Behind the Scenes

Most of my creative work this week - and I use the term “creative” loosely - was behind the scenes. Or maybe I should just call it not picture worthy.

Last Saturday afternoon I basted two quilts. The first was It’s a Jungle Out there, and the second was a rescued quilt top from the grandmother of a friend of Ruby’s (Julia). Ruby, at the request of Julia, had cut out the good part of an old worn quilt into a top about 45x55”. It contained pieces of fabric (most likely clothing) ranging from the 1940s through the 1970’s and was haphazardly pieced with random seam widths. Ruby trimmed it, added a white 5” border and made a red gingham backing. On Sunday I quilted the newly-basted vintage quilt (no pictures) and Ruby took it to Julia to trim and bind, which was going to be a basic teaching moment for Julia to learn to do those tasks. 

I also quilted the inner panel of Jungle; the checkerboard blocks will be done this week. I’ll have pictures next week. The final uninteresting thing I did was to hem two pairs of palazzo (wide leg) pants for my daughter-in-law. I still have one pair of my own to do. These are a royal pain in the posterior.

But I did get to some fun sewing only just yesterday. Here are some of these blocks on the design board. I’m working with my black scraps this month in keeping with our October challenge of dark neutrals for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

I had to re-work the sizes of the strips and blocks to accommodate the scraps I had. The center black-and-bright strip is 2.5”x5.5” and is bordered by two solid strips of blue cut at 2”x5.5”. Sewn together they yield a block that is 5.5” unfinished or 5” finished. I’d like to get an entire kid-sized quilt top, but I don’t think I have enough of these fabrics to do that. So I’ll probably alternate them with brightly colored solid squares. We’ll see how it pans out. I saved my wider cuts of black-and-bright fabrics to make 4–patches from 3” squares, which should also measure 5.5” unfinished or 5” finished. Who knows, maybe they’ll end up in the same quilt (some ideas are noodling around) or maybe not.

Other than that, it was just mostly mundane stuff this week. I had a dental appointment to have a crown replaced, played cards with friends, did some HOA presentation planning, and assorted other Suzy Homemaker tasks. It rained for two days, which was lovely. It’s supposed to be sunny today, though. I will probably get out in the courtyard and pull the remaining annuals and bring in the flower pots and patio furniture. Bruce had a mostly good week too, and even Zoom’ed with some old Army buddies. So, that’s it from here. Short and sweet, just like me! :-)

Life is good!