Change of Plans

I was feeling lazy, grubby, and uninspired (and my hair was pretty bedraggled, in need of a shampoo). I was going to punt going to my second Saturday of the Month Amador Valley Quilters guild September meeting. Spending a week dutifully adding binding, labels, and hanging sleeves can lead to a decline in enthusiasm. See my previous post. But I had four block-of-the-month blocks I needed to turn in and about a 3" stack of magazines I wanted to drop off at the exchange table. In keeping with my goals and struggles to declutter and pare down, I did want to get these items out of my sewing room. I confessed to my husband I was going to sneak in late, surreptitiously drop off the items, miss most of the business part of the meeting, and be prepared to duck out early if I was not smitten with the speaker. To accomplish this I would try to blend into the audience unnoticed.

Then my friend texted me, cheerily asking if I would like to ride with her. She reminded me that there was a social and a fabric sale an hour before the start of the meeting. Dang! I'd forgotten. I was generally trying to have less volume in the house but it is always fun to just look. And a social might be a nice opportunity to sit and chat. I said yes. Then I scurried to jump in the shower, wash my hair, and change to some less grungy clothes. I did not look as good as Rapunzel from Tangled but ... whatever.

At the social I had a good time, ate a few too many sweets, and talked so much my mouth was a bit dry. And I did buy a few items. Fortunately the sale was run as a mystery, lots of brown bags labeled with extremely discounted prices and just a hint at what was inside such as "paisley and friends" or "pansies". I figured I had enough mystery bags in my sewing room, contents unknown or temporarily forgotten, so I did not need to add to them, no matter how little they cost. 

I did however buy a sealed box for $2 enticingly labeled with "feel me" and I thought I could add that to my stash for future burp cloths. 

After purchasing it, I peeked inside. It contained two fat quarters of a black "cabin in the woods" themed flannel, two fat quarters of a red flannel, and 1½ yards of a neutral beige flannel. All were appropriate for burp cloths. I could snazz up the beige flannel by pairing it with some brighter, busier print ½ yard pieces from my stash or I could match it with the red and black options already enclosed. But there were 2½ yards of flannel there for $2 - enough for five burp cloths ... enough for eight burp cloths once I pair it with brights I already have in my stash. Not bad! There was also an odd shaped section of floral blue/peach flannel yardage which was double width and ~½ yard long. That may just find itself re-gifted on a giveaway table at my other guild. No picture of the floral flannel. I may want to remain anonymous with that one.  

I also picked up two patterns that were labeled as free, but I was a big spender and donated $1 for them. I have a penchant for United States flag patterns. I liked the way those Ohio Stars were camouflaged in among the red and white flying geese stripes. They also cleverly help fool the eye into thinking it knows which direction those flying geese are really flying! The other pattern gave me an idea on how to use border prints. This opened my mind up. A border print or broad stripe does not have to run parallel to the borders. Cutting it across the stripe can give a pleasing twist, also. Another perk is that no one needs to turn his head sideways to view the critters or text in the borders, something that bugged me a bit. The central blocks were intricate enough to be interesting, too.

Once in the meeting I retrieved a packet of 20 blocks that I had won from a previous month's block of the month. Here are four laid out to show the secondary pattern that forms with the bright batiks and white on white background.

During the meeting, the drawing for September's block of the month was held and the winner was announced ... lucky me, again. I now have 16 adorable striped pumpkin blocks. I definitely went home with more than I came with!

After the meeting, I was invited to join my friend and three other guild members for an early dinner. I accepted. My quick and dirty plan to zip out for about an hour turned into a lovely afternoon from noon to after 5:00 pm. I was glad I went. I end with a quote from Mark Twain.

Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do
 than by the ones you did do.

Updating this post to link to Let's Bee Social #194.

Distraction and the Mundane

DISTRACTION:
I try to post weekly to DL2Q but sometimes life intervenes. Last week, I was unexpectedly away from my San Francisco Bay Area home for five days when my son in southern California needed an emergency appendectomy. His wife and daughter were visiting her family in Ohio. I was closer. My last minute airfares would be cheaper. There'd be no complications of child care for a 3½ year old and a 1½ year old. And although I would not wish the pain and unexpected surgery on him, I enjoyed the rare one-on-one time with my son. I was quite willing to be a mom again. I have no regrets whatsoever about the time lost; I rather viewed it as time gained. But, my quilting progress did take a hit. To keep my presence in the blogging world, though, I will report on the trivial tasks I did complete.

THE MUNDANE:
Not much creativity or artistic expression was happening here this week upon my return. I am entering three quilts in my guild's quilt show September 16th-17th. I judiciously chose to enter only quilts I had completed. I am so glad now I did not pressure myself to enter a fourth that still needed to be backed, quilted, and bound.  Yet "completed" is a relative term. All three needed quilt sleeves, two of the three needed labels, one needed to be bound, one needed to be washed and fluffed. I am reminded that all these mundane tasks usually take much more time than I estimate.

First up is my youngest son's Monkey Quilt, posted May 26, 2014, needed a sleeve. I like my sleeves to somewhat match or at least coordinate with the backing. This quilt was finished over three years ago but of course I still had the scraps. In the sewing equivalent of dumpster diving I was on a mission to find those scraps and see if I had enough that could be used for the sleeve. I had to go through only three plastic bins. Fortunately, I had been in the phase where I put all the scraps from a project in a zip-loc bag. I'd read a tip somewhere that doing so was useful because the colors already went together since they'd been used together in a project. Most scrap organization recommendations advise sorting by color, which I do not do.

I found strips long enough but not wide enough for a sleeve. I chose the lollipop fabric found in some of the rectangles of the border and the red dots used in the binding, each of a different width. Of course I wanted the sleeve to look like it belonged on the back of the quilt. Lengthwise piecing to the rescue. Then I had to decide how much of each fabric I wanted to show. I know this is just a sleeve folks but hey it counts. Decisions like these to take time and futzing. I came up with placing the red dotted fabric away from the matching binding. I think I would have preferred to show a narrower width of red dots, but I was limited by the my available width of the lollipop fabric. 

I found a couple arcs of the orange peel quilting lines that I had missed originally. Apparently the quilt had been without those for months, even with multiple uses. Once noticed, though, I needed to change to orange thread on my Pfaff and add them. However, a label was already on this Monkey Quilt.

  

Next up for sleeving was my Storybook Charm quilt, displayed in my July 5, 2017 post. I noted and inwardly groaned that I had not made my grosgrain labels for the corners. I dutifully made those labels. The inward groan was because I had to un-sew portions of the binding to slip the corners of the labels underneath and then re-sew. It was after doing this that I re-read my blog post. It stated that my intention had been to skip the labels and just write name and date information on the binding. Oh, well. Now it has grosgrain labels.

I did not have quite enough of the backing fabric for a full width sleeve. I pieced it in the center and sewed down the seam allowances so they would not catch when threading through the support pole for hanging. 

I used only a ¼" central seam and let the sleeve fall a ¼" short from reaching the binding on each end. I thought that was preferable to another seam for just another ½" of width.

Finally I had to label and bind my Out of the Blue quilt before adding a sleeve. Here are the corner labels, neatly tucked under the sporty striped binding.

I had a long strip of the backing leftover to use for the sleeve. It ran lengthwise though, so I could not line up the grid of flowers. In 20/20 hindsight, it is a square quilt, so had I rotated the quilt 90°, making one side the top, I could have aligned them. I was not about to remove labels and do that. Even I could acknowledge it was only a sleeve.

Here are my three quilt entries for the show: Monkey Quilt, Storybook Charm, and Out of the Blue. They are quite an eclectic mix. I am sure there will be an even greater variety at Let's Bee Social #193 so I will link up there.