Quilt like a Fighter Pilot...

      Yes, I'm a day late to say Happy Halloween-- but I spent an uneventful evening doing what I do every night-- hacking fabric to bits in the attic. Quilters are a mild mannered people, so no one ever questions or worries over this impulse... MWAHAHAHAHA!

    It's baaaaa-ck! The sew jo has returned, big time. I saw this cutie on social media-- it's a kit that actually came out last fall, called "Let's Pop Some Corn," by Sandy Gervais. We make popcorn all the time here! Instead of tossing the kit in a closet, a frequent fate of new purchases, I started working on it right away. First up--- hacking 42 charm squares in nine pieces for the corn kernels.

     I'm really starting to try to work smarter, so I did chop up three charm layers at a time. To tackle the corn, I was thinking of sewing together rows of four at a time, but that doesn't allow for chain piecing. So I re-thought, and if I just grab two random squares and stitch them in pairs, then chain piece pairs into rows of four, it will go quickly. I'd love to have this by Thanksgiving. Let's see what happens!

     A Ribbon Runs Through It is the poster project for working smarter-- my strip set idea discussed in the last post went flawlessly, and I had sixteen of these ready in half the allotted month!

   Did you ever hear that saying supposedly made up about fighter pilots-- the job is "long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror"? I believe the saying truly originated with quilters-- after all the time devoted to assembly, I had to take a rotary cutter to them and cut off the pink squares to make a straight line across the bottom. Yikes!

 It took all of my nerve, but I beavered on. I am proud to say, they trimmed up great, and to the right size!

        Next up is eight of these beauties: (the image is pulled from the Sew'n Wild Oaks blog)

I was really looking forward to making eight of the same thing-- the first sixteen blocks are all colored differently. And, my goodness, I LOVE a checkerboard! I confess I balked slightly when I realized the checkers finish at less than 1" each! Thank goodness, this time the pattern was written to strip piece them together, and I'm almost through created 96 checkerboards. These blocks have 111 pieces each. I think that's a record for me. 

Thank goodness for the layout sheets Lynn Wilder produced to keep us all organized! I'm concentrating on stacking 8 of each of these things on it. I hope to finish these by the end of November, and then assemble to finish on December 31st, and I'm feeling pretty confident! This will be an even bigger accomplishment than THE MOVE this year-- heehee!

     This is my cross stitch progress for the week:

    I foolishly thought I could finish at least one of the houses in the Halloween Town SAL by Fat Quarter Shop. Not even close. I have to tell you, I just got my eyeglass prescription updated, but even so the black thread on the grey fabric is killing me. I'll probably put this away until next year, and switch back to Autumn Love, which I do Love working on. I pretty much just have a star left, and then I'm making a mini little bench pillow from it.

     Just a word of encouragement-- I work on cross stitch for an hour in the morning and sewing for an hour at night-- it is amazing how much you can accomplish with just a little bit each day. I also spend a lot of time THINKING about quilts as well-- maybe every moment of every day really,-- I'm sure if you are a quilter you understand this. But thinking does not advance any of it! Unless you do spend some thinking time trying to "work smarter" like I mentioned earlier. Well, you'd be surprised how quickly things come together, when needle meets thread a few minutes each day.

    In between those morning and afternoon stitches, I have my day job-- San Francisco Stitch Co., and I am pleased to say, new work is starting to flow! These are my new Autumn Bowl Fillers just uploaded today-- should this be a monthly series? I'm thinking of it!

    And I'm also trying to settle in to a new home-- with a big hand from my DD, we got the entire vegetable garden cleaned out last week. You should have seen it before-- we couldn't do anything with it this year, only coming every 2nd or 3rd weekend. I should have taken a "before" picture, but honestly it was too humiliating-- the weeds were eye high. I have never had a large vegetable garden before-- we always lived in the woods. So I can't wait to get started next spring.

     We bought a sugar shack! Do you know what it is? It's where you make maple syrup. We have tons of large maples on the property and hope to get an ounce or two next spring as well!

    It's just a little garden shed, but we stained it and the maple leaf is photoshopped for now, but I 'm hoping to paint one over the winter. So many, many barn stars in this area-- I am taking pictures everywhere we go and I will share them in another post. But I think my Zen Maple will top them all!

     So that's my little life at present in the boondocks of Maine. The weather continues warm, but I see rain and maybe snow for mid-November. Hoping to keep myself busy, busy and see what the winter brings. Thanks for visiting me!

xox

Carol