Put It Away

As one of the items on my Get Done In April list, putting away the stack of washed fabric is the first thing that I'm tackling because it's bugging me. This is located directly to the left of my sewing machine table and is feeling like a physical barrier to the rest of the room. It also somewhat blocks the view of my design wall from my chair.

And also because this stack is threatening to tip over at any moment. 

Now that I've got a kitten/young cat zooming around and climbing on absolutely everything, that's a lot more likely.

The first fabrics that I pulled out of the washed fabric stack was all the Quilty Box projects. These are all going into one container, grouped by project and with the pattern that came with them. 

Once I get the stack completely put away, I'll post a picture of the wide open space.

The Swing Thing

Well, it's been a week of not sewing because of the ultimate give-a-mouse-a-cookie situation. I recently started making outdoor cushions as you'll recall. I finished my mom's (yay!) And I just received the fabric for the cushions I'm making for the  porch swing in the picture above. That's where this starts with the swing. The swing needs to be repainted, specifically with spray paint, which means it has to come off the deck. And that's a big deal, a bunch of stuff has to be moved out of the way. More importantly, the deck itself really needs to be stripped and re-stained/re-sealed. It needed it last year and probably the year before. And the weather was forecasted to be over 90F on Thursday which meant the wood would dry in time to be re-stained on the weekend. All of these things added up to a Whole Thing.

So, after reading my DH in on my give-a-mouse-a-cookie thinking, and securing his promise to do the deck staining work on the weekend, I moved everything off the deck myself. Whew! Everything except for two very heavy planters. My son helped me with those two.

Then when the sun was beaming down and heating everything up on Thursday, I plugged my AirPods in my ears, turned on some podcasts and used the pressure washer. It went pretty quickly, but boy are my arms tired. At one point I was holding an umbrella for shade in one hand and the pressure washer in the other hand. Quite the workout. But Julie's Deck Services are now closed for the year. And we have way too many pots of plants. 

All of which I, of course, have to move back onto the re-stained deck next week before the neighborhood deer gang catches on and they help themselves to a driveway buffet.

There are some spots that still need to be sanded, but otherwise, it's ready to be stained tomorrow. 

And I got the swing painted too. That was the main thing after all, I really miss sitting on this swing, it's going to be really nice to have it back again. And I'll have avoided having to throw the old one out yet (at least for a few more years).

Illustrated April To-Do

My design wall is acting as vertical project storage right now which is kind of bumming me out so...
I've been working on my quilts and projects in-process database list and have gotten a few things prioritized. I really like to know what to work on when I go into my workroom, it really helps me to have the vast options in my workroom narrowed down a bit. And that hasn't been happening lately, obviously--see above photo evidence.

Besides getting our taxes done on time, here are my goals/priorities for April mostly illustrated:

• Re-iron and take Kaffe Blue Squares to long-arm quilter
  
• Quilt: Safe At Home
  
• Sandwich, Quilt, Bind and Label B/W Baby
• 
  
  
• Sandwich and Quilt: Kitchen Sink
• 
  Quilt and bind Dotsy Table Runner
• Start and Finish swing cushions
• Make new storage bag. Put away finished quilts into quilt closet, log and store.
• Cut and send beginning blocks for Orange Bullseye project
  
• Finish making Japanese Houses blocks
  
• Put away washed fabric stack

No Fools Allowed

 Happy April, but not to any fools of course. Which would definitely be absolutely none of you all!

The monthly marker above is comprised of two photos combined into one using Snapseed.

Leeloo, our new but actually kind of old to be called a kitten and the beautiful Santa Cruz sunset after our anniversary dinner.

One second everyday aka 1SE for March looks like this:

And finally here's the list of: What The Heck Did I Actually Do In March??? 

I survived getting all three quilts rejected from the Prism Play exhibit. 

I followed the Sister Artists 2 successful auction of all the great quilts, 

I finished sewing sleeves and labels on 4 quilts.

I finished the top and back of the B/W baby quilt to quilt-a-ble stage.

I kept going on my 100 Days project (but haven't posted it here yet.)

I kept going on the Secret Lives of Color quilt a long (but haven't posted it here yet).

I worked on my Kawandi.

I took an online class in using Procreate.

I hiked 2x: San Diego and Saratoga Creek.

I finally started in on making outdoor cushions after many years.

I finished the bench cushion for my mom.

I got to know the new kitten we adopted and negotiated relations with our dog.

I traveled to San Diego and back with my DH.

I got to hang out with my niece and nephew and brother when they visited.

I got my second Covid booster shot.

I added nearly daily to my Visual Journal.

I made many posts to Instagram for the Instagram Quilt Fest

I blogged here 27/31 days.

Which again adds up to a whole lot more than nothing. I'm glad that I'm continuing to write it out here for myself. I think I'll continue to do this next month too.

March 2022 Cornucopia

 

This past month was...well, I'm imagining it was really quite something. I'm writing this on 2/28, and I'm hoping that we're all still here and online by the end of March. The prospect of nuclear war happening is suddenly quite real again, and my Gen X heart has quickened with the all-too-familiar fear of my teenage years. May all leaders who possess the ability to end life on earth come to their senses and stop with the threats. This is my hope being sent in to the the future.  I have no idea how much worse it's gotten in Ukraine over the month, it's hard to imagine based on the first five days of the insane war that Putin has chosen to wage. 

**I may or may not delete the above paragraph depending on what has actually occurred.**

*I left the above in as a reminder to myself that my worst case scenario is not always the one that occurs.*

Anyways...over the past month I've been distracting myself with all of this, hopefully some of it will be useful, helpful, or inspiring to you.

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A lot of Ukraine war related charity efforts have sprung up, here's a couple:

Pat Sloan created a great star within a star block design and started a hashtag as well: #QuiltersStandForUkraine . She's asking for donations to Unicef which has a big presence on the ground to help the people fleeing the war in Ukraine.

A Lightning Round of Demos by Quilters for Ukraine on April 23.

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By now you've mastered Wordle, and maybe you've tried Quordle, but how about Heardle? It's kind of like the old game show Name That Tune.

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I've used Goodreads for years and years now (since 2006!) to keep track of the books I read or want to read, but I've finally jumped onto Letterboxd where I can track the movies I watch and want to watch (and I watch a Lot of movies). It's pretty similar to Goodreads, you can read random people's reviews, follow film critics or people you know who also love film/movies. Btw, saying "Film" is so pretentious sounding to me, it's just "the movies" in my mind, but that's how the discourse goes.

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Hey! If you're over 50 (and in the US) go get your second Covid booster shot! It's just been approved by our FDA this week and will be so important to maintaining the protection you've got from getting ill from Covid, ending up hospitalized or dying.

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Ahhh, this baby bonnet is so adorable, and looks pretty easy. Maybe I'll make a matching one for the baby I'm making the quilt for?

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One of my very favorite bands of all time is The Decemberists, and the lead singer, Colin Meloy has just started a Substack like one does now? It's time for blogging to be new again? 

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Artist Jeff Koons is going to be the first artist whose work goes to the moon? Unfortunately it's an NFT project, but otherwise, still pretty cool to be the first.

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Our next Supreme Court Justice (hopefully!), Ketanji Brown Jackson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing about how she took up the fiber arts to deal with stress. Of course it was the art quilt zoom background displaying, Senator Mazie Hirono who asked the question and talked about how creativity is important to dealing with a quickly changing world.

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Closeup on Texture

 

Texture was the theme of the day for the #IGQuiltFest2022 and these are the photos that I posted. They're close-ups of some pieces that have a whole lot of texture going on.

This was many layers of hand-dyed fibers/fabrics which were then machine and hand stitched to add even more texture.

This was a heat-set experiment of polyester fabric gathered around marbles then boiled. It's permanent unless ironed of course. The beading was added after quilting.

Cushion Cutting

Welp, I've gone in on cutting the first of the outdoor fabric for one of the cushions I'm making. It was much easier than cutting the foam, well it involved a whole lot less knives and only a rotary cutter. This first one is going to be for a garden bench that my mom has. The original cushion it came with is pretty much done in and just not worth having on the bench. This is going to be super deluxe in comparison. It will likely look a bit wonky, but it'll be much more comfy and inviting.

 So far so good. The fabric is easy to cut and sew and handle, it's not too stiff or ravelly. The outdoor thread I'm using is so thick that the auto thread cutter on my machine is balking a bit at cutting through it, so I have to remember to not automatically push that button and cut it myself with scissors. It's harder than you'd think to not automatically do that!

Happy Cat-ur-day

 

Time for a Cat-ur-day update, our new kitten is doing very well. Leeloo Biscuits is her name, and monitoring all water pouring in the house is her game. She's obsessed with all things sink-related and loves to nap in the tile shower.

She survived the visit of my brother and two of his kids. This is a selfie Charlotte took of herself with Leeloo.

They have a cat of their own, so they were super calm around Leeloo which helped a lot. Milo liked how soft she was.

She loves lying between my feet.

She and Meg are still working out their relationship, but so far they're doing pretty well.

She's named for Leeloo Dallas in the sci-fi movie The Fifth Element, don't you see the resemblance? She is rather orange in her shading.

Final? Quilty

 

The final Quilty Box has arrived, at least while they're on hiatus. I hope that they can come back, but I completely understand why they'd take a pause. It would be pretty impossible to coordinate a subscription box like this when you can't depend at all on whether the fabrics are going to show up in time to cut them up and box them to send out. Much less the right ones that go with the printed pattern book that's included!

Unruly Nature, what a great name for a fabric line. This is from designer Jen Hewett for Ruby Star Society. What a nice range of prints in interesting color choices.

Next time I have to use a seam ripper, I'll try this new one out. It's supposedly "ergonomic" so we'll see. The Seams lotion is quite lovely, it smells good and soaks right in. 

I didn't notice right away but the fabric has little bits of copper metallic. It's very nice and subtly eye-catching.

I wonder how the metallic accents will hold up to repeated washing?

Time for Replacements

 I'm finally starting in on making some replacement outdoor cushions for our deck swing and for my mom's out door bench. This is my cutting out diagram for the foam that will hopefully actually work.

I've had this full size bed sized memory foam mattress topper for ages, it was bought expressly for this purpose. But it's been taking up a chunk of real estate in my workroom, but now it's opened up and the foam is slowly spreading out on the deck and will soon be ready to cut up. 

I think it's remembering!

It's almost there, c'mon remember your size...

While I'm waiting for the foam to finish stretching itself out, here's what will be covering it. The outdoor fabric I have is this, bought from fabric.com ages ago. It is some sort of Sunbrella type stuff, I think so? And I also have outdoor sewing thread too. It's supposedly treated with something that's going to resist rotting in the sunshine.

Back Stitches

Today has been a day of hand stitching labels and hanging sleeves. 

I'm trying to store completed quilts and they don't count as completed until they're labeled and ready to hang. 

As I was sewing on various quilts from various eras, I was struck by the pretty wild fabrics I use for backs and labels. 

Since these are going on the wall and will rarely be seen or touched, to me, I just don't see the point of using nice or wonderful or expensive fabrics. Some of the fabric is FabMo sourced, or from back when I used to buy $2 a yard bargains from fabric.com.

But sometimes, I use nice fabric just because it's what I happen to have on hand. 

Or rarely for art quilts, I make a back with some of the "good" fabric that's on the front of the quilt.