Back to HRTs

 

Back to actual sewing happening today! Finally! Woohoo! But of course I had to re-teach, re-view, and re-learn how to do the rest of the HRTs with the Bloc Loc Rulers that I cut out for the Lupine Mystery Quilt.

I referred back to the kinda tutorial I'd made for myself way back in June. This is a sort of update to that, with a big deal note to begin with: Both fabrics are right side up when you cut the pairs. Very Important for prints especially.

Flip one of the triangles, right sides together, offset the triangle tips, sew together.

Press seams to the purple.

Make sure you're using the B ruler with the B units, pay attention to which side the seam allowance is on. Trim on two sides.

Keeping the ruler locked onto the seam, spin ruler 180°, slide down to the final measurement of 2"w x 3.5"h.

Repeat with the A ruler and A units.

Okay, one set all done!

There it is, an actual thing that I sewed, and ironed and trimmed.

And then I cut and sewed a whole bunch more, but they haven't been pressed or trimmed yet.

Partial ICAD Catch-up

 I've been working on doing my ICAD pieces for this sort of lost month of July. 

They are being done one by one, but more than one per day so that I can catch up by the end of July when the ICAD event ends. 

So, here's half of my July ICAD pieces.

A lot of these are using text from the brochure that I got at the Los Angeles Public Library

Grommets is one of my all-time favorite words so I was happy to find it in print to use!

We have a brand-new Pride Flag hanging up on our house.

I really like how this one turned out. This is from the label for the index cards that I'm using this year for ICAD.

That's one big batch. Still catching up on the rest for July, but getting pretty close.

Judy's Stars

 Since I'm still not up to a lot of work in the studio, I was captivated today by Electric Quilt declaring it Judy Martin day with a sale on her add-ons to EQ8. All to celebrate her upcoming inclusion in the Quilter's Hall of Fame. Woohoo, Judy, congratulations!! 

And guess what, when you're still just lying around recovering, it's quite fun to fool around on EQ8 and design quilts using Judy's excellent and interesting stars. I splurged and got Distinctive, Exquisite and Spiky stars. Using some of my favorite blocks from each group, I designed this quilt which I'm titling Judy's Stars. I took the coloring inspiration from one of the initial block colorings and I think I really like it a whole lot. Not a final design of course. These are super fun blocks!  Very versatile with endless combinations.

Here's Hoping

 

Well, it's been a long, endless, dumb month for me so far. I've been very ill with what is very likely the parasite Cyclospora that's the subject of a lot of news these days. More testing will determine that, but thankfully my doctor listened to my begging and treated me "as if" I had it and the new antibiotics worked almost right away. Here's hoping!

I've been so ill that I literally haven't even sat in my chair in my workroom since 7/4 until today. That's a whole lot of ICAD days that I've missed. I found out quickly that I still can't sit up for very long at a time. I got surprisingly weak surprisingly fast and am trying my best to take it easy to regain my energy as soon as I can.

I finally felt like doing something creative today, but I wasn't up to sitting at the machine and sewing. Instead, I dragged my ICAD box of tools onto the bed and tried to use my lap desk to get some of the cards done. It felt good to use another muscle that has been weak. Here's hoping I can sew tomorrow maybe.

Think it might be time to go back to growing my own lettuce from here on out.

Blue Green Napkins

 

I really am attracted to these beautiful toweling fabrics from Ruby Star Society that have been out in the stores lately the texture is just so lovely. I bought a yard of a different color way than the rainbow one I worked with last year or the blue/brown stripes in 2022. Those napkins from four years ago are really holding up well to a lot of use and washing.

I stitched along the raw edge with the triple zig-zag stitch.

I also cut the one yard fabric length in half with pinking sheers to limit the fraying as I sewed.

I also stitched around the pre-stitched edges as some of the existing stitching wasn't regular, quite long in some spots.

And then I went around again a second time just for fun.

Now to pull threads and make a little fringe

And there they are, two completed napkins. Turns out I should have bought 2 yards to make the usual four. Maybe next time I make it to Hart's Fabrics again.

Vintage HRTs

 

The other project I worked on at Sew Day was cutting out the pairs of purple and white rectangles that I need to do clue #4 of the Lupine Mystery.

There are so many "vintage" purples in here, a lot of which were the very first quilt fabrics I ever bought as I've always been a purple person. It was quite fun to use them all and remember "way back when" and to finally be using them again. The one in the lower left corner comes from at least two yard piece of fabric that I had probably bought to make myself shorts or some other piece of clothing. That never happened and I can probably use the rest of it for the backing for this quilt - memo to me.

The rectangles that you start out with are quite large compared to the finished block unit size. It's funny to see them together. I didn't remember to bring my rulers to Sew Day, so I came home with the two large stacks of the 23 more sets of rectangles to work with.

12 Days of ICAD

 

I wish I could see a structure like this in real life.

These two go together.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeeze

The most bulbous stoplight ever

This one might be my favorite of the bunch. Hopefully I didn't need these tickets.

Maybe this is the completely unconscious "before" of the clear hues rainbow-y Pride card I did at the beginning of June. I say completely unconscious because I didn't sit down and make this as an intentional "before", it just happened and I noticed the similarity afterward when I was sorting the cards into date order. Interesting how that works.

Sound waves?

Celebrating the end of June by tearing up the calendar page.

Not really raspberries.

Sometimes there are inspiring candy wrappers around to use: FEEL the JOY

History standout

This is the end of the ICAD download for now.