Voting/Hoping/Sewing

 

I'm just feeling too wound up to even sew today with all my worry and concern over how the election is going to go. So, I went out and did errands instead. First I picked up my replacement pedal for my sewing machine at the post office (hope it works better than my iffy one), went to the pharmacy and then worked out at the gym really really hard. The gym really helped the most.

But my main errand today was *Voting Naked*. This is a new thing that our county is promoting, you take the ballot that you received in the mail, fill it out at home where you can do all your research easily and spread out all those zillions of mailers and chunky ballot explainers, then you take it down to your polling place, sign in with a poll worker, then you get to put your "naked" ballot into the ballot box. The naked part is that you don't put it into the ballot box clothed in the envelope that you could have mailed it, or dropped it off in. 

It's a pretty cute/funny idea, the poll workers even have t-shirts that say "Ask me how to vote naked."  I walked in today, and said to the poll worker, "I'm here to vote naked." She laughed and said, "well you just start stripping then." We agreed that it was too cold and rainy for that. What a hoot! At this point, they're trying just about anything to make voting a fun experience I guess. I'm all for it really.

Anyways, hope you got your vote in too! Here's hoping🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

Okay, I'm going to go do some sewing after all, and try out my replacement sewing machine pedal, fingers crossed that it works!

November To-Do

 Here's how my design wall is looking on the first day of November. Similar to last month with big changes to the Lupine Mystery quilt top which is almost done.Patchwork Palooza and my finished Kawandii are still pinned up on there on the left. The rows of the Lupine Mystery quilt still dominate the majority of the space and I really want to just get it done and off of there!

 Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2026 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year (more on that list later). Note, this is not the same list as the UFO Challenge for BAMQ, that UFO will have this next to it on the list:🌀🌐  

QUILTS

Design & Begin

Pantone Project - work on an overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Lupine & Laughter Mystery Quilt - finish assembling into a top, so close!

BAMQ BOM - assemble finished blocks into a quilt top.

Color Study - Alison Glass quilt-a-long - make blocks

BAMQ Group entry theme to SMC Fair 2027 theme TBD (placeholder pic)

Stretching Art and Tradition 27 - Lines due in January 2027 (placeholder pic)

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - Definitely needs borders, make backing & binding

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing (use a wide-back?) & binding, definitely having it quilted

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the final group of fussy-cut stamp block centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Continue the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt originally designed for the 2025 MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the last 6 columns and sashing together of the 2023  Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

🌀🌐 David Owen Hastings class piece, assemble into quilt top, quilt, finish🥏👽 

                                      

Quilting

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife - Finish quilting it🌀🌐 

Final Steps 

🥏👽 Bending the Calendar - Cut up? Re-arrange? Embellish?🌀🌐 

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Make a Charlie's Aunt wool purse for myself, first felt the wool from Pendleton Mill.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching -  🌀🌐

Hey! These Are All Finished!

Body Pillow-knit cotton pillowcase - 🌀🌐  Yay! It's awesome and cozy and I'm so glad it's done. 

California State Park Centennial Quilt block. Not even on the list last month as a to-do but it should have been.

Continuing on with the seventh month in a row with some actual finishing happening. 

Once again, the finishes are fairly small projects, relative to the others remaining on the UFO lists, but that they actually got done is still the main thing. 

I'm definitely taking that ongoing finishing energy with me into November.

Nascent November

So was October in fact as Ornery as I thought it would be back at the beginning of the month? Well, yeah actually it was. So, I have decided that November this year is Nascent: That's it, that feeling of being right at the beginning of something is a great energy to go into November with.

The monthly marker is a combination of this picture of the Lupine Mystery quilt rows

which I first put through the app, Percolator.

I then combined it in the app, SnapSeed with this photo of three Gerbera Daisies on my porch.

Here's 31 seconds of how my October went, day by day, one second every day, in the 1se app.

 Monthly I-Did List for October

1. At Sew Day, I sewed all the Flying Geese units together for the Lupine Mystery quilt.
2. At Sew Day, I turned in the Community Giving quilt that I made the binding for.
3. I assembled the final outer border from the sewn together Flying Geese for the Lupine Mystery.
4. I made blocks for the BAMQ BOM.
5. I assembled the alternate blocks for the Lupine Mystery quilt
6. I signed up for the Alison Glass Color Study sew-a-long and have yet to make a block.
7. I made and sewed on the binding for another Community Giving quilt and turned it in at the BAMQ meeting.
8. I attended the BAMQ class with Claudia Shearer and made some great curved blocks.
9. I celebrated my 22nd Blog-i-versary.
10. I finished the Body Pillow pillowcase for a UFO Challenge finish.
11. I used one of the new Community Giving kits and made a batik self-binding placemat.
12. I designed, made and sent in my quilt block for the CA State Park Centennial quilt.
13. I started assembling the Lupine Stars and alternate blocks into a quilt top and have all 7 rows.

I'd say, that was a pretty good showing for October. once again I made a lot of progress on getting stuff done, and again finished one whole entire UFO Challenge and made the promised block for the CA State Park Centennial quilt. I attended a BAMQ Sew Day, Meeting, and class, went to one No Kings protest, wrote and mailed more than 100 postcards to voters, and I also voted early. Heading off into November with my nascent energy revved up and ready to go.

October Cornucopia

 

Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain to all who celebrate! Don't forget that it's time to Fall Back, the time change happens after midnight tonight, but keep it in mind for 11/1. Here's a cornucopia filled with all the spooky and non-spooky stuff I've enjoyed during October. 

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A free butterfly block of the month from Wonderfil Thread with wool embroidery and paper pieced versions. I love how detailed both versions are. Maybe this is the butterfly quilt I've always wanted to make?

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Blockheads #7 by Moda has started, it's a free 30 month long sew-a-long. The first block is pretty cool. Apparently you can buy the 30 block pattern ahead of time (a bit odd?) too.

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A new fun game to play is Redactle, which is a Wikipedia based guessing game. It's pretty fun and hard too.

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I was really moved by The Stolen Neighbors Quilt that was made and displayed in Minnesota.

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Ten ideas to try to escape the doom-scroll and start making things, a very good video.

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Alison Glass is doing an interesting Color Study free quilt-a-long, from now through April 2027. I'm considering trying it out as I still have all my AG fabrics in one place from making Trinket.

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Reminiscent of the great Netflix short documentary The Quilters, this from NPR about a Gary Tyler, a quilt artist wrongly imprisoned on death row having his first solo museum exhibit.

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Here's a free dog coat pattern that looks similar to the one I made recently.

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All Seven Rows

 

After getting two rows together yesterday, I pushed through to finish the last five of the Lupine Mystery quilt.

Here are all seven rows assembled. They turned out pretty evenly. To finish making the entire top, I need  to sew the rows together, add the blue border, the outer border and make the corner border blocks.

Two Rows out of Seven

 

I'm switching back over to the Lupine Mystery quilt. Time to sew all those blocks together.

These go together pretty easily, not a lot of seam /point matching.

The first row (on the bottom) is done! Wow, does that ever shrink up. It always surprises me.

I moved around a few blocks, before sewing more together. But can you even tell?

That's two rows done, five more to go.

State Park Centennial Quilt Block

I just remembered, I was supposed to make a quilt square for the California State Park Centennial quilt and it's due on 10/30. Luckily it's not too big of a size -10"square, and doesn't have to be super complicated 

Whoops! Off to designing I go, here's my reference sketch.

I used some of my pictures from San Juan Bautista when I was visiting the town for the BAMQ retreat, like this close-up of the Prickly Pear along the low brick fence line along the street. Which, not that I think about it, is a sort of brilliant choice to keep out intruders and/or deer. I also referenced some of the elements from the San Juan Bautista State Park website.  

They urged us to not necessarily do representational, but "inspired by" creations of the park we chose. 

So here's what I came up with:

It's been a while (21 years!) since I did something like this, when I recreated the Felton train station from a picture for a local history quilt that now hangs inside the one bank that we have in our tiny "downtown."