An Almost-Finish, A Dinner Out and (Lack of) Fireworks

It was another great week of summer here. We only spent one day in the yard because it was hot and there is less to do. Maybe I can get out there again this week, weather and obligations permitting. I do want to repaint the white wicker rocker and the backyard wrought iron railing, but I need to have a perfect set of circumstances come together for that - (1) having supplies on hand - check! (2) having a nice summer early morning with no breezes, and (3) getting my lazy butt out of bed before 8 am to get outside and just do it. I’ll let you guess where the problem lies…

Friends Ruby and Cousin Kim were over on Sunday, and we had our usual fun sewing, chatting, and listening to music. I sewed these Little Bricks squares, which finish at 6”. It’s Red July for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday. 

I also sewed seven more Sawtooth Star blocks with a red background for the Christmas quilt I’m making this year. I have seven more of this 12” size, then I can drop down to the 8” stars.

Monday was the day for my doctor appointment to get cortisone shots in my knees. When I was heavier, I was getting them every 4.5 to five months. Apparently losing weight really does help, because it’s been 11 months since my last shots! In the afternoon, I began a lot of batch cooking. I seem to get a wild hair to do this sometimes. This time I made a large pan of lasagna (4 meals), a ham and broccoli quiche (2 meals) and lots and lots of strawberry-rhubarb (from our garden) compote. It’s all tucked safely away in the freezer. Well, except the quiche, which was safely tucked away in our tummies!

Tuesday was a quiet Fourth of July for us. Even the neighborhood fireworks were tame. This was a nice, cooler day which we spent outside working in the garden. We harvested all the peas, and the sorting and shelling commenced! Here is a recycled photo of Darla on one of our patriotic quilts.

Wednesday happened to be another sewing day with Kim, and I got all the white background of my International Sisters quilt quilted. Later in the week, (Thursday and Friday afternoons) I was able to finish up quilting the Sisters and their dresses. Here’s a peek. It’s trimmed but not yet bound.

The background is just a small meander with white thread, while the headpieces and dresses are mostly varying patterns and more loosely quilted so they will hopefully stand out a bit more. I’ll give all the details and show some close-ups next week. I’m intending to get some “glamor shots”  of this one. But for now, here is the backing - fabric I bought in Kenya when I was there five years ago. 

The fabric is a heavy cotton Dutch wax resist, and in Africa the fabrics are put up and sold in 6-yard bolts. In this case, it was three yards of each of these two coordinating prints.  I saved some of both of these prints specifically for this backing. I also sent some fat quarters to friends at the time, so now I only have a few scraps left. And that is how it should be. 

On Thursday I had a Weight Watchers meeting in the morning. I usually go on Tuesdays, but with Independence Day being Tuesday, I had to switch this week. I lost another 1.8 pounds, to bring my total loss to 52.6 pounds. I’m 11 pounds from goal, which is the top end of my healthy weight range. I’d like to go ten pounds below that goal number just to have a little flexibility within my range. I won’t be thin, but at least I will not be obese. A healthy weight. 

Thursday was the day that Bruce was asked to attend and present at a special session for Prosthetists, Physical Therapists and Occupational Therapists ahead of the annual EmpowerFest 2023, which was being held in Salt Lake this year. EmpowerFest is presented by the Hanger Clinics (they’re a national chain of prosthetics and orthotics). EmpowerFest is an opportunity for persons (adults and children) with limb loss to connect, make friends, share resources, learn and to try out lots of new skills - like horseback riding, rock wall climbing, dancing, and on and on. 

Bruce was one of four amputees in this professionals-only session, along with three other locals - friend Sam (the No-Handed Bandit on You Tube who lost both arms in a work-related electrical accident as a lineman); Craig, who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, and John, who is a quadruple amputee and can sling his left arm prosthetic like a gun from a holster. John was so charming and funny - he just lit up the room! 

L-R: Kyle (Bruce’s prosthetist), Bruce playing the banjo, and Kelly

It was an interesting and enlightening evening, especially for us few lay people. And we made some new friends and had a really nice meal. :-)

Friday was just grocery shopping, sewing and some chores, which brings me current. Now I remember, though, why I don’t get as much done in the sewing room even when the heat of the summer sets in; there is always garden harvesting to process! It won’t be long until I start bringing extra veggies along to my Weight Watchers meetings. It’s more fun to share than to stand in a hot kitchen! 

Have a great week!

The Most Wonderful Squirrel of the Year

The title of this post was going to be The Most Wonderful TIME of the year, because with winter in full swing and Christmas and year-end bearing down (and shopping mostly done), I have lots of time and determination to play in my sewing studio for hours and hours each day. My time is spent quilting this, basting that, sorting these scraps, sewing those strings, all to Christmas songs and other favorite music. The days are speeding by. Anyway, last week I said that my squirrels (off-on-a-tangent projects) were having squirrels. This week I think I’ve even ushered in another whole generation of squirrels (grand-squirrels?). We’ll get to that momentarily.

First, I have an actual finish to show you - one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects for 2020 is a finish!! I’ll be sharing this on Scrappy Saturday. Here is Scraptastic Stars.

Scraptastic Stars finished at 48.5x64.5”. It’s quilted with small, viney loops and is labeled and ready for Quilts for Kids. 

I had hoped to get a couple more quilts tops layered together this week, but that didn’t happen. I did, however, finish sewing the quilt top for my son Ryan and got the backing prepped, too. Kim and I will baste it on Sunday.

It has been trimmed since this picture. I sure wish the colors photographed more accurately. Hopefully once it’s finished, we can get a good outdoor picture of it. But it’s huge - about about 75 x 85”, so I don’t know how one person can hold it up. I’ll worry about that later, though.

As usual (lately), I spent time working on string blocks. This week I made 27 of the multi-colored string blocks (below). I also sewed some special string blocks for my grand-squirrel project, and then focused on using up my brown strings for the RSC dark neutrals month. Here are the string blocks.

There are 19 brown string blocks, which will be added to my strings blocks for future use as alternate blocks in scrappy Quilts For Kids (QFK) projects. 

Ok, NOW we can talk about the grand-squirrel project. So, as if I didn’t have enough ongoing must-finish and should-finish projects, I started another project this week. I was itching to pare down that brown scrap drawer, and ran across some wonderful color inspiration photos online.  So I sketched out some scrap-friendly blocks in a simple row design and hunted my scraps and stash for the appropriate colors. 

First up was making 14 of these 6.5” strip blocks, each with a central (more or less) teal strip surrounded by some old brown and blue polka dot strips. Then the rest of the block was filled in with other warm brown strips. 

After those, I used scraps to make rail fence blocks, snowballs, nine-patches, checkerboards and friendship star (variation) blocks. Alfie was Supervisor of the Day, and dropped by while I was cutting half-square triangles for the friendship stars. 

I guess he wasn’t sure if things were up to standard, so he had to peer closer...

And then, apparently not satisfaied with the way I was doing it, decided to cut them himself....

So, together we got them cut and I got them sewn. Here is the brown (and blue and molten gold) quilt so far. There will be a final gold strip across the top once it’s all sewn together.  

As it appears above, it’s just half sewn and half pinned. I think the confetti dots ombre gold fabric gives it a real lit-from-within look, and I love it. At least, it’s not bad for a “brown” quilt! It should finish at about 42x50”. I’ll show a finished picture next week. What do you think? 

And finally, a picture of Bruce with his NEW guitar-playing prosthetic. The one I showed last month was his “quick-and-dirty” (homemade) version while the prosthetist was finalizing this real carbon fiber arm. Bruce helped in the design of the arm because he was a medical engineer who worked for Symbion and Robert Jarvik on the artificial heart and the Utah artificial arm.  Who would’ve thought that his experience would end up coming in handy for himself? Anyway, the playing arm is lighter and gives Bruce much easier control. He can even pick notes, not just strum. He’ll never be a Bela Fleck, but he is really amazing!!

Have a great week!

Scraps: To Mars and Back!

Yep, last week it was to the moon and back with scraps, but this week it’s to Mars and back. Two more bags of scraps were delivered to me from another Quilts for Kids board member. These scraps, all things that have been donated to QFK, include several quilt kits, more blocks of all kinds and copious leftovers and chunks from others’ projects. To say I have enough to keep me busy for a few months is an understatement. I’ll probably be sewing my way out from under it all for a couple years or more.  But what fun it’s going to be! All the resulting quilts will be donated to Quilts for Kids, of course.

Last weekend when Cousin Kim came over to sew on Sunday, we basted her zipper quilt. It’s going to be a Christmas present for her adult son, Nick. So it was a priority this week for me to quilt it. I just used a serpentine stitch with my walking foot and quilted all the sea lines between the blocks. 

I love the zippers so much! Now I can’t wait to get mine sewn. Kim and I used a lot of the same scraps, so probably about 80-90% of our quilts have the same blocks, though often with different solid accents. My zipper blocks are waiting, drumming their little zipper fingers, to be sewn together. Next year, babies!

Later in the week I finished sewing the gray and red strip blocks together and added a red border. Apparently the red Kona fabric bolt that I bought this time is a slightly different shade of red than the previous one. You can see that the border is a bit darker. But it’s OK I think.

Now here’s a strange shot of the backing, just pieced together. It’s not trimmed or pressed yet, but you can see that I incorporated those five red triangle blocks into it. 

Here’s a closer picture. The next step will be to press everything well and get the whole thing basted.

I also worked to finish this flimsy. All 56 rail blocks are now sewn together and a blue stop border has been added. I was going to add another wide print border, but I think this is plenty large as is. It currently measures about 73x83”. Adding the 4” border I planned would’ve made it 81x91”, and I don’t want to wrestle with that bulk under my DSM’s little throat space. 

So this one is ready to be basted now too. I’m going to have to have a quilt-sandwiching marathon this week, as I have three of them to do (the third one being that orange, yellow and blue 4-patch posy quilt top). 

Did I say three? Make that 4, because the flimsy below is almost done, too. Two more columns and a couple vertical strips, and this one will be ready to go! This is what I worked on with my gray scraps this week. I’m linking up with Scrappy Saturday, as many of us are trying to put our dark neutral scraps to good use.  

The two remaining columns will be a nine-patch on the right side (with an orange center piece) and a 6” zipper block (with orange added) on the left. The finished width will be 48” and the finished length will be 56”. Some of the rows will finish at 54” in length, but I’ll add a 2” coping strip at the bottom to even it up. And that means that maybe next week I can begin tackling some black scraps. I have a couple ideas swirling around!

Bruce finished up his “quick and dirty” strumming arm this week! It’s so good to hear him strumming the banjo and guitar again! His prosthetist, who built his regular prosthetic arm and the end portion of this device, is building a more formal arm to replace the black and gray tubing. But that process takes awhile, so Bruce rigged this up for the interim. 

We’ve had rain and snow this week and are enjoying evenings with the fireplace on. And the kitties are enjoying it too. Here is Darla in her bed. 

We have a heated bed for Alfie, too, but he won’t go in it. Such a cat! He prefers Bruce’s lap.

And that’s about it from Chez Kizerian for this week. I can’t believe how the time is flying by all of a sudden. Now that the election is in the history books, we look forward to Thanksgiving. But “looking forward” is not really the correct expression, because we, like many others, will be spending it by ourselves. Covid is raging, and we'll be staying home and staying safe. The hospitals here are at capacity, and that seems to be the story across the country and in Europe. Have a wonderful week!