Getting Back into the Blogosphere

The weather has finally warmed in Maine with temps in the 70s. We have four or five days of hot weather coming up, then back into the 70s. Black flies are out and about as well. I try to load up with bug repellent, and I pay dearly with huge itchy welts if I don't. 

We have been waiting for the landscapers to start on a new back walkway, and they've finally got to it. I'm guessing the walkway is 30+ feet; and they've just started laying the pavers, so they'll be a while. 

Warmer weather also means the violets are in bloom. I discovered that my neighbor's side yard is almost all weeds in the spring, including spectacular amounts of dandelions and violets. I picked blossoms to my heart's content and made some lovely lavender and violet face cream with fresh blossoms infused in water. Also some wild violet cold process soap with dried blossoms infused in oil. 

The left over blossoms were dried and bagged for use this winter. Violet leaves were not so plentiful this year, but Mountain Rose Herbs carries dried violet leaf, and I can make soap with them too.  

Tis also the season for summer cactus. My summer cactus is a very finicky bloomer, so I was excited this morning to discover it is sprouting buds. There are not a bunch yet, but I'm hoping. 

My Christmas cactus, on the other hand, is perpetually confused. It has bloomed nearly continuously since last October. Here it is June, and it's still blooming.

In April I finished Mountain View Lodge, which was a free pattern from Benartex. I've made a couple of these as gifts for men; and this was for a friend of hubby's, who stitched a canvas cover for our pontoon boat last summer. 

I still have quite a lot of fabric left over from this collection, so I used up all of this striped piece on the back. Still didn't have quite enough, so I pieced one stripe with some tan fabric from the collection on either side. 

I am increasingly trying to find ways to use up more fabric from the stash on the back side of my quilts. I recently found a site called Just Get It Done Quilts by Karen Brown, justgetitdonequilts.com. Her YouTube channel is a gold mine of videos on scrap management and other subjects. She also has one called The Afterquilt. That video illustrates the process she uses to incorporate scraps left over from the front of a quilt into a pieced back. Very useful information.

The only other quilt I've finished this year is a quickie strippy. After having been off the quilt frame for so long, I figured a little practice was in order. Plus, these strippys are mindless and fast to put together, which sometimes provides a necessary respite from more complicated piecing. I'd like to have a stack of these tops available for practicing machine quilting.
 

Besides not having as much time to quilt as I'd like, the other reason I've been slow to get things done this year is because I've been working pretty consistently on two UFOs in particular that have been exceedingly time consuming. 

I finally finished the pineapple top and got it loaded on the longarm right away, intending to complete it before quilt show registration closed in May. I stitched out two rows in a thread color that didn't work, in a pattern that didn't work. It's been sitting on the frame for weeks now because picking out two rows of stitching takes a really long time and really kills my back. I'm still chipping away at it in increments of 15 or 20 minutes, and I don't have too much more to go. But that also means that I can't get anything else quilted because I am NOT taking this thing off the frame.  

I also resurrected my Y2K millennium charm quilt--again. I blogged about this quilt at the end of October in 2014, and that's probably the last time I worked on it. I am finishing up the last three rows of triangles, then it's time to sew all the rows together and add a border. This top is NOT going back in the closet again.

June Finish

June was not the best month--one thing after another went wrong, mostly trivial things, but still. The worst of it was when we broadsided a deer on the interstate in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. My husband, who was driving, saw the deer emerge from the woods, headed for the highway at a full gallop. He managed to slow down from 70 to 55 mph, but we hit the deer so hard that the poor thing just exploded. My son, who was coming along behind us about a mile back, said there was only half a carcass left on the highway. Thankfully we had the pickup truck that day, wouldn't have wanted to think what would have happened in the car. Just got the truck back yesterday from the auto body shop--$2600 in damages.

The Department of Transportation is cutting back the growth further and further away from the highway; but at 70 mph, there's not a lot of time to react. The auto body shop and the insurance company both reported that there have been a lot of deer strikes this year because we had such a mild winter. Two winters ago, the deer stripped my evergreens at the front of the house. Night after night, I'd watch through the window around midnight, and three or four of them would come and munch on my plants. By the end of the winter, they consumed nearly all of the greenery. My neighbors' evergreens suffered the same fate. I didn't see the deer this past winter, so they must have found things to eat in the woods.

I did not finish the Mountain View Lodge quilt, which was my One Monthly Goal project for June; but I did finally finish the Star Crazy quilt. Yay! Only took me 10 years, lol.

I quilted it with an all over feather, Plumage, I think, from Willow Leaf. I got off on one of my rows and had to restitch a few places after I got it off the frame, but it didn't take long.

SO glad to get this done!

Credit where credit is due: Star Crazy design by Sue Garman, for Alex Anderson's The Quilt Show, 2009.

Company is coming tomorrow for several days--my sister-in-law who visits once during the summer and right after Christmas every year--and there are other activities planned for the month. Of course I'll be at the sewing machine this month, but I hesitate to commit to a One Monthly Goal. I have a few more days to think about it.

Another thing that took some of my time in June was hand dyeing. There's a Bonnie Hunter string quilt I want to make that uses 4 yards of solid yellow. I used to hand dye cotton years ago, and it occurred to me that it would be a lot less expensive to dye my own yellow than to purchase it. I kept all my supplies over the years, thinking I might get back to it; and I still have a bunch of prepared-for-dyeing (PFD) cotton.

I had to buy new dye, of course; and ProChem has evidently changed some of their formulations. The Golden Yellow I bought 20 years ago was more yellow than what I just dyed some fabric with. I now have some cheddar colored fabric that would probably look great with some Civil War repros. Clearly it will be a process to find the right yellow. In the end, it might be cheaper to just buy it, lol. Still having fun with it though, so I'll keep going.

More soap and lotions got made in June too--a new herbal shampoo bar that smells so lovely, another batch of hair conditioner, another batch of bug repellent, a spray to ease sunburn, some lavender violet face and body cream, and some honeysuckle rose salve. I picked the honeysuckle blossoms and infused them in a lightweight oil, along with some dried rose petals, to make the salve.

The timing of that turned out to be pretty good. My husband was pulling some vining weeds out of the junipers yesterday, and evidently the oils in the plant were toxic as he now has a bumpy red rash all over his arms and belly. We don't think it is poison ivy or poison oak--don't know what it is, truthfully. Haven't been able to identify it online.

Last night before he went to bed, he applied Cortisone on one arm and witch hazel on the other to see which worked better. The itching woke him up during the night, so he tried the honeysuckle rose salve and said that worked the best.

There are courses in herbology that you can take, and they are not inexpensive. I've always been a little dubious that herbs really can alleviate all the ailments they say they can; but I have to say, I'm beginning to be a believer. I bruised my tailbone two summers ago taking my granddaughter down a metal slide at the park, and after a year it wasn't better. I started applying a pain stick I made that contains arnica and cayenne red pepper, and it has helped so much that it mostly doesn't bother me anymore. I've used it for other aches and pains, and it does seem to really work well. Even if it's all in my head, if the pain goes away, I'm all in, lol.

No OMG This Month

So! How are we liking the new and improved Blogger? Not! My dashboard automatically opened up into the new format; and for the life of me, I couldn't see how to start a new post. I found the button to use the Legacy (old) formatting and switched back to it; but eventually, I discovered how to start a new post in the new formatting. I hate change, and it will take a little while to get used to the new format if Blogger forces me to use it. 

My OMG for May was to finish the Star Crazy quilt. I'm sorry to say only half of it got quilted, and it's still sitting on the machine (insert sad face). Too many other things got in the way the latter half of the month--
tying up loose ends for my part in two quilt shows that got cancelled;
several all-day sessions of soap making to include 7 pounds of soap, a couple of different batches of lotion, and some stuff to keep the bugs away and soothe when they don't stay away;
and some serious spring cleaning, which may be ongoing til the fall because I've neglected it for so long. I suppose that's the most of it. May not sound like much, but I'm so darn slow at everything that it takes me forever to get things done.

This is also the season that dandelions and violets are blooming, and I have been harvesting blossoms to use for face cream, lotion and soap. I infuse the blossoms in either water or oil, depending on what I'm making.

Last year I made a couple of batches of dandelion soap, dandelion lotion bars, and violet leaf soap, but I missed my chance to make violet face cream because I waited too long.
This year I made my lavender and violet face cream, and it is such a lovely light cream. I shared some with my friend who let me pick flowers at her place.

I also picked some lilac blossoms which will be used for lotion most likely. Honeysuckle and wild rose will be blooming soon, and I can't wait to try some recipes with the roses. All of these recipes came from nerdyfarmwife.com; she uses a lot of plant material that she grows locally to make her own bath and beauty products. I have a couple of her books, and I really enjoy her blog.

I did finish this wallhanging earlier this month. It was a kit from Keepsake Quilting called Lake Life that I bought late last year. I also bought enough of one of the other fabrics in the line to make pillowcases, which hubby received for Christmas. We bought a camp on a lake last summer, and hubby has just retired; so this was a surprise for him.

Hubby started working from home in late March, I think; and it was a challenge to get this done. Even though he was supposed to be working, he would pop down to my sewing room occasionally throughout the day. I couldn't always hear him coming, so I'd have to work on the quilt at night often times after he went to bed.

We visited camp about once a month all winter just to make sure everything was secure, so I sent him up one day in April, and that's when I managed to get it quilted. Binding was another task that took place at night.

There was not quite enough backing fabric in the kit, so I added a panel of fabrics left over from the front, which worked out beautifully.

Lake Life was quilted with a pantograph called Waterworld, from Willow Leaf Studio, which was perfect for the theme of the quilt.

OMG for October Done

Woo hoo, made it under the wire again, and two more UFOs bite the dust! One is Yankee Puzzle #1, and I'm donating it to a local veterans' shelter.

The other one is Stella Blue. I think my friend Koleen did an excellent job choosing the colors and fabrics.

See in the upper left corner of the photo, how five of the flying geese blocks are flying the wrong way? I panicked momentarily, thinking I got them backwards; but I double checked the pattern, and it's correct.Not that it matters, I suppose.

I used a pantograph that was more dense than I usually use, but it is the sort of thing I think Koleen would have chosen had she quilted it herself. In the end I very much liked it.

There are some excellent finishes this month. See what others have accomplished here.

I'm aiming to finish two more quilts in November. The blocks for the Missouri Two Step are all put together, just need to add some borders. And I have a BQ2 quilt top finished and ready to quilt. 

I made this sewing gadget holder a week or so ago. The pattern was given to me by a friend, and unfortunately it wasn't attributed. I hunted for it on the internet but no luck. Anyway, it is nothing more than a quilted cover with pockets that slips over a freestanding acrylic 10" x 8" picture frame. Quick to sew and oh so handy. 

Not having made one before and not having a photo in front of me, I didn't realize that so little of the base fabric would show on the front. This is the back of the sleeve, and I really wanted to see more of this fabric on the front. Had I known, I would have used my focus fabric instead of the red for the bottom pocket. I have more of the selvage fabric, so maybe I'll gift this one and make another to keep. 

I also made a bunch of soap this month. Candy corn... 

Beehive soap, scented with honey...

And animal soaps for my granddaughter.

I like to admire my soaps, so I line them up across the windowsill in my kitchen, lol. DGD stayed with us a couple weekends ago, and she piled all the soap bars into her big teapot and played with them all weekend. Sometimes the simplest things are the most fun.

The Puff Quilt... and a Finish!

Making the puff quilt was not as difficult as I anticipated, and I'm documenting the process here, not only for some other soul who might take the challenge, but mostly because I don't want to forget how I did it. I figured out a few tricks of my own beyond what I saw in YouTube videos.

For someone who really was learning how to sew for the first time, DIL did extremely well with the process. And what a taskmaster! We decided to make the quilt 12 x 12 puffs or 144 puffs. I cut while she sewed, and we sewed up all but 24 squares on Saturday and finished the rest on Sunday. I was exhausted Saturday night when we finally quit.

We used 4-1/2" muslin squares for the bottom, and 5" squares of focus fabric for the top of each puff. Squares were sewn on three sides with a 1/4" seam allowance, leaving one side open for stuffing.

Because the top square was larger than the bottom square, it was necessary to sew a pleat into the top square. We eyeballed this so the pleat was approximately centered on the square.

Once all the squares were made, we sewed 12 squares together to make each row.

At this point the squares were not stuffed. I tried sewing two stuffed rows together and oh, what a chore that was. It was so much easier to sew an unstuffed row to a stuffed row, then fill it with the fiberfill and sew the squares in the whole row closed.

I also discovered that if I sewed the row closed with an 1/8" seam allowance, then I didn't have to worry about a line of thread showing on the top after the rows were sewn together. When I added the next unstuffed row, I used a 1/4" seam allowance.

I took 9 rows home with me to work on because DIL wasn't sure how much she'd be able to get done on her own. She actually got her 3 rows all done a day or so later. I finished mine last week.

I very much like DIL's fabric choices. She has another piece for the backing with black skeleton heads on a white background that I think will be really cool.

I also finished the binding on this string quilt last week. This is a rather strange quilt to me, but I took a liking to it and wanted to make it. It is from a book called Small Pieces, Spectacular Quilts by Biz Storms and Mary Elizabeth Kinch. They called it "Go With the Flow", I call mine "Heartstrings". There are some insane quilts in this book, but there are a couple others I'd make.

The blocks finish to 12", and they are composed of vertical bars of varying widths. One of the blocks has 5 vertical bars, the rest have 4 or less. My friend Koleen, who passed away in 2017, was making 4" x 8" sections of string blocks for a quilt of her own design at the time. I had about 6 of those blocks plus all the string sections she'd made; and I tried to love them... but I didn't.

When I found this pattern and decided to make it, I took Koleen's string blocks and worked them into my 12" blocks. Every last piece of Koleen's string blocks was incorporated, even if it meant taking the smallest leftover strip and using it as a string itself. These blocks are so busy you really have to hunt to find these string-pieced strings.

Done!

I also turned out a new batch of soap last week, a small one-pound batch. I realized that if I kept making 2- and 3-pound batches, not only would I quickly run out of storage space, but I'd never be able to use it all up. This batch got too thick before I had a chance to try and swirl it, but I still like how it turned out. I'm not much good at swirling anyway, but I keep trying, lol.

The colors are not quite true in the photo--the purple is brighter, and the white is whiter. I scented it with lavender and chamomile. I hadn't used chamomile before, didn't really care for the scent, but it's very intriguing blended with the lavender. Chamomile essential oil is pretty expensive, but I'll use it again.

It's A New Year...

... and migosh, it's already February. Time moves so quickly these days. Last year was an extraordinarily busy year for me. Staying busy with the family accounts for much of that time, but I also worked two quilt shows during the summer and fall, and then the holidays. There simply are not enough hours in the day.

And soapmaking. I spend more time reading about soap than I do about quilting. I took a couple of adult ed classes in January and February last year and learned how to make cold process soap. I've been hooked ever since. I make it on a small scale for family and friends, and I really like experimenting with all the different ingredients you can add to soap. I've added body butters and lotions to my repertoire, and my extremely dry skin is so much better for it this winter.

This past Christmas, my son indicated he wanted to learn; so I bought him all the tools and some reference material; and he's as hooked as I am. Now my daughter-in-law has gotten in on the act, and my younger son told me yesterday he wants to learn too. I'm lovin' it.

This is a lovely batch of orange-scented soap with some marigold petals on top that I cut last week. I'm anxious to use it, and I wish I didn't have to wait for it to cure for four weeks. 

I managed to finish 12 quilts last year, some of which were in the works for quite a while. All of the ones featured in the last post, which was from May of last year, were completed. Nothing like commitment to display at a quilt show to motivate, and here are the others I finished last year.

Jungle Blooms was my first effort making a One Block Wonder quilt, from Maxine Rosenthal's book of the same name. I really enjoyed making this, and I absolutely love how it turned out. Can't wait to make another one. The cutting and piecing are not difficult, and moving the blocks around to create a design was absorbing.

I quilted it with something that looked like a palm frond, which I thought appropriate for the theme.

I was very happy indeed to finish Twisted Ribbons. I don't know how many times I blogged about it, and it dragged on and on. Decided it was time to knuckle down and get it finished, and it went in our chapter show in October.

Farm Girl Sampler from Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet was a fun quilt to make, but it definitely wasn't a quick quilt. All the blocks were made with rotary cutting instructions, no templates or applique; so some of them took a bit of time to make. I've already purchased Lori's newest book of sampler blocks, Vintage Christmas, and looking forward to getting started on that one.

Lori designed additional blocks that were not in the original quilt, so I subbed out the house for the cow block. There's a barn and a milking pail in the quilt, so I thought, why not?

I don't knit much anymore, but I was happy to include the sheep anyway.

I was also happy to see Lori included a spool block. The gingham plaid is cute enough to make a whole quilt with. Lori's book had quite a few other projects in it besides the sampler quilt, and blocks were all included in two sizes. There is so much you could do with these blocks.

This year will be another year with multiple charity quilts, and some golden oldies for a chapter UFO Challenge. This Quilt of Valor is from a kit that the state rep gave me to work on last October. The ribbon border was a pain but worth the effort. I've been trying to make time to get it loaded for quilting, but that hasn't happened yet... I've finished a few other tops that are also in the RTQ (ready to quilt) pile, and you'll see those eventually; but the Quilt of Valor is the next one I need to push to finish.