The Year in Review

     Sew it was my New Year's Resolution to make twelve table runners this year. How am I doing? The year is officially 3/4th over, so I thought I'd take a minute and take stock... 

January: Fig Tree Burgoyne Tablerunner

I dove in and pulled this first thing from a Little Box of Figs subscription I had a couple of years ago. I love Fig Tree fabrics-- but the kits quite honestly were hit and miss-- mostly miss as this is the only one I made. It was fun to get a surprise in the mail four times a year, but honestly Fig Tree is now releasing their Little Box of Figs patterns after the fact, so you can decide if you like a thing first, and use your stash fabrics for it. I switched back to Fat Quartershop's Sew Sampler Box this year-- it's every month, and you get a bigger variety of designers over the course of a year. It's also very reasonable in cost.

Good news! This is actually quilted and just in need of binding! I want to have it for Christmas-- red is such a good color for Christmas-- if you like to leave your things up for quite a lot after the fact, red can take you right into Valentine's Day. That is my decor tip of the day!

February: Sew Sampler Box Fast and Flurrious

Well, that opens the door to talk about my Sew Sampler box project! This one was actually from last November-- clearly, I like my boxes to simmer for awhile. I LOVE this Cider fabric-- I LOVE most of what Basic Grey puts out. If you know me, you know I use their Grunge fabrics which are actually so scrumptious as a texture under machine embroidery. So each new fabric collection has three or four new Grunge colors, and I love seeing what they are. This collection had a new orange, a gold, and a fabulous denim color.

I managed to get a table runner and two pillows out of the honeybun that was in the box, and you can see EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY DONE, has been on my upstairs coffee table for months, and now the color scheme, fall, is appropriate for the first time this year-- YAY!

March: Double-wide Dresdens

This pattern was from another Sew Sampler box in 2018-- but at the time, I really didn't understand what it was. Then I saw pictures on Instagram of these dresdens, and in a rare moment of serendipity, instead of buying the template again, it not only dawned on me that I had it, but I was actually able to find it. 

You stitch an entire charm pack together-- then cut it all apart-- which was as satisfying a thing to me as ever was. Only a quilter understands. So all would be well that ends well, except we don't have an ending yet-- all four are stitched up, but still need to be sewn together and I want to make a scrappy piano key border out of an extra charm pack I have. So that's still on the list but I'd love to have this for Thanksgiving. We got a shot!

April: Scrappy Carrots

This was for San Francisco Stitch Co. Everyone loved this as evidenced in sales (thank you!) and I now have an acorn version in the works. Totally done-- EXCEPT-- I would go back and free motion swirls behind the carrots, only I am afraid of ruining it. More on that later.

May: Pears

I was so pleased with my Fig Tree pears, and I even pulled a pear pattern out of my hat. This is a gift, and THIS NEEDS TO GET FINISHED in time for Christmas. So here's another instance where I am afraid of ruining it. I have the longarm, and I hate to say it, but I'm at the point where I'm wondering if I should have spent the money. Longarm time is not happening in my life as much as it should. I clearly have too many obsessive hobbies. Do you know that I take a guitar lesson every week? My teacher, half my age, LECTURED me on the practice time I (am not) putting in each week. How humiliating was that! 

Where, where, can we find more time, people? Without any area suffering? Does my family need to eat?

These are the questions I ask myself frequently in the fall.

June: Thank You for your Service

So this one was a bit of a cheat--I had extra blocks made from a Quilt of Valor that I did with two friends. I cleverly arranged that we would complete it at my house, and so the extra blocks remained here. (Months later, I did ask if anyone else wanted them, to be fair.) So these got sewn together, I birthday--gifted it as a flimsy, joking that my recipient "would see it again at Christmas." (finished, hee, hee) Now that a bad joke is about to become true, I am promising myself this will get loaded to the longarm THIS WEEKEND. I think just some simple wave quilting would get it done-- does everything have to be SEW FANCY? No.

July: Three Blind Cats

Thank God-- it's a success story. This was stitched, quilted, and gifted months ago. YAY!

I even embroidered shut eyes on the cats but I guess I didn't get a picture of that. This went to a really sweet person who took in blind kitty cats-- since they could never see, they have never missed it, and I hear that they get on just fine. <3

August: Snickerdoodle

This was a big WIP from last year. I started last year on National Jelly Roll day and finished this year on National Jelly Roll day. That's a year of jelly-- I still don't like Jelly Rolls. There is too much squaring up of units-- like, just cut your dang strips from yardage to 2-1/2" wide and you will spare yourself the extra time these are supposed to save you. Lots of squished points and mismatched seams in this one. I'm perfectly happy to have it folded on a shelf until the next baby or new home is on the horizon. Let's consider it DONE for now. I'm DONE. I can tell you that. It's a hard thing for me to say I didn't enjoy working on a quilt, but there you have it.

September: Bats and Boos

This is Fat Quartershop's free Halloween stitch-a-long-- after week two, I couldn't resist. September is over, but it is not-- that middle block is photoshopped (I was testing colors) and I'd love to hand applique some pumpkin leaves. Pumpkin leaves are a really pretty shape if you've ever noticed. I'm hoping I can cut them out with my new Cricut-- yet another gadget I'm not sure is paying for itself-- though I did cut all the pieces for these blocks on it!

So here's the Checklist:

Burgoyne Binding

Dresdens

Quilting- Pears and Thank You for Your Service

Bats and Boos-- finish

That's actually not as bad as I thought-- and I'm going to tackle it. Technically I have three months of tablerunners to go, but frankly, the Snickerdoodle could have counted as FIVE table runners if you count the rows. It would be fun to go over my master list of projects and think about any others I'd like to finish this year.

So that's my table runner story! I'd highly recommend taking photos of your work on your phone as it comes along all year, or to write a little blog even just for yourself-- to keep things in perspective-- to enjoy the accomplishment-- to keep things moving along.

xoxo

Carol

Summer of 2021

 It's time to say goodbye to summer as the equinox nears on the 22nd! Always such a bittersweet time of year, especially this year, as I celebrated a BIG birthday!

I guess I would have liked to keep it a secret, but I am always so bad at keeping them myself. So here I am, a few lines in my face and a grey streak, but still alive and sewing! I tried to flip the birthday numbers around, but all I could get was 90-- so I'm sticking with what I have.

For my birthday, I asked for a tiara-- my sister got me one, and I was able to wear it for most of the party (also provided by my sister <3) until my head got squeezed too much. Mostly, I got many, many flowers-- that is one of the best reasons NOT to keep your birthday to yourself! These were from my neighbor-- who as she presented them to me said, "Yellow is for friendship!"

Then my good friends from my quilt guild brought me a rose bush-- also in yellow, and also said, "Yellow is for friendship!" There must be some significance to hearing this twice in two days, and I'm still not sure what it is, but when I think about it, I want to shed some happy tears for friendship.

After the birthday, I had company for a few days! Thank goodness for company, or nothing would ever get cleaned around here, so we went from this:

To this:

with heartfelt thanks to the artist-in-residence, who has a lot more stamina than me! And a bonus-- we were out and about so much with our guests, it has actually stayed that way!

That is one of the peculiarities of living in a touristy area-- when company arrives, you go to places that you would never think of going anytime else! Here is the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor...

The Cape Cod Canal...

And even the pond down the hill from my house-- I haven't been over there in months!

We even did some fun cooking-- here are the birthday cakes and a pie-- German Chocolate and Peach-- my favorites, of course!

The artist-in-residence decided she wanted to make pickles-- that is something I would never have thought of, but it's always such a joy to do any type of adventure with this kid, so I'm always all in. The cucumbers were from a farm stand, and we cobbled together some spices from blown out grocery shelves. Who knew, but I am going to have trouble settling for jarred pickles anymore-- they were amazing!

Not much sewing got done, but before company came, I only had the borders to put on my Coriander Christmas. I'm hoping to get that done this weekend-- a FINISH! Ta-da!

And I did have a few sweet moments each morning to work on this-- who knew, when I picked this up mid-June I would become absolutely obsessed with it?

I pretty much have the left side filled in now-- after that, there are four different things in each corner-- Harvest, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Back to School. I'm estimating each would take a solid month. I really want to get on with my Baltimore Album quilt borders-- I mean, now that it's Autumn, why would I want to work on this? I would much rather be starting a Spring project... or work on a Christmas one, at any time of year!

So I'm ready for fall-- fall is my personal New Year, when brand new #2 pencils are sharpened, sheets of loose leaf paper are fresh, and even at 60,  I'm ready to begin again.

xox

Carol

Thread Chest

I missed a blog post last week-- yes, it was PAR-TAY time as we say around here, and I'll tell you all about it next week, when I'm fully recovered. It's come to my attention that Superior is having a sale on Magnifico-- it's up to 50% off-- but you have to act by Labor Day. So here's a quick rundown of our favorite colors, if you'd like to stock up for fall stitchin!

We are blessed with this--

If you've been embroidering for years, your thread collection may be more like this--

We are not at all opposed to this approach-- all the brands play so well together in our experience. It's a good time of year to just take stock of what you have and fill in the blanks-- the goal is to have lights, mediums, and darks in the rainbow colors, and a few neutrals. 

So let's go through the Magnifico color chart-- we're pulling out about 40 of 200 that we use all the time-- and we're going to star about twelve must-haves if you're light on budget. Or as many as you "need." hehe.

The chart starts with white and black-- truth is, I would stock up on white if you need it and the price is right. Some people are loyalists--I am not opposed to any brand of white---in a pinch, I've gotten Sulky at Joann Fabric-- that's my nearest source if I am in desperate need. Black is a must have-- but honestly, it is used in such tiny portions, I don't go through a lot of it.

Now the pinks-

Growing up between two brothers, pink is never a color I learned to understand-- I'd skip all the way down to the most peachy version-- 2023, 2024, and 2025 give you the light, medium, and dark you need. And I'll just skip down to purple, another girly color I don't use much of-- 2112 and 2115 are the warmer purples I use, and 2126, 2127, and 2129 and the cooler purples I reach for. None of these I'd put in the must- have column. 

Warm colors:

Now I'm in my sandbox. 2050* is Magnifico's must-have cream. *2051 is more of a yellow. Then, I'd skip right through the rest of the yellows-- most of them are too electric, although if I need a darker yellow, I'd pick 2061.

*2054 is cheddar-- one of my absolute favorite colors. I like to sprinkle it here and there. *2041 is THE red-- only occasionally do I use a more candy apple one. *2045 is my dark red of choice.

*2068-- a beautiful gold. Then we have a range of oranges, light to dark-- 2036, 2037, 2038, and 2040. Now I am just realizing you can tell how full the spool is to see how much I use it--LOL. So 2037 is my go to orange-- I wouldn't call it a must have, because orange is not a huge color with me.

Greens--

Magnifico has a huge range of greens-- from really soft, unsaturated ones, to bluish, to bright. So I use all of them in slight measures since so much of my work had greenery in it. *2097 is a lime that may be my most used color. *2104 is basic your Irish green. And 2091 is my favorite dark, outline green. Other than that, I also use 2099 and 2100 for more subtlety with my 2097. Then I threw a warm gray into the photo-- 2182 is the best one. 

Onward to blue-- also a nice range of hues in Magnifico.

2134 is a light blue, but *2143 is THE pale blue, my go to. 2138 and 2140 represent the teal end-- you'll know these if you did Stitches of the Sea! The bottom row is a range from light to dark I use freqently-- *2161 is a must-have for me-- it's a great Royal Blue.

Then we close out with supplementary colors-- yes, we do need neutrals sometimes!

2001 is white-- then 2165 and 2167 give you a light and dark gray. 2170 is for beige (only when cream 2050 is too bright) then my range of browns from light to dark-- 2173, *2174, *2176, and 2189.

So that's a run down of MY favorite colors-- I always have to end by saying-- you'll never mis-color an embroidery design if you pick colors YOU like!

Visit Superior Threads to save on Magnifico by September 6th-- here (I'll just note that I do not get a commission on any thread purchases and we are in no way affiliated with them, so we obviously do not provide customer service for anything you do buy.)

Don't forget to visit our sale page by Monday night as well-- you can take 50% off a purchase over $50 on any designs of your choice.

SALE PAGE

xox

Carol

Summer's End...

    The month of August is rapidly coming to a close and with it, another summer of enjoyment! I have given up on trying to tempt beachgoers, campers, and gardeners to the sewing room and have been quietly working on the fall line up with all due diligence.

     After finishing the Christmas ABCs, I am addicted! So I made this little Autumn ABCs piece for release right after Labor Day.

    It's like a puzzle to think of all the words-- I am particularly proud that I thought of Equinox-- and fall is such a Xenial time of year, isn't it? Can't you just see Winter, Spring, and Summer ABCs, as well as Thanksgiving, Valentine, and Fourth of July versions? I can!

     The next set of five Carefree Highway states are in production-- we are going to leaf peeping states. Just look at that foliage in Vermont!

I decided on these because I want to start filling in some of the rows to see what the quilt is going to start to look like. (You can view the layout in the previous post.) I'm going to stitch mine together in the order they were admitted to the Union and I assumed the northeastern states were first. Wrong again! When I went to look at the first row, Georgia was third and I don't have it yet! If you want to get ahead, I did figure out that you can only add the star points to the left and right of your states for the layout-- the corner blocks are shared. If none of this makes sense to you, no worries-- it's barely making sense to me right now, but I'm going to release finishing instructions with the next set and we can all find out.

     I also spent part of my week on volunteer work-- I'm putting my quilt guild's 24-page membership handbook together. I worked in advertising for years, and I know Adobe InDesign, so that insures that I'm the best one in my guild to do this job, and also that no one else is ever going to be able to take it over. I did ask the artist-in-residence to do the lighthouse-- it is Nauset, on Cape Cod, isn't it fabulous? It's so good to see this group resuming activities, and if you're in the neighborhood, you should join-- but it's too late to get your name in the handbook, though! LOL

   So 2/3 of the year is now over, and I thought I'd review my table-runners-a-month goal-- the next post is going to be dedicated to this. "Where are they now?" I'm proud to say at least three are table ready, one is gifted, and one is in active use. But it turns out I'm missing a month... the final excuse I needed to start the Fat Quartershop's Bats and Boos stitchalong. This picture is of their project:

   They were releasing a free block each week for the last four weeks-- I usually won't begin a project unless I know how it's going to look. And I like Bats, but I'm not keen on Ghosts,which I assumed were the Boos. Well, I guess they just liked the catchy name, because we got bats and then pumpkins-- it's futile for me to resist anything pumpkin, edible or not. 

I made two rules for myself since obviously I shouldn't be starting another project-- ONLY stash, and ONLY if I learned how to use my new Cricut Maker to cut the pieces! Done and done.

    This beauty has been sitting around at the office for too long. I got on the Cricut "Design Space" app and very easily created all the squares and rectangles needed. Then, it organizes them into the most efficient cut on a 12" x 12" piece of fabric. The pink thing is a sticky mat for the fabric, and then there is a cutter in the machine-- well, it's an actual tiny rotary cutter.

    So I'm not ready to say it was quicker than cutting them the usual way, but it was tremendously fun. I got 120 pieces cut for the pumpkins, not to mention the bats-- and an added benefit of this method-- the cutter does not ever make a mistake on size as I frequently do-- LOL.  I do love a bit of gadgetry. 

    Now that I have one video under my belt, I'm looking for potential other things to film, and I promise I'll show you it this fall. I hear shipping is screwed up worldwide and Christmas is in trouble-- this lovely gadget I'm convinced will save me a bundle on presents this year. It does so many things and I love it!

    So here's where I am on Bats and Boos-- I have four bats and one pumpkin. The pumpkins have about 40 pieces each-- wish I'd thought about that a little more before starting, but I'm loving it and enjoying making it so far. The border would be sew much better with a little appliqued pumpkin vine-- yes, we must raise the bar constantly!

   If you now are sucked into this thing-- the link to the free blocks is below, and you don't have to wait, as you are now, four weeks late! heehee. They are soon to start a Christmas one-- I need to see it before I commit, but you might not be like me!

Fat Quarter Shop Bats and Boos

Fat Quarter Shop All the Trimmings

    Coriander Christmas arrows are sewn (all 31 of them) and are in the process of being attached to my twelve blocks. I much prefer to add a side and a bottom sashing to each block instead of sewing long rows as is always suggested. It keeps the pieces a manageable size for longer. My shoulders don't enjoy pinning and hoisting 70" of quilt through the machine. 

    I found a friend on Instagram who's at the same place I am with it, and we've been encouraging each other to keep going. All that being said, I do not think I will make my goal of finishing by the end of the month. I do not prefer this part of a project-- and it shows when you see my UFOs-- all blocks, waiting patiently to be sewn together.

    So that's it for this week. I have a little road trip planned next week, but I'm hoping to be able to keep all the balls up in the air at the same time. As they tell me, there's always HOPE!

xox

Carol

You have to start somewhere!

"You have to start somewhere!" That’s been the theme of the week in this establishment… but to that I add a cautionary note— don’t keep starting over all the time!

It began with my plans for a YouTube channel... I keep putting it off. My cutting mat looks gross, my tripod is not stable enough, I need to lose weight... until finally the artist-in-residence said, “You have to start somewhere, mom!” And so I just dove in one afternoon last week. 

I was able to completely film an episode from start to finish in about two hours. My first topic is "Setting Your Carefree Highways Blocks into a Sawtooth Star." It all went very well, aside from breaking into hysterical laughter at the ludicrousness of myself talking to an empty room about the merits of flying geese.

It's kind of a sweet thought that the little girl who frequently had an attack of the giggles in church on Sunday morning is still alive and well! 

Filming turned out to be the easy part. When I took all my clips into Adobe Premier to assemble them, well, let’s just say, it was pretty intimidating! Fortunately, there is a ton of talent in this house—the artist-in-residence studied animation, and knows very well how to deal with the fourth dimension of time. I traded her some graphic design (my major) for editing.

My adventurous daughter has discovered the White Mountains after swearing she’d return to New York City after the pandemic. She and her friend are finishing up the "New Hampshire 48" this weekend— it’s 48 hikes to mountains 4000 ft. and more, completed in a single year. Next year, they are doing the Appalachian Trail! She wanted a logo for her YouTube channel, "Gypsy Trails." I've never seen her happier.

My video came out really well— sometimes it is just extremely helpful to SEE someone doing a thing, and there’s lots of general tips and advice that came up as I stitched along. When I showed Mr. SFO the finished cut-- he also howled with laughter--to my dismay. When he finally composed himself, he explained, "Did you know the quilt block matches your shirt exactly?"

I’m saving the release for when the next set of Carefree Highways designs comes out in September, but here’s a peek at the quilt we’re all going to make. It incorporates all fifty 4-1/2” blocks set like the stars in a real flag— I’m putting mine in the order they were admitted to the union. And, of course, we need some beautiful red stripes!

Don’t start making sawtooth stars yet— in my head, I thought each state would be in its own star, but if you study the layout, some of the corners are shared.

Besides that, I also worked on Stitches of the Sea borders— not quite happy with that yet, and I finished the Christmas ABCs cross stitch piece— that I am thrilled with. 

To frame or to make a pillow? I took another of my old finishes up to Michaels for framing— can you believe the piece below was done and sat in a drawer for 25 years— and they are just amazing. So I’m highly partial to framing Christmas ABCs  as well. I’ve always been convinced that all my WIPs will end up in a dumpster, but hopefully I’ll leave a few really nice finished things to be remembered by.

The Coriander Christmas quilt also saw progress— I have thirty one Christmas arrows ready to go. They are the sashings. This has proved more work than I thought it would be, but I might make a rule for myself— like add sashing to two blocks a day this week, to try to drag it over the finish line by the end of the month. I love to make rules for myself, almost as much as I enjoy breaking them.

If you've ever done a Fat Quartershop BOM, you know how much extra fabric they give you! So I bought this pattern that was also developed for the Holliberry fabric--I might make a nice tablerunner with it for the holidays. So cute!

I have a big "ZERO" birthday coming up— for my present, I am being flown out to Las Vegas (only nerds say "Las Vegas," but if I catch myself saying VEGAS, another fit of hysterical laughter may ensue.) It's my first time and I’m really looking forward to it, but the fall sewing embroidery designs are gonna take some extra time bit to get in swing. I'm not a gambler-- I’ve always wanted to see the Hoover Dam— but I’ve promised my son I will at least TRY a slot machine or two!

Of course the highlight of the stay will be looking up quilt shops to visit—heehee!

xox

Carol