Cruising

I will be MIA from blogland for a few days.

I leave today for another quilting cruise. I’m beyond excited. Between being sick most of December and the stress of the holidays, I’m ready to get away for a little while. This is a short one—only five days, which equates to maybe three and a half days to sew. I have my projects and my sewing machine all packed and ready to go. I didn’t get a picture of the first one, but the second one is a Tula Pink layer cake

and I am planning to use this pattern.

I’m not sure I will even get to this one. The first project may take the entire time. But, I want to have an extra project so I don’t run out of things to work on.

The weather here is disgusting. Cold and rainy. I made a big pot of beef vegetable soup out of the leftover rump roast. 

It was good, but I couldn’t eat it all and froze the leftovers. If it’s still cold when I get home, I’ll thaw it out and enjoy a nice hot meal! 

Monday Musings

 

Hmmm, that’s a good question. I think I was still tired yesterday, as I didn’t accomplish a lot. I cut some more of the strip sets for the Fuse Box quilt before church, and I sewed a few more together in the evening, but it wasn’t a lot of progress. 

Maybe slow and steady will win the race. LOL. I doubt it. I do have all the “light” wedges sewn together, and I’m now working on the “mediums”. I used an old Michael Miller jellyroll I had in my box of precuts. There wasn’t a lot of variety to it, but I wanted to use it up, and it fit the requirements of having 12 lights, 12 darks, and 12 mediums. I bought it because I thought it had dogs on it, but it is actually foxes. 

I did get my bags out of the car and took some pictures. I bought this kit which I can hardly wait to start. 

They had a sample sewn and quilted in their store, and it was really cool. It uses the large twister ruler which I have. 

I also found a really neat pattern

and an older jellyroll which I need to complete a quilt top I made last year. The vinyl is to make some project bags (when I get around to it!).

The thing I was most excited about—I found four colors of “Uncorked”. 

I used up what I had some time ago, and hadn’t seen any more locally. I didn’t want to break the bank, so I only got a yard of each. I have no clue what I will do with it, but I sure like it. 

I went to the mall yesterday after church. Actually, I went there to eat with my church friends, but after we ate I did some shopping. I was hoping to find some jeans. Something besides the Levi’s I usually wear. I wanted something more stylish, and maybe more dressy. I saw some cute wide-leg ones and tried them on, but I didn’t like the way I looked in them. In fact, I didn’t like the way I looked in anything I tried on. It was a total waste of time. I guess I will just keep wearing what I have. I was hoping to find something new to wear on my cruise, but that’s not going to work out for me.

Quilt Class

Janice and I drove to Richmond yesterday for a class at the quilt shop there. The class was the Fuse Box quilt 

which uses the Star 60 tool from Deb Tucker. 

The quilt shop was a little bit of a drive for us…..a little over 100 miles. They had a nice classroom. 

My workstation was where the red Janome is sitting. That’s my class machine. It’s a 3/4 size machine, and only weighs about 11 pounds. Anyway, I didn’t finish. LOL. Does anyone ever finish the class quilts? I got all my strip sets sewn, got about half of the wedges cut, and I sewed a few together, just to make sure I knew what to do. I’m hopeful that I can work on it soon. It’s not a big quilt, but it’s a little involved, so I’ll have to see how much time it takes me. 

Of course, I did a little shopping before I left the store and bought a few things. I know I said I wasn’t going to buy any fabric in January, but I pretty much blew that promise. Everything is still in the car. I was too tired after the drive back to unload everything, although I did bring my machine in. I can probably take some pictures tomorrow. 

New Computer

Well, my laptop finally quit working. I knew it was going to happen—it locked up a year ago, and I took it to an IT guy for repair. He got it working and updated the browser, but he also told me that was probably the last time the browser could be updated. He was right! I bought a new one on Black Friday, and I’ve been trying to transition everything. The problem is that the new one won’t communicate with the old one. It’s okay…..I’ll get there eventually. I’m writing this blog post on my iPad. It’s easier than dealing with the new laptop. 

The new laptop is eating up a lot of my time, but I have gotten a few quilts done. This one will be for Day One, and will go to a graduating senior who is leaving foster care.

I’m going to try and get some binding on it today.

I have one on the quilting frame that I need to finish.

That needs to happen today also. I like this pattern so much, I found the pattern online and ordered it. It takes 13 one third yard cuts. 

It has been nothing but meetings all week, and I really haven’t had the patience for any of it. I just want to sew. I have a class tomorrow in Richmond. Here’s a picture of what we’ll be making:

Mine won’t look like that….my jellyroll is a little different. I’ll try to remember to take pictures, but no guarantees. 

Plants and Plans

It’s finally cold here, and we are expecting freezing weather tomorrow. I brought the plants in. The ones in pots. The Lily of the Nile and the fountain grass are in the ground, so they got covered. I don’t cover the ferns or the lantana as they will come back after freezing. My Christmas cacti have been quite happy with the warmer than usual winter we’ve had. 

Aren’t they beautiful? I have white, red, and pink. I bought the pink one last year, but I’ve had the other two a while. I need to find a bigger pot for the white one soon. 

I have been working on my UFO lists, and I think I have almost everything figured out. I actually ma list for things I haven’t started but would like to. I think this will be a productive year for me if I can stay focused. 

This is the logo for the 2025 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I have also been thinking about this one. I have a box of 2.5” squares by the sewing machine that I use for leaders and enders, and I’ve made quite a few of these 16-patch blocks.

I think I will make some kind of star blocks using the RSC colors each month. January’s color is pink. I don’t think I will do the Stashbuster challenge—I don’t care for the block they chose. Of course, I need to finish last year’s, so there is no shortage of things to do.

A Few Finishes

I am motivated right now to get some things finished. I went through some of my totes and pulled out UFO’s plus some things I bought fabric for and never started. The only problem with all that is that I wrecked the house. I really need to clean now. I made some table runners yesterday.

The one in the middle is made from toweling so I only had to hem it. The other two are the 10-minute table runner pattern, so also fast. I really like the fabric in this one:

This is a Christmas one that is also made from towelling.

It’s one of the items I had planned to finish before the holiday, but getting sick pretty much eliminated that from happening.

I found 30-ish of these blocks I started last year.

They don’t all have the outer border, and I only found a small piece of it. I went by the quilt shop as soon as they opened just hoping I could find some more. I can’t remember when I bought it, and I was thinking they didn’t have much left on the bolt when I bought it. 

Lucky me—there were almost three yards left. I bought it all! LOL.

I am going to try to make a few extra blocks plus finish all the ones I started. I want to get 35 finished and then put them all together. 

I did some quilting this week and got three customer quilts done.

It would have been nice to get the Santa finished before Christmas, but that’s one more thing that didn’t happen.

The two embroidered quilts were made by two friends. They bought the same kit, and then did their own thing with it. Both of them had nice stitching. 

I hope I can get this house cleaned up this afternoon, or at least make a pretty good effort on it. Hopefully, there will also be some stitching time.

Year-End Wrap Up

I almost didn’t do this. I was disappointed about how many things got finished in 2024, but I thought about it for a few days and realized my blog is a record for me of what I’ve done and when I did it. 

I sometimes refer back to posts I’ve made when I am trying to remember when something happened or to find a picture of a quilt or whatever. 

I went through my 2024 camera roll and made a few collages of finished projects. They aren’t all quilts. In fact, they are mostly not quilts. I didn’t include quilts I quilted for customers. 

This one includes three quilts. The one with the gray border was donated to Day One Project, and the one in the lower right corner was donated to The Gabriel Project. The farm animal placemats and table runner were donated to a local church fundraiser.

Two quilts in this one plus potholders, crocheted dish cloths, and scissor cases. The quilt in the middle right spot is on my bed as we speak.

No quilts in this one. Mostly tea towels, scissor cases, potholders, dish cloths.

Last one. This includes a large quilt I made for a church raffle. The pumpkins were donated to a church fund raiser, there is a whole stack of crocheted dish cloths, a pin cushion, and a quilted jacket. 

All in all, not many large projects. That’s okay. I did a lot of traveling, and I was sick twice last year. I had Covid in late February/early March, and that set me back for a good three weeks, then the bronchitis and upper respiratory infection I had in December was another three weeks lost. I am going to do my best to stay healthy this year, and I only have two cruises scheduled for the year. If I get a chance to do a local quilting retreat, I wouldn’t say no, but I have turned down several trips friends are doing. One was a trip to Portugal, but it was 11 days, and that’s too long to leave my dogs. 

Last year was the first year American Patchwork and Quilting didn’t do their monthly UFO challenge, and I think that affected my productivity. I am an easily distracted person, and I need some accountability tools to keep me on track. There were some chats on the APQ Facebook group about how people are disappointed they don’t draw the monthly numbers any more. One of the members has volunteered to draw numbers each month, and there are still some blank templates available through the group. I have printed out three templates which I plan to fill out and get myself back on track. I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it.