M.O.M.

 

Well, I'm feeling like the luckiest mom ever as I've just had a very lovely Mother's Day with my family. A visit from daughter Zoe and her friend Viv, who were picked up at the most southerly BART station by DH and DS. They picked up a great lunch for us from our favorite sandwich place near my mom's house. Then we all went on a little post-lunch walkabout, including to the Future Farmers of America farm next door to my mom's community where we got to walk through the stalls and check out all the animals, cows, sheep, goats. After a quick jaunt on the freeway overpass and back again, we all inhaled our very tasty Costco Tiramisu, actually speaking of inhaling, watch out for that powdered cocoa on top, several of us had coughing fits, stir it up before eating. We also did some helpful gardening at my Mom's, got her new umbrella set up and the A/C unit put back in the window for the summer. 

Lots of fun and conversation and laughter. Just what I needed. And this picture above is my very favorite present, thanks to photographer, Viv.

Here's to all mothers every where, some great words from the great Rebecca Solnit:

"Mother is both a noun and a verb. Some people had great mothers but lost them, some had or have mothers who never mothered them or stopped mothering them for some reason, treated them as adversaries or as worthless, and Mother's Day can be a punitive day for all those for whom this is true.

The other half of the question of what there is to celebrate is what mothered and mothers you, how you mother yourself, how you celebrate and recognize what cares for you and takes care of you, and what you care for in return....

May you locate the ten thousand mothers that brought you into being and keep you going, no matter who and where you are. May you be the mother of uncounted possibilities and loves."

Ocean Return

 

Back to work on finishing up Ocean Effect for the Bay Area Modern Quilting group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair. I've already gone ahead and entered it, so now I have to finish it up. Referring to my initial sketch, I started with the lowest horizontal color line, just to see how it's looking.

Adding in a few more colors.

And here are a few more of the colors pinned on and ready to sew. I've just got a few greens left to go up to the very top. Then it'll be time to trim it up and do the facings and hanging sleeve.

Mosaic Runner Top Done

Here's where I ended up with the mosaic table runner. Or so I thought...

One last rearrange before final assembly.

And one more little change before the last seam was sewn. That upper left hand corner block got turned 180°. Now I'm done and all ready for layering and quilting.

 

Mosaic Piecing

 

Time for some teeny-tiny piecing with teeny tiny HSTs™for the mosaic table runner 2.5" blocks I'm filling in the final layout with.

A little bowtie block.

And some of the bright bright bright neon yellow solid for a little bit of an interior frame. Started out with .75" wide strips.

There it is, a 2.5" square. I figured that some of these smaller pieced centers would be interesting to look at up close while this is on our table.

I started piecing together some of the sections of the layout. It's going pretty easily to join up the various sizes which all fit together mosaic-style.

This is likely the final layout I'm going with.

Even More Mosaics

Making more Mosaic Blocks for my table runner project. Using up the scraps from making the other blocks to make the smallest size blocks.

Not a final arrangement but I think I have almost enough to figure out how to assemble this thing now.

 

Shopping Local

 

I haven't been to a quit shop in a while, but I needed some more Best Press and a certain type of elastic. Imagine my surprise when I was handed this lovely gift bag at checkout of Santa Cruz Vac & Sew. They had just celebrated their 7th anniversary, and had gift bags for customers. Which was super nice! Shopping local is so necessary.

The three FQs on the right are called Cotton Shantung, they have that lovely slubby texture and almost have the weight and drape of a silk shantung. I thought the patterns were lovely and they had many color combinations available at Hart's Fabrics. Some smiley face wooden buttons, more needles (always more needles just in case of an apocalypse), very wide elastic and a big bottle of Best Press. 

Adding these onto the fabric tracker, and also updating with my recent finishes, I've found that my

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -11.5 yards 

Yes, you read that right, I'm in the red, I've used up more fabric than I've brought in. Yay, me! We'll see how this holds up through the year.

Mosaic Runner Blocks

 

At the Bay Area Modern Quilting Sew Day yesterday, I worked on making more mosaic blocks so I can put together this project and make a table runner. I was chatting and visiting and concentrating on my blocks so that I only took this picture at the end of the day as I was packing up. 

I haven't worked on this project since our last Sew Day, so I had to take a look at my notes to see what I was supposed to make. I found that I had to re-press the blocks that I made with some Best Press at home.

That's better. Well, flatter.

Here are the blocks I made (I think), I've kind of lost track, but I'm pretty sure these were it. I pushed myself to make those two that are quite a bit lighter.

Overall, I think it's going together pretty well. This is following the square quilt layout we got in our class notes. So I need to work on a layout for a rectangluar table runner size and shape.

At the end of the day, I sewed together a bunch of the smaller scraps and they'll probably end up in the remaining blocks I have yet to sew together.