Hitting the reset button

This winter, life has been crazy hectic!  I've been squeezing some sewing time in while running full speed at work and parenting my teenage boys (who are relentlessly creative about finding ways to get into trouble). But then, a week ago, it all came grinding to a halt.  My heart goes out to all whose health and/or livelihood is affected by this current crisis.  Luckily (knock on wood), my family is healthy and we are on vacation from school anyway, so our lives haven't been that disrupted.  My kids may be bored, but honestly, apart from this being a scary pandemic, this time at home has been a dream come true for me!

I read the entire book club book BEFORE the book club meeting for next month!  That right there is a sign that these are crazy times!  While I read A LOT (I've read or listened to 17 books since January 1), I somehow never seem to find time to read the book club selection!

I've also been sewing up a storm while listening to audiobook after audiobook.

I've pulled out my Grandmother's Flower Garden UFO and have done some hand sewing.

I've pulled out my Carpenter's Wheel UFO and made two more blocks.

Can you see that a couple of my muslin pieces are a different, lighter muslin?  Oh well!

I finished my 2018 Temperature Quilt and now just need to figure out borders.

A pretty mild year!  I have LOTS of blue left over (blue was for cold!)

I made a couple more blocks for my String Shadows UFO.

I sewed a baby quilt top, and am currently contemplating...is it done?  Does it need borders?

I pulled out my leftover border blocks from my Sew Many Strips quilt and made two of the corner blocks so I can use this border treatment for another quilt - who knows what I'll put inside?

I've made a total of 11 Jewel Box Stars blocks so far as Leaders & Enders.

There is so much scrappy goodness that I can hardly choose what to work on at any given time.

In the meantime, I'm keeping calm, sleeping in, talking long, slow walks with the dog, and appreciating this time to hit the reset button.

The beauty of a blog

I was feeling like I hadn't made much progress on my Sew Many Strips quilt until I compared today's photo with last weekend's photo. Even if no one reads my blog, it is useful to me in this way.

I've got a little more than one quarter pieced.

It's slow going, but it's growing!  With all this work, this might have to be a quilt for me!

I'm off in the morning to visit some colleges in Minnesota.  My plan is to take some hexagons to sew by hand, as well as a sock that I would love to finish knitting.

I added this yellow hexi to my GFG quilt last night while binge watching Queer Eye

My 15-year-old has his learner's permit, so I let him drive today while I knitted in an attempt to remain calm.

I'm glad to have finished four quilts already this year; it makes me feel better about working on so many ongoing projects these days.

Every little bit

The end of the school year is like riding a panicky, runaway horse with no reins or saddle; all you can do is entwine your hands into the mane, hold on tightly, and try to enjoy the ride.

In the meantime, I've been trying to make sure to carve out moments of quiet sanity for myself, time to sew.  It hasn't been much, but as we all know, every little bit adds up to a lot eventually.

My temperature quilt is moving along well - I enjoy having just one block to make each day.  On Ringo Lake is sitting silently, willing me to notice it again.  The trouble is, despite the fact that the fabrics are scrappy, they are all in the same four color families, and for me, that makes it just a bit too predictable to compel me to work on it.  One day...

The Flutterby blocks are the ones that excite me the most.  I have 67 of the 140 blocks that I plan to make done, with about 11 more partially done.  As you can see, I've been making the borders as I go.  I really want this quilt to end up on my bed!

I miss my design wall!  The floor just isn't the same.

The Sister's Choice quilt's final size will be determined by the amount of blue and neutral fabric I have for the the alternate blocks.  I've started to make border blocks for that, too, so I can figure out how many more blocks I need to make.

A couple of rows are sewn together, as are the outside borders.  I'm hoping I'll have enough to make this lap sized, but it might end up being a baby quilt.

Both of these quilts have enjoyed an infusion of new scrappy fabric after I received a box of scraps from a a friend back in Virginia.

Is there anything better than someone else's scraps?

So far, I've only made it through one baggie of scraps from the box, but what fun to discover them all while cutting them down into my precut scrap sizes.

Hmm, I need better light in my sewing room!

And when I'm not home, I've been diligent about bringing some handwork along, making more hexie blooms during meetings and sewing them on while attending campus sporting events.

Enjoying softball in the sunshine while putting in a few stitches.

In one month, I'll be on summer vacation.  I am so excited about all I should be able to do over the summer - sewing to my heart's content!

Vacation Sewing

I know that there are some folks out there who can knock out a quilt in a weekend, but I'm not one of them.  I am S...L...O...W...

But I'm having a great time sewing away on my school vacation so far!  Saturday was a no-sew day because I took my boys snowboarding and then had dinner at my twin sister's house.  On Sunday, I finished adding the hexies I'd made so far to my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.  Time to prep some more hexies for travel and meetings.

Monday didn't include much sewing, as my younger sister taught her final yoga class before my new niece or nephew arrives (yeah, she's 9 months pregnant and still WAY more flexible than I am) so I drove to NH to take her class.  By the time I got home, I was in need of a nap, and then I had to (gasp!) cook.  The only drawback to vacation is that the dining hall is closed.  I am SO SPOILED not having to cook for my family anymore.  Well, except for vacations. (sigh)

But today, I went in to work for a couple hours in the morning, and sewed ALL AFTERNOON while binge watching Psych.  I thought I was getting a lot done, but when I laid out my blocks, the total seemed a bit paltry for the hours of sewing I put in.  Maybe I should listen to a story instead of watching a show...

Oh well.  There are many days of sewing left in this vacation.

I am linking up with Monday Making and Oh Scrap.

Woefully unprepared!

Last week, I visited St. Louis on a counselor visit to Washington University. 

The courthouse under the arch is where they tried the Dred Scott case - cool!

I left on Wednesday, well prepared with two books to read and six flowers worth of hexagons ready to baste and then sew together for my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt...or so I thought.

I had finished one book and all my hexagons by Thursday evening. 

I did all the basting on the planes.  I use the mylar pop-out templates, not paper.

Oops!  Ran out of templates!  Gotta add the flowers to the main quilt to free up some more templates.

Oh well, my second book would get me through the flights home on Friday, I thought.  WRONG!  The nor'easter that battered the East Coast meant that all flights were cancelled, and they couldn't re-book me on a flight home until SUNDAY!!!  Luckily, Washington University was gracious about bringing me back to campus and providing me with a room for my extended stay, but what was a gal to do?  My second book was finished before bedtime on Friday.  Luckily, Washington University is situated next to Forest Park which has a zoo, a history museum and an art museum, all FREE to the public.  Saturday was a day of exploration!  I walked miles and miles, enjoying the park, the history museum and the art museum.  I ran out of steam before I made it to the zoo, got something to eat and went to bed ridiculously early.  Then, I bought another book at the airport on Sunday to help me make it through the day.

I made it back home on Sunday just in time for Sit Down Dinner duty and study hall duty.  It's a busy week here at school, exam time, so I don't have much time to sew, but I'm using every spare moment to sew these hexie flowers onto the quilt so I can free up some more of my templates.

(If you've not used the templates before, you pop them out once a hexie is completely surrounded by other hexies.  I have a combination of "Quilt Patis" and "Brandy's Mylar Pieces" - which has apparently gone out of business - but I've also made my own templates before with card stock and a hole punch.  I prefer this method over traditional English Paper Piecing where you actually baste onto the paper.) 

The backside of my quilt.  You can see there are only templates in the outside pieces.  I use that black "stick" to pop the templates out once a hexagon is completely surrounded by other hexagons.

But starting Saturday, I have TWO WHOLE WEEKS OFF!!!  Can you tell how I excited I am?  My own children will be in school (they had a week off in February, and will have another week off in April), so I am dreaming of spending all day, every day, creating!

And in April, when I have two more counselor visits scheduled (to Vanderbilt in Nashville, and then to six colleges in Ohio: Kenyon, Denison, Wittenberg, Ohio Wesleyan, College of Wooster and Oberlin), you can best believe I am going to bring more handwork than I think I can finish, just in case!

I am linking up with Oh Scrap and Monday Making.

More of the same

My creative life this week was much like last week - a couple more On Ringo Lake blocks completed, staying up-to-date with my temperature quilt, and a few more Flutterby blocks sewn up.  These Flutterby blocks are right up my alley - precut scraps and free rein when it comes to combining colors and fabrics!

About half the fabrics I put in my ETSY shop last week sold already, so I added more this week. 

Maybe, one day in the far off future, all my remaining fabric will actually fit in my sewing room. (Ha, who am I kidding?)

I'm getting ready to head to St. Louis for work for a few days, so I'm hoping to prep some hexagons as a handwork option for the flights and my hotel room at night.  If only I could find my Grandmother's Flower Garden hexagon quilt WIP...

This photo is from 2013 - and is probably the last time I worked on this.  It looks really washed out in the sun, and wrinkled because it had been tucked away in a bag, but I love the scrappiness.

...moving is so disruptive!  It's been six months and I still can't find things!

I'm linking up with Monday Making and Oh, Scrap!

Success!

I've been out of town, sequestered in a windowless conference room for 11 hours a day, 2 days in a row, with 10 of my colleagues interviewing candidates for an open position at my university.  It was an exhausting, yet intellectually stimulating exercise, and I left with even greater respect and affection for my colleagues.  And I left energized and excited by the finalists we selected to bring to campus.  But I was also ITCHING to sew!

I brought a quilt to work on, but never made a stitch.  Instead, it just adorned my hotel room bed and kept me cozy warm the two nights I had to spend away from home.  I also brought my GFG hexies out of retirement.  I did end up taking a few stitches during breaks on day two, and managed to get one flower done and attached to another.

I made the one on the left yesterday, and attached it to the one on the right that was probably made 4 or 5 years ago. 

But when I got home, I realized the way I put them together won't work with what I have together already.  Note to self - add just one flower at a time to the whole.

Looks washed out in the sun, but lots of scrappy color in this quilt top. 

I got home very late last night, and enjoyed sleeping in this morning as my kids were spending the weekend at a friend's house in my absence.  But my Cub Scout meeting was this afternoon, and I had to prepare.  I spent my entire morning and early afternoon measuring, cutting and drilling to prepare for our woodworking project.  I didn't have time to make a prototype - I just had to hope that I had thought of everything and that it would come together.

Spoon basketball.  I adapted a plan I found online to make these. 

And it did!  The boys were thrilled with their projects, and spent a bit of time trying them out.

Now, the kids are in bed, I have a cup of tea and my new copy of Jennifer Chiaverini's The Giving Quilt, and I'm going to enjoy a bit of down time.  The weekend was busy and full of interactions with other people, but everything about it was a resounding success!