Wandering Wednesday: Sacramento Family

 

We had a long day of driving on Saturday, over bridges, through several cities to get to my Uncle Bill's 80th birthday party. This is the Carquinez Bridge and some very nice cloud cover. We were glad the party wasn't held a couple weeks ago when it was so hot. We haven't seen the Sacramento branch of the family in a while so it was a greatly anticipated event.

We pulled up a bit late as the highway construction delayed it. Thankfully I happened to see my Uncle getting out of his car in front of my cousin's house so we went around the block and waited. We were glad we didn't' ruin the surprise. Right when we got there, my cousin Angel wrangled almost all of us for a group picture, there were several normal ones and then the regulation silly one too of course. 

Here's why I noticed Uncle Bill, check out those colorful pony tales! He and my aunt have been using temporary hair dye of various colors for a while now and they both love all the smiles and comments they get from people. They are truly fun and unique people that have always been wonderful to spend time with.

Bill has always been into trains, so he got a train cake that he was very excited about. That's my aunt Vincie in the foreground, Uncle Bill, and my Dad watching the cake action, with my daughter Zoe next to him.

The napkins were super cute! And thankfully not related to that particular current political message.

As night fell the cool backyard lights came on. There's my cousin Dana on the left, cousin Maya, aunt Vincie, my mom, and Maya's husband Lee. I liked Lee's PeeChee shirt a whole lot! We decide he needed a Blue Book one, or maybe even a ScanTron one to fill out the set.

Then things got wild, no just bad camera handling.

The younger cousin generation got wrangled to varying degrees of displeasure for a picture with the birthday dude (so said his sash!). My two kids are on the right hand side.

Then it was all the way to Oakland where we dropped off our DD at her place. This is a picture of some interesting graffiti, lights and underpass. What a fun day, mostly spent in the car, but even that was fun because we got to spend time with DD. Totally worth the drive, I'm really glad we have such good, interesting people in our extended family to spend time with.

Squaring and Scaring

Pressing opening all those seams from the HSTs I made yesterday.

And then it was time to square them all up and also time for Scare Up The Vote, a horror community fundraising call for Harris/Waltz. Amazing stuff.  I really enjoyed watching the whole thing.

Getting to hear my fave, Stephen King discuss horror movies and books and the importance of the election with his son, Joe Hill was a great way to get all the trimming done. I'm now looking at the Go Kamala Harris website to see what else I can do.

 

More Friendship

 

Cut out some more fabric in different cheery colors for more Friendship Stars.

Woo, those need ironing.

Ironed, marked, pinned, ready to sew into HST's.

And that's where I'm stopping before I make any mistakes.

Friendship Star

 

I'm making a practice Friendship Star block for another project, and I thought I'd use some of the blue and yellow and green fabrics I'd pulled for the Sunflower blocks for the Wrap the World in Quilts Ukraine Project. These means making a bunch of HST's, I'm using the 2-at-time method, so out comes the marking tool and an erasable pen.

I had to cut them all down to size, ao I used the mini rotating mat that I have and it really helped speed things up.

That's a lot of trimming! But now they're all the right size (4.5") so hopefully the block will go together easily.

I laid out the blocks to check out the placement of the colors.

A view of all the seams on the back, pressed open.

There it is! Another 12.5" block done.

Stamp Quilt Mail

 

I was so surprised to get the Stamp Quilt sew a long patch in the mail the other day.

Isn't that patch adorable? I love the '24 in the corner. Remember when stamps were that cheap? They're now .73¢ now. I was at the post office in my little town today and they had Run Out of stamps! Wild?! What? The postmaster was printing out postage on the tape for people.

I'm being good and not peeking in the envelope to check out the finisher charm because I haven't finished my Stmap Quilt top yet. 

Answering the Prewash Question

 

I'm getting ready to work on some blocks for a group quilt and was reminded by the helpful instructions to pre-wash the red-purple fabrics I'm using.

Hoo boy! I thought I'd already washed all of these fabrics so I was surprised to see so much free dye captured in the Color Catcher. They're now all soaking in a bucket with some Synthropol and then I'll short wash them with some Retayne. Hopefully that will work well enough.

Whenever people tell me that they don't regularly pre-wash all their new fabrics I try really hard not to make a face, but I know I probably do. And the above is why! Why would you risk it?  

Two Sunflowers

 

It's finally cooled off enough to actually go get some sewing done. I went back to the second Sunflower block I've been working on. I had to re-do a couple of these flying gees+ triangle units, which was well worth the effort.

Otherwise this block would not have gone together...at....all.

Yay! I really like this one. I'm happy that I used that batik sunflower fabric. And that I got the directional yellow print triangles lined up well.

This one looked even better after a little pressing with a hot iron.

I really like both of these blocks! I hope they will be useful in the Wrap the World in Quilts Ukraine project.