Raising the Bar

The libertarian part of me that doesn’t concern itself with things that don’t affect me directly sometimes comes into conflict with the part of me that likes to go tilting at windmills. (The husband has been known to leave for work in the mornings by giving me a kiss and expressing sympathy for said windmills on his way out the door.) I couldn’t help myself yesterday morning. I ran across such a badly-written article on a Spokane news station website that I felt compelled to e-mail the news director. The author of the article would not have passed my eighth-grade English class back in Avon, Ohio. The entire piece read as though it had been written by a child. The most egregious error was the use of the word “breached” to describe a buttocks-presentation birth. (Hello? Merriam-Webster? Google?) I did not receive a response to my e-mail but I saw, later in the day, that the errors had been corrected.

And now we reach the “get off my lawn” portion of today’s blog post. What is with people nowadays? Is it laziness? Is it ignorance? Is it sheer incompetence? Has the bar really fallen so low that some middle-aged woman in Kalispell, Montana, has to take a virtual red pen to an article on a regional news stations’s website?

This makes quite a statement (I would like to credit it but I can’t remember where I found it):

How many 18-year-old boys match this description today? My very attractive and accomplished younger daughter has a lot to say about the lack of maturity in the young men of her generation. I know that mediocrity is rampant among people of all ages, not just certain generations. I’m tired of it. And I am becoming far less willing to ignore it when I see it. Show up and make an effort.

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I planted more seeds yesterday and will finish up this morning. The husband and I also did a recon tour of the garden to formulate a plan of attack. The potatoes need to go in soon. If it’s too windy to burn today, we might plant. I have to decide if I want to leave the billboard tarp on the spot where I want to put an herb garden, out by the strawberries. That area is terribly overgrown with quackgrass and Oregon grape. It would be better to leave the tarp on one more season to make sure that nothing survives under there, but I’m itching to plant that section.

Our neighbor, Mike, came over and I gave him some bacon as a thank-you—he feeds scraps to the pigs because the pig pasture backs up onto his property. He’s on the fire department with the husband and also works as a flight medic on the ALERT helicopter. His garden was lovely last year. He grew enough kale for the whole neighborhood, LOL.

Cobbles and Pebbles and Peeps

The Cobbles and Pebbles pattern is live in the store and on sale for the first week.

Some time between now and next fall, I need to figure out how to handle the social media end of pattern production. I am terrible about posting on Instagram and I only check Facebook when I get a notification of activity on my page. The time I do spend online is usually in a homesteading chat group, which is full of people who actually do things rather than wasting their time on social media yelling about stuff they can’t change.

As a result, there is no coordinated social media campaign to launch this pattern. I will try to fix that before I release any more patterns, but farming is the big focus for me right now. With the nice weather, we’ve also had some visits from friends and neighbors, and sitting on the porch enjoying the sunshine with people we haven’t seen all winter is important.

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This is not my first rodeo. I am convinced that the farm store really has no clue when they are getting chicks. An employee might tell you the chicks are expected on Friday, but when you get there on Friday, you discover that the shipment came in on Thursday and all the chicks have been sold. I had a hunch the store might get a shipment yesterday, so I drove in to town midmorning. I heard the telltale peeping noises as soon as I walked in. The stock also bears no resemblance to what the chick schedule said was supposed to come in. I get a different breed of chickens every season so we know how old each cohort is. I needed black or white ones this year. There weren’t enough of one breed of either color, so I ended up with 10 black Jersey Giants and 10 White Plymouth Rocks. That works.

[I think that next year, a group of us is going to have to get together and order directly from the hatchery. I’m not interested in playing chick roulette with the farm store again next year.]

I also bought six chicks (a variety of breeds) for Susan, although when I dropped them off and she opened the box, she discovered that one was missing. We still don’t know where it went. She drove back in to town with the receipt and got a replacement.

Our peeps went into the brooder box where they settled right in:

This is a very active group of peeps. The chicks I hatched out last year slept a lot.

We made a change this year and put the brooder box in the old garage instead of the coop. The old garage stays at a consistent 55 degrees, which—along with the heat lamps—provides a better environment than the temperature swings in the coop. This also means that big chickens are not standing on top of the wire cover looking down into the brooder box. And I can pop out to the garage several times a day to check on peeps without the big chickens mobbing me for scratch grains.

I spent a few hours in the greenhouse yesterday potting up seeds. We are having a plant sale later this spring to help raise funds for our local community group, the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation, so I am planting extra of everything. Last year, Susan gave me two Dirty Girl tomato seeds that she got from a farmer in California. (This is an open pollinated tomato similar to Early Girl.) Only one of them germinated, but I saved all the seed from that plant’s tomatoes. If they germinate, I’ll have several dozen—plenty for us and some to share. I also saved the seed from the largest Cherokee Purple and Indian Stripe tomatoes. Plant genetics are kind of fun to play with. I keep thinking that as promiscuous as my lavender plants are, the chances of a new variety popping up are pretty high, but I don’t have time to spend trying to isolate and propagate it.

I’ll plant the cukes, melons, and zucchinis today. This morning, though, I am going to assemble Bertha’s Flower Garden blocks, which I finished appliquéing last night.

The Kiss of the Sun

After a quick trip to the farm store yesterday morning (still no chicks), I went out to the garden to see what needed to be done. I know there is advice circulating around social media not to clean up dead branches, etc., until the temperatures are consistently in the 50s so as to allow pollinators to emerge from their winter homes. The problem here is that we don’t have those conditions until later in the season, and there will be other pressing tasks then. I’m going to continue to work as I always have. Yesterday was a bright, sunny day and it got up into the 50s. I worked in a T-shirt and jeans.

I got out the clippers and went after the dead canes in the raspberry patch. Our raspberry patch got very overgrown, and cleaning it up has been a multi-year project. I’m also beating back the suckers that want to take over and slowly taking out the thorny variety in favor of the thornless one. The two varieties were interplanted when we put the patch in. Thankfully, the thornless variety is more vigorous and productive.

The patch looks much better now, with better air circulation between the canes and less cover for the ground squirrels.

It felt so good to be outside moving around! I wandered around the garden to see how things were doing. The rhubarb is just starting to put up shoots. And in last year’s row of lettuce, I found this:

A few plants overwintered! We may have greens sooner than expected.

I moved some landscape fabric around and put cardboard down to get ahead of the weeds. The husband will help me move the black plastic around this weekend. The potatoes need to go in soon, too.

I still have to finish pruning fruit trees and decide where the new ones will go. Susan grafted some apple varieties for me last year. One is from her Northern Lights tree—she says that is her favorite pie apple. I am not sure it will de-throne Duchess of Oldenburg, which is my favorite pie apple, but I’m willing to try it. She tried to graft a Duchess for me last year but it didn’t take. She’s also got a Westfield Seek-No-Further for me. That is an apple I wanted simply because it’s mentioned in one of my favorite books (the Wilderness Series by Sara Donati).

I’m going to give the farm store another week, and if I still can’t get chicks, I’ll set up the incubator. A couple of hens are taking turns sitting on a pile of eggs—of course, being birds with brains the size of peas, the pile of eggs is on the floor under the nesting boxes instead of inside them. I asked the husband to leave the eggs there—we have plenty—just in case they manage to hatch out a chick or two. I usually collect eggs in the afternoon when I feed the chickens, but he’ll bring in any he finds at night when he closes up the coop, so I have to let him know if I want to let hens go broody.

Gardening season is officially underway. I will still work on sewing projects here and there as I have time, but I’ll be outside as much as I can.

I quilted the inside section of the green and purple quilt the other day. I did loopy flowers in light lavender thread:

I still have to do the outer border. I’d like to do some kind of leafy vine in that area, but I need to practice, first, on some scrap quilt sandwiches.

The GFG blocks are almost done—I have six left to appliqué and then I can put the top together. That one may have to wait until next fall to be quilted, but at least the top will be done. This is my favorite block:

I love how Bertha fussy cut the little chick for one of the hexies. I plan to put this block in the center of the top.

Another Quilt Finish

As I mentioned, the Under the Big Top quilt has been quilted and bound.

Temps are supposed to be in the 60s here by Thursday, so I am hoping to get some nice outside shots of some of these quilts later this week. For now, though, the floor of the bedroom has to do. I am pleased with how this turned out, particularly because I reverse-engineered it and was flying by the seat of my pants. Now I need to finish the pattern.

I will get the Cobbles and Pebbles pattern put into the store this week. I was reluctant to release a pattern for sale just as I was leaving town.

I sat and undid the rest of the flower blocks from their white hexie backgrounds yesterday. They had been hand sewn together with small running stitches and very secure knots. I put on a YouTube video and worked under the Ott Lite. The flowers are all pressed and starched and ready to appliqué to the Kona White background squares, which I will cut this morning. The purple and green quilt is basted and sitting on the table next to the Q20. If I have time this afternoon, I’ll start quilting that one. I’m trying to take advantage of a few crummy weather days to get stuff done or moved along in the pipeline before I start working out in the greenhouse and garden. The husband would like to burn slash piles in the woods this weekend, so that’s on the schedule as well.

There were no chicks at the farm store yesterday. One of the employees told me they might get a shipment today or tomorrow, so Susan’s husband is going to check there today and I’ll run in again tomorrow. I did get some seed potatoes—Yukon Golds and Castle Russets—but the garden center was limiting customers to 10 pounds total. (We still have some potatoes left from last season that we can use, but I like to get new stock every couple of years.) I have plenty of canning jars and lids, which continue to be in short supply, but who knows what’s going to become scarce in the next couple of months?

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I had a long phone visit with DD#1 yesterday. It sounds like she and DSIL are settling in to life in Alaska. DSIL is setting up the dental clinic at the Coast Guard base and she is working on getting her Alaska occupational therapy credentials so she can look for a job. Their house is right on a small bay and she said a mama seal and baby are often out there. Bald eagles are everywhere. They’ve met the neighbors and might try out a Lutheran church. Both of them love to sing and it would be wonderful if they could be part of a musical group.

DD#2 started her new job last week, which is why I spent a fair bit of time shopping and entertaining myself in Seattle during the day. She and her roommate (who is employed by an accounting firm) both work from home. They have their desks set up in the front window of their living room and the arrangement seems to suit them both. We had time to visit in the mornings and evenings. I’ve been to Seattle often enough that I’m comfortable exploring on my own.

I am glad my kids are happy and productive.

Visiting the In-Laws

Susan and I arrived in Seattle on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday morning, DD#2 made me breakfast, we swapped cars, and I drove her diesel Jetta onto the ferry for a trip across Puget Sound to the peninsula.

Our DSIL’s parents helpfully arranged an appointment with their mechanic so we could get the Jetta’s oil and filters changed and the summer tires put on. (Snow tires have to be off by March 31 in WA state.) That also gave me an excellent reason to visit them. While the car was in the shop, DSIL’s mom and I went to a small quilt shop in their town. The store has temporarily located to a building next door while their original shop undergoes some renovations, but they have a lovely selection and I did some damage there:

I bought a length of Grunge in navy blue with teal accents, some Kona in a color called Blueprint (for binding), an older Bonnie and Camille print I had been searching for, and some wool felt. This store had several out-of-print fabric lines in the back room, including some of the Corey Yoder Pepper and Flax line. Large quilt stores tend to churn through inventory quickly. The big quilt store in Spokane rarely has fabric from lines older than a year or so. Smaller quilt stores might keep stock for several years. They often don’t have online ordering, though, so the only way to find some of these older fabrics is to visit in person.

I spent the night at the in-laws’ house rather than driving back to Seattle in the dark. I timed my departure the next morning so I could stop at another quilt store before getting on the ferry. The Quilted Strait, in Port Gamble, WA, has always been closed when I’ve driven over to the in-laws’. I arrived a few minutes before they opened Thursday morning. This store is well stocked and beautifully laid out and worth a visit if you are in the Seattle area.

I bought a fat quarter bundle of Tim Holtz fabric, some Diagonal Seam Tape—which had been a specific item on my shopping list—a holder for my spray bottle that clamps onto my ironing board, and some Valdani thread. This store had a fantastic selection of wool embroidery supplies, including the entire line of Valdani threads. These are the same ones that Primitive Gatherings uses in their patterns. I had never seen them in person. I bought several balls of the #12 perle cotton, which is impossible to find except online (more on that in a moment).

[Diagonal Seam Tape is the brainchild of Allison, at Cluck Cluck Sew, and adheres to the bed of your sewing machine much like painter’s tape. It provides clear center and 1/4” sewing lines for making HSTs and other units where you sew on the diagonal. Everyone who has used it says it’s a game changer, so I thought I’d try it.]

After I got back to DD#2’s and retrieved the BMW, I headed up toward the mall where she used to work. I had a few items to look for at Kohls and Target and also stopped at Barnes and Noble, Trader Joe’s, Joanns, Hobby Lobby, and Half-Price books. I found a book on blacksmithing for the husband.

Friday’s shopping excursion included a trip to Ikea, which is south of Seattle by the airport. I go there because it’s fun to walk around, but on this trip, the only thing I bought was a dozen lint roller refills and some small items for DD#2. (I have found lint rollers to be very useful in the sewing room.) Just a little bit further south, off of I-5, is a small town on the edge of Puget Sound called Des Moines (like Iowa), and there I visited Carriage Country Quilts. I could have spent hours in that store. They carry a lot of reproduction Civil War and 1930s fabrics, as well as tons of wool embroidery supplies, including both Valdani and Aurifil threads. Aurifil makes embroidery threads in addition to quilting threads.

[Visiting stores like this reminds me that despite the internet and the availability of online ordering, Montana is at least a year behind the rest of the country in terms of trends. It always has been. Our quilt stores carry small amounts of wool embroidery supplies—and have more stock than they did a year ago—but clearly, the wool embroidery craze has yet to reach us in full force. It is frustrating to watch YouTube videos touting all these cool projects and know that you have nowhere to take a class or even see them in person to to determine if it’s something you would like to try.]

In any case, it’s probably a good thing that my shopping time in that store was limited:

I came out with a pattern for a quilt done in wool embroidery on a linen background. The owner of the store is doing it as a block of the month kit and I briefly considered signing up for that, but settled on just the pattern. I also bought a spool of Aurifil 12wt thread to try and a small bundle of wool felt fat quarters. The wool felt in this store is hand-dyed by a local artist. Because I bought wool felt, the owner threw in a bag of wool scraps—always useful—and because it was my first time in the store, I got a free fat quarter of fabric (the flannel pig print). I certainly will be making another trip to this store the next time I visit DD#2.

My vacation is over and now the fun starts here on the homestead. The husband picked up eight bags of potting soil for me so I could get seeds started this week. Susan and I also worked out a plan for getting chicks: if I go to the farm store and they have chicks, I am buying hers as well as mine and vice versa. They have been selling out as soon as they get a shipment, but I don’t have time to camp out at the store all week. Plan B is to hatch out my own again.

The Big Top quilt is finished and bound (pics soon). I have 24 of the 42 Flower Garden blocks appliquéd:

I’ll finish the rest as soon as I cut more background squares. I am pleased with how quickly this came together. I plan to put a label on the back with Bertha’s information on it. She pieced these flowers in February 1950, and 71 years later, they finally made it into a quilt.

The Mothers Take a Road Trip, Spring 2021 Edition

I think I’ve mentioned before that my friend Susan—also known as my kids’ other mother—has a daughter currently living in Seattle, so the two of us took a road trip last week to see our children. (For security reasons, I don’t like to advertise when I am going to be away, or for how long.) We left Monday morning and drove as far as Spokane. I had some hotel points that needed to be used up and also wanted to do some shopping, so we had arranged to spend the night there. It was snowing when we left home and snowed through most of north Idaho. In Spokane, we were treated to sunshine, sleet, rain, snow, and even a thunderstorm.

I had a list of things I wanted to look for on this trip, and I confess to getting a bit carried away with the quilt shopping. As nice as both our quilt stores are, they can’t carry everything. We started at Heartbeat Quilting, where I loaded up on Signature 40wt thread and some grippy stuff for the backs of my longarm rulers:

From there, we moved on to the Quilting Bee, which is a huge store in a big barn-like building. I cannot go into this store without a list, because the sheer amount of stuff is overwhelming. I knew I wanted some of the Thatched fabric by Robin Pickens in a particular shade of blue. I’ve seen it paired with Corey Yoder’s Spring Brook line and like the way it looks. I bought that and a spool of 50wt Aurifil thread in lavender for the bobbin thread in the green and purple quilt:

We also went up to Regal Fabrics and Gifts on South Hill. This is the store where Tera and I took the collage class last November. I went in there looking for a yard of some sparkly gold fabric for binding for Christmas items, but was seduced by some Tula Pink fabric. I am not a Tula Pink fangirl, nor do I really understand the obsession. However, this fabric had sewing machines on it and I think it will make a nice quilted cover for one of my machines. As Irene, the owner, was cutting my fabric, she asked if I had seen the clearance fabric in the back room, so I popped in to take a look and found enough of a vintage reproduction fabric (at 50% off) to back the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt when I get that one done:

I also mined the remnant racks at Joanns and picked up a couple more yards of Kona White for the Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks.

We finished our day with dinner at Wisconsinburger, which is a restaurant in Spokane where DD#1 worked as a waitress when she was in grad school, and then headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday morning dawned cold and foggy, and the sleet from the day before had frozen the car into a solid block of ice. As we headed out of Spokane, though—and climbed in elevation a couple hundred feet—we exited the cloud bank to find clear blue and sunny skies, and the weather was nice all the way to Seattle. Getting over Snoqualmie Pass has been such a hit-or-miss proposition this winter that I was glad we were able to sneak over when the weather was nice. I dropped Susan off at her daughter’s place and headed over to see DD#2. She lives in a duplex and the woman in the other half of the duplex runs an Airbnb in the basement studio apartment. I stayed there all week, which was perfect.

Washington entered Phase 3 of its reopening last Monday, although it was hard to tell that much had changed. Everyone there—especially in Seattle—wears masks indoors and out. I am willing to wear a mask when it’s requested, but some of this is verging on the absurd. I earned a glare from the lady 15 feet away from me while fueling my car because I didn’t have a mask on (she did). And while shopping at JC Penney—where I picked out half a dozen pieces of Liz Claiborne clothing to try on—I was informed that the fitting rooms are closed during the week but they are all open on the weekends, because apparently the virus doesn’t infect anyone on Saturday or Sunday. (Please don’t tell me it’s a staffing issue—even if they wanted to clean and disinfect after each use, I think they could still have ONE women’s and ONE men’s room open during the week.) Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything, and ridiculous policies like that are why JC Penney will eventually go out of business. Nordstrom has at least a few fitting rooms open because they want to sell clothing, not frustrate their customers.

These are only a few of my fabric acquisitions, but the rest will have to wait for tomorrow’s blog post.

Oh, Look—A Hexie!

I am sure by now that some of my blog readers are convinced I have ADD. I don’t. What I DO have is an insatiable curiosity about a whole lot of stuff, and that is what gets me into trouble. I am also conscious of the fact that I do not want to suck the joy out of quilting by monetizing what I do. Part of why I got burned out on knitting was that I never had time to knit things I wanted to knit. I had locked myself into producing patterns on a regular (and rigorous) schedule, so anything I sat down to work on had to have future income-producing potential. I want to give myself permission to monkey around with other quilting projects when I feel like it.

A few years ago, I happened to go into one of the quilt stores in town when they were having a “garage sale.” I bought a large plastic zipper bag containing a whole bunch of Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks, which are quilt blocks made of small hexagon-shaped pieces sewn together. The name and phone number of the quilter who started the project—Bertha—were still in the bag, along with some additional hexagons and a few pieces of material. I contemplated working on it, but that was early in my quilting journey and I didn’t feel up to the task of completing Bertha’s quilt. Everything went into a plastic bin for storage.

Last week, I got the niggling feeling that I should get that box out again and look at it. I know a lot more about English Paper Piecing now, which is the usual way of making Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks. Small pieces of fabric get basted or glued around cardstock shapes, like hexagons. The individual shapes are sewn together and the pieces of cardstock are removed and re-used.

The universe must have been leading me down the garden path—no pun intended—because as I was perusing the wall of Accuquilt dies at the quilt store the other day, I saw that Accuquilt has dies for cutting both EPP templates and fabric pieces. They have a Qube for EPP, which contains dies for making many shapes beyond the traditional hexies, but I decided to start small and bought just the hexie die.

We have good supply of prayer shawls at church now, so I’m going to take a break from knitting. I am hoping to be traveling more this year (Alaska!) and would like to have some handwork projects to take along. My embroidery projects are hard to make portable because I need so many different threads. I am going to see how hexies work as my traveling handwork projects.

But back to Bertha’s quilt . . . the plastic bin contained a number of completed “flowers.” Some flowers had already been joined together using plain white hexies. The flowers themselves are made of truly vintage fabrics from the 1930s and 1940s. Unfortunately, the white fabrics are discolored and stained. Everything appears to have been hand cut and hand pieced, but without cardstock templates.

I was contemplating how to proceed, thinking that at the very least, I could make a bazillion white hexies, replace the discolored ones with new ones, and join the rest of the flowers together, when YouTube, which I had set to autopilot, decided to queue up a Missouri Star Quilt Company video about using vintage quilt blocks:

Jenny mentioned that she likes to buy old quilt blocks at antique stores. She had a whole pile of Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks and decided to appliqué them to white background squares. Brilliant! That would be a much faster way to get these blocks into a finished quilt and honor all the hard work that Bertha put into making them.

I have 42 large Flower Garden blocks measuring 10” across and a dozen smaller ones measuring 8” across. The smaller ones still need to have the outer ring of hexies sewn to each other. The larger ones are complete. There are also a couple of smaller centers that don’t have the outer ring of hexies attached yet.

I pulled out a three-yard chunk of Kona White and cut a stack of 12-1/2” background squares. Jenny suggests attaching the blocks to the background square with fusible strips before appliquéing them. I set up the Janome to make a small blanket stitch edging and loaded it with white Aurifil 50wt. (A 60wt or even 100wt thread might be better, but I used what I had handy.) And before I knew it, I had six appliquéd blocks.

I’m not a purist. I will vote in favor of finished and usable before historical accuracy almost every time. Forty-two 12” blocks are going to make a nice-sized quilt, with or without sashing and cornerstones. Jenny notes that she takes an hour every morning to work on a “fun” project before starting her work sewing, so these will be my “fun” project. Everything I need is stacked in a bin next to the Janome.

And while I was cutting cardstock hexie templates on my Accuquilt cutter, it occurred to me that index cards would make excellent templates and fit easily onto the die. It just so happens that I have a box full of index cards with the names of azalea varieties on them. Grandma Milly was a quilter as well as a gardener—I have half a dozen of her quilts stored in the textile collection—and I think she would approve of that method of recycling them.

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I’ve got the binding attached to the Big Top quilt and have sewn about a third of it down. I should have that done by the end of the weekend. I also discovered that the quilt store in Spokane where I buy Signature thread has PDF inventory sheets on their website, so I printed them out and went through my collection of Signature thread to mark off what I already have. In the process, I discovered that I have a cone of light lavender, which is the color I want to use to quilt the purple and green quilt.

I am a bit concerned that the farm store still has no chicks. I was in there on Thursday. They have all the brooders and lamps out, and by now there should be chicks in at least some of them. The husband asked me if that was because the chicks were selling as soon as they arrived, but I don’t think the store is even getting shipments from the hatchery yet. (I have heard that some hatcheries won’t ship because the postal service is having so many issues and chicks were arriving dead.) Elysian was going to use my incubator, but when we took it out of storage, we discovered that the control module isn’t working. The manufacturer is sending me a replacement module because it’s still under warranty. She found another incubator.

I will hatch out my own chicks if I have to, but I’d prefer not to have to deal with all those juvenile roosters come fall.

Worldwide Quilting Day

Did you know? March is National Quilting Month! And this coming Saturday is Worldwide Quilting Day! A holiday just for quilters!

I hit the to-do list hard yesterday and got the green and purple quilt laid out in the morning. I am using this for the backing (this is pre-pressing):

I snagged the last 2-1/2 yards of this wideback at the quilt store the other day and got a nice end-of-bolt discount. It coordinates well with the front.

One of my blog readers e-mailed me a potential name for the quilt, so I am trying it out to see if the quilt likes it. (I know that sounds bizarre, but quilts have opinions, trust me.) Lilacs fit, definitely, but so do pansies and other purple flowers.

I pulled out some Quilter’s Dream Orient batting for this quilt. It is a luscious blend of bamboo, Tussah silk, Tencel® and cotton. We’ll see how it quilts up. I don’t intend to do any custom quilting on this one except, perhaps, in the borders. The main part is going to be an allover design. I might do flowers. I’d really like a pale lavender thread for the top, though, and I’ll have to get that from the store in Spokane.

And that border—once I got the top smoothed out on the batting—wasn’t wonky at all. I think the pile of the carpet may have been grabbing the seams when I took that previous photo. The top is now pin-basted and rolled up. I’ll start quilting it as soon as I have get the thread.

[The husband had a funny story for me when he got home. He had to use a different line pump company for a pour yesterday. It’s run by an older guy with two older employees. They were dragging the line out for the pour and one of them muttered that he was “too old for this” and said he thought he should retire and take up quilting. I wasn’t pulling a pump line around, but I did crawl around on the floor for a couple of hours getting this quilt basted together.]

After lunch, I sat down at the Q20 and quilted quadrants in two rows of circles. I contemplated doing the rest of the circles but needed a break, so I quilted the border with loops. I’ll finish the rest of the circles this afternoon and then that quilt will be ready to trim and bind. I think the Beginner’s Choice wallhanging will be up next for quilting. Do I know how I want to quilt it? No idea. We will all be surprised together.

I’ve got the Pepper and Flax quilt blocks up on the design wall. I added the beige ones and a couple in gray.

I’m still thinking on this one a bit. Having it up on the wall forces me to look at it regularly.

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I’ve developed a mucous cyst on the joint of my middle finger on my right hand. (Yes, I am self-diagnosing here, but it looks exactly like the photo on the website, so I feel fairly confident that I have it correct.) It is small and doesn’t bother me unless I accidentally bang my finger on something. I’m going to give it a week or two and then decide if I need to make an appointment to have it looked at. My mother has a history of having cysts in various locations that either need to be drained or excised, so this is not unheard of in my family. I am inclined toward conservative management ( = do nothing) unless it starts to interfere with my daily activities.

Our neighbor across the street texted me late in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to walk with her. She and our other neighbor usually walk once a day when the weather is nice, but our other neighbor is visiting her daughter. I put on my hiking boots and headed out. We walked about a mile and a half down our road, then turned around and came back. It was a gorgeous day:

Unfortunately, our next walk is going to require that we bring gloves and a trash bag, because there were an appalling number of beer cans along the side of the road. The amount of trash that people are leaving all over the valley—including mattresses and furniture—is increasing exponentially. Idiots.

Darning in Ends

I’ve been sewing together the last few Guidepost sweaters knit by my MIL so I can package and send them, and it occurred to me that I haven’t finished—as in sewn together—a sweater in over a decade. Apparently, when I left knitting behind, I really left knitting behind. Those skills were right there when I needed them, though. Like riding a bike.

I started quilting the insides of the circles on the Big Top quilt. Each quadrant gets quilted separately.

Custom quilting takes a long time. Hand quilters wouldn’t think twice about this, but on a machine, this kind of quilting involves a lot of starting and stopping. I am being a bit OCD and darning in all my thread ends. The Q20 has a feature that makes a securing stitch at the beginning, but I just don’t trust it. So I pull my bobbin thread up, quilt the section, and when I am done, I grab the self-threading needle that I keep in a pincushion next to the machine and run the thread ends into the batting. It takes a few extra seconds—and over a quilt like this with a lot of little sections, that can add up—but that step makes everything neat and tidy. I did it in knitting; I can do it in quilting.

Once the circles are quilted, I am going to quilt the border and then trim and bind this one. If I think it needs additional quilting in the open sections, I can always go back and add more. For now, though, I need to keep moving projects through the pipeline.

[And I need to stop looking at BlockBase+ or figure out how to clone myself so I can get more done.]

I pulled out the Corey Yoder Pepper and Flax blocks and put them up on the design wall, and then I got out her new Spring Brook fabrics to see what I could add that would finish off that quilt. Another half-dozen blocks and some assembly and I can cross that one off the list (and put it in the growing pile to be quilted). There will be plenty of Spring Brook fabric left from that fat quarter bundle to make at least one other quilt.

This what needs to be done, quilting-wise:

• Post the Cobbles and Pebbles pattern for sale in the store (that will happen this week).

• Quilt the Beginner’s Choice wallhanging and decide if I want to make a quilt version with that block.

• Quilt the Lilac Chain green and purple quilt (its current working title, but if anyone wants to contribute suggestions for a name, drop them in the comments). I need to get thread for that one as I have nothing in light purple or light green.

• Finish quilting and binding Big Top and write the pattern.

• Write the patterns for Beginner’s Choice and Lilac Chain.

• Decide on fabrics for Duck Duck Goose, which is the block I designed that needs to be made into a quilt. The block told me that was its name so I am going with it. Also, I can’t find it in either EQ8 or BB+ or online, so I am claiming it as an original block design and will contribute it gladly to the quilting universe.

• Start the Slabtown Backpack.

• Make some new tops for spring.

I just need to stay accountable to this list and not be distracted by anything else (coughBlockBase+cough). Wish me luck.

Hello, Daylight Savings Time

I know people hate switching to Daylight Savings Time because they lose an hour of sleep, but I welcomed it because now my body has stopped feeling like it was fighting an abnormal schedule. The fact that we have to figure out how to pass laws to get previous dumb laws repealed—Washington state has been trying to eliminate the time change for several years now and can’t seem to get it through the legislature—is a ridiculous commentary on just how useless government can be.

I don’t care which time change we eliminate, as long as we stop this nonsense. Also, it wasn’t the farmers who wanted this, because cows cannot tell time.

I came home from church yesterday and worked on quilting Big Top for a few hours. I made enough progress that now I’m motivated to get it done. I just needed to get over that “middle of the project” hump and get to a point where I could see the finish line. My ruler work continues to improve:

I’ve got to do a thread resupply soon. I am keeping a list of colors I need and will get them from the longarm quilt store in Spokane that carries Signature 40wt. I wish the stores here had it, but they all seem to be fans of Mettler thread. I am not.

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It was warm enough yesterday for the husband and I to reinstate our late afternoon habit of drinks on the veranda. I’ll need to hang up the shade curtain and the hummingbird feeders soon.

We use that time for daily briefings and strategic planning. I asked the husband what he thought about the current building boom here. Northwest Montana has a history of boom-and-bust cycles. We ran into that when we moved here in 1993. We deposited a huge chunk of money from the sale of our Pennsylvania house into one of the local banks, intending to use it as a down payment. A few months later, I went back to that same bank and attempted to get a mortgage for $30,000—an amount that was less than half the purchase price of this property because we had such a big down payment—and they refused. The loan officer told me that they wouldn’t loan money to self-employed contractors because the bank had gotten burned in the previous housing boom in the 1980s. That same bank did, however, give a much larger mortgage to some people we knew who moved here from the east coast, because the guy was employed by the local semiconductor company. That couple also had a mortgage on a house in Maryland, and he was laid off by the semiconductor company less than a year after they moved here. Apparently, though, the bank saw them as a better risk than the husband, who has never been unemployed in his entire working life and is now one of the most sought-after concrete contractors in the valley.

[No, I’m not bitter. Needless to say, we switched to a different local bank.]

In terms of building and real estate, 2020 was nuts. Out-of-staters were buying property sight unseen. Interestingly, the paper had an article last week about a 455-home development west of Kalispell that had gone through the entire planning and permitting process, and at the last second, the developer pulled the plug, citing lack of labor and lumber prices as the primary reasons for halting the project. (I am not sorry about this, for obvious reasons, but it was a shock to see the story.) I wondered to the husband if we are at or near the top of one of those boom-and-bust cycles. I just don’t think this is sustainable. I think that part of the reason we haven’t been completely overrun is that we do not have adequate internet service here for people to work remotely. We can’t even get YouTube videos to play during our church service without a “your internet connection is unstable” message appearing on the screen. Also, we have snow. And bears.

The husband is already booked well into the summer, so it doesn’t appear that 2021 is going to be less nuts than 2020 was. He doesn’t think this is sustainable, either. I guess we’ll find out.

Another Quilt Top to Add to the Pile

I finished the green and purple quilt top yesterday morning while I waited for it to warm up enough for me to work outside:

I think I am going to have to take off that outer border and reattach it—despite measuring carefully through the center of the quilt, despite cutting the border on the lengthwise grain of the fabric, and despite using my walking foot to attach it, the border is ruffling. I may have to switch back to piecing on my Necchi. I was using the Janome just because it was set up for piecing and had the right color thread in it. For now, though, the top has been folded carefully and added to the pile. I’ll revisit it in a couple of days.

I also made the mistake of playing with BlockBase+ for a bit and now I’ve got an idea for another quilt. I knew that was going to happen.

I’ve noticed that many of the really productive quilt designers out there—the ones with patterns AND blogs AND YouTube channels AND Instagram feeds, etc.—have enlisted younger-generation family members in their businesses. I should have had more kids, LOL.

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I actually had to open the greenhouse doors for a while yesterday as it was so warm inside. I chatted with our renter and his 4 year-old daughter on my way over to the garden, and she informed me that they had caught a wolf spider in the house and relocated it to the greenhouse, and if I saw it, I was to address it as “Olivia.” I thanked them for moving the spider and not killing it. I don’t mind spiders (or snakes) in the greenhouse.

The fruit trees need to be pruned. That was on my list for the afternoon. A couple of the apple trees had to have some lower branches removed. I should have done that last year but didn’t. That’s done now, and when the rest of the snow melts, I can get to the other trees.

It felt good to be out in the sunshine. This nice weather may be a Mother Nature head-fake, though—I’ve lived here long enough to know that we could still get snow in June.

The husband spent the day chasing down a problem on the forklift, which inexplicably has been shutting itself off while it’s running. He uses that machine a lot, so having it operational is a priority.

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This little wooden box sums up much of what I’ve been struggling with for the past couple of weeks:

At the beginning of February, we got a freight shipment of stuff from my in-laws’ house in Maryland. It was freighted here because there were some large paintings done by my MIL and by her mother that are going to the girls, but the shipment also included boxes of some other items. My father-in-law moved to assisted living just before Christmas. His daughters spent several weeks in Maryland cleaning out the house. Thankfully, neither of my in-laws were pack rats—not even close—but there were still items that needed to be dealt with.

I’ve been going through the boxes one by one. There are photos. There are slides. There are CDs with backups of all the photos on my MIL’s computer. And there was this little wooden box. I opened it, expecting to find recipes. What I found were index cards with all the names and varieties of all the azaleas that the husband’s grandmother had planted at her house in Pennsylvania.

I said to him, “What do I do with this?” Those of us who spent time at that house remember how beautiful the azaleas were. My MIL had moved some of them to her house in Maryland and no doubt kept this box of cards so she would have the information. We like being able to see Grandma Milly’s handwriting. But none of this really has value beyond the sentimental.

I do not want to leave a mountain—or even a hill—of stuff for my children to deal with after I am gone. Even the sentimental value of some of these items diminishes as we get further from previous generations.

I could figure out creative things to do with these cards. I could scan them. I could frame a couple. But all of that takes time, and doing so is not really a priority for me right now. So I ponder what to do with this box.

But Not There Yet

I’ve been in an absolute funk this week. March is such a difficult month here. It’s spring and it’s not spring. We’ve had lovely, sunny weather, but I can’t get outside to work yet. I have had no desire to machine quilt, so Big Top is still sitting, half-finished, on the table with the Q20. I spent Wednesday morning and yesterday morning cleaning the upstairs. We have so much dust here—our road wasn’t paved for the first few years after we built our house, and we’ve had a lot of ash drift in from wildfires over the past couple of summers. We don’t have A/C and have to keep the windows open when it’s hot. The result is that a thick layer of dust accumulates. Every so often, I have to take whole rooms apart, wipe down everything with a damp rag, and vacuum thoroughly. Swiffer dusters are no match for this kind and amount of dust—they just stir it up and let it resettle. I’d love to have one of those houses where I could keep quilts out on display, but the dust makes that impossible.

As I go, I’m also trying to make piles of items to donate. We just don’t need all this stuff.

I have been sewing in the afternoons. All of the green and purple star blocks for the lilac quilt (for lack of a better name) are done, and last night, I made all of the four-patches for the chain blocks (they are white and dark purple).

I decreased the number of star blocks to 13 to make the design balance. Even so, without borders, the top is a respectable 60” x 60”. I’ll look for some suitable border fabric(s) on my next trip to town.

The chain blocks shouldn’t take to long to finish. This top may be done and basted before too long. It’s pretty even though it’s not my style, and it’s just what I envisioned when I was searching for flowers a few weeks ago.

I need to get a handle on things and prioritize what I am going to work on. I hate having half-finished projects of any kind, and I certainly shouldn’t start anything else. Being so mentally unfocused is psychologically uncomfortable. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s frustrating when it does. I prefer to attack my schedule with laser-like focus, LOL.

Of course, this was released yesterday (and it’s currently 25% off if you’re interested):

BlockBase+ is a standalone database program with over 4000 quilt block designs researched and compiled by Barbara Brackman. It is put out by the same people that bring you Electric Quilt 8, although EQ is not required to use BlockBase+. I haven’t done a deep dive yet, but I did check to see if Noon and Night is included (it’s not) and what the Beginner’s Choice block looks like (it’s the same as the one in the Jinny Beyer book). I’ve been waiting months for this, although I have no business mucking around in it right now, because that will release an avalanche of quilt ideas that I’ll want to play with. Bleh.

Inching Toward Spring

I went to my Ruler of the Month class yesterday afternoon. The instructor demonstrated how to use the ruler on both the longarm machine (a HandiQuilter model) and the sitdown Q20. It’s interesting to see the differences; on a longarm, the machine is moving and the ruler is stationary, and on the Q20, the quilt and ruler are moving and the machine is stationary. This month’s ruler is an on-point square. (The store ran short on their supply so I’ll get mine later this week.) I’m already thinking of ways to use it in the border of the Big Top quilt. That quilt is still on my Q20 and I need to finish quilting it.

I don’t think I’ll become a ruler fanatic, but I would like to get to some basic level of competence with them.

The store had also received a shipment from Bernina and had my extra bobbin case and package of bobbins. I bought an extra bobbin case so I could play around with heavier thread on the bottom without having to continually adjust my original bobbin case. I get 20% off all Bernina accessories because I bought my Q20 at the store, so that’s a nice benefit.

I took my Sandhill Sling in to the other quilt store to show it off—the ladies who work there make a lot of bags and the store also carries Noodlehead patterns. They asked me to bring it in so they could see it. And of course, I stopped in at Joann Fabrics and raided the remnant rack.

The green and purple star blocks are in the assembly stage. It takes me about 20 minutes to do one block:

I don’t want to get too many tops done and not be able to get them quilted and written up. I’m trying to work on writing up the Big Top pattern before I forget what I did. I took notes and made drawings, but I want that pattern out of my head before those notes cease to make sense. The pattern for Cobbles and Pebbles is almost done and ready to list in the store.

I am trying not to make too many assumptions about my schedule. I have a rough idea of how things may go, because winter and summer are so drastically different in terms of daily tasks, but nothing about the last couple of years has been consistent. In the spring of 2019, I was working from 5-noon as a transcriptionist and managing gardening and animals in the afternoons. Last spring, my transcriptionist job went from full-time to part-time and eventually disappeared altogether, and we were in the midst of a pandemic. I may have more time this spring than I anticipate and can keep working on quilt projects.

The farm store put out their chick schedule so I grabbed one yesterday. We’re aiming to get chicks the last week of March or first week of April. It looks like they’ve ordered from additional hatcheries, so the supply should be adequate. This year, we need white or black pullets. (I do a different color breed every year so we know what ages they are.) I’ve got it narrowed down to Black Star, Black Australorp (we’ve had those before), Black Jersey Giant, White Plymouth Rock, White Orpington, and Pearl White Leghorn. We had Leghorns once and I said never again because they were so flighty. For egg production, though, they cannot be beat, so I would be willing to consider them. Some of what I get depends on what the store has when I go in.

The store is also getting in 25 Blue Australorp pullets the week of April 19. I am not much for rare or designer chicken breeds—and especially not at $10 apiece—but I would get one or two if they don’t sell out.

Decisions, decisions. I am glad I have all my seeds and don’t need to worry about them. And it occurred to me that I am going to have to prune fruit trees in another week or two.

The Collars Are Moving

The bear biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks posted on social media this week that “the collars are moving.” I thought that was such a descriptive way to let people know that the bears are waking up and coming out of their dens. We haven’t seen any signs, but we’ll be watching (and making sure the electric fence is on around the chicken coop). I haven’t seen any robins yet, either, although I’ve heard the pileated woodpecker. Spring is coming.

DD#1 and DSIL made it to Ketchikan. The ferry arrived around 4 pm Sunday afternoon and they were at their house a few hours later. They are renting a house from a friend of DSIL’s family. It’s right on the water in a small bay and I’m sure that it feels like a palace after living in a closet in Seattle for three years. (Their apartment in Seattle was about the size of our living room.) DSIL had his first day at work yesterday and DD#1 is busy getting the house organized. She’ll look for a job once things are settled. I said to the husband that I am a bit envious of their big adventure and he asked me if I wanted to move to Alaska. I don’t, but I remember the excitement of moving out here to Montana.

Clearly, it is time for a road trip.

The big brown truck of happiness delivered these racks to me yesterday:

Accuquilt has a weekly Facebook live broadcast—I usually watch it on YouTube after the fact—that includes some screaming deal on their website. Last week, it was “buy one, get one 50% off” on accessories. I wanted racks for my big dies and they were finally back in stock, so I ordered two. The dies have to be stored upright so as not to damage the blades. I had them leaning against the closet door but kept stubbing my toe on them. This is a much better solution.

These dies continue to pay for themselves in time savings, especially in situations like this:

I need 15 star blocks for this quilt. Each block has eight of those green and white HSTs, or 120 total. I made them by cutting 60 white and 60 green 3” blocks, sewing them together on the diagonal, then cutting them in half and trimming to 2-1/2”. I am pretty speedy with the rotary cutter, but it was SO much faster to cut the piece of fabric I needed, lay it on the die, and cut all those 3” squares in one pass, perfectly sized. (If I had the triangle dies, I could cut triangles and chain piece them into HSTs, but the squares work fine for me.)

As soon as I get these star blocks put together, I’ll start working on the chain blocks.

And finally, I recommend this excellent piece entitled Come and Take It: Part One of a Series on Practical Wisdom, by Spencer Klavan, a young man I follow on Twitter. We’ve somehow lost the capacity to have these kinds of philosophically-minded discussions with each other, as it’s far easier just to default to calling anyone we disagree with a Nazi. (I saw that happen again on Facebook this week, sadly.)

Junior Quilter

I had WS for the day yesterday while his mom was at a class. She dropped him off a little after 7:00. He is not a morning person, so I let him hang out in the husband’s recliner and watch PBS Kids for a while. Eventually, he ate breakfast and then wanted to do a project. I asked him what he had in mind and he said he wanted to make a blanket for his cat.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Asking WS about his ideas can be tricky. The possibility was not small that the answer to my question might have been, “Can we build a zip line from the top of the shop?” and would have been accompanied by specific plans and instructions. A blanket I can manage; a zip line is a different matter altogether.

We went upstairs to look for fabric. I had some scraps of cat-themed cotton, so we started with that. He added squares of green and orange and then we did the math. The advantage to having a mom with a degree in childhood education is that he is way beyond his grade level in a lot of subjects. He’s also done some sewing with her so this was not unfamiliar territory. He determined how big he wanted to make the blanket and how many squares of what size he needed. I pressed the fabric and showed him how to use the ruler and rotary cutter. No bandaids were required.

My Janome has adjustable speed settings, so I sat him down at that machine and set it to slow. I put the foot pedal up on a box, and pointed out the buttons for needle up/down, reverse, and the automatic thread cutter. (He was fascinated by that thread cutter.) The quarter-inch foot with the side blade was already on the machine. I explained that he needed to keep the edge of the fabric along that blade, then let him loose. He sewed all of the blocks together and we only had to take out one slightly wonky seam.

He did all of the pressing. Once the front was together, I found a batting scrap and some yellow polka dot for the backing. Rather than bind it, I decided it would be easiest to sew everything together and turn it inside out. I did that part for him, and then topstitched around the outside edge.

He picked out some green and yellow variegated #8 thread from my embroidery supplies. I demonstrated how to pull the thread through the layers and he did all the squares and tied the knots (very securely, so the cat cannot take them out and eat the thread).

And now the cat has a blanket!

He also wanted to make a pincushion, so I put some 5” squares together for him to sew. He stuffed it with a bunch of Poly-Fil and I sewed it shut.

Making those projects used up most of the morning. After lunch, we headed outside to see what the husband was up to (loading a trailer). We checked out the rebuilt Porta-Potty/outhouse—WS noted that the husband had paid particular attention to the interior details, like putting in screened ventilation holes and a shelf for the supplies.

We gave scratch grains to the chickens and collected eggs. Elysian also has chickens, so WS is right at home in the coop, although my hens don’t like it when he tries to sneak eggs out from underneath them. I have a few who look like they might go broody—if only—and they get snippy when you get too close. We left them alone. WS informed me that, in his opinion, I “pamper” my chickens. LOL.

We went over to the greenhouse to see what needed to be done there, which is not much because the greenhouse fairy had already paid a visit and organized everything. (I suspect the husband did that last fall when he was putting all the gardening tools away.) I need to shell the rest of the beans that have been drying out there, but everything is all set up for starting seeds in a few weeks.

I suggested we walk out and take a look at the garden. There is still about 6” of slushy snow on the ground (this is looking east, back toward the mountains):

But we also discovered this:

This must have come down in the last windstorm. It fell from the pig pasture onto the fence separating the garden and pasture. There was another tree down in the pig pasture, so the husband will have to get out there with the chainsaw and also shore up this section of fence. The tomato cages don’t appear to have taken much damage.

Elysian’s class ended around 6:00 p.m. (a long day for her). By that time, WS had gotten his second wind and wanted to make a zipper pouch—he already had the dimensions worked out—but I told him he would have to come back another day to do that.

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DD#1 and DSIL should be arriving in Ketchikan this evening. Their ferry left about 14 hours later than scheduled because of a storm system and high winds. We are looking forward to hearing about how they are settling in to their new home. DD#2 starts her new job on March 22nd. I’ve got a laundry list of things to take care of this week and that may or may not include sewing. We’ll have to see.

A Completed Sandhill Sling!

I’ve started whittling away at the spring cleaning, sorting and making piles to donate. I’m trying to do an hour of sorting every morning. I still have two little Guidepost kids’ sweaters to sew together from the ones my MIL started and then I’ll package those up—there are about a dozen—and send them off. I plan to hike out to the greenhouse this afternoon and assess what needs to be done out there. We’ve had a week of warm temperatures that have melted quite a bit of snow. It’s too early to work outside, but it will be time to plant seeds soon. And I expect we’ll have chicks by the end of March. The farm store seems to have a good supply this year, so I’ll just get them there.

I got my Sandhill Sling done yesterday!

This came together quickly and easily. I was able to watch all of the videos, even though the sewalong is still in progress, as the links are embedded in the pattern. After some consideration, I decided to sew the lining in on the machine. Anna notes that it’s a bit easier with a free arm, but she doesn’t have one on her machine.

[Honestly, the only time I ever use the free arm on any of my machines is on the coverstitch for doing the hems on the sleeves of knit tops. I am so used to sewing on flatbed machines that I hardly think about it anymore.]

She also suggests basting in the lining before sewing. That does make a difference. I was able to move the bag through the machine—my industrial Necchi—without worrying about the lining shifting out of place. What makes this step so tricky is having to topstitch along the side of the zipper, down the side of the bag and around the base of the zipper, back up and along the other side of the zipper and down around the base on that side, then back up. This is not a large bag, so it’s a bit of a tight fit under the needle. I was happy with the way the topstitching looked when I was done, though. Having that machine in a treadle base makes it perfect for projects like this where I need to sew slowly.

The lining is hard to see because it’s a dark color, but it fits snugly down inside the bag.

Overall, this was a fun project—as are all of Anna’s designs. And I learned a few new techniques that I think will come in handy on the Slabtown Backpack.

I need to add some kind of extended zipper pulls, especially on that zipper on the side pocket. I used Coats and Clark purse zippers from Joanns because they were in my stash, but I don’t like them as well as the byAnnie or YKK zippers. The zipper tabs taper down and have too small a hole to install a leather pull. I’ll have to clip on some kind of charm or something.

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I have one more round of edits on the Cobbles pattern and then my tech editor will give it a final review. I am so happy to have found someone I enjoy working with. Tera has also weighed in with some good comments. I’m hoping to have that one listed in the store soon, and then I can start working on Big Top and Beginner’s Choice (which is going to need a different name).

A Tower of Fabric

My fat quarter bundle of Corey Yoder’s Spring Brook line arrived in the mail yesterday:

This is about three times the size of the fat quarter bundle I had for her Pepper and Flax line. I am sure that there will be enough left over after I finish the original quilt to make a second one.

I’ve signed up for the Ruler of the Month club at the quilt store where I bought the Q20. The club is a HandiQuilter program (that’s the other line of machines they carry), but the rulers can be used on both machines. The first class is next Tuesday and I’m looking forward to learning more about rulers and ideas for using them. The Amanda Murphy book and videos have been great resources, but I also like hands-on instruction. The class runs for six months. Each month we get a different ruler, which more than pays for the cost of the classes.

I’m doing something I don’t usually do when I make quilts:

I am cutting all the fabric at once. I’m not designing this one on the fly or using up scraps as I go, so it’s much easier to do a marathon cutting session for each unit, then stack the units up in blocks. I’ll make all of the star blocks, first, then cut the fabric and make the chain blocks. As the design stands right now, it’s 60” x 72” without borders.

That quilt block I designed may have to go into timeout for a bit. I love the block. I love the quilt design I came up with for it, too. The problem is that when I look at the block/quilt design, I see something very specific, and the Very Specific Thing is wreaking havoc with the fabric choices. I much prefer blocks that can be interpreted and used in many different ways. I picked up some fat quarters at the quilt store and I am going to make a few more test blocks in an attempt to come up with something coherent.

Some days I am in charge and some days the quilts are in charge.

On a related note, if I can ever figure out which shade of dark blue Kona doesn’t have a greenish cast to it, I am going to buy an entire bolt. I like navy blue as a background color, but it’s a tricky one to dye, I think.

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There is a joke in ministerial circles that pastors only have one sermon, and they preach a variation of that same sermon every Sunday. I plead guilty to the same here on the blog. Homesteading/being prepared is something I am passionate about, so I talk about it a lot. It goes without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that if you don’t like the content here, you’re welcome to go elsewhere. No one is forcing you to read what I write.

I ran across the following post yesterday morning on a quilt group I belong to. There was a picture accompanying it, but the text gets the point across very well.

During the Texas February freeze (3 days of rolling electric blackouts) and then our subsequent 10 days of going without water, I managed to finish 2 dozen baby quilts for the Binky Patrol. I could piece them on my 1952 Singer 66 treadle (no electric needed) and then when the electric rolled back on, I could quilt them on my 1970 Kenmore. Tomorrow I deliver them to the local group's distributors. It was a good way to keep busy and to keep warm. There are 4 bundles of 6 here, tied up with the trimmed salvages from the fabrics. Nothing wasted.

Here’s a woman who turned a lousy situation into something positive. And before someone misses the point—deliberately or otherwise—and tells me that “not everyone has a treadle sewing machine and can do this”—the point I am making here is that the details of the situation don’t matter. The solution doesn’t matter. This post just happened to involve quilts. What matters is flipping one’s mindset from “This is a disaster, I can’t do anything!” to “This is a disaster, I can do something!” No, not everyone will be in a position to set aside their own issues and discomforts, but this woman could and did, and what she accomplished in that period of time is impressive.

Big Top Quilting Progress

“Quilting” is a term that encompasses many different activities. Strictly speaking, though, “quilting” is the process of joining layers of fabric together with needle and thread, either by hand or machine. Hand quilting is very different from machine quilting. Machine quilting really is its own art form. I’ve noted before that I prefer the design and piecing part of making quilts over the actual quilting—either by hand or machine. However, I don’t want a closet full of unquilted tops, so I am forcing myself to get better at machine quilting. As Angela Walters says, “Every master was once a disaster.” I am nowhere near master, but I think I have progressed at least a bit beyond disaster.

I’ve been struggling with how to quilt the Big Top quilt. I can see the appeal of having a longarm machine on a frame, hooked up to a computer, making an edge-to-edge design on a quilt. That setup takes a lot of agonizing out of the equation. As my Q20 isn’t on a frame (or hooked up to a computer), my version of that system is to quilt meandering loops. I am good at them and they don’t take much time. They aren’t appropriate for every situation, though. Sometimes a quilt design can be enhanced by custom quilting, or quilting different sections of the top in different ways.

Amanda Murphy likes to approach a custom design by quilting “the bones” of the design first, then going back and filling in specific areas. I first looked at the photo of the vintage quilt that inspired my version:

I see the strong vertical and horizontal lines that come from the shape of the block. I changed my piecing, though, to avoid those oddly-shaped wedges, so I don’t have that same kind of underlying grid.

It does look as though the top has hand quilted lines just inside and outside each unit, so that’s where I started:

I used rulers to quilt inside each of the background sections. I am also going to quilt inside each quadrant of the circles. (This is starting to resemble the quilting, actually, on Noon and Night, where I did much the same kind of outlining.) I’m going to do that much and then reassess. I am not a fan of dense quilting, but there has to be enough quilting to keep the batting from bunching up. I might have to add something in these background areas.

These aren’t show quilts. At this point, I am machine quilting my tops with two objectives in mind: 1) to get better at it; and 2) to finish the tops so I can publish the patterns. That’s it. And in the process, I am getting to know the Q20 better and what it likes.

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I went ahead and started cutting the purple and green fabrics to make a quilt from that block that everyone liked. Even if it’s not my style, it’s a pretty block and I think it will make a pretty quilt. It’s good to get out of one’s comfort zone. I also want to make a quilt with the block I designed, but I am still considering fabric choices for that one.

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We are celebrating DD#2’s promotion to a new position with Nordstrom. Instead of being an assistant manager in a store, she will be working from home as a merchandise analyst. I have always been impressed with Nordstrom’s policy of promoting from within. They also like to cross-train their employees in several different areas. DD#2 did an internship with Nordstrom in college and worked at the store in Spokane before moving to Seattle to work at a store there.

I’m sure someone will take offense at this, as taking offense seems to be the default setting of a lot of people these days, but I am incredibly proud of the fact that all of our kids (I include DSIL, too) show up and work hard. All three of them knuckled down last year and did what they had to in order to keep moving forward. DD#1 transitioned to teletherapy (not an easy thing to do in a hands-on profession like hers), her husband finished dental school in the midst of a lockdown, and DD#2 not only made her base salary but additional income in commissions. Honestly, it’s not hard. You can either sit around and whine about how hard and unfair things are, or you can get out there and make things happen. The husband is going to have lots of opportunities for some young guys to show up and make good money this summer. We’ll see who actually wants to do it.

March Miscellany

I parked myself in front of the computer yesterday morning and worked on the Cobbles pattern. I have a different tech editor now, and I think this will be a productive working relationship. I am reminded again of Jean Lampe’s advice to me as a new knitting designer. She suggested I write out instructions for tying a shoe so that someone else could follow them. That sounds easy enough. It’s not. And you never know what baggage people are going to bring with them when reading your pattern. The Sandhill Sling pattern included cutting instructions for interfacing pieces. I assumed that those were for the lining, because I always interface quilt cotton when I use it for lining. They weren’t. They were intended for the exterior pieces. Had I bothered to read the pattern instead of making that assumption based on bag patterns I’ve made in the past, I would have noted that small detail.

[It doesn’t really matter, as I can’t interface the waxed canvas I’m using for the exterior, and I prefer the added body that the interfacing gives the quilt cotton lining, but I was scratching my head there for a bit.]

The baby quilt is quilted and just needs a binding. I’ll have to start on the Big Top quilt soon and the Beginner’s Choice wallhanging, although I still have no idea how I want to quilt either of them. I am hoping that inspiration strikes when I sit down at the machine.

I got an e-mail notice that my fat quarter bundle of Corey Yoder’s new line Spring Brook has shipped.

I generally do not buy fat quarter bundles of fabric collections, but I made an exception for this one. Last spring, I tried to make a quilt using a smaller fat quarter bundle of Corey Yoder’s Pepper and Flax fabric collection. I didn’t have enough fabric, and nothing in my stash coordinated well with the colorway. (That is why I don’t buy fat quarter bundles.) Of course, that line was no longer available. I put the blocks away in a box. When I saw this line—which is basically the same colorway as Pepper and Flax with some blues thrown in—I decided to go ahead and get a fat quarter bundle to see if I could finish the quilt I started as I really hate having large unfinished projects hanging around.

My habit of noodling around in EQ8 for 15 minutes over morning coffee has resulted in a new quilt block design, or at least a quilt block I have not yet been able to find anywhere else. I haven’t made an exhaustive search of the Jinny Beyer book, however, to see if it’s in there. Of course, the block then wanted to be put into a quilt design. I love the design and even made up a test block yesterday, but I’m shelving it until I get some of these other tasks finished and crossed off the list. And everyone seems to love that purple and green block—who knew? I may go ahead and put that one into the queue as well.

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The husband and I were talking over dinner last night and I mentioned that I am going to have WS on Saturday as Elysian is taking an all-day class. I am trying to decide what to do with this 7 year-old for the day. I thought we might take a trip to Missoula as it’s supposed to be in the 50s this weekend. The husband said, “He probably just wants to watch TV all day.” (The little boys do not get a lot of screen time at their houses.) Just then, there was a knock on the door—it was WS with a delivery from his mom. I said to him, “What do you want to do on Saturday when you’re here?” and he said, “I just want to watch TV.” That made the husband laugh.

I might let him watch some TV, but not for 8 straight hours. I think he should spend some time out in the shop with the husband, talking his ear off. That would be good for both of them.

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I’ve got to take the car in to the tire place. The left front tire has a slow leak. Every couple of weeks now, since the first of the year, the low pressure sensor on that wheel goes off. The weird thing is that it only happens on Sundays. After church. The husband put the car up on the lift over the weekend—he had to change out one of my fog lights because it took a hit by a rock and had a hole in it—and he said he didn’t see any nails in the tire. It might be a bad valve stem. I’ll have the tire place look at it and get their recommendation.

The Annual Cabin Fever Post

Tomorrow is the first of March. In my head, I know that it’s going to be a while before I can work in the garden—this is Montana, after all, where 3” of snow in June is not unheard of—but I equate March with spring and I am starting to get a bad case of cabin fever. In years past, I have taken a trip somewhere. Even just going to Portland or Seattle in February reminds me that winter doesn’t last forever. I wasn’t able to do that this year. The husband and I watched videos on YouTube last night that someone had taken at the summit of Snoqualmie Pass over the past couple of days. Despite being a major east-west highway (I-90), the pass has been closed almost as much as it has been open recently. This isn’t the snowiest season on record for that area, but it’s in the top 10. The Cascades have been getting hammered with snowstorms.

[I went over Snoqualmie in a snowstorm during the second week of April, which is why I don’t take the snow tires off my car until May.]

In any case, I am getting twitchy. I want to clean the house (the dust! the dog hair!) and take a few loads of stuff to the thrift store, but there is no point in doing that until I can clean out the storage container and load the car on a driveway that isn’t a skating rink.

I shouldn’t be designing new quilts, either—I have patterns to work on and already-pieced tops to finish. And Tuesday marks a year since my MIL died. We all miss her and feel her absence keenly.

I did make a quilt block yesterday. I couldn’t help myself.

EQ8 calls this block Four Crowns, for what that’s worth; quilt block names are fluid and this block has a number of variations. These are my thoughts about it. If you have some, drop them in the comments.

• I like this color/fabric combination. Do I like it enough to make a quilt out of it? Are three colors enough? I spent some time making little HSTs in pink and also in yellow to see how they looked in the corners instead of the green flower print. In the end, I kept coming back to the green. (There was a dark purple in the fabric pull, but the design I am contemplating has alternating “chain” blocks and I was going to use the dark purple in those blocks.)

• I am not crazy about quilts with white backgrounds. We have too much dirt and dust here for quilts with white backgrounds.

• The block is not hard to piece, for all that it has a lot of units. I could probably stand to make a couple dozen of them.

• I am not much for matchy-matchy quilts, and this has that feel to me. The block would lend itself well to scrappiness, I think, with a few rules governing color placement so that it doesn’t end up looking like an incoherent free-for-all.

So we’ll see. I may have scratched this itch sufficiently with one block. After I finished the block, I cleaned my sewing area. I put everything away except what I need to quilt the tops and finish the Sandhill Sling. I am trying to keep myself from getting distracted by new projects. Discipline.

I’ve been working on my Urban Chicken embroidery project in the evenings, alternating with a prayer shawl. As soon as I get about 8” of the shawl done, I’ll put it in a tote bag and leave it at church as the new emergency knitting project.