To Do Tuesday #76

This week went by with a rush, whistling through the shutters and trailing dust eddies in its wake. A few more weeks like this and we'll be wearing short sleeves and wondering what happened to winter. Nothing even remotely interesting happened in my life this week so I had plenty of time to sew and do housework and I ignored the housework. The coming week will be a different story though. Doctor appointments requiring a half day each and the plumber is definitely coming Thursday.

One of my goals from week two of 2021 was to put up the Christmas decorations. I didn't get it all put away, so I added it to the list again last week. And finally, I did I finish that task. At least I think I did; Christmas decorations spread throughout the house have a way of being overlooked. Soon, I need to make some changes in the storage closet and build another rack with room to hang wreaths. Wreaths in boxes take up a lot of room.

Last week's goals are all done!

✔ Add additional border on the backing for Gairden Walk so it can be quilted
✔ Iron and cleanup top and backing for Gairden Walk, pack it up, send it out
✔ Choose backing fabric for Scrappy Pinwheels and cut into thirty-five 13 inch squares
✔ Cut some trial blocks and batting and experiment with quilting patterns
✔ Quilt at least 5 Scrappy Pinwheel blocks
✔ Put up Christmas decorations and get those boxes out of my sewing space

Goals for January 19, 2021

• Make 28 half string blocks and 7 string squares
• Buy enough muslin to finish blocks

(This is easier said than done. Since I'm not driving, I have to impose on someone to take me, and I hate asking people to take time out of their day to take me somewhere.)

• Quilt 7 square blocks and 7 pinwheel blocks
• Make 4 lap bibs, similar to below, but bigger (1 Xmas)

(I thought I had posted about these in 2018, but I guess I didn't. It's more like a scarf that works like a bib. I'll take better pictures this time.)

Linking to:

To Do Tuesday at Home Sewn by Us

Scrappy Weekend

I am giving myself a sewing weekend. The plumber was supposed to be here Saturday, but he was a no-show. That was probably a good thing as then I didn't have to deal with any distractions. I waited for him until 10:00 Saturday morning and then put a note on the door and headed up to my sewing space.

My weekend actually started Friday afternood and I thought I'd get a lot of quilting done, but I decided to try making myself an eye patch first. Since I had no pattern, it was a lot of trial and error, and a lot of scraps in the trash. I never did come up with an over the glasses design that only allowed vision from one eye. As much as I don't like the idea, I think I'll have to make a regular eyepatch. So that was a whole day wasted. Meanwhile, I thought I'd show you the progress I've made with quilting on the Scrappy Pinwheel blocks. I decided to do a meandering stitch on the square in a square blocks, but now that I've done three of them, I think the quilting may be too dense. I'll quilt a few of the pinwheels and then decide if all of these need to be tossed.

Saturday afternoon, I quilted one pinwheel and it may be okay. I'm using the walking foot on the straight lines of the strings and the free motion foot on the open spaces. I need to either do all the walking foot part first and then switch to the free motion, or set up two sewing machines to do the quilting.

Now on to the sewing reports. I don't think I spent 15 minutes in the sewing space any day this week. It was more like two or three hours every day. Some days it was just cutting strips, or trying out patterns, and of course Friday afternoon and nearly all day Saturday were spent trying to come up with an eye patch design. I spent several hours last night quilting with the ruler foot and it was a struggle. Either the center bulk of this bulk is more of a problem than I've had before, or I've forgotten how to do it easily, but today my shoulder is killing me and the quilting doesn't look good either. I won't be doing any quilting today, only piecing, or I may work on cross-stitch. The positive out of all this is that I've maintained my 100% success rate for the year. I also pulled fabric from my stash to make the backing blocks so I finally have something to show in the stash report.

Linking to:
15 Minutes to Stitch at Life in Pieces
Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework
Sunday Stash at QuiltPaintCreate
Patchwork & Quilts at Quilting Patchwork Applique
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

To Do Tuesday #75

We had a taste of real winter this week. It never got below freezing, so the snow we got melted away quickly. But for the day it was here, it was so pretty, and wasn't it nice to come on a Sunday when most people didn't have to get out? I thought so.

I had a good sewing week, but I didn't complete all my goals for the week.

Goals from January 5, 2021

1. Iron top and backing for Jacob's Ladder ✔
    It is ready to go to the long arm quilter as soon as she gets her machine out of the shop.
2. Make 25 half string blocks ✔
    I made 37, plus 12 four inch blocks
3. Put up Christmas decorations 
    I put up some, but not all. I did build a shelving unit to store all the totes that hold various

    decorations. Some of the totes had broken under the weight of stacked totes.

4. Work on the cross stitch project. I just didn't want to stop working on the string blocks.

This week's goals are much the same.

Goals for January 12, 2021

1. Add additional border on the backing for Gairden Walk so it can be quilted
2. Iron and cleanup top and backing for Gairden Walk, pack it up, send it out
3. Choose backing fabric for Scrappy Pinwheels and cut into thirty-five 13 inch squares
4. Cut some trial blocks and batting and experiment with quilting patterns
5. Quilt at least 5 Scrappy Pinwheel blocks

6. Put up Christmas decorations and get those boxes out of my sewing space

Linking to:
To Do Tuesday at Home Sewn by Us

Sewing Weekend Week 2 of 2021

I hope everyone is well and enjoying this new year. So far, so good for me. I have discovered that using the sewing machine (first time since August) perfectly hits the sweet spot of my vision. The only problem I've had this week has been not being able to tell which is the right side of the fabric, which made me try out Mr. Ripper sooner than I wanted. And that was tough. I threw some pieces away because it just wasn't worth trying to hold the fabric and a magnifying glass at the same time. But all in all, it was a very encouraging week, and I got a lot done.

I worked mainly on my string Scrappy Pinwheels. Originally, I was going to make the quilt with all pinwheel blocks doing quilt as you go so each block would be separated by a half inch sashing. But I've been playing around with designs, and made then made another block to see how it would look. It looks better on the computerized design than it does on the design wall. Now I'm not sure which direction I'll go with it.  Sorry for the dark photos.  I should have taken pictures while it was still daylight.

On to the reports!

I stitched every day this week so my 15 minutes to stitch report still shows 100% success rate.

Since I am using scraps and previously cut muslin, my stash report remains the same as it has for the last eight months. I'm not going to reduce my stash at this rate.

I'm linking this post to these blogs. Click on them to see what other quilters are doing:
Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework
15 Minutes to Stitch at Life in Pieces
Sunday Stash at Quilt Paint Create
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

To Do Tuesday #74

Sometimes it seems that my posts are redundant. Most of the goals I post on the weekly to do list are also goals on either my PhD list, my OMG list, or my yearly list. I think the To Do Tuesday list is more like a breakdown of steps to get to the ultimate goal though. Since I didn't make a post last Tuesday, I'll jump right into this week's goals.

1. I need to iron the top and backing for Jacob's Ladder. Both of those are contingent on finding that darn iron though.
2. Make 25 half string blocks. I cut the backing late last night but need to recheck the measurements while I'm wide awake.

3. Put up Christmas decorations. What does that have to do with sewing you ask? Well, the boxes are in the middle of my sewing space.
4. Work on the cross stitch project.

Linking to:
To Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us