Attitude Adjustment

My psyche was set for a houseful of company for five days -- Saturday to Thursday -- but that didn't happen.  

SIL was not able to come at all.  Son-2 and GS-3 arrived as planned on Saturday, but went to Dollywood Monday and stayed overnight there. Son-1 arrived to spend the day with his brother on Tuesday as planned. Because of a kerfuffle at home, Son-2 et fil left this morning, a day early.

So what's a girl to do with unplanned spare time? I spent Monday catching up on all the TV recordings from the week before when I was in Jonesborough.  Today I'm going to plant some creeping Jenny in my garage planters, then maybe I'll venture down to the sewing room.  I hope to get a little further on Patricia's Kaleidoscope.

At a minimum, I want to cut the borders.  My expanded version should finish about 86" x 86".

So What Was I Up To ...

 That last day of retreat?

You may remember that I went to Tennessee Quilts and came back with a new project to work on.  The pattern is One-Fabric Kaleidoscope.

The fabric is Patricia by In The Beginning fabrics.

The quilt is made from octagons cut from eight stacked strips of this border print.

I am making it larger than the pattern and this is where I am so far.

Still need to stitch the diagonal rows.  My blocks came out too small (I think the cutting instructions were a little ambiguous about how big to cut the border print strips) so I did some trimming and now some of my block intersections are a bit wonky.  After I cut the borders I may have enough fabric to replace some wonky blocks.  More later.  

Family visiting here and it may be a few days before I get back to sewing.

Summer Retreat

While I may have gotten off to a rough start -- unstitching more than I stitched -- things have smoothed out and a lot of progress has been made.  Frankly, it wouldn't matter if I never accomplished a thing in this peaceful setting.

I arrived at February Hill Retreat Center in Jonesborough, TN about noon on Monday and was faced with deciding which of the nine projects would be first on the agenda.  I chose Harriet's Legacy which, according to my notes only needed five more blocks to be a small top.  

My notes lied!  The second round of the medallion was not even together and the HSTs in the third round bear paws were being recalcitrant, so I put that project into timeout and moved on to Weaver Fever.  Before bedtime I had added inner and outer borders.

On Tuesday I added borders to Jack's in the Pond ...

... put borders on Garden Trellis ...

... finished the remaining blocks for Megan II (Great to be Square) ...

... and put corners on the RSC sampler from 2018.

I also made a trip to Tennessee Quilts and came back with a new project that I worked on today.  More on that tomorrow!

  

Well, It's Not So Bad

 After farbling all week with tiny HSTs, missing pieces, and dreary fabrics, I actually kinda like the result.

I think the lavender cornerstones helped brighten it up.  You'll notice I didn't have enough of that fabric so I put purple in the four corners.  Oh, and you probably notice the corners are missing.  I had to get this off the design wall so I could pull down the Murphy bed for company coming Sunday. I will add the corners as soon as I can get to the leftover fabric ...

Planning

 I have an embarrassing number of UFOs (I stopped counting at 50).  Granted, some of those are "wishful thinking" (pattern put with fabric) but since they occupy a box, they count.  And I won't even tell you how many are in the TBQ stack!

Obviously, my plan to quilt my way through the alphabet last year didn't work as I ran out of steam around G or H.  So this year I have decided to prioritize by the amount of work it will take to finish.  I have eight quick-finish projects lined up to take to a retreat at Febuary Hill in Jonesborough next week:

    Weaver Fever - needs borders

     RSC Sampler - needs corners and borders  

      Jack's in the Pond - needs borders  (photo not available)

      Garden Trellis - it is assembled, just needs borders  

    Modern HSTs - needs borders (photo not available)

    Megan II - blocks are cut, needs assembly (and probably borders!)  

    Tumbling Triangles - blocks are made, need to layout and assemble, and think about borders

      Harriet's Legacy - needs about 5 more blocks made to become a small quilt (skip borders?)

Do you see a pattern developing?  I like to work on borders at retreats where there is plenty of room to lay out the flimsy to get proper measurements and a big table to support the weight of the top as I sew.  Let's see how much I can accomplish in a week at that glorious place.

Welcome to My Corner

You know, the corner(s) I paint myself into quite frequently!  

No, not the paraments for the church corner; I found out the white set is not needed till later in the year so that project went on the back burner.

It's the Shoofly corner.  As I said in a recent (was it really two weeks ago?) post, I had a pile of cutoff HSTs from this quilt (which, according to my blog, was intended for one of my sons, but it's MINE).

The block is a variation of Sister's Choice.  I chose to make the star points with the sew-and-flip method.  Eight star points meant 8 cutoff HSTs in each fabric combo, more (or less, not sure why).  Since each shoofly block only takes 4 HSTs, my plan was to make a positive and negative of each combo.

My first "corner" was realizing I didn't have enough of some of the fabrics to fill out the blocks.  So I substituted alternate fabrics in a similar color.

My second "corner" was my choice of framing fabric for the shooflies.  It was something I had a lot of and would coordinate with all the block fabrics, but it turned out to be dull and just a little dreary.  

I thought about making an alternate block to fill out space as these little gems will finish at 6-1/4", but this just made the dreariness worse.

Sashing between the blocks was my ultimate solution, but what to use?  White was too stark, a print was too busy.  So I settled on a beige from my mother's stash (she died in 1979) so it probably is a cotton/poly blend, but it works.

It's close to the tone in the frame fabric and adds a bit of lightness.  And you probably know my trick to making a quilt bigger -- set the blocks on point!

My third "corner" was discovering, after I had laid the blocks out square, that in setting on point some duplicates were next to each other! So I came up with a new arrangement that you'll have to wait to see.

While I was cogitating on what to do with the shooflies, I picked up some more remnants from Kevin's mystery and threw together a child's comfort quilt.

Speaking of comfort quilts, tomorrow is Devo Day and I'll be taking this one to show and share.

One Good Thing

 ... about Daylight Savings Time

I get to enjoy a 5 a.m. sunrise like Monday morning's!

My husband and I disagree on whether it is 4 or 6 a.m. standard time.  I am convinced of one time until he makes his argument for the other that always sounds so logical.  Anyone else confused?  (Since we live less than 20 miles from the Eastern time zone, I'm always confused. anyway.  Our TV, as well as our big shopping, is in Knoxville which is in the Eastern zone, so I'm constantly having to adjust times.)

With Priority One now off my list, I spent two days in the sewing room putting things away, assessing the situation, and setting priorities for the remainder of the year.  I pressed all those HSTs that I ran through the machine when getting my sew-jo back.  

It is some of my favorite Kim Diehl fabric -- I love her soft comforting colors -- and I have the urge to do something with all those tiny (1-3/4") squares that were cut off this quilt:

I have eight of almost all of the combos, so I looked through some block patterns for an idea.  This is what I have settled on.

My plan is to make as many as I can using up scraps from the same fabrics as the HSTs for the center and  corners.  When I run out of those, I'll substitute something similar.  

AS IF I need another new project ...