Getting What I Deserve...

      Another light sewing week, although a few things got an hour here or there. After sheet rocking my entire studio in a lightning fast two days, everyone on the homestead has had to get back to their day jobs and the project started to languish!

     I decided to put in three or four hours on my own every day. To those of your who aren't crazy DIY construction fans, the next step is to add drywall tape over all the cracks and make sure all the screws are recessed. To make it more fun, I pretended this was a jelly roll:

     This was a rotary cutter:

     And these were pins.

   
     Attitude is everything, isn't it! When Mr. SFO came up to check on me, I decided to radiate positivity amongst the dust, debris, and dead lady bugs, and told him I was really enjoying listening to the rain and doing something different for a few hours. Without missing a beat, he looked at me so lovingly and in all seriousness said:

"You deserve it, sweetheart."

     So here I am, getting my just deserts. The weekend was filled with some other gardening activities, but I am a bit of an unstoppable force and will continue putting in what my body permits over the rest of the merry month of May-- three coats of spackle, three sandings. I got this!

     I try to put a couple of hours into digitizing every morning just to give myself some wakeup time, but also some time to convince myself to go upstairs. For the longest time, I've wanted to make a perpetual calendar of some sort, and I have a great bowl filler set started for June. It's called "Celebrate."

     Instead of a holiday, this is for all those little private milestones we have in life-- like a birthdays or anniversaries. So we have the word "Celebrate," and then a cake, or course! If you know me, you know I love a sweet-- I'm thinking of doing an alternate colorway for a chocolate cake.

    Then we have a set of plain numbers. That is the best part of this set. You can use your numbers to display a person's age on their birthday, or the number of years for an anniversary. You could also combine the numbers with your previously stitched Monthly bowl fillers, and change it out each day-- for instance, use "MAY," the "1," and the "4" for today. That gives you a perpetual calendar. There's probably many other things you could do with the numbers-- like "2025" for the next New Year's Eve. So that's my sales pitch. I, myself, would love to change this our every day on my desk. I'm always wondering what the date is!

     This is all digitized, but needs to be tested-- one thing I am ahead of in life is bowl filler ideas, and we are up to June, so I'm just simmering it right now.

      Then I also have this complete-- it's the 12th installment of my "ABC" series-- Gardening! It's also ready to test stitch.

     I very much have gardening on the brain right now. Maybe next week I will show you everything that's growing on Sugar Meadow! Can a baking design be far behind? 

    The Village of the Month is underway.
It is the SEWING VILLAGE!

    The Village of the Month is very challenging in terms of organizing the space into a landscape and this one is especially difficult. Do you have any ideas on what sewing items should be in my vista? We already have pincushion mountains, scissor trees, and a button sun. For the saying, I'm thinking of "My Happy Place." Comment if you have an idea. I wanted to do this before we get into the summer villages, like the lake and ocean-- where would you like to "visit" this summer?

     So a lot of cross stitch-- I know some of you are not interested, but it's just easy right now, with the slave labor camp I have going upstairs. I also just moved everything over to a new computer, which is now done-- Phew! I love it. I had to drive all the way to Bangor to pick up the new digitizing software which is not sold online-- it was a scenic drive, and I want to share that with you soon, too. Did you know Benedict Arnold went up the Kennebec River to attack Quebec, before he was a traitor? I passed where he traveled. Did you know it's harder to transfer your software to a new computer than to boat troops upstream on the Kennebec in January? So I'm glad this is behind me.

     Finally, the sewing portion of my week. The poor reindeer are languishing-- sorry, Sara, my stitch-a-long pal! I WILL catch up!

    But I am halfway to catching up on the Moonbeams sew along-- got four of these queued up for final assembly--

     And the matching cross stitch is way ahead of schedule!

 And I didn't buy this, this week:

    The Red Little Posy Wreath has been on my wish list since I first saw it months ago. It has lately occurred to me that I need to think more about the 20 hours it will take to make a thing, then the millisecond it takes to order it. My friends, I don't know about you, but I feel that once in my new space, all those UFOs are gonna be FFO'd. I, for one, do not think I have yet reached that tipping point where I cannot finish all my projects in this lifetime. BUT-- while last week my new space really had the creative juices flowing-- this week, I'm exhausted from all the up and down on ladders and I'm just thinking about putting a couch and a TV up there!

    So that's my world-- summer is coming on fast here, with everything springing back to life. It's time to be part of it. I think it's probably a natural cycle that sewing slows down and rests for a season.

   But not for too long, right?

xox

Carol

 

Big Things are Happening!

      A TON of progress this past week-- just not on sewing...

but my new creative space has walls!

Here's the "before"...

So, just to NOT have disgusting insulation raining down on my head is a huge improvement... I'd move in now if they let me!

All this was accomplished in two days with five twenties-something people--

all I had to do was provide food and you can bet no one was left hungry.

We're kind of back on our own for the spackling and sanding-- yup, three coats, but I'm hoping in six weeks to be all moved in! I'll show you progress as we go along-- it may be a bit of a light month for new embroidery releases and sewing, but just seeing the potential of a new organized space is really getting the creative juices flowing!

I did get a little sewing done on the nights when I didn't feel DECEASED...
All 64 of these blocks are together on the Chatterbox quilt-- I only laid out a few here so you can get the gist of it.

     I really LOVE this thing-- it was so much more work than it appeared-- and I still have to sew the blocks together. I'm thinking of gifting it to my son, who will destroy it-- but he's my patriotic one-- what do you think, should I? Giving it to him is the diametric opposite to having it sit in a closet for 20 years.

     While I didn't get the Moonbeams Release 2 quilt blocks done in April, I got Releases 2 and 3 done on the Moonbeams Cross Stitch!

     We weren't supposed to do that lower right corner yet, but from the picture you can see it's the same bird. I just need a little help on the placement of the tree, or it will be upside down.

     Release 3 is now out-- it's the quilt blocks in the upper right. That really gives you the whole pattern, because it's also repeated in the bottom left corner. So I'm just going to continue along with this at night and first thing in the morning until it's finished. If I APPLY myself, I could be done ahead of time. This is the Fat Quarter Shop's Make-a-Wish project-- it is not free-- they are looking for a $20 donation for the cross stitch and $50 for the quilt design. Don't forget! It is so hard to raise money right now-- they are doing a great job. Click the links below and join them-- it is a lovely project!

DONATE HERE

DOWNLOAD THE CROSS STITCH AND QUILT PATTERNS HERE

 Of course, even though there's no time to sew, there's plenty of time to just click a button and order more stuff, isn't there! Here's a package from the Fat Quarter Shop this week. 

   I wasn't going to get this board to display my finished Moonbeams Cross Stitch on, but I really love how it's coming out. I'm hoping for a WALL of finished cross stitch in my new studio!

   I've been eyeing Cathe Holden's fabrics for a couple of years-- she has a bit of a Tim Holz, scrapbooky look-- I just love it. This fabric is going to be hard to use, though. It's called "Curated in Color" and has all the colors of the rainbow and brown. Fat Quarters are a bit out of reach for me financially these days, so I'm thinking the layer cakes may be a good option from now on-- they are about $40 instead of $140 and you have enough to make something a decent size.

    Then the last thing I bought is this finishing kit for the April Sew Sampler Box. I may just put this away for now-- I'm getting more and more behind as Chatterbox has taken so long, and the Cupid Box really hasn't been touched yet. I just don't need the self-imposed pressure right now. It's just going to be a big help to drag some of these project across the finish line when I can spread out.

I still don't have my six reindeer for April finished! Three are done, then the three facing the other way are almost there. It would only take a half hour to finish them-- that's one of my top excuses for UFOs-- they are "almost done," which I frequently confuse with DONE!

 This is from the "Quilt Kits I Didn't Buy Last Week" department--

isn't it marvelous!

      Does it remind you of anything? Here's a clue:

     Yes! This is Wendy William's "Licorice Allsorts" BOM. I'm not a Licorice fan at all, but the colors in that quilt are delicious-- it also has some hand embroidery-- which I could quickly convert to machine embroidery to get it done. It also checks the nostaligia box for me-- my mom and dad were from Scotland, and it's a British candy they both enjoyed. Half of my family tree is still in Scotland, and I had greataunts galore, people I never met, sending me British candy as a kid. Occasionally, I still find an AERO bar (flaky chocolate) or a CURLY WURLY (long, braided caramel dipped in chocolate) in the international aisle of a grocery store. 

    So I haven't clicked the button on that one yet-- but I can't seem to "unsee" it. 

     That was my week-- I may skip a week of blogging here or there over the summer, depending on whether or not I have any sewing to talk about! Just know that I am here, inching my way along on all fronts, and that my heart is with all of you, my sewing friends.

xox

Carol