Quick Update

Not much is new here. I have not been sewing much. I had to report for jury selection on Monday—lucky me! We were there for most of the day, and then they said we were all free to go. I assume the case was settled out of court, although I really don’t know. I didn’t ask any questions! 

It has rained pretty much all day for the last three days. Luckily, it was clear Saturday morning and I was able to get to the farmers market. I got there at nine when they opened and people were already lined up. 

I was in line for a while, but I got tomatoes, zucchini, and okra. 

The tomatoes are not beautiful—we’ve had too much rain this summer, but I did eat one for lunch.

I know my weight watcher lunch doesn’t look very exciting but it was good. 

I did a little bit of sewing. Betty gave me two pillow panels that her sister bought at a garage sale. They are totally 1980’s. Or maybe early 90’s. My grandmother made a quilt from these panels around that time, so I remember them.

They hadn’t been cut apart, so I fused some fusible fleece to the entire thing, folded it in half, and boxed the bottom. I added handles and now it’s a bag. 

I didn’t want to make pillows, but the bag is cute. It will go in our church craft sale.

I have another stray cat that showed up at my shop. He/she is white with black patches and is not full grown. It’s hungry all the time. LOL. 

I really don’t know where all these cats come from. I can’t take them home because my dogs are not cat-friendly, but I don’t mind feeding them. 

One Tote Done

I spent pretty much the entire day cutting and sewing a tote. I’m using this pattern: 

I have had the pattern almost a year, and I’m just now getting around to making it. The pattern has three sizes, and I made the large one. I was hoping using Bosal foam as the filler would give it enough body to stand up, even in the large size. Did it work? I think it worked well enough. I’m not unhappy with it. 

I also filled the handles with strips of the foam, so they will be comfortable to carry. The handles weren’t hard to make, but they took a little more time than I would have liked. I am going to try and think of some kind of alternative. Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Putting the bias binding around the edges of the bag was a little fiddly, but I used my large sewing machine with the dual feed foot engaged and was able to get through it. 

My friend Janice sent me a picture of the one she just finished. I like the Texas fabric theme, which made me want to make more. LOL. 

I enlarged the picture a little bit to see her handles, and I see she did hers differently. She is also sewing her binding down by hand which is no doubt a neater finish, but I’m not willing to hand sew anything I can do by machine. 

I have two more prequilted pieces which I want to cut out and sew hopefully this week, and then I will think about a Texas A&M one and I think I have some of the Texas fabric somewhere. I plan to donate these to sell at our church festival and also at our quilt guild open house, so a good number would be six. We’ll see how much time I have.

Speaking of the church festival, Betty and I got together for a few hours today and made pillowcases to sell. We had both pre-cut some, and thanks mostly to her, they are all done now. I’ll get pictures later if I remember. I also cut some more scraps into potato chips. 

Every little bit adds up! Maybe tonight I can find time to work on potato chip blocks. I hope so. Becky and I are going to a barbecue this evening in Dacosta. Becky is our  Luther Fest chairman, and I’m in charge of the silent auction, so we are going to see what their setup looks like. Or as Becky said, we are going to do some reconnaissance. LOL. 

Making Some Totes

I finally got around to quilting some yardage to make totes. 

I used a wide back and was able to do three one-yard pieces with Bosal foam in the middle. I used a pretty dense quilting design as I will be cutting this yardage into much smaller pieces, and I want to make sure there are plenty of stitches in each piece to hold everything together. 

The texture of the quilting really shows up well with the Bosal foam in the middle. This is the back:

I got the pieces cut out for the first tote and started applying the contrasting binding. I like the way it looks so far. 

These are the side panels. The top piece forms the pocket. I still have quite a bit more work to do, but I was anxious to get started and get a little done. 

Trash and Treasure

No quilting right now. The technician came from Richmond yesterday to do the routine maintenance on my longarm. I get it done every 18 months to two years. I needed a new thrust bearing on the belly bar and a new shaft adapter for quick change feet. He also tightened all the belts, changed the tension spring, cleaned everything, etc. I will need to get back to quilting today. I did do some sewing though.

I often sew at home in the evenings, but lately I haven’t been in the mood. In fact, my small machine was still in the travel bag where I put it after the placemat workshop two weeks ago. I got it out and removed the walking foot I had left on it, and proceeded to figure out I don’t have the ankle that the regular feet attach to.

I robbed the one off my Janome 6019, but that’s not a permanent solution. I will either need to find the missing ankle or order a new one. I can probably get one from Sewing Parts Online. I hope. 

Someone had given me a bag of scrap fabrics, and I found these 10” squares in the bag. 

Well, you know how I am. I like the challenge of figuring out how to make something beautiful from someone else’s rejects. I made a cute baby quilt top that took all of about ten minutes.

I will put minkee or flannel on the back, and it will be a nice quilt for a baby girl. I had 8 squares left over, and I don’t now what to do with those. I may end up cutting them up into 5” squares and adding them to the charm squares boxes. I’m not sure yet.

I also cut up some more potato chips from some random scraps.

There are still some more scraps I need to process (always). I need to get back to work on the Summer Challenge, but now that I have the machine out and working, I will be able to do that.

Two of the dogs go to the vet today for checkups and shots, so this will be an expensive week for me!

Crafts and Stuff

Happy Monday! I have been working on some different things. Is this true, or did someone just make it up? 

I decided I need to make some totes from this pattern, 

and I spent more than a little time looking for it. I am going to prequilt the fabrics and then cut out the pieces. I have pulled the fabrics I want to use, but they aren’t quilted yet. The technician is coming today to do the periodic maintenance on my longarm, so I didn’t bother to load anything for quilting. I will work on my paperwork while the machine is down. 

I have a goal of better utilizing my free time in the evening, and I am currently working on a crochet project. A quilt guild friend gifted me one of these.

It’s a face scrubby or facial puff…..I’ve seen them called both things. I was determined to go home and figure out how to make them. It took a few tries, but I finally got this made. They kind of look like sea urchins to me…. https://seathingsventura.com/products/pink-sea-urchin?srsltid=AfmBOop0dC60mOX0g3pTaqgJxZ47T1RtLfHJgiL5ztyvNbTKjqZt33wC

I haven’t picked up a crochet hook since last October when I crocheted all those pot scrubbies. I needed a break, but now I’m having fun. I got out all my cotton yarn.

I have three of the pink, two of these

 and two of these

They’re not hard so it’s going pretty fast.

Yesterday was my oldest granddaughter’s birthday, and her choice of where to celebrate will generally include crawfish. 

She can put away a lot of crawfish. I’m still doing weight watchers, so I had boiled shrimp, one corn, and one potato. It was good! 

What I've Been Working On

 I've gotten a lot done this week, but not all of it was quilting or sewing. In fact, I still haven't had time to work on the placemats I wanted to make. I hope I can do that soon. I got these quilts done for Joycelynn. 

I also do the binding on hers, so it takes a little longer. I was happy to get them finished and back to her. 

I also finished two for a new customer named Megan.

I see I forgot to edit my feet out of that one. LOL. Both of the quilts had Minkee on the back, 

Megan hasn't been quilting long and needed a longarmer to get these done. She found my name on my Facebook business page. I hope she is happy with them. 

My youngest grandson had his awards presentation on Wednesday. His school is year-round, so their schedule is a little different. I think he will be out a couple of weeks and then go into fifth grade. 

Here he is with his mom.

Other than that, we have been busy at church doing all the policy revisions. I think we are finished with all the mark-ups. We got them all printed out yesterday so we can review them at our council meeting on Monday. Hopefully, I didn't miss anything when I did the revisions! If I did, I will hear about on Monday! 

I have been making an effort to quit wasting time in the evenings looking at my iPad. I can waste several hours just looking at TikTok and YouTube videos. I have been crocheting some and doing some hand sewing. I will share more of that in the next post. 

Lots of Placemats

Happy Sunday! It’s been a full week. We had a Community Service workshop Thursday and Friday at quilt guild. Our workshop participation hasn’t been great, but 10 people stayed to sew placemats, and a couple of people took stuff home to work on. I didn’t take pictures at the workshop, but I do have pictures of what we accomplished. 

We managed to complete 45 placemats which will be donated to Meals on Wheels. Here’s a picture of them all together:

This was two days of sewing. Not everyone could come Friday, but five of us were able to. I posted this tutorial for the group, in case they wanted to an easy self-binding type of placemat. I haven’t tried it yet, but I picked up some inexpensive fat quarters at Walmart the last time I was in there, so I will experiment and see what I can do with the tutorial.

I also had prequilted some yardage as did another lady who has a longarm.

I had pre-made some binding, but it went fast, so I spent most of Friday morning making more. Some people wanted to bind instead of sewing, and it worked out well having everything prepared and ready to go. 

I have a few more quilted and not bound that I brought home with me. I hope to get them finished this weekend, but I don’t know if I will have time. I’ll get them done eventually and post pictures when I finish.