Get it Together!

      Spring is here!

    We are starting to have some beautiful sunny days in the high 50s as I emerge from my cocoon, feeling a little pasty-faced and weak from too many winter hours spent behind sewing machines and computers over the past few months. Every where I look outside, the melting snow is revealing projects and maintenance jobs that need to be done! My daily Mantra is "GET IT TOGETHER!" said in a bit of an angry tone to myself in my head, to combat that overwhelmed vibe.  I'm starting with an enforced hour in the garden from 2-3 every day. Once that shows some progress, there is a bit of painting to do outside, and then some more fun gardening projects with flowers.

     Last week was a tough one-- when last we spoke, I had the Safelite appointment that was supposed to be three hours, but ended up being five hours, with an additional three hours driving time. They ordered the wrong windshield-- I have the FANCY car, with the FANCY rain sensors and FANCY ice melting features. I swear I'm not a FANCY girl-- this was one of two cars on the lot in April of 2020 when I desperately needed transportation, and trust me, the second choice was even FANCIER!

    I think the service people were worried I would go ballistic-- I bet they've never had a cross-stitcher in before-- so patient-- the hours FLEW by, haha, and Release Two of the Moonbeams stitch-a-long got done in one sitting! 

     The quilt part of the stitch-a-long has four blocks this month-- they look somewhat like those red stars with the green "bone" I'll call it. They are releasing the first Friday of each month, so that gives me a little more than two weeks to git 'er done. Maybe, maybe not!

     My extreme case of taxitis is starting to go away-- it features red eyes, a sick feeling in the pit of the stomach, and sleeplessness! But not much done on the digitizing end last week. I did finish up the Veggie Seed Packs-- very cute! I want them to be stiffer that the Poppy seed packet from the Gardening Bowl Fillers came out, so I may add another finishing suggestion, which is mounting them on sticky board. And I'd love to make a little basket for them to live in-- so still some more work to do.

     I used to be a graphic designer, so these were super fun for me to draw up. I may do a flower series if the set sells well, and then maybe even herbs over the course of the summer. But it is really hard to keep your attention, people, when the weather gets nice! Hoping to get some test stitching done tomorrow.

    Springville-- I am so sorry to say-- just a little progress! Don't worry, I will GET IT TOGETHER!

      On the plus side, my leaf quilt is almost finished. Last week, I just had the blocks done. I laid them out with a printout I cutout and they looked a bit too regimented. My print out idea did not work at all-- the print was way too faded and small. I tried to do something with a more random layout by adding some extra strips here and there, but it was just turning into a mess. I ended up just laying it out on our bed.

And here's my final layout!

I am really happy with the way this came it-- it really captures the leaves on brick image I've had in my mind for 40 years! The row seems were KILLER-- lots of pinning. All that's left is a little border-- just quickly cut four long strips, you say? No-- it has to be made of 2x2 and 2x4 inch pieces! I really want to free motion this myself with swirls and leaf veins-- I'm hoping to have my longarm set back up in about 8 weeks. Yes, the sheetrock for "Quiltopia," my 600 sf space above the garage, has been ordered!

I started my March Sew Sampler box-- I'm making the "Chatterbox" quilt with the Sweetwater Vintage fabric provided.

It's cool looking, isn't it? It is quite a bit of sewing! It's basically HSTs with an additional tiny white and dark triangle sewn to each side. I have 12 fat eighths-- I can make 240 3" finished HSTs. I've actually never done a quilt that's as repetitive as this one. The Sew Sampler box came with 3" "Triangles on a Roll"... have you ever use them? They are paper piecing guides you can use to make HSTs. 

You lay two fabrics right sides together and pin the paper on top. Sew on the dotted lines, then cut on the solids.

The results are super accurate-- this is an "HST" unit-- a half square triangle for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, one of the basic blocks of the quilt world.

Only thing is, you then half to pull the papers off and trim off those little dog ears. Horrors... I am pressing seams open for this project because there's too many tiny pieces. Once I have 240 of these, I then need to sew 480  little flip and stitch corners on them. It's a good mindless activity for me at the end of the day, but I am hoping this whole thing can be done by the end of the month.

No progress on Pressed Flowers, or a heck of a lot of other projects that are lying around right now. But I'm thinking of starting a new feature on this blog-- "Quilt Kits I Didn't Buy This Week." heehee.

I really want this:

But I didn't buy it!

And I've really been wanting this for a long time:

But I haven't bought it.

And there's this-- I really want it!

It's the Fat Quarter Shop's Christmas Free Stitch-a-long--
honestly, if I get sucked in, it's not like I don't have enough Christmas fabric to make it my own.

Just think of all the savings of time I have made by not buying anything new-- I will really be able to make things happen this week!

So that's all the nonsense that's in my head this time. I hope you're encourage to GET IT TOGETHER this spring, and make all the beautiful things.

xox
Carol

Ten Brilliant Observations of the 2024 Eclipse

      It was about six months ago, I read somewhere about the coming eclipse and was delighted to see we were just inside the path of the moon's shadow. Good thing it came to us-- Mr. SFO and I do not travel, especially do not travel in traffic, and most decidedly do not travel in traffic where any sort of crowd might be involved. In fact, it's unlikely that we would walk 50 feet up the road to get a better view of any given thing. To borrow from Jane Austen, "There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."  

    The DD and SIL are young and feel differently-- they wanted to travel to the top of a mountain. I had to convince them that wouldn't really be much closer to the event... and because we were on the very edge, I also had trouble convincing everybody we would be in TOTALITY. (So fun to say that word, is it not-- I'm going to miss it!) Here's a diagram I drew in my embroidery software to explain it to them.

   They were still skeptics-- as the days drew closer, I eventually found a chart listing all the towns in the U.S. and was able to definitively prove we would be in glorious TOTALITY for 45 seconds. It's so awesome to be right all the time, isn't it!?

     I had been watching the weather for days ahead of time-- there was not a cloud in the sky, and you have no idea how unusual that is for these parts at this time of year-- the sun has been in full eclipse behind the clouds for months now. With temperatures in the 60s for the first time in forever, the weather was truly a gift.

    So here's my brilliant observations-- I do apologize for acting like no one has ever seen an eclipse before, but I've never seen an eclipse before. But honestly, I didn't hear anyone give the in-depth analysis, as you're about to read, anywhere on TV. Enjoy.

1. The sun is bright. So we heard a thousand times before any discussion of the eclipse-- DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. How do you even do that? It hurts and you can't even see it anyway-- thank goodness, or we'd have a lot of blind people stumbling around. It's just too bright. One thing that surprised me is, even with just a sliver of a crescent of a sun, it's still too bright to look at. (I guess I will have to confess to trying to peek through my fingers with extremely slitted eyes to discover this and I'm happy to say my corneas are still intact today) Then magically and only when in TOTALITY, we could finally look up. So that brings me to brilliant observation #2--

2. Those overpriced, cheap paper glasses were worth it. This is really the only way you can look at the sun. But you can't see anything else through those glasses, so I questioned how long I'd really want to have them on before I fell into a ditch. On the contrary-- it was fun to look at the sun in the middle of the day for the first time in my life. And see it gradually getting chipped away. Heck, I may even pull those glasses out from time to time this summer to see if the sun's still there.

3. The sun is small. When you finally can look up at it, for all that light and heat, it's pretty surprising how small our sun is! Think about it-- for the moon to cover it, it would have to be small. I think I understood, in that great big sky, why it's a rare event when the moon is passes directly in front of it.

4. Celestial events are SLOW. So it took a long time for the moon to cover the sun-- we went out about 2:00pm and our TOTALITY wasn't until 3:30pm. I'd hate to admit how many times I reached for the dreaded cell phone during the once in a lifetime event. Granted, I was texting other people about it. How fast does the moon travel? Slow. In a nod to our weird northern location, the moon seemed to be traveling from right to left as I watched TV in Mexico, but where we are it went from the bottom to the top. Very strange.

5. Celestial events are FAST. It really didn't get super dark until TOTALITY. Things started to look weird about 20 minutes before. The light was kind of yellow and red but not quite like a sunset. All the shadows had fuzzy edges. I stood up at that point, as if to get a better look. For perspective, the series of  four photos you are looking at are just about 10 minutes of time, out of the whole two hour event.

6. TOTALITY was beautiful. I even understood for a moment why you would suffer travel, traffic, and crowds to view such a thing. A perfect golden ring hovered in the sky, then a "star" popped out. You can see it to the lower right of the sun-- someone on Facebook told me it was Venus. We were all transfixed for a moment.

7. We have more and closer neighbors than we thought. We were all wondering what the animals would do-- the chances of us hearing nighttime insects here is 0% right here now with the temperatures. (Believe me, after just one warm day, that is about to change.)  But after a moment of silence, a great noise came up-- was it howling wolves? Honking geese? Our chickens? No-- it was people! We heard a great cheer echo over the pond and another group up the road. I was tempted to yell myself, but Mr. SFO is sensitive to noise and I didn't want to waste any of my 45 seconds. The chickens did not even bat an eyelid-- just kept pecking away! Like, "Yeah-- it's just a dumb eclipse, people. Where's my corn?"

8. The cold temperatures and wind are a thing. Okay, so maybe not the wind-- we had that anyway. But I went from pulling out deck furniture and running for suntan lotion to freezing again-- I almost thought I'd miss the eclipse by running in for my down coat! It seemed like we got about a minute of view, then that little bead of light cracked out from the bottom of the sun and it was time to don our glasses once again. The whole process reversed itself over the next hour. (Slowly scroll back up to experience it!)

9. It's fun to do something different for a day. I definitely dropped some baggage I've been carrying around for one sweet afternoon. And, (philosophical thought warning!) for a couple of blessed hours, the entire country was looking in the same direction with optimism.

10. Chocolate cake is good way to celebrate anything. (Thank you, C.W., for that thought!) I thank the Lord for my DD and SIL everyday-- they fired up the grill, and we enjoyed our first hamburgers, baked potatoes, and pasta salad of the summer. The DD even made a celebratory cake-- here it is in TOTALITY.

And here's a view of the beautiful, sprinkled "corona." 

And my "sunshine" rising over the moon once again. Awesome day!

So that's the once in a lifetime event over! It's hard to get back down to Earth this morning as I write. I have a three-hour appointment to get my windshield replaced and two sets of Form 1040 to get done this week. 

Remember, every day is a "once a lifetime"-- let's make the most of them.

xox

Carol

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies!

      I am in a high good humor, way too happy for a person who suffered another foot of snow and another twelve hour power out this past week! Why, you ask? Because celestial and earthly events have turned in our favor and conspired to afford Northern New England the best view in the country of our coming eclipse. (Fingers crossed.)

    I even was inspired to stitch up an embroidery design with the shortest shelf life I have ever done. I'm sure you had to have seen it, because I have made sure it is constantly before your eyes for the last few days!

     Of course, its value is over on April 9th-- but I'm happy to say it has sold well and dragged in a few unsuspecting new customers.

      So, I don't really want to be that annoying person prattling on like this is the first time the moon has ever slipped in front of the sun. To encourage those of you not in the path of TOTALITY, chances are you're going to get a bit of a spectacle in North America wherever you are-- it will get dark. I read that Boston, a good two hours drive from here, will reach 95% of full eclipse, so it's bound to be true that a really wide area beyond that strip they keep showing is going to have some darkness. So even if you were too frugal to buy the $5 glasses or the $1.99 aforementioned mug rug, be sure to head out between about 12:00pm and 4:00pm tomorrow with a colander.

     I'm going to post a few pictures mid-week for those of you interested. The kids are going to make a YouTube video a little later-- they have a drone, go-pro, and artistic abilities all ready to make a really nice short film. I will let you know when that goes live-- probably later in the week. I'm sure you'll be sick of hearing about the eclipse by then, if you aren't already.

     I had a good sewing week as well. I absolutely FORCED myself to finish the last 9 smaller leaf blocks of my Kim Diehl jelly roll project. this is going to be a nice size of about 55" x 55." I'm way into overtime on this-- it was supposed to be March's project. Almost there and I do feel it was worth the time, effort, and force.

     I didn't update this picture with all of the blocks yet-- its a 5x5 layout-- but when I do, I'm taking the picture and cutting it out with scissors to "play" with my block arrangement. This will be so much easier than repeatedly bending over to move blocks, or sliding around the floor on my butt! I do not have a design wall right now, and I've never needed one as badly.

    It occurred to me there is something very wrong with stitching a fall piece in spring when it looks like winter outside. But on I go!

    For digitizing last week, besides my Eclipse Mug Rug, the next Village of the Month is coming along. It's a tulip theme-- may be getting old for you, but tulips are still years away for me. I did throw some bulbs into the vegetable garden, poor things.

     Then, I'm working on a set of six cross stitch "seed packets"-- I may even make a little ITH basket to put your seed packs in for display, and to fondly look at for encouragement, when life dumps snow on you.

     For regular embroidery, I'm making a wall hanging that says BLOOM. This is a sister piece to the ones that say LOVE, HOPE, HOME, etc. So I need a saying for the sashing about spring or blooming or what not. Let me know if you can think of one.

    The O's get replaced with a couple of pretty wreaths-- I really love how the stylized flowers are coming out, and the set might be worth it just for the wreaths-- I hope you think so, too. To misquote Dickens, I am honoring Spring in my heart, and trying to keep it all the year, with embroidery projects, at least.

    What are the chances of finishing all three things this week? I'll be honest-- 0%! The big T-X deadline looms-- my heart is with every small business person struggling with Schedule C this week. I do three sets of taxes for family-- it is so hard to have it IN MY FACE how they are all struggling right now-- and still we owe more. Enough about that, or my blue skies are gonna cloud up and rain! Time to count our blessings, I guess.

    And thank goodness for the humor that this house runs on-- Mr. SFO is currently calling me "Betty Davis."

     We are fans of Turner Classic Movies and discovered one from 1940 called "The Letter." Betty is the star, as you can guess, and plays a murderess-- that is plainly revealed. The question is-- is she pure evil, or was it self-defense? We got sucked right in-- THEN-- at various stressful and inappropriate times during the investigation-- she pulled out CROCHET to work on! You can bet, I was riveted. As the story moves forward, she had more and more of a maniacal look on her face as she pulled that piece out of her project bag. So all I will say is-- in the last scene, if she had just kept crocheting instead of walking out into the courtyard, all would have ended well. Let that be a lesson to all of us-- just KEEP STITCHIN!

    Mr. SFO loves to point out factually incorrect things in movies with buildings. His favorite is when people hop up into air conditioning vents to escape the bad guys-- you may have also realized an A/C vent would never be big enough or support the weight! I was so proud to be able to point out to him that over the course of Betty's troubles, about two weeks, she would have never been able to go from a few crocheted squares into a nice throw size. Turns out that Bette Davis really knitted, though, and frequently did so between "takes"! 

     So here's my final progress for the week-- whether or not my face is maniacal when I pick it up-- well, you'd have to ask Mr. SFO. But when I pick it up, he keeps saying, "Hello, Betty!"

     Fat Quarter Shop did "Release 2" of the the Make-a-Wish Moonbeams piece on Friday-- that means more cross stich and four more quilt blocks. It's a busy week for me, with the eclipse and I also have a THREE-HOUR appointment in Augusta (an hour and a half drive) this week-- are hand stitchers the only ones who take long waits in stride? Yup, my windshield has an awful crack and I will be happily stitching away all that time.

    Have yourself a wonderful week--
whatever comes, clear skies or gray, let's just stitch our way through!

xox

Carol

No Spring for YOU!

      So the day after my last blog post, when we were expecting 12"-18", we got 20"! Time to clean off the cars again.

Fortunately, it was the lightest, fluffiest snow I have ever seen.
Not sure why I had the watering can out! Hope springs eternal.

Here is a "Stonehenge" before and after-- that biggest rock is about 4" high.

     Then, I got cheated out of my Easter-- I woke up just not feeling well and spent the day on the couch! My family could tell I wasn't faking it-- I couldn't even sew.  We have rescheduled the festivities to Tuesday. Hope yours was better than mine. xox.

     We'll get Easter dinner done just in time for 1'-2' more on Wednesday/Thursday-- yeah, you're reading it right-- " is for inches, ' is for feet. And while we're on about the weather, we are getting the full solar eclipse, but my once-in-a-lifetime event looks Partly Cloudy. I'm hanging on every weather report these days. We'll let you know what happens-- at least it will get dark-- that should be fun-- I'm thinking of doing a time-lapse with my phone and I will post it on YouTube if I do. Celestial events are written in stone-- time is on my side, and eventually it has to warm up!

     To soothe our souls, Caroline has started seedlings, and I made Gardening Bowl fillers. We both had fun with this collaborative photo. I didn't take me long to decide what type of flower I would feature on the seed packet-- but don't worry, I had so much fun designing that, I'm planning another set of six, and maybe even a cute machine embroidered basket to store your "seed packs" in.

    Last week was a machine embroidery intensive week-- I really wanted to push this out before Easter.

    This is the 8" size-- someone on Facebook said they wished we offered a 10"-- I don't have a hoop that big and I don't sell what I can't test! We had a really nice chat about embroidery-- she said the trend has been to larger hoops. I don't see it, for what I'm digitizing. At 10", this is going to be a seriously long stitch out-- 3 or 4 hours? I poked around, and most of what is available in a large size like that is quick, one color designs with quilting around them-- the dreaded cute sayings, huge appliques and the like. I prefer my embroidery in as many colors as possible, with tons of tiny shapes, in short, as laborious as possible. I guess I should pause to thank all of you reading along here, who I know love that, too. :-) 

    

    So no chance I will start designing for the popular trends, although as one customer pointed out, I did give in to red trucks! I countered--my son has a truck, and I haven't done gnomes. If I'm not designing what I love, I'm out. But I am seriously thinking of getting a new embroidery machine with a really large hoop. The Janome CM17 has an incredible 11" x 18." Eventually I will get back to my show quilts, and the idea of being able to make a quilt block that big is extremely appealing. I do find that I prefer smaller stitch outs, though-- 7x7 is my sweet spot-- they are so precious! Is a Cloud Club bird really meant to be stitched life size? This is a question I'd love to have answered before spending $20,000. Your thoughts?

    

    I didn't think I got much sewing done this week, but when I checked my phone for pix, it was just because I was all over the place! I highly recommend taking pictures as you work along-- it is very gratifying to see progress over weeks and months.

     I finished Block #12 of Pressed Flowers.

This is the first time I've ever made the blocks that are included each month in the Sew Sampler boxes. I really LOVE the flowers-- they are very unique and I was able to stitch them up in just about and hour and a half each month. I even took a chance and bought the kit after just seeing the first flower. Here is the finished quilt, which I hope to get done fairly quickly at this point-- I just love it.

Fat Quarter Shop has revealed the first block of the next series--
they run from April to March. It's a basket theme.

  Thank goodness I do not find this first block compelling-- or the fabric, which is Camille Roskelley's Shoreline. It's a meh blue, with a meh green, done in meh roses-- but trust me when I tell you I am the only person on the planet who feels that way. Everyone is going crazy over it-- it's a follow up to her first meh "Nantucket Summer" collection, and don't worry if you miss out-- there is bound to be a meh third collection now. So nothing to add to the bucket list with this quilt-- PHEW! My opinion on this colorway reminds me of the old days with TV shows I liked-- whatever I enjoyed, was bound to fail-- maybe one, two seasons at most. I guess I just have really weird taste and I deeply apologize for my review of Shoreline!

     I got ONE block done on the leaves this week. I have the sixteen large leaves, but I wanted some smaller ones sprinkled in.

   Here it is-- I'm appliqueing all the stems. I like my stems thin. I added a little square of "pollen," too!

I need nine of them for my 5x5 layout. I did some sketching on how this is all going to fit together.

I love this Lori Holt Graph Paper notebook-- the squares are small enough for cross stitch sketching, too. A creative quilter really needs graph paper-- I'm giving a link-- and I'm not getting a commission for saying this!

https://www.fatquartershop.com/mercantile-grid-paper-notebook-lori-holt

I'm finally getting around to sewing some backings together for finished tops. I have three that just need backs to be sent to the longarmer!

And I also started my first "original" applique block using Lori Holt's Sew Simple Shapes. This is for my king size Prairie Meadow quilt. I thought this would be harder than it was, but I gave myself the theme "Winter" and really enjoyed it! I wonder how I got that theme in my head...  

     I actually finished an entire spool of 220 yds. of thread on hand stitching! I'm not exactly sure how long it took-- probably a year and a half, but color 376 of Superior Threads silk is the one you want for applique with light fabrics, and binding, too! Pretty good accomplishment, huh?

Now I'm really starting to think I killed it last week. And since so many projects are underway, why not cut one more? This is the Cupid Box-- I unwrapped the fabric-- it's Sandy Gervais, and I really liked it better than I thought it would. 

Sandy Gervais was one of the first fat quarter collections I ever bought-- she's crushing it lately. I'm really tempted by FEED MY SOUL. Now that folks, is a fabric collection I can get behind!

But let's hope I don't-- I'm already spreading myself thin again-- Moonbeams quilt and cross stitch Release 2 is today-- and the Kona stars are still waiting.

Better go... have yourself a great Spring week-- I'm still waiting on it!

xox
Carol