Last Design Wall Monday of 2020

 To see what other quilters are up to go to 

Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.

I missed getting to see the Christmas Star on the 21st because of cloud cover, but the 22nd was a clear night.

I spent Christmas day making cookies - chocolate chip and sugar cookie cut-outs. 

These get eaten as fast as I make them as you can see from the bite taken from the one tree. 

I am making progress on Crimson Poppy.

I need to get this finished because of this. 

Coral Reef by Quiltworx.

The fabric and specific cutting instructions for this colorway kit have arrived. The pattern with the foundation papers isn't available for sale yet, but I want to be ready when it is.

I added a block to Grandmother's Flower Garden.

Then I decided to spend some time cleaning up the piles in my sewing room. I had made a storage roll for my knitting needles a few years ago. I was storing crochet hooks in there also and it just got too full. So I decided to make a separate roll for the crochet hooks. 

When rolled up they are a neat bundle.

Each size has it's own slot. So easy to find the size needle or hook needed.

The flap folds over the needles and hooks to keep them securely in the roll when closed.

In my button stash, I found a cute bee button to use for the closure for the crochet roll.

Stay safe and well.

Design Wall Monday

To see what other quilters have on their design walls go to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.

I am still working on Crimson Poppy.

Saturday my wall looked like this.

Today it looks like this. The sun ducked under a little while ago so the top part is too dark and hard to see. Sorry.

You can see on the table I have started the next unit. I think I am over halfway finished with piecing. The units are getting bigger and have more pieces now so they will take longer to sew. None of the units are sewn to each other yet. This is pieced in quadrants to avoid Y seams, which will be nice. 

The weather has gotten colder and windier. It was sunny this morning, but that has changed in the last hour. I guess that is fitting for the first day of winter. I am looking forward to spring.

Covid cases have increased greatly in my area recently. People refuse to wear masks as people are dying. I am choosing to wear a mask when in public. I am choosing to stay at home as much as possible. 

Stay safe.

Every day a little progress

 is being made.

Monday looked like this.

Wednesday looked like this.

Yesterday looked like this.

Wonder what today will look like.

I am still trying to practice patience.

Our internet has been great, ok, not good off and on the last few days. It suddenly drops to nothing, then comes back. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. That makes it difficult to watch Youtube videos, Netflix, on-line cattle auctions (that's Husband). Ii spent 45 minutes on hold this morning waiting to talk to a tech person. They told me they show nothing on their end and I have to call when it is happening. Grr. Patience.

I am waiting for the mail to be delivered. The carrier is really late today. She's a lovely person and I know it isn't her fault. Post offices are backed up everywhere. Informed Delivery tells me I should be getting a package today and I want to meet her at the mailbox so she doesn't have to get out of her vehicle. I have laundry in the dryer but I figure as soon as I go to the basement to take care of it she'll come. (As I was typing this she pulled in my drive. Got a package, but not the one I expected.) Patience.

Nothing I am expecting is urgent. Everything I had ordered for Christmas gifts has been delivered so I feel very lucky. 

Husband's phone decided to not work right this morning and he couldn't figure it out. Turns out turning it off and back on fixed whatever the problem was. Patience.

My local PBS station has decided to change its broadcast schedule. I had my day sort of planned around that. They were showing crafting/quilting/sewing shows in the afternoon which worked great for me. I do the 'chores' in the morning then sew in the afternoon while watching those shows. Now it is cooking/food shows. One show is on twice. The exact same episode.  I'm still sewing then, but I miss the shows I was watching. Patience.

Stay safe.

Patience

To see what other quilters have on their design walls go to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.

Lately, I have been needing patience. 

Some days a little, some days a lot.

It started a couple of weeks ago when a couple of my friends commented that they liked the ear warmer I was wearing when the exchange group gathered in the school parking lot to exchange our bags.

Oooh! I immediately thought of Christmas gifts! I went home and searched my small yarn stash and found nothing that would work, so I ordered some. I had to have patience while I searched for just the right colors and had trouble finding them. Then I had to have patience while I waited for the yarn to arrive. Then I had to have patience while I searched for the end of the yarn inside the skein. If you are a knitter you might know what I mean. 

That end is usually hard for me to find and I end up with a snarled mess right at the start. This happened with all three skeins of yarn. Patience.

I got right to knitting but didn't like the way the stripes were forming. I took it out and decided to try a different pattern. I happily knit away but soon began thinking that it seemed bigger/looser than mine.

It was. It just didn't fit right. I took it out again. I decided to try a different yarn for this person. It was bulkier yarn than the others, but I thought I could adjust the number of stitches used. I knew fairly soon into it that it was too wide, but Husband insisted that wide was good, it would cover the ears well. 

But it was too wide. It didn't fit well. So... patience.

I cast on again with fewer stitches and that worked just right. On to the next two. I had sock yarn for both of them and cast on the first one using a single strand of yarn.

 

I realized quickly that knitting with one strand on tiny needles would take forever. So, out it came. (This drives Husband crazy, BTW. He just doesn't understand that it is better to take it out and redo something that isn't going to fit so I tried to do the unknitting when he wasn't around!) I cast on using two strands on larger needles. But, since I only had one skein of yarn I had to use one strand from the inside and one from the outside of the skein. That got a little messy sometimes. Patience. 

The knitting did go faster and I like the finished ear warmers.

I hope my friends like them, too.

I will include the bands from the skeins of yarn so they will know how to wash them.

I have been piecing a Double 4-Patch quilt. I had found some 4-patch blocks with I was doing some organizing in my sewing room. I have been trying to finish up projects that have been hanging around for too long. I cut more in both sizes. I have stitched and stitched and was getting close to finishing, then I realized I didn't have enough squares. 

Patience. I cut some more.

 

Still didn't have enough squares. At this point, I was becoming IMpatient. If I hadn't been so close to a finish I probably would have put it away for another day.  It is a flimsy now, though.

While working in my sewing room and I noticed these projects patiently waiting their turn.

Churn Dash,

Crimson Poppy

and A Sparkling Sampler Exchange.

Husband has been wondering when I was going to finish the double 4-patch and get started on his quilt, Crimson Poppy. So I pulled that one to get started on. But before I did that I decided to rearrange my little sewing corner in the living room. The way it was I was looking at a wall and had to turn my head to see the TV.

This was causing my neck to hurt. Now I can just look up and see the TV. 

 

I can still see out the bay window and the window to the front of the house is just behind me. 

You can see that I got the very center units of Crimson Poppy sewn. This is a Quiltworx pattern and is paper pieced. I do like paper piecing, but it takes longer and requires more attention. Patience.

Husband had seen this quilt pop up on Facebook. I follow Quiltworx and there are beautiful quilts posted all the time. I think I may need to unfollow since he keeps seeing quilts he insists I need to make. He recently had me order the fabric kit for the newest one - Coral Reef. The pattern hasn't even been published yet. It won't be available until mid-January, but the fabric is on its way to my house so I better hurry and get Crimson Poppy finished. I guess my UFOs will have to wait a while longer. Patience.

I wish I could see more of my parents and Son.

I wish family drama would resolve.

I am so ready for Covid to end.

Patience.

Stay safe and well.

All over the place!

To see what other quilters have on their design walls go to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.

I am all over the place!

First off, I had some over-ripened bananas so I decided to try a new recipe.

Banana Bundt with Brown Sugar Glaze. Yum! If you click on the recipe and then look at my version you can tell that I made a few changes. I thought that a whole cake would be too much for just the two of us.  I halved the cake batter recipe and made it in a round cake pan instead of a bundt pan. I then cut that in half and layered it. I made the full glaze recipe, iced between the layers, the sides, and the top. I didn't add the pecans because I didn't have any on hand, but they would be good. I bought more bananas this week so I see this cake in our future.

I have been working on hand quilting this lovely vintage quilt for my friend.

I am not entirely sure, but I believe the printed fabrics may be flour sack fabrics. They are more loosely woven than the yellow. I have been noticing that the person who pieced this quilt was pretty thrifty. Some of the blocks use all the same printed fabric. Some blocks use two or more printed fabrics.

They are close, but not the same. 

Some blocks have pieced pieces.

These blocks are not perfectly pieced; there are puckers and excess fabric in some places. But, I think this quilt is beautiful. I hope my friend will think so too. I have stopped working on that and picked up some knitting. I'll show you that another day.

On Saturday my quilt group met for the final exchange. We all got our bags back. Here are my blocks.

I made that big block. Now to get to put it together, but not until after the knitting is finished. I will miss this group of ladies. We have decided to not meet again until it is safer to do so. In the meantime, we are thinking about doing a mystery quilt. Our leader will send out clues once a month and we can share our progress as we go along via email and/or text. It will keep us connected but social distant.

Then my niece sent me a message asking for some family photos. That took up some time this weekend. I pulled out one of my boxes of actual photographs.

Oh, the memories. I am pulling photos and making piles for her and also my son.

I do a minimal amount of decorating for holidays.

A fiber optic tree that Husband is in charge of.

He decides when it gets turned on. It stays on until he decides to turn it off sometime in January. We also have a cute Santa figurine that is filled with glitter. It lights up with multi-colored lights and the glitter swirls around. 

There is also a large green ball with rows of lights that flash and blink in several different patterns.

But, this year Husband got creative. He had to get new tractor tires and repurposed a couple of the old ones into this!

I didn't know he was making it. Such a nice surprise!

So I am all over the place with projects and ideas. But, right now I need to get to the knitting!

Stay safe and well.