Productive day!

I'm feeling pretty relaxed this morning! I'm going away AGAIN for a couple of days and I have to confess that I didn't run around yesterday trying to get a ton of stuff done and that feels AMAZING. 

I still have some paperwork to do, but could it be there's a light at the end of the tunnel? At least to get caught up on all the mundane stuff that has to be done? I doubt it because it seems the more you do, the more administrative stuff needs to be done. Or there is something that needs to be taken care of for the house and I'm trying very hard to keep up to date on that. 

I've also become OCD - OK. I'll admit -- I've just become my true self. 

When I get in the mood and the decluttering has happened in an area, do NOT put anything on the counter! While outdated, my kitchen has not much sitting on the counters or the kitchen table. 

The kitchen is pretty tidy!

The worst part is that I can't leave anything out now. If I come home, I immediately unpack whatever I brought home and put it away. If I have dirty dishes, they immediately go in the dishwasher. There were times when most of the surfaces in that kitchen were covered -- OK -- not the counters, but the kitchen table and the island would be covered with my crap. No more! And you know what? It feels exciting! 

It's easy to unpack stuff for two reasons. I'm doing mindful shopping, which means I don't buy anything that I don't have a home for and second, stuff laying around looks so out of place that you want to put it away - it doesn't matter how busy you are! 

I unload the dishwasher as part of my morning routine. But do you think DH could load his dishes in it? Nope -- they sit on the counter until later in the day. That's one thing I've discovered about men (after talking to my friends) that the husbands want things to look nice, but they cannot multi-task. It's one job to get the dishes to the ktichen and requires a whole different mindset to actually put them away! 

That's one thing I LOVE about Zoom. We have discussions about many things and sometimes our signifcant others are the topic of conversation! 

The bottom line is that if I got this one area tidied up, it's possible to get others done as well and then it'll be a breeze to keep it that way! I'm excited!

So I took my own advice and set aside the customer quilt that was going to get done and loaded my own. 

That is probably the fastest turnaround I've ever done on one of my own quilts! There were zero issues with it (I would HOPE so!) and it turned out super nice. 

My Among the Stars Again quilt

There's the quilting pattern on it. 

The quilting design

And there's the crazy back, but I don't care -- I'm just happy that I got to use up some of the extra bits. It's funny with that print on the left -- there's a rather promininet repeat on it which I never noticed until this photo! The quilt is trimmed and I'm waiting for the binding to come. There is ZERO rush for it. 

The back of the quilt

That took up a great deal of the day as that quilt is HUGE. BUT, not as large as this next one. 

I decided to attempt to get the two borders on my Farmer's Wife quilt. What a job, as this quilt is massive and you had to lug around that quilt top. It was a challenge to measure and I took everything off the cutting table to make it easier. I said EASIER, not easy!

Putting the borders on the Farmer's Wife quilt

But listening to a good audiobook to distract oneself is a good thing and by the end of the day, I had the two borders on the quilt. I think it measures 86" by 106". 

The two borders are on the quilt

That leaves the binding and the backing and to clean out the project box. I had two options for the binding, and have decided to go with the dark green. 

Binding options

But that will have to wait until I'm back next week. Don't worry -- I'll still be blogging and I'm going someplace new, so you can share in our "new" experience. 

The car is packed, something, I don't normally do until the morning I leave, but I'm taking my bike with me and I didn't want to deal with that this morning. So I ended up putting almost everything in the car, but I still have to walk the girls and have breakfast. Thankfully the drive is only one hour!

I have to say that when I put my mind to something, I can get a lot done! Amazing how that hppens, but I also think it's having the space to work properly and something to distract. Anyway, if I could have ONE day a week, like the last couple of days, I'd get so much done! I might actually get caught up! HA!!

On that note, I'm out of here! Before I go, how is the decluttering coming along? It's a long, horrid job, but if you don't start somewhere, it'll never get done. I can't begin to tell you how good it feels to have some tidy spaces in the house and can't wait for the day when the entire place is like that. Every little victory is another weight off my shoulders. My posture will love me for it. 

Speaking of posture, everyone tells you to pull your shoulders back, chin down, lower your shoulders, but people forget a very important step. Your pelvis and your hips. If you tuck your pelvis in and try to align your shoulders with your hip bones, your shoulders automatically go back and I find it's way easier to keep that posture than just do the shoulder thing! I'm trying! 

And Mary -- my new morning routine includes that Vitamin D! Thanks for the encouragmenet!

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!

Back to back to back

So before I tell you all about the back, let's talk about the firsts! 

As you are probably aware, I love to find geocaches. Now I'm not a huge geocache person as I haven't hit 600 yet, but I like to do it from time to time. And it's something fun to do in a location you are visiting. As with all things I love, there are many ways to measure what you do - the number of caches you find, the level of difficulty, the size of the container, and many other things. One thing that has eluded me is the FTF, which stands for FIRST TO FIND. 

What does that mean? After someone places a cache, if you have your e-mail notifications set up, you'll get a notice that a new cache has been placed. It'll tell you how far away it is from your location. I checked my e-mail this morning to find one that is .19 miles from my house. OH - has anyone else found it? 

I checked, and so far, no one had logged it. Let's just say that I breezed through that blog post yesterday morning, grabbed Murphy, and we did the walk in reverse so we could get to the cache quicker. I was practically pulling Murphy instead of the other way around. OK -- so that's a lie, but thankfully, she likes to hustle. 

We arrived and quickly found the cache in the forest, and we were the FIRST TO FIND it!  Yeah, me and Yeah, Murphy!!!!

FTF!

I will say that Murphy was way more interested in the squirrels than she was in the container. That dog needs better training! Oh -- she's good with training, as long as you have a treat! 

Murphy and the geocache

And it's a good thing we did what we did because as I found it, someone was on their way and logged in shortly after I was there!

So this brings up a shameful moment. Years ago (TEN years ago - August 18, 2012), I was in New Brunswick and picked up this travel bug from a geocache. What's a travel bug? There's a tracking number on the back of that little frog, which is attached to Bart Simpson, and the idea is that the bug gets moved from cache to cache. This little guy has traveled close to 20,000 KM across the US and then it came to Canada. 

A travel bug

I brought it home and promptly lost it in the office. Sigh...   In my decluttering, I found the travel bug, and I contacted the owner to ask if he wanted it back or release it back into a geocache. He said to put it back into circulation. So I plan on taking a picture somewhere in particular before I release into the geocaching world! 

OK -- enough about geocaching. It's time to talk back! Not my back, not your back, but QUILT backs. 

I'd sit down before you read further because you'll be exhausted. I know I was -- just getting this all together. 

Let's start off with a couple of the backs of customer quilts. This was a sports-themed quilt, and the backing is large pieces of sports fabric. 

The back of a customer quilt

I finished this customer quilt two days ago.  

Customer quilt - DONE

The back of it was pieced with extra blocks. 

The back of the customer quilt

I finished this customer quilt yesterday. 

Customer quilt - DONE

While the back wasn't anything too out of the ordinary, I had to make the backing. The quilt is race car themed and the customer couldn't find anything she liked for the back. 

 

Race cars

I said I might have just the thing, and this is what I found in my stash of quilt backings. So I sold her the fabric, made the backing on her behalf, and it's quilted and trimmed and ready to be delivered later this week! Now, how is that for service? And I used some of my fabric!

The backing of the customer quilt

Then it was time to work on some quilt backs for me. The quilt tops were piling up a wee bit, so during the Virtual Retreat, I decided to get to work. I had searched and couldn't find something suitable for my Wonderful Woodland, which is very strange. So I checked out the baskets of flannel to see if something would work. I found this pile of fabric. As I mentioned, it was in strips and lots of it. 

Fabric pulled to make a backing

I measured, sliced, and diced until VOILA -- I had a quilt backing that was the right size. 

My pieced backing for the Wonderful Woodland quilt

You can't see it, but there are a lot of seams across the width of that backing, and I'm perfectly OK with that. You'll see the top later, and I made the binding the same day I made the backing. 

Lots of seams in that backing!

This is all that was left of that pile of fabric, and it went into the flannel scrap bin and will go to a good home. 

The leftovers from making the backing

Then it was onto the backing for the Among the Stars Again quilt. I couldn't find anything suitable in the stash, but I did have LOTS of leftover fabrics, so I figured, let's go for it, and pieced the backing from several different prints. 

The pieced backing for Among the Stars Again

I still had all this fabric leftover, which is now in the appropriate stash bin. Green or grey? I put it in the green bin. That would be the bin with the green fabric, not technically the green bin for compost! I should qualify that as well, this is NOT left over, meaning the pattern was overly generous, it means I had a whack of this fabric and make the quilt top and the backing and still have left over. I could make a small coordinated quilt from it. Hmmm -- perhaps I'll dig this back out and send it to Diane! I should quilt the darn thing before I do that! 

Left over fabric from my project

And I'm still working on the little triangles cutoffs to make half-square triangles. This is the quilt that I'm waiting on for the binding, but it's not like I'm going to quilt that quilt tomorrow, so no rush. Even if I quilted it tomorrow, there would be no rush to put the binding on!

Half-square triangles in progress

Phew -- that's a lot of backings, but WAIT. I'm not done!

I had this stack of backings ready to put on the shelf, but they had NOT been measured. 

Backing fabrics - not measured

That won't do, so they got measured and labeled. Now, this is much more useful! Even though I don't have a ton of room to store those backings, it might just be the time to start going through the stash ins and pull anything that is huge yardage that can be used for a backing. I seem to be needing backing fabric more than anything else these days. Maybe, I'll start one basket at a time. See what I mean by there always being something to organize. The more you have, the more time it takes to manage it and make it useful! But it's so much better than it was!

The backings are now measured and labeled

My Long Time Gone has been sitting here forever without the backing or the binding made. The backing fabric was pulled, so I also measured and cut that. 

The backing fabric for Long Time Gone

I found some fabric suitable for the binding, and that one got moved to the "to be quilted" pile. 

Long Time Gone in the "to be quilted" pile

That left these two projects that still needed to be tackled. 

Two more projects to tackle

I found the perfect backing for my All in a Row quilt, which was a sew-along in 2021. It has cute owls on it, and it is bright. It's not just owls, but they are very prominent. 

The owls on my All in a Row quilt

Look at what I found. I mean, is this not perfect???? 

The backing fabric

And so the backing got made for that one as well. 

Another one hits the "to be quilted" pile

I'm working on the second quilt in that photo, but there's no time to tell you about that one right now. 

So much can be done when you're on a roll and have nothing to distract you. I got one more writing assignment out the door, but I must start another big one and soon! I've been puttering around with other paperwork that needs to be done and I'll get a bit more done today. 

If you want to see a really intense pieced quilt back, check out the back of Darlene's quilt. This is the BACK. That's intense -- I think she used every little leftover scrap she had, and I swear it took her longer to do the back than it did to make the front! Thankfully, I don't get that intense!

The BACK of Darlene's quilt

An FYI about my quilt backs -- I piece then vertically or horizontally -- whichever way makes the most sense. Sometimes, you have no choice if the print is directional. Once that seam is done, I fold it up and put it with the quilt top. I do NOT press it at that time. Why bother, when I'll likely have to repress it when I load it on the long arm. There is ZERO double work in this house if I can avoid it! 

Phew -- I'm off for another productive and busy day. Oh, I did grab a few things from Studio U and put them in their proper place. I WILL get through that, but I needed to take a break. Spin class -- it's time for spin class! 

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!

Among the Stars Again Show and Tell

We had Monday sewing yesterday, and I was so productive, but you'll hear about that tomorrow. 

Today, it's all about the show and tell from one of the sew-alongs at the Hobby Horse. We started the class in January and finished in July. There were some very new quilters in this group who did an AMAZING job at finishing their quilts!

Let's have a look. 

Here's the book we used. 

Among the Stars Again by Its Sew Emma

Here's something to think about -- I encourage the students to change up the pattern if there is something they don't like. Even though this is a 100% pieced pattern, they didn't disappoint. 

There were 16 people in the class, and I think we got an almost finished quilt or a finished quilt top from everyone! That's very impressive. 

First up is Cathie, who used a Christmas collection for her quilt. 

Cathie

Cathy tried a layer cake in a colorway that isn't her thing. She usually works with brights, and this is a great exercise to learn about color - move out of your comfort zone! She is working on the border. 

Cathy

Darlene is a brand new quilter and wanted to make her quilt larger, so she added an extra row and an extra block to each row. She's working on getting the final border on the other side and the bottom. 

Darlene

Donna made her quilt larger as well but only added an extra block to each row. Something you have to remember is the way the layout was done; it wasn't an easy thing to just add an additional block. The sashings were different widths, and the blocks were not all the same size, so it took a bit of figuring to make the extra blocks and rows happen. The original quilt layout was symmetrical, so adding the additional blocks and rows was tricky! 

Donna

Jennifer was another brand new quilter and chose to keep the center part like the book but changed the border. Can you believe these quilts? I'm so impressed that they are learning from Zoom without meeting in person and have achieved great pressing and piecing skills!

Jennifer

Judy also kept hers similar to the book and is working on that final border. 

Judy

Karen made her quilt larger by adding an extra block to each row (the original quilt is 64 by 84, in case you are wondering!) and then went crazy with that border! If ever you are going to do a border like this, it's best to follow Karen's example. The likelihood of those diamonds fitting exactly into each side, top, and bottom is pretty slim, so if you center them along the border, it looks fantastic every time!

Karen

Kelly is making TWO quilts from her blocks, but she hasn't finished sewing them together yet, and we are waiting to see how she arranges all the blocks into two quilts. 

Kelly blocks

Lucy also made extra blocks, and her top is almost together. Then she can work on that border. 

Lucy

Margaret was having fun with her blocks and did not need another large quilt, so she was making the blocks from kid prints and is going to make them into small quilts for the NICU units. How sweet is that? 

Some of Margaret's blocks

Maria also worked in a colorway that was NOT her thing. She started with a floral print as her focus fabric, but not much of it ended up in the quilt. 

Maria

Sandi, another relatively new quilter, also decided to make the quilt larger by adding extra blocks. 

Sandi

She did the spikey border as per the original, then went rogue. She added an extra strip of black to finish off that border nicely and added some white to the edges to make the quilt larger. 

The borders on Sandi's quilt

Shelly was a little bit behind in her blocks, but this is the colorway that she chose. 

Shelly

Val kept true to the book but also changed the last border. 

Val

And can you believe my quilt top was finished at the end of the class? Yep -- I'm trying to be very good about finishing up. 

My quilt

However, I will confess that when I saw what Sandi did with her quilt, I really liked the effect of making that border more pronounced by adding a little bit of the same fabric to the edges. Remember, that grey is the fabric I plan to use for the binding, and I didn't have enough. However, now that I have found the fabric and had some of it left, I could cut 2" strips and sew them on. 

The extra border added

I have to say that I like this version much better! Thanks to Sandi for that! See -- I learn as much from my students as they do from me!

If you counted, one person audited the class and didn't make any blocks! 

Now I need to contact the store that has the binding and get them to send me a bit more than I originally requested (good thing, the store owner couldn't attend to it until this week!), and then I'll have this one ready to quilt as well. More on that tomorrow!

Next week, I'll post ALL the classes and clubs I have on my list to teach in the fall of 2022 and 2023. There will likely be a few one-time or two-part classes that haven't been decided yet, but you'll get to see which sew alongs I'm teaching. All of them will be on Zoom! 

Some of you might be saying, I don't need another quilt, and that's probably true, but we are MAKERS, and makers gotta make! If you want to be part of the group and have fun because that's what it's all about -- I don't teach rocket science in my classes, and a lot of people know just as much as I do, but we're all together for fun! 

And if you don't need another quilt, do what Margaret is doing -- make blocks, change the size of the quilt, and donate them. One of the other ladies in this class will donate the entire top (or the finished quilt). She doesn't need another quilt, but she enjoys making it, and let's face it -- we have loads of fabric that needs to be dealt with. I think it's a fantastic win-win! 

Plus, making stuff is cheaper than therapy; we get to chat with each other, tell stories, and learn from each other! I love it!!

On that note, I'm out of here. I did not get out on my bike yesterday, and I'm not sure about today. I have some urgent paperwork to do and I'm on a roll in Studio B, and I don't want to interrupt the momentum!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!

Backed up!

The weather is perfect these days, although I wish it would rain every night. Things are so dry, but it's beautiful to have the windows open all day and night. The humidity levels are extremely low or non-existent. 

I started the Virtual Retreat two hours later, although technically, anyone could have joined, and I was off for a bike ride. I wasn't sure what route I was going to take, and I usually make a big circuit, so at any point, I could have turned right and made the trip as short or as long as I wanted, but I had a distance in mind. It seemed like a calm day when I walked the girls, but I discovered a nice headwind when I got on my bike. Yeah!

However, my legs are much stronger than ever, and that headwind was NOTHING. There are a few hills along that route with grades of 11%, which is nasty, and I managed to get up those with no problem, although I was breathing a tad heavy when I reached the top!

No issues, traffic was kind, and it was a glorious 40 KM in under 2 hours. The only thing that would have made that ride perfect was to have chocolate milk at home! There's nothing like a glass of chocolate milk to refresh you. I remedied that situation later in the afternoon when I walked to the grocery store. 

It takes me ten minutes to walk to the store, about four minutes (depending on what I'm buying) to buy and check out, and ten minutes to walk back home! I have to say that I love the new self-checkouts, but they do need to make a couple of modifications. If you are buying a lot of the same thing (my snack bars are on sale this week, so I'm sticking up) and you can't enter the number of similar items, only the self-checkout supervisor can. I'll ask next time before I attempt to scan six items of the same thing. And you can't NOT get a receipt, but that's coming where you can request no receipt! 

We had loads of fun at the virtual retreat. It wasn't as busy as on previous occasions, but many people were traveling, had family visiting, or were doing whatever. I will confess that I didn't get as much done as I wanted, but I never do! I MUST learn to stop talking so much! 

I did get the blocks fixed and the top completed for my Wonderful Woodland, and I'll post those pictures this week. 

Then I scrambled to find a backing for it. I couldn't find something suitable for the first time in a long time. WHAT??? With all those bolts of fabric? Yep--- couldn't find anything. Well, the other thing was the size of the quilt. It's 47" by 63", so to do my easy way of backing - cutting two pieces either vertically or horizontally, would have been a big "waste" of fabric. 

So I started to look at my flannels and found this. 

A heap of fabric strips

It was a fair amount of fabric, but it was in strips and looked like the cut-off edges from the backing of another quilt. I gave the pieces a good look and then decided that YES, there is enough fabric there to make the back, but it'll have a few seams in it. 

So I measured, sliced, and diced, with three seams left to put it together. I was hoping to get that done last night, but that didn't happen. But that's on the agenda for this morning with Monday sewing. 

I have the backing for one more quilt I want to get done today. I hope so. And then two other finished quilt tops need backing, so I might just focus on that. Not that I need to add to the "to be quilted" pile, but I need to get those finished quilted tops out of my sewing area!

Nothing is happening at my house on Tuesday or Wednesday, so I hope to accomplish much. 

I went to bed much later than planned, so I'm behind this morning. But I'll leave you with these pictures to contemplate. When I walked past that rental house two doors down, this is what they left. 

When you move, just put your junk to the curb

And from the other side. It's a HUGE mess, and I can't believe that people feel it's OK to just leave this behind. The recycling and garbage bins were also packed to capacity, with the lids popping open. Why couldn't they call the junk people to collect it?

I would be embarrassed to leave this on the curb. Can people take responsibility for their own crap? That's why we need to take responsibility for our stashes and what other things we own. Imagine seeing our sewing machines and fabric on the curb because our families didn't know what to do with them. 

On my way to the grocery store, a vehicle parked across the street that I didn't recognize, and the door to the house was open. The owner of the house? On the way back, I saw someone coming out of the house, and I swear there was more stuff on the pile. Actually, there is more stuff if you compare the last two pictures. 

I bet they were having a heart attack if it was the owner. Apparently, the backyard is about 3 feet high with weeds, which I heard from the next-door neighbor who moved out the previous summer. Such a shame as the people who originally owned the house kept it immaculate. 

I remember renting a house in Montreal before I could sell it, and when the renters moved out, it was a pigsty, but at least they removed all their belongings! 

And this is the house at the end of the street. Yes, those branches got trimmed, but they are now lying in the drive, and who knows when and how they'll be removed? But the trimming still doesn't clear the overgrowth of that tree, just enough so she can get out of the garage from the left side. 

Trimmed branches lying in the drive

Sigh...

I shouldn't complain because it could be worse! 

Well, I'm off to make quilt backs today! I did zero decluttering, and zero quilts were done on the long arm, but I hope to do some today. And I may get out for another bike ride this afternoon since it's a holiday and there was no spin class this morning. I'm a "few" kilometers behind on my stretch goal of cardio KM this year, and the only way to make them up is to get out on the bike! I should be out every day for 40 KM, and I could be caught up in a couple of weeks!

Have a super day!!

Ciao!!!