Sewing Weekend for Week 4 of 2021

It's been a foggy, drizzly weekend so far with thunderstorms forecast late Sunday. The perfect weather for stitching and reading, so I stitch by day and read by night. The plumber was here Friday and Saturday and I sewed with my noise cancelling headphones on for most of the day. Not the most comfortable way to sew, but it was going to be loud no matter where I was. I had no idea plumbers made so much noise.

I decided not to send the Jacob's Ladder quilt out for quilting. I don't think I'll ever look at the quilt without seeing all the faults. I had considered throwing it away instead of finishing it into a flimsy, so spending more money on it seems like a waste. But I do need to practice quilting and it will be fine for that. I started quilting it this week, using a combination of straight lines with the walking foot and ruler foot and I'm having very little trouble seeing the dark green against white.

The pinwheel quilt blocks are a different story. The light colors against muslin are impossible to see. But I found that drawing a line with a dark Frixon pen is making it much easier. I thought I had all the string parts of the Scrappy Pinwheels quilted until I put them all on the wall yesterday and realized I had one too many pinwheels and one too few square in a square blocks. Since I had used every scrap of backing fabric, now I have to rip out the quilting on a pinwheel to reuse that backing. Why oh why couldn't it have been an extra square in a square with less quilting in it?!!

Getting down to business though, I have maintained my 100% daily stitching success rate for the year, and have used a little more fabric from the stash this week. I came very, very close to buying some unneccesary fabric, but I resisted. I thought I needed a little more muslin to finish my pinwheels, but I found another yard in my stash.

One Monthly Goal Complete!

My One Monthly Goal for January was to make 20 blocks for this quilt, and I have made the blocks and done most of the straight line quilting on them. I will be linking to Elm Street Quilts when Patty posts the final linkup.

I am linking this to:
15 Minutes to Stitch at Life in Pieces
Sunday Stash at QuiltPaintCreate
Patchwork & Quilts at Quilting Patchwork Applique
Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Monday Making at LoveLaughQuilt
One Monthly Goal January Finish at Elm Street Quilts

Scrappy Weekend Week 3

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 #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