December Cornucopia

For the very last cornucopia post of the year, here's a picture of some of our outdoor holiday lights.  In this blog post are links to all sorts of things that I watched, read or listened to online this past month. Maybe it will help you count down to the new year which is coming up fast!

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I loved watching this short BBC video about the Italian city of Prato, where they have a huge industry in fabric recycling. Fascinating!

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Sewing Room Declutter challenge starts tomorrow. Sign up for free daily prompts. I'm trying it this year.

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I liked this blog post about using a really pretty paper-pieced orphan block and made fabric on the back of a By Annie Project Bag 2.0. 

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You've no doubt heard about the very odd Pantone Color of the Year choice, but how about the Etsy Texture of the Year?

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I have always enjoyed reading The Onion, the satirical online (and now again in actual newsprint) "newspaper", but this one about Joann Fabrics had me howling with laughter.

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I'm really looking forward to the 30 Days of Drawing starting on January 1, with the Grown-Up Table of Draw Together.

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In February, the Quiltfolk Adventure Workshop is going to Sweden, and the quilt that will be taught is really beautiful, can't wait to try it out.

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Lights On

 

Hooray, Hurrah! The power is back on as of this morning. I knew PG&E wasn't going to make their deadline of last night at 11:10 pm. I have a very long chain of texts of them declaring "progress" and that our new estimated restoration time was going to be yet another day. Sigh, I wish I knew where to even complain to make things change for the better. Monopolies just really really suck. Note: these first two pictures were taken the night before the power went out. This is how it was supposed to look around here the last week. Cheery and warm and festive.

We now have ALL of the appliances going at once, dishwasher, laundry, we're making toast we don't even want to eat and microwaving water just because. I might even wash my hair and blow dry it and curl it just for fun. 

And best of all, the Christmas tree gets to be back on. And it is blessedly quiet without the racket of the generator, so I'm a happy camper.

Time for me to go iron something! And now I can work on assembling Patchwork Palooza. I put it off because it was going to take so much ironing and I first needed to rearrange the blocks with all the lights on. No excuses now.

Neutral Triangles

 

Half of the Flying Geese ingredients I need for Clue Two of the Lupine Mystery quilt are now cut out. Next up will be pink triangles for 72 of the Flying Geese. And then 72 pairs of purple for the wings of the other 72 Flying Geese. That's a whole lot of triangles! I'm honestly a little sick of cutting out the white/neturals fabric so I'll be happy to move on to some color.

And yes, the power is Still Out! That's five days now, and four postponements of the estimated time for bringing our power back. grrrrrrrrr That's honestly the worst part, they tell you one thing and then every single day they extend it out just one more day. Very very hard to plan for and deal with. At least we finally saw a big crew of contracted-out non-PG&E people beginning to get to work at 3:30 today. The latest promise is tonight at 11:00pm, but I am Very Much Doubtful. Hey, at least the internet is still on, right? Our internet provider, Comcast, has a generator going just like we do.

Clue One Done

Well, it took me a little bit less than an entire month, but I finished off trimming the last hourglass block units for the Weekly clue one of the Lupine Mystery Quilt. Yes, the power is still out. Supposedly going back on by 11pm tonight, but I am Not Counting on it at all. I am sick unto death of the roar of the generator.

I have some rather strange pink fabrics in here, but I like how they look together (24 sets of 4 matching hourglasses) and now I'm quite happy to move on and go make a Whole Bunch of Flying Geese for clue two.

Clue One Sewn

 
Because I'd gotten the remaining hourglass block units cut and ready yesterday, all I had to do was to get the extension cord hookup to our generator to power up my sewing machine. Yes, power is still out, not much solar input today as it was still stormy today. 

All sewn up, and pressed open, now together into the hourglass block unit.All done except the trimming.

I think this is my favorite fabric combination. I'll be so glad to get these trimmed and then finally move onto another clue.

First Clue Cut

 

I got a little time in the sewing room and cut out the remaining hourglass block units for the first clue of the Lupine Mystery quilt

Yes, indeed, our power is out (as of Wednesday 2 AM), so it's a Merry Merry Mountain Christmas! We're having crazy wind, and lots of rain, and today a short-lived Tornado Warning! Thankfully that wasn't an actuality, but there was a super intense burst of hail and then diagonal rain. We postponed having my mom come over for Christmas dinner today and are instead hoping for a Boxing Day dinner tomorrow.

Trimming Hourglasses

 

Feeling like I'm being extra pok-y slow on this first clue for the Lupine Mystery quilt. But I'm plugging away a few at a time. Here's the most recent batch, now that they are all trimmed up to size. That's about all I was up for as our power is out thanks to last night's big windstorm. Christmas Eve by candlelight maybe? But not on our tree, I promise! If you're celebrating, hope you're having a good one.

My total of sets of four matching hourglass units is up to a whopping fifteen out of twenty-four. Some of those lighter pinks are reading as quite yellow, if it's a problem I'll use some ink on them.

Tool Tuesday- Steady Betty(s)

 

One of my most frequently used tools is finally failing on me. At first I was a little mad about it, but then I realized I'd been using the Steady Betty pressing board for almost 10 years now. Just about daily. But unfortunately there are big tears in the material that make the board so useful. 

There are tears on both sides of the board. I don't remember seeing these begin, all of a sudden they're just there. They don't affect the performance of the board as far as ironing goes. But I'm pretty sure I can't just glue these down as it would either not stick well enough, or melt the foam, or make a lump under the pressing surface that would translate to the fabrics I'm pressing. The tears are just going to get worse if they aren't repaired or secured.

Besides the two big tears, there's a lot of little pieces missing, especially on or near the edges. Maybe from using pins and/or scissors on and around the board?

Or...perhaps some of the holes were started by studio assistant claws (as pictured above in action)? That probably didn't help matters.

But I also noticed that the same thing is happening with my Betty Bands, which the studio assistants do not use. I think this grippy foam material is just not endlessly robust. It wears out with use (like most things), which is really not terribly surprising. 

So, Merry Christmas to me...I ended up replacing both the mat and the machine quilting bands. They arrived today with very cute Sharpie-art on the package.

 Hopefully I'll get ten more years out of these. It's so much lighter, and a bit bigger. The edges are a little strange, but it seems like very similar foam. Now to maybe make something out of the old mat. Perhaps I'll cover it with canvas and use it for a surface to have for pressing underneath the wool mat I have in my traveling kit.

 

And unfortunately I didn't notice the redesign of the Betty Bands on their website, they no longer have adjustable velcro, so they do not fit my hands very well at all. I will be doing some modifying to be able to use these!

Four More Sets

 

Well, I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention, can you see the mistake that I made on these parts of the hourglass blocks for the Lupine Mystery quilt, clue one.

Yes, that polka dot is sewn with the wrong side showing.

But I think it looks better sewn wrong, as these are "supposed" to be neutrals, and the right side is much brighter, too bright.

There's a big big difference between the two "pinks". And that one batik is reading as too purple instead of "ice blue".

But from farther away, they're interesting and different enough from each other to have that variation I"m going for. That makes fourteen sets done (once these are trimmed to size), and thus ten more sets to go for Clue 1.

Ten Hourglasses

 

All ten sets of four hourglasses are trimmed and done for Clue 1 of the Lupine Mystery Quilt. Now to make either 14 or 16 more sets. I'm definitely pushing the definition of pink.

More Hourglasses

 Six more sets of four hourglass block units for the first clue of the Lipine Mystery Quilt are all sewn together and pressed, but not yet trimmed to size.

Still Clue 1

I'm finally getting back to working on the Lupine Mystery quilt. It feels like it's been absolute ages, even though it was just about 2 weeks ago. Still in Clue 1, here's another group of four matching hourglass units. 

I wasn't sure how that plaid was going to work out, but I think it looks nice.

Then because I've been think of blocks due to the BAMQ BOM, I played around with them a bit.

1/4 square triangles really make for different block options than HSTs.

Four out of 26 sets are done now. And then my wrist said "Hey!' so I stopped for the day.

Arranging Time

 

Another day, another short sewing session so I don't over-do it with my wrist. It's feeling a lot better, but I'm trying to be careful. Thankfully, I found that I had already cut out the majority of the remaining Patchwork Palooza sashing strips at Sew Day earlier this month. That made it easy to sew the cornerstones that I cut out yesterday.

The pile all ready to be ironed.

Nice and flat.

All ironed and ready to go up on the wall with the blocks.

Now it's arranging and re-arranging time. Looks like I made some extras? So that means I have more flexibility and can take out the cornerstones that are either too prominent or distracting.

Cornerstones

 

After a few days off, I couldn’t resist doing a little *something* in my sewing room, and so I cut out the twenty six remaining cornerstones for the Patchwork Palooza quilt. My wrist was feeling good enough for that at least. And then instead of cutting the corresponding background strips and sewing them together, I quit for the day. Don’t want to re-injure myself.

More Advent FQ's

 

My right wrist is really hurting, I think I strained it while I was traveling. That means that I'm taking a few days off of sewing activities to rest it up. So here's the most recent Advent FQ's up to the 11th, and some goodies that have come along in the envelopes as well.

Here's all of them so far, stacked up together. Would I have chosen these fabrics? Definitely some of them, but overall I like the choices so far. When you look at them together, the color palette and variety of prints work. I think they'll end up making a good quilt next year.

Snuffle Mat

 

At the BAMQ December meeting/Sew Day, we had a swap which I hadn't managed to make anything for. It was fun to watch even though I wasn't participating. There ended up being one thing left by one of our new members, Eleanor. She was so sweet to gift me with it. It's called a Snuffle Mat. This is for a dog, you hide treats in the flappy pieces of fleece, flannel and other fabric. Then they snuffle around and "hunt" for the treats. Meg loved it. She was done so fast I didn't have time to take a picture!

I had to flip it over to see how it was put together. It's such a great re-use of jeans. The whole thing is easily washed as well. Here's a video on how to make a different type of snuffle mat.

Davenport Trees & Sky Stitching

I was actually wandering on a Wednesday, yesterday that is. So, here's the stitching that I did while I was away. Two more lengths of variegated blue embroidery thread have been added to the sky in Snake In The Garden while I waited for my plane to board.

It was a rainy and windy morning in Spokane, so I was very glad I was inside stitching.

Also, strangely, there were birds indoors at the Peet's Coffee in the airport. They were nesting up above on top of the giant monitor screens that display great outdoors scenery. You know, like where the birds are actually supposed to be. I can't imagine they get enough calories out of the scone crumbs on the floor from Peets.

And this time, during the visit, I got to stay in the fancy old hotel, The Davenport, which was all done up for Christmas. Isn't that such a lovely tree?

The second floor was hosting a raffle fundraising event for the Spokane Symphony, so I went upstairs to check it out and got a great view of the big central lobby tree.

There were nine fully decorated trees (that's the LEGO one above) that came with "major prizes", actually they were prize packages worth $1,000's. It was quite a to-do, was absolutely packed with families in the evening, but still very fun to walk around and enjoy.