A Sampling of HSTs

I am not a big fan of sampler quilts, as a rule. I think they sometimes struggle for cohesion. I am making one anyway. All 61 blocks for the Ritzville quilt are done, but I have a pile of leftover HSTs. (I’ll still have leftovers after this sampler top is done, but I may be tired of them by then.)

This sampler quilt is based on the Layer Cake Sampler QAL (Quiltalong) at Material Girl Quilts. The blocks don’t require a lot of brainpower on my part beyond arranging 16 HSTs into various patterns and sewing them together. They go quickly. I made seven of 20 total yesterday afternoon:

They will get sashed with white strips in between to give them a bit of breathing room. Who knew that 16 blue and white HSTs could be arranged in so many different ways?

I cannot start anything new this week. I need to finish up some existing projects, first. The blocks for the Ritzville quilt are done, but I still have to cut the setting triangles and put the quilt top together. That’s going to be a big job.

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I got one half of the zipper removed from the husband’s Carhartt hoodie, but I didn’t have the correct zipper in the needed length, nor were there any in town. (Joanns was having a 40% off Coats and Clarks zipper sale and someone got there ahead of me and cleaned out most of them.) I ordered two. I was really cranky about that on Saturday afternoon. I had it all set in my head that I would knock that project out and be done with it and then I hit a roadblock. I had zippers aplenty in the stash—I had separating zippers, coverall zippers, parka zippers, purse zippers, 24” zippers, 26” zippers, 30” zippers, but no heavy-duty separating 28” zippers. I couldn’t make any of the ones I had work. This is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts.

I’ll get the other half of the zipper removed and patch the lining in the meantime.

I stopped at the sew ‘n vac place that sells Janome machines on Saturday to see if they had the clear plastic foot for the coverstitch machine. They did not. I had to order that, too. Sometimes it’s not worth the time or fuel to drive around town looking for all of these things when ultimately, I end up ordering them anyway.

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Part of our seed order arrived on Saturday:

I love that Baker Creek always includes a free packet of something new and different. This order included seeds for Purple Russian tomatoes. That’s a variety we’ve never done before. These will go into the garden with our Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, and Oregon Star tomatoes and we’ll see how they do. Perhaps they will end up in the permanent rotation.

It’s almost February! Another month and it’ll be time to start seeds in the greenhouse. I am putting all the chipmunks on notice.