October Cornucopia

Well, the last day of October is of course Halloween...so Boo!👻 To!🎃 You!🧡 Here's a cornucopia post of all the various things I read, watched, listened to, learned from or enjoyed this month. 

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I bought this fundraiser compilation (136 songs!) Cardinals At The Window, raising money for flood relief for Western North Carolina. It is really really good. And I also got this new compilation from Noise For Now, called Songs For Sex, supporting the National Women's Health Network. I wasn't sure what to expect given the title, but it was a lot of really great music by artists I already liked and new ones too.

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Join in on November 2nd for International Scrap Sorting Day.

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More music, another Tiny Desk Concert, this time with saxophonist, Kamasi Washington and a great back up band including his father on flute and soprano saxophone, just amazing. Do yourself a favor and listen to this one.

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This is called the best meatball recipe, which of course YMMV, but I thought that they were awesome, and I had never thought of using ricotta instead of milk!

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Podcasts I've enjoyed this month: 

SlowBurn: The Rise of Fox News - super interesting, especially if you've never watched Fox that much

Organized Money - on how business really works, I really like the one on grocery store chains

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Material Girls has been doing a year-long 3 Yard SewALong, releasing a pattern a month for free that uses 3 yards of fabric. This month's pattern, Uniform is really great and is still available through the end of today 10/31/24. Then it's for sale on their website. But there's two more months to look forward to this year if you miss that one.

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Another cool innovation with EQ8 partnering with Accuquilt, a new add-on to the EQ8 software. This looks pretty useful for block making.

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Shake The Muse is a really interesting generative art prompter.

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Make some 12.5" blocks for Wrap The World In Quilts, Sunflower Quilt for Ukraine project.

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Some short and sweet and great encouragement from Ira Glass on The Gap.

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A very beautiful and moving essay about all things, Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

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Nearly There

Now it's starting to look like I wanted, so I'm almost done with the quilting.

Will I get it done in time, who knows?

I really do like how it looks though.

So much texture!

Studio Assistant Exam

 

Well, some decisions were made on the quilting I'm doing to finish Running Out of Rain Cloud. I carried the quilting lines ofmustard yellow out into the adjoining areas to the corner triangles.  I did 15 lines out into the rest of the quilt. I really like how the various angles cross over with the vertical hot pink quilting lines.

I had my studio assistant come in and check my work to make sure I was on track.

He said the texture was acceptable for sitting on. He really seems to enjoy my new floor lamp, like it's his own little spotlight.

Okay, all that quilting work and it barely even shows up on first glance. Granted this is not the best lit photo I can take. I'm going to carry on with this quilting a bit more and then try some side lighting to see if the quilting shows up a little better.

More Color Choices

 

Now that the Running Out of Rain Cloud quilt had an allover horizontal pattern of hot pink lines quilted in, I needed more and different colors. I chose a thread that went with the other four colors in the quilt.

I did the first corner triangle matching the diagonal. I think it looks pretty good with the mustard gold thread just in the triangle. And what the heck is that spot? I hope I can get it out before I photograph this quilt!

Gives a really nice texture.

I think that t's a pretty color combination too.

Here's how it looks with all four corner triangles quilted on the diagonals. That was the easy part now for more decisions, like what to do with the corresponding light blue triangles. Also on the diagonal (with the light blue thread or the mustard gold?), or go for vertical lines instead. We shall soon see.

Voting Done

Isn't this a great local Voting/Halloween combination display?  That Vote For Pedro shirt is a deep cut (from the movie Napoleon Dynamite).

Here's DH dropping his ballot into the official drop box this morning. Now to check to make sure they receive it on the county website. I love how convenient the vote by mail/dropbox is, it really works for us. I really wish that it was this easy for everyone in our country.

Now we can put our "I VOTED" stickers on our phones. That's one of our dumb family traditions, we stick them on the back of the phone case and they usually last until the next election. This time we each got a different sticker from our county. These are from a contest that they ran a couple years ago. I'm excited to have Otter 841.

I'm really feeling hopeful for this election and hope that you've made a plan to vote if you're eligible. If you've got a complicated ballot to work on, this is a helpful resource to start researching the issues you get to help decide.

Back On The Horse

 I was brave and "got back on the horse that threw me"and got some more quilting done on Running Out Of Raincloud. My finger was just a bit sore today, so it wasn't enough to stop me. I also didn't want to put it off in case an irrational fear of quilting became "a thing." I absolutely paid more attention today though.  As you can see, I'm almost done with the hot pink all over horizontal lines. I'm thinking that the second color I'm going to add mustard colored diagonals based on one of the bottom two angles. 

It Finally Happened

All these years of sewing, it finally happened. I sewed through my finger. Yikes! No pictures of that, don't worry, just a picture of the broken needle.

It all happened so fast that I couldn't even tell you what my mistake really was. Bad timing of taking my foot off the pedal and moving my hands into the needle area. I'm really thankful it was just a glancing blow on the side of my left ring finger, not too close to the cuticle, and not in the fingernail. (always the nightmare possibility to me). So phew on "lucking out" I guess, only a bandaid required. 

So yeah, it's definitely time to quit quilting for the day. I really should know better than to keep quilting when I'm tired. 

One of those lessons learned for good now I hope!
 

Raincloud Quilting

After all that block making it was time to switch over my sewing set-up to the walking foot for some quilting. Specifically the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt, Running Out Of Raincloud, that's due by the end of October. I haven't worked on this quilt for an entire month. I think I'd given up finishing it because I'd thought it was due at the end of September.  Anyways, back to it and hopefully getting it completed by the end of the month.

I started out using this hot pink rayon thread in horizontal lines all over the whole quilt. The lines are not really matchstick close...yet. 

I think I may either go back in-between these lines with some other colors from the quilt--mustard, red, blue. 

Or those other colors might be done in vertical lines or 45° parallel lines. Depends on how it looks when I finish the first step.

Sew Magnetic

 

I just received a new tool from Sew Tites, it's part of their new Sew Magnetic products, a rotating cutting mat. It's definitely pretty pricey, but they had a promo of BOGO, so friend Jaye and I went in on two of them, cutting the price in half.

It's a really great size for a lot of blocks and also for fussy cutting smaller pieces. I like the grey and white, it's a nice medium grey which will be great contrast for most fabrics. The cutting lines and markings are very clear..

You use it with these Booster Magnets to hold the fabric or the ruler. They also sell magnetic rulers that work with the mat, the magnets are built into the acrylic ruler.  I wonder if the other SewTites magnets that  I have would work, I'll have to try that out.

I tried it out with the fussy cutting templates from Jaybird Quilts and it really helped keep it stable. You still need to put a finger or two on it as well, but it really helps stabilize things. As my hands start to get more arthritis, I can see how useful this system will be when I need more assistance to cut safely and correctly. The mat rotates really smoothly and it's not too noisy like some of the other rotating mats are, I appreciated that a lot.

What a great product this is! I love being able to spin it around instead of rearranging the fabric and ruler for each cut. That is one of the main reasons I go wrong on cutting things with templates especially. I would definitely recommend getting one of these if you do a lot of fussy cutting, or block trimming in your quilting. Not having to grip the ruler so tightly made it so much easier on my hands and fingers, which has been a problem for me lately. I was able to concentrate on being safe with the rotary cutter, and ended up being a lot more accurate. 

I'm also considering investing in the large mat and big ruler (the non-rotating version) as well because this system really worked well for me.

City Sampler Quilt Top

The last two sides of the City Sampler got their borders. So now it is an official Quilt Top, instead of a Quilt Top In Progress. Woot!

It took quite a bit of pinning along those long sides, but it was worth it and I got it done.

This may be the biggest quilt I've ever made! It measures: 110" x  110"!  I hope that the long-armer will be up for it and it'll fit on their machine.

Now I really have to think about how I want this quilted...Oh, and I have to make a back and binding for it too.
 

Stars & Flowers

 

Here are all the blocks I've been making lately. All 12.5" square.

The solids really work in this one well.

This is an older print, but it's A) The Right Color B) Not Too Contrasty. I think it works just fine. You can really see that the outside light color is a pale peach in this photo. Not white or off-white.

This might be my favorite print I used in this block, a little more current.

This one is cool too, although the directionality maybe doesn't work out too well when doing the 2 at a time HSTs.

Of course this picture has them in the wrong placement, but oh well, you probably get the idea. 

City Borders

The City Sampler was hanging up on the design wall and I decided it was time to actually put on the borders. All the grey pieces were cut out and the print rectangle borders were ready too.

It is a really huge quilt, a bit hard to manage. It made me clean up the sewing table area so I had enough space and wasn't knocking everything onto the floor.

I really like how this is looking! 

Each corner is going to have one of these long rectangles of the black and white polka dot fabric going out to the edge of the quilt top.

I think it looks good, and it's making the quilt into a size big enough to work well on our bed.

So that's the top and left side border done, now to get the other two on to complete the quilt top.

Un-Mixed Friendship

 

I was laying out possibilities for the Friendship Stars that I'm making and think that I like them better un-mixed up. This one of all solids is quite nice, very clear.

Little paws are staying away as I'm sewing all the blocks strips together. He does like to observe though, especially when I'm using the steam iron. All that hissing is rather provocative I suppose. That was a whole lot of pressing seams open happening for this project.

After the pressing and sorting comes the pinning.

Ready to assemble now.

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.