The Courage to Quilt

Happy Fourth of July! It's after dinner here, and we're waiting for the fireworks to begin. There are plenty to see over the lake just down the road from our house. Private displays-- the Commonwealth of Massachusetts frowns on this activity, but they don't seem to do much to stop it. And New Hampshire is just a short drive for all the fireworks you can dream of!

We had a great family get together-- we have birthdays to celebrate, too. Our son's birthday is tomorrow and we made him a custom corn hole set-- Mr. SFO is a woodworker-- I was responsible for the paint job. Pretty nice present, huh!

I didn't know what cornhole was until recently-- and it is addictive. (Yes, another addictive pastime, yay!) My throwing arm and my hip are slightly out of whack tonight-- but I won my round!

You are probably seeing those new Cricut machines all over Michaels-- so I bought a roll of permanent sticky vinyl for the stars. I cut my stars by hand-- but I'm seriously thinking of finally jumping in and buying one for the fabric cutting capabilites. Does anyone out there have one? I know you can make appliques, but could you cut a ton of triangles if you needed?  I have Adobe Illustrator and I know I can draw and save shapes to that SVG file you need. It could be life changing, if it works-- I am skeptical!

This week started and ended with my "Beacoup de Bouquets" piece-- it's in a show next weekend, so I had to get moving. What held me up? Well, I had to trim off about 3/4" of excess around the edges. Taking a rotary cutter to a piece I have been working on for four years just about killed me. It takes guts to quilt, ladies! If anyone ever needs me to scoot under a moving train, run through fire, then leap off a cliff to save a drowning kitten, after trimming this piece, I believe I would able to do it.

Then, I made a beautiful label for the back. Just have a little more binding to stitch down, and one hanging sleeve, and it's major progress for this piece. Would you like a set of generic embroidered labels for your quilts? I have long thought, every quilt deserves one!

If you are in New England, and want to see a real quilt show instead of the virtual ones we've settled for, come to the show! It is a small show the Bayberry Quilters of Cape Cod are putting on in a greenhouse in Hyannis, MA, and the theme is flowers. (We have now missed our big annual show twice.)
There is some information here:

Hydrangea Festival Quilt Show

It's only fair to warn you that braving Cape Cod traffic is another activity that requires a bit of courage-- so map it out first! I will try to get some pictures to share, if you'd still rather the virtual experience.

While the label stitched, I cut the sashings for the Snickerdoodle quilt. I really liked this pattern, from the charm pack book, Perfect Five Quilts, only I used jelly rolls-- all of the pieces were 2-1/2" wide. I'm proud to say, this entire thing was out of my stash.

A jelly roll is not a pre-cut I'm partial to-- but I subscribe to Fat Quarter Shop's subscription box, and they love to include them! Both the colorful fabric and the whites were from various boxes. I struggle with the zigzaggy edges, and the blocks here range from 8-1/4" to 8-1/2." My solution is just to cut oversized sashing, and then just trim the resulting bigger block right down to size.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to think of this, but it solves another problem, too-- I despise sewing together long rows, and this way, I only have 4 long seams instead of eight.

Next week is going to be "Shark Week" here-- just kidding, but we have the next seaside installment of Summer Twist, plus, "Stitches of the Sea" is going to start getting assembled. It's a great month for it!

So a bit of entertaining this week, but enough sewing to keep me happy, too. It's dark now, and the booms are starting in earnest!

I'll be heading outside.

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

xox

Carol