Doing and Undoing

Where is time going?! It seems that just a few days ago these fellas were here. They returned home last Sunday.

As you can see, we visited Legoland. The Florida Legoland is the largest of all the Legoland parks. 

The little boys had talked about it for months (every time I visit them, I take them to the Kansas City Legoland). In spite of our long car ride to Winter Haven, and a five year-old's and 62 year-old's meltdowns, we had a good time. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. 

Tay's favorite thing was watching the "fire department," a performance put on by a crew of six young, acrobatic adults. The antics and comedy were slap-stick - perfect for a five year-old boy.

Aesa watched that show attentively, but told me his favorite activity was riding the big Coastersaurous. He barely made it past the height requirement.

While at our house, Aesa also turned out to be a boccé ball enthusiast, an outdoor activity we enjoyed several times.

After the boys left, and it was a tearful parting, I took my heavy-heart to my sewing room. I began by addressing a problem with my Kaffe Fassett quilt. A few months ago, I pin-basted this 61" X 61" quilt, and had started quilting one of the blocks - the pink block in the lower left corner. (No picture of it quilted.)

With a blue wash-out marker, I had marked a few registration marks that I later spritzed with water, to remove the marks. See what happened? The pink petals fabric bled to the quilt back! I sure don't know what I've done to deserve so much heart-ache with recent marks and bleeding on my quilts!

So my "undoing" was to remove all the quilting I'd put in, and un-pinbaste the whole thing. 

Next I'll be washing the quilt top - it's apparent that the fabric in these blocks (won in a giveaway) were not pre-washed, something I always do. Then, I'll give sandwiching another go, including using a new backing fabric. (sigh)

Other Odds and Ends

I finished my bias tape challenge quilt, including making a label.

This quilt, and "Ad Libbing," have both been officially entered into QuiltCon (February, 2015). The quilt show entry deadline is November 30. Whether these will be accepted into the show or not remains to be seen. In any case, full reveals of both quilts are yet to come.

I've begun making a pin cushion for the December 8 swap at our CentralFloridaMQG meeting.

I also made another Christmas stocking, like these made these in late 2012 when our son and his family still lived in Florida. This past January they became a family of four.

Thank goodness I wrote a blog post about making them, as I needed to reference it to make a stocking like the others! Unfortunately, the free download of the stocking template is no longer available, but I was pleased to find my print-out in my big notebook of Miscellaneous saved freebies. Whew.

What I didn't note is the font I'd used to create the names, so I had to go through about 12,000 of them on my MacBook Pro to find the one that matched. It's Tekton Pro font. LJ's stocking fits nicely into the family.

After a thorough Pinterest search of English paper piecing projects, I've selected a couple designs for away-from-home sewing in the months ahead. I always print and cut my own papers, so prep time is a little more involved. But, I'd like to think I'm being frugal, a German trait that comes naturally to me. I'm using my Sew Together bag for carrying and storing everything. 

Have you seen the EPP Millefiore Quilt Along that's coming up in January? The along is based on Katja Marek's new book The New Hexagon. If you love EPP as I do, you'll want to follow her on Instagram to learn more. Linda