Playin' Around

Back in April, in an Instagram giveaway I won a large box of fat quarters - all 100 colors of Benartex Superior Solids. When they arrived, I began cutting (using the Classic Curves Ruler) and piecing set-in circles. For months I've continued to play, somewhat listlessly, without any clear direction. 

The last time I share a picture of my design wall, blocks looked like this. 

For two reasons, I needed to get moving on this project! It's my entry in the South Florida MQG "Curve Around Challenge," and I want to enter this into QuiltCon (entry deadline is October 31). For those who don't know, QuiltCon is the Modern Quilt Guild's annual show (February 2022 in Phoenix, Arizona), and to have a quilt in the show it must be accepted first - juried in.

One morning last week I opened my print stash doors and stared inside, wondering if I could find inspiration. Then, voilá! A lightbulb turned on! I unearthed a leftover piece of a large black and white check. How would it look cut into strips as spacers between circle blocks? I liked it!

That fabric was just the inspiration I needed to re-ignite the design. 

I kept making circles, trying a variety of different styles - with stripes, plain, half circles, quarter circles - and made smaller circles using Applipops purchased from The Craft Table in Orlando.

I used my Bernina appliqué foot #20C; a size 60 Microtex needle, and Wonderfil Invisifil thread to zig-zag stitch circles into place. Last Monday I had my nails redone, and unintentionally, they looked pretty good with the circles I machine-appliquéd!

I dug out some yellowing Carol Doak Foundation Paper to cut into pieces that I positioned behind each circle, to help stabilize zig-zag stitches. Tearing it away was it bit of a bother.

A couple days later, the design started to come together. I worked from the top to the bottom, doing the math to make sure blocks fit together - a few had to be re-made larger - adding Applipop circles as I went. It took quite a bit of switching back and forth - from machine-appliqué to piecing - that required many foot and thread change-outs.

Here it was about one-third pieced together. 

Determined to finish the top by the end of September, I stayed up late Thursday night to complete it. Whoo-ee! I couldn't be happier! This weekend I'll prep parts for the quilt sandwich. The top is 61" X 70". This time I'm planning to use Quilter's Dream Puff batting to make the quilting pop.

Playin' Around is what I plan to call it because that's exactly what I did as I made it; I enjoyed playing with circles.

This week of intense sewing has meant a lot of pedal-to-the-metal, so today I gave my Bernina a thorough vacuum-out, wiping down, and oiling. She deserves it.

This is week 5 of the Finger Paints QAL, and these are blocks 7 and 8. I'm keeping up with weekly goals and posting pics to Instagram so as to be in the running for weekly prizes. 

Only block 9 remains to be pieced; it's due next Friday. 

After making the circle quilt top, my sewing room was mess! Just believe me when I say that there were lots of scraps, piled up and tossed here and there that I rooted through often to find parts and bits of this or that particular color. But it was very satisfying to clean up today! I added scraps to my shoebox bins of color-sorted scraps. 

When I have some uncommitted time, won't I will have a good play, piecing from several of these shoeboxes?

These past five days found me so focused on sewing that I didn't listen to a book, as I usually do. Instead, with lots of goals running through my mind, I've been ticking things off a mental check list. October will be a busier-than-usual month.

On Saturday and Sunday afternoons I'll be tuning in to the Global Quilt Connection virtual program: All Star Virtual Sampler Platter. 

Tuesday I'm giving a Big Stitch Quilting and More program and demo to members of my local Big Cypress Quilters. 

Next Saturday is the Central Florida MQG meeting from which I'll have to hurry home to attend Intriguing Interleaves, a virtual workshop with Mel Beach.

I'm playing hard these days... and lovin' every minute of it! Linda

Makin'

Hubs has been watching lots of football, which doesn't interest me, so I've been having good times in my sewing room. Every day. 

For those of you who speculated about how well I'd do at last Tuesdays jelly roll race with Big Cypress Quilters, I came in second place. I don't know how long it took me to make this top, but the winner made hers in 51 minutes. 

quilt top 45" X 65"

We determined afterward that my quilt top, at 45" X 65" is larger than the others, likely due to it being made from a jelly roll that came from Australia. Though the colors are not "me," the fabrics include nice reminders of the differences between Australia and the US, and evoke fond memories of time spent there.

I came across this pattern when following Art Gallery Fabrics on Instagram. This is a Swing Fabric Basket and is meant to be a little "travel basket" for notions and supplies, when going from one stitching spot to another. 

I filled mine with the size 8 Eleganza perle cotton threads I'm using to add big stitch quilting to my MQG Artisan Fabric challenge quilt. 

I followed this Sewing Times YouTube video tutorial to make it. 

Book Recommendation

Today's book recommendation deserves some explanation. 

I selected The Monsters We Make by Kali White because the synopsis intrigued me - a fictional story, written by an Iowan, based on facts that happened where I used to live in West Des Moines, Iowa. Literally. On the same block. 

In September 1982, a Des Moines Register newspaper boy, picking up his early Sunday morning newspapers to bundle for delivery, went missing. At that time, we lived in an eastside Des Moines suburb, but I vividly remember seeing the boy's mother on that night's news, making a plea for information about him.

In 1989 we moved to West Des Moines, not knowing until after moving in, that the last place the paper boy had been seen was on the corner behind our house. Though in 1982, the lot where our house stood was vacant.

For nearly 23 years we lived in this house. The second light pole on the left was where he was last seen folding Sunday newspapers. His red wagon and newspapers were left behind.

So, it was particularly interesting to read the book's opening chapters describing that Sunday morning in 1982. I can vividly imagine the early morning dusk, and his route.

The remainder of the book focuses on the second newspaper delivery boy who went missing in August 1984. No traces of either boy have ever been found.

In The Monsters We Make, the names of these boys have been changed, but circumstances around them have not. Many things actually happened with the parents, search, police, etc. For example, the disappearance of these boys marks the first time milk cartons were used to publicizing missing children - thank you, Anderson-Erickson Dairy. 

The story's focus is on two children of a single mother who lives on Des Moines' southside, and a troubled police officer who handled the first disappearance in West Des Moines, and then accepted a new job/promotion to a detective position in Des Moines where he found himself assigned to the second missing newspaper boy case. 

While the story is dark, it exposes the hidden aspects of the term "pedophile, " - a new term at the time -  that has now become common, and brings attention to the trusting nature of Midwesterners, and innocence that can be lost.

Naturally, I appreciated this book because of its familiarity and reminders, and because it was extremely well-written. 

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0

Linda

Life is So Full

Life is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. - Robert Louis Stevenson

 

I'm a happy king queen, continuing to leap-frog through my she cave

It's the home stretch on the "All Dressed Up" mini quilt I'm making from Kelly Young's My Quilt Infatuation new book Scrappy Improv Quilting. I've been asked not to share all of the project until my October 18 reveal day, but I'll tell you that I enjoyed quilting it. I haven't quilted free motion hooked swirls in a long time, and - as I am doing more often these days - I added some big stitch quilting. 

For week four of the QuiltFortCo Finger Paints QAL, these are blocks 4 and 5. 

Thus far, here's how it looks. I like it more and more.

Curated Quilts asked quilters to make and mail them a 5½" X 10½" block for the Harmony Quilt they plan to feature in their "Collaboration" issue, and display at QuiltCon. This is my contribution, made with a Guicy Guice print.

A Jacksonville (Florida) friend, Paula @sewmodernchicky has an online quilt shop (she has also been a Marketplace vendor for Quilting Guild of The Villages). When she recently had a sale on wide backs for $9 a yard, I picked up a couple, and a few sale prints. I've always liked Anna Maria Horner's "Echinea" print and managed to buy-out two of her remaining color ways. I'm thinking "purse." That palm print might make into a nice shirt too.

This tired-looking jelly roll has been in my possession since 2009, when it was given to me by a quilt-y friend, Di B., who lives in Sydney, Australia. She gifted it as a souvenir of six weeks I spent in Sydney, teaching beginner quiltmaking to a group at her church, St. Mark's Anglican Church. The fabrics are all Australia prints. 

Truth told, I've never bought a jelly roll because the prints are often overly-matched. But when Big Cypress Quilters (my every Tuesday quilting group) announced that this Tuesday - this afternoon! - would be Jelly Roll Race Day, and having never participated in a jelly roll race, I remembered this jelly roll. 

We were instructed to watch a Missouri Star YouTube video to see how to make a jelly roll quilt, and told to join our strips together before the Tuesday meeting. 

I'm all set to go, with pressed-open seams and miles of strips ready to join.

I'm almost embarrassed to post the two pictures below, but this is the best I could do with my Canon point-and-shoot camera.

Last Wednesday evening shortly after 8 pm, after watching on TV the countdown for the Cape Canaveral launch of Inspiration4, we rushed outside to watch, from 109 miles away, the rocket's progress across the night sky. 

Inspiration4 is a SpaceEx capsule that sent four civilian astronauts into space. It was pretty exciting to watch! This is one of the booster separations.

I paid the price for being outdoors for five or six minutes though! Mosquitos love me. Eleven mosquito bites, some of which swelled to two inches in diameter, as well as itching like crazy. I hope every mosquito that bit me died a horrible death from my drug-thinned (Plavix and Xarelto) blood!

I recently had a check-up for P.A.D. (peripheral artery disease - for me, it's a genetic condition caused by blood with too much plaque in it) that has been problematic in my legs. In addition to blood-thinning drugs and cholesterol med, my doc continues to recommend rigorous exercise to keep the blood pumping and arteries open. Besides Walk Away the Pounds and line dancing, I power-walk twice a week.

When walking, I use a Map My Walk phone app to track distance, speed and elevation. Below is the route of my last 4.22 mile walk, for 1 hour/8 minutes, at a rate of 16:18 per mile. (It's always audiobook listening time for me!) I like seeing where I've been, and have even seen pictures of a specific route a walker or jogger has taken, so their course spells out a word! How about my cute little cul de sacs? Inspiration for a quilt?!

Book Recommendations 

The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn is a nicely-written book about Esther, a young wife and mother in the 1930s, suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband sends her to a Scilly island (off the UK) mental institute. Though initially she resists, the doctor's gentle kindness, and the therapeutic lifestyle of seven people living on an island, begin to work wonders. Tragedy changes that. 

In 2018, Rachel takes a position in the Scilly Islands as a marine scientist, studying the life patterns of clams. A rough storm finds her near a tiny island where she's rescued by a woman who lives there alone. While waiting for the weekly supply boat to return her to her home base, Rachel spends five days making discoveries about the island. Hidden in a suitcase, she finds letters written to "E" from "R." Rachel needs to find out who they are, and how their love story ended. 

Linda's score: 3.6/5.0

In The Therapist, by B.A. Paris, Alice and Leo have decided to move in together. They find a condo in The Circle, a gated area of 12 homes, in London. Alice can't figure out why some of the neighbors are whispering, and excluding her from their get-togethers. Deciding to make friends, Alice invites everyone for an evening of drinks. When an uninvited guest shows up, and it seems that Alice is the only one who meets him, she determines to find out who he is.

Still, a few women seem stand-off-ish. When Alice learns that something happened in her house, her world turns upside down, and her relationship with Leo changes. Determined to get to the truth, she questions everyone, suspects everyone, and unknowingly puts herself at risk. 

Linda's score: 3.9/5.0

I have fond memories of watching my dad make ham salad. He clamped a heavy, cast iron meat grinder to the kitchen table, and cranked it out using bologna. Not having eaten it in ages, we decided to make it, and bought a one-pound hunk of "German bologna" from the Publix deli. To make it into ham salad, we've determined that bologna magically turns into ham as it goes through the meat grinder! It was delicious! 

We're living and eating like a King and Queen! Linda

More In-Process

Another week of going and going, with no finish line in sight. 

Another week of project-hopping, or leap-frogging, as it's now called.  

For Kelly Young's new book Scrappy Improv Quilting, I "made fabric" from scraps. (My turn on her blog hop is October 18.) No surprise about the colors I chose, right? Honestly though, initially I wanted to make a different color combo. But I quickly realized - horror of horrors! - I don't have enough scraps in other colors to make fabric! Not enough pinks. Not enough reds. Not enough purples. My scrap bins are getting down to the nitty-gritty! So unless I indulge in some stash enhancement, my days of making scrappy quilts are limited. But I'm looking at it as a good thing. I'm truly "using-up."

Keeping up with Laura Loewen's @quiltfortco Finger Paints QAL (quilt along), these are blocks 3 and 4 for this week, the third week of the QAL. I'm using only solids.

By Friday, I'll post this picture to Instagram, so I'm in the running for Laura's weekly giveaway. My friend and Central Florida MQG president, Karen @sunrayatplay won last week. 👏

Blocks 1, 2 and 3 are in the top row. Block 4 is in the second row. Five more blocks to go. I like how it's looking... bright and hot!

Mostly I've been big stitch quilting. Every day I am sure to pick up this - my entry for the MQG's Artisan Fabric Challenge.

This quilt is about 50" X 56" because my preference is to make quilts that are useable - a size that can be given away for someone else to appreciate. So it's taking a bit longer to stitch. 

After finally getting my design wall cleared-off, this morning I plunked these blocks back up. What a hodgepodge! I have no idea how I'm going to deal with them. But I must. I'm coordinating South Florida MQG's "Curve Around Challenge," and how bad would it look for me not to participate?! I'm gonna need LOTS of inspiration to figure out how to do something with these. Help!

Book Recommendations

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner is a trending title on the Hoopla library app, so I checked it out because it had a 4.5 rating. I wasn't disappointed. Though the first chapter was a slow start, and I wondered if I was listening to a sci-fi tale, the book just got better and better.

It's 1791, and Nella runs a London apothecary inherited from her mother. But she's secretly dispensing more poisonous drugs than remedies - helping women escape men who disuse and control them. Precocious 12 year-old Eliza visits Nella's shop to pick up a specially requested order, and the two develop an unlikely relationship.

In present day, Caroline is in London celebrating her tenth wedding anniversary alone, since learning of her husband's infidelity. A history-lover, she finds an unusual blue apothecary bottle, and ends up spending her holiday seeking more information. As she discovers an unsolved crime, she not only unearths a mystery, but also a greater understanding of herself and what she wants for her future. 

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0

If you have enjoyed any books by Mary Kubica, then you'll like Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell. Taking place in a London suburb, the Fours family is temporarily living in a rental while their home is being renovated. Choosing to reside in a rental that's in a more posh area, mum Cate finds the quiet streets somewhat disturbing. Following a series of sexual attacks in the area, Cate believes that the odd young man, Owen, living across the street, could be the perpetrator. 

Owen is a teacher at a local university, and is dumb-founded when the human resources department tells him that two female students are charging him with sexual misconduct, and that he's being put on leave.

Saffyre is a beautiful teenage girl with an aversion to men. At age ten, she suffered trauma that prompted her uncle to get help from child physchologist Roan Fours, Cate's husband. With suspect interactions and many secrets among Owen, Saffyre, Roan, and even the Four's 14 year-old son, Josh, Cate wonders what's really going on, perhaps even in her own family.

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0

We love our Texas little boys, and have these on our frig as a daily reminder of how much we miss them. The school pictures are from this year; they're sixth and second graders now. When we visited them in late July, Luke and Bapa made the fish, just for me, from Perler beads. If you aren't familiar with Perlers, here's the website. 

Hoping to leave you with a smile today.

Apparently it's tough to come up with a funny that includes "Bernina." 😀 Linda

In Process

Everything I've touched lately continues to be in process. I'm making headway on each project, albeit slowly. 

The QuiltCon 2022 Artisan Cotton Fabric Challenge (such a long title to remember!) is due October 31, along with all QuiltCon 2022 entries. 

I've been quilting my challenge entry, hopping back and forth between machine walking foot quilting and big stitch quilting with size 8 Wonderfil Eleganza perle cotton.

There's no rhyme or reason to quilting designs. I'm just going with the flow, adding stitches here and there, and using thread colors as the mood strikes me.

With this approach, the quilt may end up looking unplanned, but I'm having fun with it. Each evening, I look forward to sitting in my comfy aqua chair, under my Slimline 2 floor lamp for hand stitching time. 

Participating in the Finger Paints Quilt Along, I made blocks 1 and 2 this week. They're each about 22" square. I've been surprised to look at my finished blocks and believe I improv cut these pieces - I didn't use a ruler. 

Guess my 40-plus years of making quilts has given me a "good eye," though I wish that wasn't the case! Still, I know I'm going to like this quilt.

Though this quilt top is done, I'm not yet sharing a picture of it - my Central Florida MQG Chips and Charms Challenge quilt - because I submitted my design for publication. If it doesn't happen, I'll share later.

Good Eggs by Rebecca Hardiman was a happy read, after my disappointment with the last book (Malibu Rising).

Good Eggs is a charming, family story that takes place in Ireland. A family of five is struggling through careers, keeping up with kids, and dealing with a somewhat eccentric grandmother, Millie. Kevin, the dad, is at the heart of the story, trying to navigate his own unemployment and his middle-aged attraction to another woman, while handling Millie's quirkiness, and a rivalry between his teenaged twin daughters. Sixteen year-old Aideen is so recalcitrant that boarding school seems the only option. Not surprisingly, Millie and Aideen understand one another, so running away from home together doesn't seem like a bad idea.  

I really enjoyed the audiobook narrative, listening to well-acted Irish and American accents. Not to give too much away, but when part of the story happens in Florida, I felt a real affinity for the character's impressions of the state.

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0

This morning, while golf carting to 7:30 am line dancing, I paused to appreciate God's beautiful creation. The sky was stunning. In one direction, sunshine glowed on fluffy white clouds, and in the other direction this double rainbow appeared in a gray sky. 

Later, alongside the golf cart path were three sandhill cranes. I love seeing them! They're distinctive and very majestic-looking. Since they're a protected species in Florida, everyone stops - golf carts and automobiles alike - when they wander across roadways. 

To keep them in perspective, they're about four feet tall.

While I had a lovely cart drive to line dancing, and this was the sky on my way into the rec center...

...my drive back home at 9:30 was rainy. Tropical storm Mindy is making her presence known. Linda

Leap-Frogging

My friend, Melissa (@mtweedel on Instagram) posted this week about leap-frogging, a tendency some of us have to jump from project to project. I completely identified with that term! It seems I function best when switching from one project to another, like following a whim.

Leap-frogging has been the norm this week. 🐸

Mostly in the evenings, I've continued to hand-appliqué circles onto half-square triangles, for my Chips and Charms Challenge quilt. These are blocks 73 to 80 - so I finally reached the 80 appliquéd blocks needed for my quilt design. Whew.

Kelly Young at MyQuiltInfatuation has a new book Scrappy Improv Quilting, and it's now available. I received a copy to make a quilt for Kelly's book introduction blog hop; my turn is Monday, October 18. All patterns in the book are to make mini quilts from scraps, so I've begun "making fabric" from which I'll cut pieces. 

The Finger Paints Quilt Along, hosted by Laura Loewen of QuiltFortCo began Monday. This week's assignment was to choose the 31 fabrics needed for the project - nearly all of mine are Painter's Palette solids - and cut them out. My rotary cutting was entirely ruler-free, so it remains to be seen how my blocks will turn out!

All that cutting produces lots of fabric snippets that I toss into a fabric bag clamped to my sewing machine table. It doesn't seem to take long to fill a bag with fluff to make a nice pet bed to locally donate. This bed is made from leftover home dec fabric, and measures about 23" X 26".

Fully aware that on September 1 the MQG opened-up QuiltCon 2022 entries (due by October 31), I'm slowly progressing on my Artisan Fabric challenge quilt. My plan is to domestic machine quilt, and then add big stitch quilting.  

Melissa, the same person who explained leap-frogging, shared this progress picture of putting together redwork hand-embroidered blocks. Do they look familiar? These are the some of the 91 blocks found in my grandparent's Ohio farmhouse that I sent to Melissa. Read my June 4 blog post about it. She's gonna have a beautiful quilt when she's done! (Yes, one of the blocks is embroidered "1899".)

Book Recommendation 

It's times like this that I wished I'd labeled my "Book Recommendations" - "Book Reviews" because I can't favorably recommend Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Call me a prude, but my low score is because I don't care for stories about privileged stars who mistreat others, have sex with whoever crosses their path, turn marital infidelity into a practice, indiscriminately sire children, drink too much, ingest drugs like candy, and unabashedly swear. 

The book is about soon-to-be-famous singer Mick Riva who marries the beautiful daughter of a couple running the local seafood restaurant. They have four children fathered by Mick, but not his wife. The eldest, Nina, unexpectedly finds herself taking care of the family when their father abandons them and their mother turns to drink. The story is about Mick and his reckless lifestyle, and  those children - how they struggle financially, and what they accomplish, becoming a: champion surfboarder; famous model; famous photographer; and college student. The entire book takes place in one day (with frequent returns to the character backgrounds) - a day that ends with a huge, wild party in a gorgeous Malibu cliffside home, and Santa Anna winds that fuel a fire. From the ashes come endings and new beginnings.

Linda's score: 2.8/5.0

Instagrammer, Jamie Lynn @purejoycreative is the wife of a pastor, mom to six, and an extremely talented artist. She teaches art, partime, in a parochial school. Most months, Jamie Lynn offers free cell phone wallpaper. This month's is a good reminder of how God wants all of us to live. 

Though I fail most of the time, God never does. Linda