Only One Halloween Card

 

I had big plans to make a bunch of Halloween cards with my CriCut to send out, but the power outage threw a monkey wrench into the works. So here's the one and only card that I got done. In the original design that I was using, the background yellow was a printed piece of paper. I thought the plain yellow just didn't work.

So out came the ink stamping pad. I used the end of a plasticized cork to make these variegated rough circles. I think it worked!

Yes, better.

And next year, I hope that there will be a few more cards made.

Power On Power Off

Well hello there. Our power has been out since Sunday because of a PSPS (Public Safety and Power Shutdown) thanks to our not so wonderful power company, PG&E. It was several days of forecasted high winds and the extremely dry conditions which equal what's called a Red Flag warning. PG&E is basically C.Y.A. by turning off the power just....in....case. Instead of replacing the equipment, they inconvenience tens of thousands of their customers. Grrrrrrr.

This picture was taken right after the power shut off and after we got one of the LED lanterns on, it's a shadow of the Halloween pennant banner on the ceiling. I thought it might make a good addition to my collection of shadow pictures.

When the power goes out, the internet which we get through cable goes out within a few hours. They don't have much of an infrastructure of batteries to keep it going. And that means we lose our home phone which is VOIP. At least this time the cell towers kept working so we still had cell service. It makes me think that AT&T must have upped the batteries or installed solar panels or something. Because in the past it was scary when our power was out, because of the extreme weather and worry about a fire, and your phones are all out so you can't get a warning from the fire department to evacuate. 

The power came back on just after 10pm last night. It gets very old very fast running a generator all day, it's so loud and I hate all the power cords all over the house. It's a miracle none of us tripped down the stairs.

I got some sewing done thanks to said extension cords, nothing exciting, mostly mending and other things like that weren't worth taking pictures of. It wasn't the right lighting to work on my Rock Candy piece because I wanted to rearrange the elements and that would have a lot to do with the colors which were impossible to see clearly. So I guess I'll be back onto that today.

Rock Candy Started

I've started another Journey2Nebula project, first the fabric pull, 18 prints.

Here's all the pieces cut out using the Sidekick ruler, and that's the pattern, Rock Candy. This time it's a "table topper" which I guess is not the same thing as a table runner because it's not a rectangle?

 I truly don't know these terms,  it might as well be an antimacassar over the davenport or something as far as I know. Bad housewife, yep, that's me.

Kind of weird colors, and this picture is truly off color-wise. I have to work on the way this is laid out before I sew it together. At this point I think the background will be a dark grey, but I haven't decided yet.

Tilted Squares Holiday

 

The Titled Squares table runner turned out pretty well. This is a picture before I pressed the wavy border. I'm considering using this in January as it's not as super-Christmas-ish as some of my other seasonal table linens. 

I did a lot of stitching, but it's pretty subtle as the fabrics are pretty busy already.

I'm pleased with the embroidery stitch I used on the thin green border.

Can you see the machine embroidered snowflake at the center of the triangle?

Jawbreaker Done

 

The Jawbreaker pillow for Journey2Nebula is complete and on my couch. Look how pointy the points turned out!

There are a lot of eyes in the Tula Pink prints that I used.

A lot of stitching, along all the edges of the pieces.

I'm really pleased with the border fabrics and how the quilting turned out.

Here's how it looks with my pillow insert made out of batting scraps. It's not quite the right size unfortunately, so I may replace it with an official sized pillow if it bugs me. I chose not to go with a binding around the edge like in the pattern because I used upholstery fabric on the back and I thought it would just be too bulky.

I like how it looks with the Lucky Charm pillow. 

Titlted Squares Ready to Run

 

Oh boy, look how cute the Tilted Squares table runner turned out.I was feeling a little iffy about my fabric choices going in but it worked out as I pictured. I'm very pleasantly surprised with it and am looking forward to finishing it up with some quilting and binding. Binding is going to be the blue print.

Jawbreaker Top Done

 

The rows on the Jawbreaker went together very easily.

Sewing the rows to each other was a little harder, especially at those intersections with lots of fabric joins. But I got it done and most of the points are pointy and lined up. Much better than I thought it'd end up looking.

The hardest thing in the world was cutting the assembled top down to size for the pillow. I toyed with making a much larger pillow top. But it wouldn't have worked out for the fabric I wanted to use for the border.

Which was totally worth it. I love those otters so much. Now on to the quilting!

Tilted Squares

 

I got the three tilted square in a square blocks done for the table runner I'm working on. I don't think I've ever made this block before, and thanks to the clear instructions it was a lot easier than I thought it'd be.

I really like how the fabrics look together so far, I'm looking forward to putting the rest together today.

Those Tables Better Run

 

Here's my fabric pull for another table runner. Can you tell which holiday period it might be for? I'm using a Tilted Squares pattern from the Modern Handmade Jumpstart on Christmas Sew a Long.

I've got all the pieces cut out and now it's on to the first steps of assembly. The shop owner made a great video that shows how to put it all together, so I'm just going to follow along and hope for the best.

Beginning Jawbreaker

The next project for Journey-2-Nebula project is the Jawbreaker pillow. I love the name! It starts out with strips, so here are the ones I cut out. Two solids and all the rest Tula Pink fabrics in various shades of green. This is going to be another pillow to go on our weird green couch.

This one uses the Hex-n-more ruler. It was really fun to see the patterns the prints make when laid out this way.

After I sew all these triangles together, I'll be cutting a square out of the resulting pieced fabric for the center of a pillow. I don't think the darker green solid works all in one place so I changed it up.

 I'll probably go with this layout. Although those frog eyes on the far right are calling me to put them in the center. This might be harder to start actually sewing on because it's so fun to play with the units.

Seaside Top Done

It took a few hours, but I got the Seaside table runner top sewn together yesterday. I had zero problems with fitting all the diamonds together, it went very smoothly. All because the diamonds were cut out accurately with the Sidekick ruler.

 It looks SO different with the pointy edges trimmed off. I kind of wish I was better at bindings, it would have been cool to have it remain pointy. I could have done some sort of SpOoKy raw edge treatment, but I chose to make it more stabilized with a "normal" binding.

Onto getting the quilting and binding completed and this baby on the table.

Beginning Seaside

 I really enjoy working on Halloween projects during the month of October, it's kind of like getting to decorate my workroom to go with the rest of the house. So this year, I decided to do the Seaside table runner pattern for Journey to Nebula in a variety of Halloween prints.

This pattern uses the Sidekick ruler, which I found very easy to use. I especially liked the trick of trimming off the points of the diamonds to make it easier to sew them together.

It really didn't take as long as I thought it would to cut out all the diamonds. And they ended up being being pretty accurate.

Here's how the somewhat random layout worked out. 

I even had enough time left over to sew four rows together. I was happy to have it all go together so easily, and that's because of the ruler making it easy to cut the shapes accurately.

Lucky Charm Finished

Finished off my Lucky Charm pillow yesterday. The sewing together of all the pieces went very well, it was pretty easy once I got going. This is the multi-shade green thread I chose.

Haven't done this in a while! Secured quilt sandwich ready for quilting.

Here is how the panel looks after stitching the quilt sandwich.

Close up of the embroidery quilting stitch I used.

And here it is, ta-dah! 

I used upholstery fabric for the back of the pillow. I liked how the fringe selvedge looked so I left it showing. I think I need to add either velcro closures or buttons to hold the overlap down as it's kind of a long expanse (23").

On The Helping List

 

This satellite comparison of the before and after views of the area that I live in. We live just below the "O" in Boulder Creek on this map. 

Every day that I drive by the spot where the fire reached the highway that bisects our valley and get reminded all over again about how close we came. As I drive past the burned hillside, I send up all thanks that the firefighters were able to stop the fire's progress right there. It's tough knowing that there are a lot of people in our community who've lost everything. 

If you feel moved to make a quilt for the CZU Fire, our great local quilt store, Modern Handmade is hosting a benefit Sew-A-Long beginning on October 8th. It doesn't cost a lot, for $10, you get video tutorial and three patterns as well as a FaceBook group that goes along with all the projects. It's billed as a "get a jump on Christmas". Hope to see you on there!

There's also a local quilt group that's collecting "personal sized" quilts to distribute to Fire Survivors, minimum size of 48"x 60".

Lucky Charm Layouts

 

Tried out a few layouts of the Lucky Charm half-hexies. This is the one I'm going with. Putting all the solids on the outside edges looked better to my eye.

It was fun to play with the pieces.