The trend continues. Another machine applique finished up that has been in process for months. It feels good to finish my final goal for my A-door-naments this quarter. The Apples one is for September and was fun! The cute new hangers from Ackfeld Mfg came in today so you get to see it with its cute hanger! So August is up and I am total prepared for September and October.
Of course, I will be linking this up with Capitola Quilter in October for the 3rd Quarter Finish-A-Long. Original goals can be found here.
Other Machine Applique Projects
This month with @southbaybella is applique month which is perfect with my push to finish two more projects that are to be displayed during September. I continue to participate with #sbbsewfor15. I expanded mine to try and do at least 15 minutes with at least two projects everyday. Sometimes my day job gets in the way. Sometimes hockey/Shaun commitments get in the way, but I am amazed with having the 15 minutes a day mentality what the impact is.
Since my last post, I have not made any additional progress on my two Blooming Series projects (Apples and Pansies) or my A Year in Words (Autumn). I spent most of my time working on my Sew-A-longs since Saturday.
Sew-A-Long Updates
I ran out of premade blocks yesterday so I spent 15 minutes on Monday night doing a fabric pull for 6 more blocks, then 15 minutes Tuesday morning sewing two more blocks. I finished the other 4 blocks last night. So I am all set until the weekend. Here are blocks August 18th-21st (blocks 49-52), I had in mind this weekend to put together the 5th row (blocks 41-50) if I am caught up on all of my other SALs.
Most of my time since Saturday has been spent finalizing my plan, cutting, laying out, and sewing my first blocks. Once I decided the color scheme, I thought I was home free. With so many directional prints in the Tula Pink Zuma line, more thought than I realized should be put into fabric placement. I ironed and cut pieces for almost 8 hours on Saturday and another 2-3 hours on Sunday. I pulled my 4 corners based on my coloring chart and made A & D block kits (one of my habits). No problem. I went to do the 4 B blocks and realized I really need to sew together the blocks before moving forward, at least for me and my brain. I could not envision the next step. Sunday night found me laying out one corner block A and one corner block D and putting all the pieces where they should go. This quilt is a lot of “covered corners”. Thanks to the #365blockchallenge I am very very familiar with this technique. Laying out the whole block helped me get my directional fabric coordinated and my blues and greens fabrics sorted out in my head. Of course, I know there is no real wrong way and I did make a mistake with my plan in my head. I am just rolling with my new “design” change.
Tuesday night I also pulled the fabric for Row 1 block B & C as well as Row 2 block B & C based on the finished Corner blocks A & D. This morning I laid out the covered corner pieces on the two main fabric pieces and drew my sew lines on those pieces. It is my hope to actually begin sewing those tonight. Here is my finished corner blocks:
My #onethingwithamy goal this week is to finish rows 1 & 2 of this QAL.
#fw1920eppsal
I felt guilty after my last post that I hadn’t actually worked on this sew-a-long. With hockey practice on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I can now stop feeling guilty. (Thank goodness for hockey practice!) This is a larger 4 unit blocks with multiple units making up the larger unit. I finished the base units of the 4-patch and have finished a number of small half-squared triangle units. If I continue with this progress, it is entirely possible to be done in another week. Here is my progress so far:
Interesting enough, the sponsor of this SAL abandoned it. No reason given but since I started it because it was something I wanted to do, I am continuing plugging away. Of course, common sense tells you that doing an english paper piecing project as a sew along is ludicrous which is probably why. Someone this week finished block 111 and I am only on block 27. I am not the only one on block 27 either. So while the SAL has been abandoned by @gnomeangel, the participants are still posting on Instagram. I have not seen much posting happening on the Facebook group.
I have to laugh. We started this in October 2018. I have been beating myself up thinking I wasn’t doing my goal of two blocks a month. When I did the math, I am fine. It is just going to take me more than 2 years to do this quilt. I am enjoying it so no problem right?
Other Sewing Updates
I continue to use my Zuma charm squared blocks as fillers between other sewing. I have been able to finish a few more Zuma blocks and that leaves just 2! I don’t really have any other updates this blog. Mama Gypsy is really sucking up my time.
I was listening to a podcast put out by The Quilting Company last night. They interviewed Tula Pink. I really like her story and understand her fabric designs so much better. I have a renewed appreciation for the Zuma fabric line that I purchased and it inspired me to take a closer look at her recently released fabrics and upcoming lines. The fabric just became so much … personally connected to me.
The same thing happened after taking a class from Kaffee Fassett.
Speaking of which, Alison Glass is releasing her new line in September called Handiwork. She is taking preorders now. (Of course I placed my order already!) This week she is having a once a year sale on bundles and this Saturday is her Rainbow Bundles one day only sale. Last year I got some killer fabric. I am probably going to get some Insigna fabric before it goes out of stock and I adore her sun prints. What designer calls to you?
Until next time, thank you for stopping by to read my rambling.
Happy Quilting and Safe Travels everyone!
Peggy Stockwell