It's Monday... Blog Day!

Who would ever guess Monday morning would be the best time for me to do a blog post! But that's how it is working out. I'm guessing it's because the weekends are jam packed with activity during the summer-- lots to report when it's over!

So this is high birthday season for us-- it's been celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Plate looks empty, but the only side dish I require with this is melted butter!

Instead of buying gifts for birthdays this year, (no one will help out with a wishlist)-- I'm making thoughtful, handmade items (so they have themselves to blame.) I can't show any of that till next week! Which would you prefer? Purchased gift? Handmade gift? Money? Be honest.

I did have a narrow escape this week (not in the new car, thank God.) I came within a hairsbreadth of starting a new project. I had to get tough with myself and sat myself down to "have a talk." In the end, I agreed-- no new projects. 

This is what precipitated the attack:

The May Sew Sampler box finally showed up... I may have been suffering withdrawal. The Sew Sampler subscription now has a Facebook group-- it is so great to see all the finished projects-- I thought you were just supposed to keep it all in the box in your closet.

I'm not in love with every box every single time, but as an industry professional, it's important for me to stay on top of trends and new products. (Huge GUFFAW on this end.)

The project is really cute this time and it was hard, with that group, not to get sucked right in!

After reasoning with myself, the box joined others in my closet. Instead, I pulled out a WIP-- do you recall the "Snickerdoodle" quilt I started last September?

I had all the snickers done, I just had to doodle them... which was easily accomplished. 

So here you have July's tablerunner of the month-- well underway, but this thing is going to be big, and it's going to take awhile to get all the sashings in. It was made from jelly rolls-- I'm not a big fan, and the block sizes range from 8-1/4" to 8-1/2." I have a way of dealing with this I will share you in July.

 

The balance between "fun" sewing and "business" sewing can be a tough one for me, but in that talk with myself, I wrote down a list of business sewing as opposed to "waste of time" sewing-- I am ashamed to say that my thoughtful, handmade items mentally fall in that category-- they shouldn't. I have sometimes thought that they are the most important thing I am doing in life.

But this is my "meaningful sewing" list for the week, so you can see where we are with "website" things:

Top of the list--  My flower piece is in a show at a garden center in two weeks-- I will tell you more about that next week-- but it needs binding and a hanging sleeve! If I spent as much time WORKING on this as I do STRESSING about it, it would be done long ago.

Next, if you can read my writing-- finish the longarm project-- well this is a personal project that just needs to get done so I can load the next business project.

Third-- STITCHES OF THE SEA! yay! I know many of you are waiting very patiently for the finishing kit-- it is ready to be born. Why so slow? I'm glad you asked. During the early pandemic, I ran out of the satin stitching thread color AND stabilizer. How could such a thing happen? It is so easy to recall that it seemed like the end of the world and I froze in my tracks a bit and prepared myself for... whatever. It wasn't even possible to order these things for a good few weeks, remember?

So I was dutifully testing them, but some of the colors were wrong-- wrong stabilizer, so I stopped adding batting and backing-- to use an unfortunate pun, my stitchouts are a bit of a shipwreck. Hopefully, this may encourage you where ever you are in this process-- we're all in it together. I scraped up four passable blocks and can use them to write the finishing kit. Then I will have a big corner done, and will be able to fill in during the rest of the year.

Finally-- Item 4-- we are halfway through Carefree Highways-- it's time to make those states into stars like I have had in my head for a year now-- this is one I can't wait to work on!

The artist in residence has some free time this week and I may make use of her video skill to produce a tutorial on this-- sew fun!

And finally, the agreement is-- fun sewing-- ONLY SNICKERDOODLES gets worked on! Read my lips-- no new projects. So that's my plan this week-- fail to plan, plan to fail, let's take the road less traveled and all of that. Meet ya back here next Monday and we'll see how we did...

Have a wonderful week. 

xox 

Carol