So Much Sewing

This week I put in a lot of time sewing. So much time in fact, that I’m burned out this morning! I’m going to brave the spring cold and go out and spend an hour or two in the yard. I need to prune a few things before they break dormancy, and a little flower bed cleanup would also be time well spent. Then I may read or even do some fun sewing this afternoon, but we’ll see. Let’s back up to last weekend, though.

We had a wonderful time at Ryan (my son) and Kim’s (DIL) home last Saturday evening. We left home at 5:30 in order to get there at 6:00, and I mentioned to Bruce it usually only takes us 20 minutes so we’d be early. HA! As we pulled out it started raining and then almost immediately began hailing. OK, I’m a careful driver, so we kept going. Within a mile or two from home, the hail was so big and loud that we pulled into a closed car wash and took shelter under the check-in/vacuum canopy. We stayed there until the hail subsided, about 5 or 6 minutes. Then we set out again. It was only raining by then, but there was lots of lightning and thunder. The traffic was pretty intense for about 10 minutes, but that was because everyone was (thankfully) driving very slowly and cautiously. We didn’t go far in that 10 minutes, but we did make progress. Then the traffic thinned and we were able to make it to Ryan’s house in 50 minutes. Whew! It was a white-knuckler all the way!

Ryan fixed the most delicious salmon I’d ever eaten. Usually I’m not a big salmon fan, but his had a great rub on it and was moist and flaky. Perfect! We also had a tossed salad, fruit salad and rice pilaf. And for dessert…. Birthday cake! I was going to make two kinds, but long story short - we just had a yellow two-layer cake with homemade buttercream frosting. Very traditional and boring, but yummy.

Then when we went out to go home, it had already snowed a couple inches and was still going. But we made it home safely with no incidents, and the whole evening was so worth all the driving hassles!

On Monday, I got a call from our Quilts for Kids President, Sandy, that my batting was ready. So I went over to her place and delivered those 165 string blocks and got batting for 8 quilts. QFK can get it wholesale, so it’s much cheaper for me to buy it through them for the kids’ quilts. Sandy also asked if I’d sew 3 quilt kits she’d just unpicked. One of our elderly members (who is starting to have some dementia issues) loves to sew these kits, but doesn’t really know much about sewing - things like straight lines, quarter-inch seams, pressing, thread tension. But we don’t want to take this away from her, so we smile, unpick and re-sew them. That’s what I did on Monday and Tuesday. They’re sewn and basted now, so I’ll show those next week when they’re complete.

Now here’s something I do have pictures of and can show you. I got some blocks sewn for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. March is the color yellow, so I sewed up 20 bullseye log cabin blocks. These will finish at 7” each.

Next I worked on framed four-patches. 

These are made with 2.5” squares and strips and will finish at 8” each. 

Thursday was a marathon quilt basting day; the three QFK re-sews I mentioned earlier plus two yellow scrappy quilts, which will also go to QFK. I quilted them on Thursday and Friday. First up is a pastel little quilt (40x46”) in yellow, pink and blue. 

I did a horrible job on the quilting, and don’t think I didn’t hear about it from my supervisor, Alfie. He’s shown here telling me I’d better “shape up or ship out”.

The backing was made of two chunks and a single strip of sweet fabric remnants I’ve had for awhile. They match so perfectly.

The second scrappy quilt was made from my stash of yellow strings. And since the Ukraine people have been on my mind and because I had blue and white string blocks too, I mixed them into this Charlie-Brown-Visits-Ukraine quilt.

I usually use 56 of these 6” string blocks to make a quilt that’s 42x48”. But my backing wasn’t wide enough for that, so I did just 6 blocks across and 7 rows down, then added a blue strip on the top and bottom. This little number finished at 37x 44”. 

On Wednesday, my quilter called to say that Swimmingly, my Stay at Home RR quilt (SAHRR), was ready to be picked up. So I went and got that on Wednesday and trimmed it up. I’ll add the binding sometime this week, and then it will be ready for the parade of quilts on the 21st. More on that next week!

Next week and the week after promise to be busy with my annual physical, eye doctor appointments and two family visits (one from our Idaho daughter and family). But for now, off to the garden! Life is good!