
I finished Unit 4 of Esther’s Bloomers this weekend and was
very relieved to find that the pieced borders fit when I added them to the
center. There are only two units left. If the weight of the packages is any indication,
they will keep me busy for a while.
Before I can move on to the next unit, however, I need to
change directions. There is a scheduled drop
off for anti-ouch pouches Friday and I want to have some to turn in.
Live -- My 2021 Word
The components for Unit 4 of Esther’s Blooms are coming
along. This section does not require any
applique and my aching thumb is very appreciative. I’ve never been a big fan on pinwheel blocks,
but I do like the ones with the borders.
Bob and I have tried very hard to lower our exposure to
Covid and so far, we have been fortunate.
So, Friday was a real awakening.
Our air bed has reached the point where it is in serious need of repair
or replacement. We made a run into
Georgetown Friday to learn about our options.
I think we managed well. We
distanced, hand sanitized, everyone was masked, and there were only five of us
in the store including employees. What
amazed me was the amount of traffic and the crowded parking lots for shopping and
restaurants we passed on the way there.
I guess living in a small city with a high percentage of retirees has
pretty much kept me out of the loop on pandemic life in bigger cities with
younger populations.
Sunday was a rare treat.
It ended up being a fuzzy sock, stretchy sweat suit, watch it snow kind
of day. Snow is a novelty in our part of
the world, especially when it occurs on a weekend when business and school
traffic is minimal. The temperatures
never dipped below 34 degrees. So of
course, it disappeared quickly, but was quite pretty for the three hours it
fell.
I was at my sewing machine looking out at the front yard
while it happened. Bob was not quite as happy about it, though. It interfered with satellite reception for
the football games.
I absolutely love my Roomba, especially now that we can
program specific areas rather than doing the entire house at a time. I then decided it was time to upgrade my mop
as well.
Even the self-wringing models you can find at the grocery store
are hard for me to operate and their heads are smaller than I like. I decided to order one of these spinning
mops. I was impressed during its maiden
voyage Saturday. The mopping motion has
a different feel than a standard mop and requires some getting used to; but it
did a good job. Of course, after Sunday’s
rain and snow event, I need to do it all over again (I love my dogs).
Cutting is definitely my least favorite part of making a quilt. This is especially true when cutting from a purchased kit where minor miss-cuts can result in major problems. I spent a few hours this weekend, cutting Unit 4 our Esther’s Bloomers. I had one minor miss-cut, but was able to salvage it by using remnants from Units 1-3. I probably don’t need to worry too much about getting replacement fabric, because I know the shop owner held some back for just such situations.
In other news, I discovered this thread cone over the weekend. I think I'll blame it on our grand puppy which visited briefly last week. Certainly, my dogs would never do something like that...yeah, right.
I noticed that a number of bloggers I follow are choosing their word for 2021. Mine is “live”.
Frequently during 2020 I felt like my life was on hold. I was waiting for the pandemic to end, the
vaccine to arrive, the election to come to a grinding halt and mostly for
restrictions to lift. All of these were
things totally out of my control and I had to keep reminding myself not to let
them pull me into a morass of self-pity.
So, in 2021 I want to focus on how to live fully on whatever terms life
presents itself.
One blogger I know, ends her posts with some quotation pertaining to her word of the year. So, to follow her example, I’ll start with:
Live and let live.
My red and white project is finally quilted and ready for a
trim and binding. Yea!
Three of four borders are done. There have been many days you could find me at the kitchen table working on this while listening to audio books. My most recent “listen” was Eleanor by David Michaelis. It was a fascinating look into the life of Eleanor Roosevelt. I’m learning that she was a very complex, and not very happy person who totally gave herself for others. I hope the next unit in this BOM has more machine piecing and less handwork.
Hubby gave me an early Christmas gift this week, a
Roomba! I’ve always been fascinated by
these things, but it was not until our daughter got one that he showed any interest. I love what it does, but I
think he has had the most fun mapping and programming it. It’s first pass through our house took eight
hours. Hopefully, future runs will be
quicker now that it has learned its way around.
Unit 3 of Esther’s Bloomers has lots of applique. As I was stitching the background and
prepping the applique, it occurred to me that the geese were flying and the
leaves were falling indoors as well as out.
There are 84 leaves plus large and small semi-circles to be appliqued to
rows of flying geese in this unit.
Thankfully, all the prep work is done.
I continued using the Appliquick products for prepping the leaves. The semi-circles which are applied in two
layers would have been too thick using that method, especially since they are
partially stitched in the seam line. I
returned to my old method of forming them around no-melt templates using
starch. I have plenty of handwork to occupy me during
the evenings.
My machine stitching these days mostly focuses on a a red and white project on my quilter. I knew I would need red thread for the bobbin when I got to the border. I prefer using Bottom Line and went online to place my order. I only needed and wanted a single spool as I probably have enough thread in my stash to circle the globe, just not red for my bobbin. I appreciated the prompt shipment, but found the packaging to be a bit much for one spool.
A call went out to guild members requesting donations of precut batting for use in the cryotherapy mitts we make for certain types of chemo. I happily thinned out some of my smaller batting scraps.
Unit 2 of Kim Diehl’s Esther’s Bloomers block of the month is finally done. Four more units to go. I was relieved to see that my piecing was accurate enough for the borders to fit with no problem. The pattern calls for several more pieced borders.
In order to get an acceptable image at the beginning of this post, I had to fiddle with fill light settings in Picasa 3. I would love to find portable, and not too pricy, lighting for when I photograph quilts. None of our windows illuminate my design wall evenly and our ceiling lights are too dim. A blogger I follow suggested using the ring lights that are made for selfies. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know. I have one of "those" birthdays coming up next month. Since parties, our annual birthday-anniversary trip to San Antonio, and even shopping sprees are not going to happen, maybe I can order some new lighting? Just a thought.
September was gone before it got here. How can time pass so quickly when so much has
been cancelled or postponed? Now that October
has arrived we are enjoying cooler temperatures. I keep telling my friends that this is why we
live in Central Texas. Actually, I live
in Central Texas because that’s where my heart is, but summers are really a
bear.
I finished my part of the guild group applique project, and
very happily handed it off to the project coordinator. I was flattered that they asked me to
participate, but could not believe how challenged I felt. My hand applique skills were really
rusty.
I was recently given the name of a new neighbor who happens
to be a quilter. I called to chat with
her and learned she was about to deliver some of her excess fabric to one of
the local thrift stores. I snagged the
tub which was so heavy it took two of us to load it in the back of my car.
The contents were mostly quilter’s cotton that she just didn’t want any more, perfect for anti-ouch pouches which require a half yard each. There were also a couple of unopened kits that will probably be donated to the guild’s boutique, assuming our quilt show goes on as scheduled in February 2022. Smaller remnants can be used in our other two cancer support projects. We make kangaroo aprons which are used to hold the drain apparatus and hoses after breast surgery. Our newest project is cryotherapy mitts which are helpful for patients undergoing some types of chemotherapy. As it so happened, today was the scheduled collection date for kits we completed in September. I had 10 completed pouches and a lot of fabric to pass along, and it was wonderful to see some of my quilting friends (socially distanced and masked up, of course).
I’m looking forward to resuming work on the projects that
had to be set aside while I worked on the group project. Esther’s
Bloomers block of the month by Kim Diehl is the one I'm most anxious to work on.
I’m in the middle to unit 2 of 6 and hope to really focus on it now.
We had some rain in September and I spotted a rainbow. I have always loved seeing them.
I should be receiving my next block of the month installment soon, so I’ve been trying to complete the first month’s assignment. I wanted attempt a fancier project and this one will certainly provide that challenge. It is a design by Kim Diehl called Esther’s
Bloomers.
Here is the center block.
It was not difficult.
The smaller blocks that will eventually surround it will
take longer. There are 36 small leaves that need to be appliqued.
This is my first attempt at using Apliquick tools and a glue stick for prepping the
units. It took many false
starts before I was happy with the results, but this method is much easier on my hands
than molding each piece around a heat-resistant template with starch as I have done in the past. Fortunately, You Tube
videos helped me learn the technique.
A group of us gathered in a parking lot Tuesday to drop off completed anti-ouch pouches and pick up supplies for more. I had 33 pouches to hand in. We wore our masks and social distanced as much as possible. Somehow we managed to not exchange our usual hugs.
As one of our number said, we are hug hungry.
We expect to hit triple digit temperatures today. I'm most grateful for a working air conditioner.
