I've Leveled Up Since Being Home

As my birth year becomes further away, I'm not thinking of it as getting old so much as advancing a level. I leveled up last week, and I got a few quilty things as gifts.

 My sister made me this adorable pincushion! Is it cute or what??? It's even got my initial on it!

She also made me pins to go in the pincushion should I desire to use it for that. 

I have some numbered pins that I love using when I'm laying out a quilt, but I've used them so much the numbers have worn off. I've tried using a Sharpie to put the numbers back on, but that doesn't stay on long. My sister made me some numbered pins, and since the numbers are indented on the beads she used, I'm thinking I could probably use them longer without issues. Very useful gifts!

DD#2 gave me a Missouri Star gift card, also a useful item. We're actually planning a trip close enough to them that a detour would be in order, so I'm hoping to use the gift card in person! If that doesn't work out, I can always use it online, but how cool would it be to use in person?

We actually lived in Missouri from 1988-2002, but Missouri Star wasn't a thing then. I believe the Doans were in California all of those years. Part of the time we lived in Missouri we weren't far from Hamilton. Right place, wrong time I guess. 

We actually passed a bunch of quilt shops on our last trip, and DH kept offering to stop. I only went into one shop, and I only bought a pattern. It's a little hard to get excited about buying more quilting supplies when this is a year I have so little time for quilting. I'm running through projects with deadlines that I could buy something for, and I'll use that as my guide. 

DH bought me roses and they were beautiful! Hot pink, orange, and yellow, which is a great combo for me. Red roses remind me of funerals, so he knows those aren't my thing. I think when I was a kid I saw a couple movies where the widow placed a red rose on the casket at a funeral, and ever since I've associated red roses with funerals, it's weird, I know. 

My MIL gave me some $ to put in my quilting fund, so I could really have some fun in Hamilton. 

Since I am at home now, some quilty things have been happening. One of my deadline quilts (and the deadline was months ago) was a quilt for a great-nephew. 

The pattern is Oh My Stars by Pat Sloan. The stars that aren't finished will finish in the border. My great-nephews first name means sun, and his middle name means heaven, so rather than stars I was thinking sun in the "heavens" or space. Yes, I realize stars are suns. I have a gold minky with embossed suns on it for the backing. There are about 10 different space themed fabrics in the top that I cut for the dark background. I think it will be a fun quilt. I'd really like to get this quilt finished and mailed this month. I've got it sewn into rows now. 

So the baby quilt is my main project, but my first sew day back at home was actually my birthday, and I just wanted to sew something fun. Even when I'm pressed for time, I give myself leeway on quilting. I'm only allowing myself completely new starts for deadline quilts, but leader/ender projects, I can work on whatever I want as long as it's a UFO. UFO is a broad term and means different things to different people. For my leader/ender criteria, if it's been cut at all for a specific project, it's a UFO. So, if I have a pile of 10" squares I cut for a project, even if those squares need to be sub-cut more, it's a UFO for this purpose. If it's a pile of units leftover from another project, yup, UFO qualified. Pile of orphan blocks? Fair game. For several years I allowed myself as many new starts as I wanted, and long as I was using scraps. That worked so well, that I don't have a huge amount of pre-cut scraps now. I do however, have piles of blocks everywhere, and bins with extra units, and parts of mystery quilts set aside because I decided on a completely different setting and didn't use the pieces as intended. 

The first thing I grabbed on my birthday, was this bin of HST's. They are all scrappy creams, with autumn inspired colors, I didn't curate the colors for an autumn quilt, I was busting 3.5" strips and pulled whatever I thought I could get away with in an autumn inspired quilt. I made the HST's during my scrap busting years, but I hadn't done anything with them. I knew there were enough to make a queen or king sized quilt. I also knew that I had a plan for them, but unlike me, I hadn't written myself a note stating what the plan was. I'm usually good at writing myself notes. 

I decided any plan was better than the HST's just sitting around, so I made them all into broken dishes blocks. Did I ever remember what my plan was? Sure did, after I sewed up the last broken dishes block! No worries, my plan B is just fine. I clipped the blocks in sets of ten, and not only do I have enough for a king-sized quilt, I have enough extra for a small project or two.

I can start sewing these broken dishes blocks into larger blocks, but I don't want to do that right now. I found a UFO that was also at assembly stage, so for now I'm using it as my leader/ender project while assembling the baby quilt. Assembling two quilts at once is one of the ways I trick myself to actually assembling a quilt. Blocks piles languish way too long around here!

I'm putting another baby quilt up on the design wall. It was cut out and partially sewn. I need another quilt for another great-nephew on the way, and I could use this one, but I'm not sold on this being his quilt. I have another idea I like better, but we'll see how things go. That nephew isn't due until November, so I've got time for that one. 

Basically, I'm just grabbing random UFO's and sewing whatever I can as a leader/ender. If I put it aside after one step, that's fine, it's still one step closer to being done. When the deadline projects are my main project, I know they have to be finished. If it's already a UFO, there is no timeline involved, but this way I'm not creating any MORE UFOs, I'm just making progress on the ones that already exist. 

Series of Side Quests

 Normally, when I know I'll be out of town, I get a few blog posts ready and schedule them to post when I normally do. Earlier this year, the trip out of town was totally unplanned, so I didn't get a chance to do it, and this time I had every intention of scheduling posts, but that it didn't happen. This latest trip was planned, it was mostly a business trip for DH that kind of took on a life of its own.

The scooter quilt I made last was raffled off at Amerivespa in Portland, Oregon. DH had a vendor booth there.

If you look at his table, you can see some of the luggage tags I made for sale too. My sister made a bunch of stuff for him too.

I had finished all the luggage tags on time, I had most things ready to go, then DH decided to leave a day early. That day I lost? That was the day I had planned to prep the blog posts, and wash out the refrigerator, and do a few other misc. things. Needless to say, none of those extra things got done. (I did, however, wash out the refrigerator when I got home before buying groceries)

Leaving that day early was the first way the trip took over. The original plan was to go to two scooter events in Oregon (which we did) and we were supposed to be gone a total of 17 days. Since we left a day early, we didn't have to drive quite a far each day, so we did a little bit of sight seeing on the way. 

The first side quest was to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. The rock formations there look like they are from a science fiction movie on another planet. 

We stopped at Shoshone Falls in Idaho. They are often called the Niagara of the West and are actually taller than Niagara Falls.

We also stopped at the Columbia River Gorge just before we got to Portland. 

We did the Amerivespa event, had fun talking to a bunch of people, including some people we've met at other scooter events, and then we had a few days before the second event in Seaside, Oregon. We did go see my brother in Vancouver, WA while we were in the Portland area. 

Well, if you've got time to kill in Oregon, the best thing to do is to go to Crater Lake National Park, right?  We thought so.

Snow in June? Yes, we actually saw quite a bit of snow on our trip. Crater Lake has no tributaries, it is formed purely by snow melt into the volcanic cone. Just because the lake has no tributaries, doesn't mean there isn't water around. We lost count of how many waterfalls we saw.

From there it was up to Seaside. We passed Cannon Beach which has Haystack Rock, a memorable part of The Goonies movie.

Goonies Never Say Die!

The Tillamook cheese and ice cream factory was on the way, so we took the factory tour. These cheese curds were amazing, and so was the apple crisp ice cream we got. They even gave us some cheese to take with us!

I took this pic while sitting on the balcony of our hotel in Seaside. We were right on the beach, and it was the first time I've been to a beach in June with not a swimsuit in sight. The temps were mostly highs in the 50's while we were there, but the lows were much lower. we even saw a few snowflakes mixed in with the rain. 

Before this trip, I had been to 49 states but DH had only been to 44. We have plans to go to Alaska, and DH needs Alaska too, but here we were in the Northwest, and in this trip we had already hit Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State, which were three of the states DH needed, so now he's at 47. The other states he needed besides Alaska? Montana and North Dakota. Now we live in Arizona, and most of our family lives east of us, so when is the next time we'll be this far north, in the western part of the US??? We don't know, and if we take a big detour on the way home, we could indeed go to Montana and North Dakota. OK, so it added an extra 1500 miles to the trip home, but hey, this is about as close as we'll likely ever be.  

Now for the epic side quest. We had seen some stuff in Idaho, and still needed to go through Idaho again. We had been to Crater Lake in Oregon. I told DH we should see something in Washington besides my brother, so we looked at a map and I navigated us to Mount Rainier National Park. Normally before we take a trip, I do my research, and plan out what we're going to do and see. Well, at this point we're totally winging it, and since we were avoiding the interstate highways as much as possible, I rarely had cell phone coverage, so even doing some research on the fly wasn't easy. 

Mount Rainier National Park was awesome!!!

Where Crater Lake is a dormant volcano, Mount Rainier is an active volcano. When we first entered the park, the forest was so thick and green! It was rainforest and moss was all over everything. There was so much moss on the trees, instead of seeing much bark they looked green and furry. Ferns covered the ground. It seemed like around every curve there was another waterfall, you were either at the top of one looking down, in the middle, or at the bottom depending on your elevation at the time. We saw elk and a bear while we were in this area. 

We left Mount Rainier and crossed into Idaho again. DH and I agree, Idaho does not get enough credit, it is beautiful! We were talking about what to do in Montana, and my first thought was Glacier National Park. It was really far north though, and to go there, we really needed to cross Idaho on the interstate, which we didn't want to do. Again, as navigator, I'm looking at maps, and while in my head I always associate Yellowstone National Park with Wyoming, I realize you can access it from Montana and Idaho too. HMMM, a chance to go to Yellowstone? Sure, why not? 

It's kind of funny, we've been to Volcano National Park in Hawaii, but here were were, hitting yet a third volcano on this trip. We saw several steam vents, but skipped Old Faithful because the traffic was awful near there. We drove most of the loop, and saw a few bison, but not that many. We got a great view of this groundhog, he was only a couple feet away from me. If you like fly fishing, Yellowstone is the place to be, so many fly fisherman camping in the park. The weather the day we were there was crazy. It started out sunny, got overcast, we had slushy hail and rain, then it was sunny again. 

I looked at hotels near Yellowstone, but when even the Super 8 is $350 per night, we opted to drive on and sleep elsewhere. We ended up spending three nights in Montana. 

Is there anything to do in North Dakota? Sure there is, we opted for another National Park. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is in North Dakota, and we knew nothing about it before we went. Turns out there are multiple sections of it, the Elkhorn Ranch section is where Theodore Roosevelt had a house, but it's only accessible with four wheel drive, which our minivan doesn't have. The north section is mostly scenic, but I felt kind of robbed of wildlife at Yellowstone, so we did the south section of Theodore Roosevelt National Park which is known as the wildlife section. It delivered!

Bison

Baby bison

Big Boy Bison

Prairie dogs

More Prairie dogs

Bison in the road, they don't care, you just wait for them to move, they are huge!

Wild Horses

Now DH and are tied at 49 states, and we both just need Alaska to have all 50 US states. We still saw some great stuff on the way home. We went to Sturgis in South Dakota so DH could see the motorcycle stuff there. Colorado is always a good drive. We went through more of Wyoming and New Mexico as well. 

In total we were gone 23 days. We went to two scooter events, drove almost 6,000 miles, hit 5 national parks, we saw a bear, bison, wild horses, pheasant, big horned sheep, musk ox, a bald eagle, pheasant, wild turkeys, deer, pronghorn, and I'm sure more that I can't name right now. It was an epic adventure, with lots of unplanned side quests, but aren't those types of adventures the best anyway?

I know this post was photo heavy, but these are just a few of my photos. I'm not much a picture taker, DH took literally thousands of photos this trip. In case you were wondering, our favorite national park this trip was Mount Rainier, hands down!

I'm back home and just starting to get back to a routine. I've got a couple of deadline quilts to work on, plus I want to start cutting out Christmas presents I've got planned to make. Quilty posts to come!

Big Little Project Done!!!

 What's a Big Little Project? For me it was a big project, of a lot of little things.

Here are the luggage tags I made for DH to do with as he pleases for his Scooter 'Zine business. I didn't want to be working on luggage tags all the time, so I made over 400 of them to buy me some time without making them. One luggage tag is definitely a little project, but over 400 of them? It's a BIG little project.

All of the fabric for these tags is upcycled denim. I had several people give me jeans they no longer wore, and for this batch of tags, I was mostly busting the colored denim. Yes, there is some blue denim in there, but I used several pairs of colored denim jeans for these tags. The fabric for the scooters is all quilting scraps, and when I could, I positioned the scooter template on the fabric in a way to make best use of the design on the fabric. The loops were mostly single fold bias tapes my mom gave me, that I doubled and sewed up on each side. I just finished sewing up ALL the bias tape she gave me, and how much do I have left?

A LOT, I have a lot left. Why did I double and sew all of that bias tape? Because it's the only way I ever use single fold bias tape. I ordered six circular hangers so I can sort the remaining bias tape into color groups, and hang it in the closet so it doesn't get tangled. What will I use it for? Most of it will be used for drawstrings in bags. If I need to make more luggage tags, it will get used for that, if I need to make loops on a bag or stuffie, I'll use it for that. I've definitely used up a lot of the colors I had, and now have a limited palette of colors. That's ok, because I use double fold bias tape all the time so I end up with scraps of it and I can use it for the same purposes. Are you wondering how my mom ended up with so much bias tape? She lives in New England, and back in the day, when a lot of fabric was made in the USA, New England was filled with fabric mills. A lot of the mills had stores attached, where you could buy directly from the manufacturer, before everything was packaged and pretty. My mom used to buy things for a fraction of what it cost in a store, and those store prices are only a fraction of what you'd pay today. 

There still are some USA companies making bias tape and other trims today, and they are still much cheaper buying from them directly than buying at a store. I buy bulk binding from both Home Sew or Dove Original Trims. I've had very good luck with both of those companies. Do the loops for luggage tags have to bias cut? No, they don't, this was a matter of using what I had that I wouldn't have used otherwise. I don't do a lot of garment sewing, so single fold bias tape isn't something I'd use much of, but my mom wanted to see what she had put to use, and I'm doing that. One of my next projects is a bunch of drawstring bags, so I'll be using more of these sewn strips shortly. 

Now that I'm done all of those luggage tags, I need to regroup and start prepping for my next projects. I have a deadline quilt that's not even cut out but need to be finished by late August. I have some quilts without strict deadlines that need to be finished and gifted, plus I need to get started on Christmas gifts. I must say, I am REALLY good at keeping myself busy! 

Fabric Blessings

A lot of my stash has been given to me over the years. I am always grateful when I'm gifted fabric, because it allows me to keep making quilts and other things for charity without going broke. Do I use all gifted fabric for charity? No. Sometimes a piece of fabric I've been gifted is exactly what I need for a personal project. I've made DH scrub tops from gifted fabric, I've made clothes for kids or grandkids from gifted fabric. I've used gifted fabrics in quilts that I've used as gifts or that are even in my house, BUT, the majority of fabric I've been gifted ends up in charity projects. 

This week I met up with a quilter 20 years my senior. She's got some health issues that are making it harder for her to quilt, so she's passing on a lot of her fabric, but keeping enough to do some projects when she feels up to it. Normally when someone gives me fabric, they pack up what they don't want, and I just take it home and sort it out. Usually, anything I won't use, my sister will, so we can put a lot of sewing supplies to work, whether it's quilting fabric or any other sewing supplies. This was a bit different, in that she wanted me to choose what I wanted from her stash. 

I have known this woman's husband for several years, because he rides with DH's scooter club. I had never met her until this week. I don't know about you, but going into someone's house whom you have never met, and just asking for stuff had me quite nervous. Add to that, I've recently helped my mom with downsizing her stash, and I know how emotional that can be. I really didn't know what to expect. 

As it turned out, she and I hit it off pretty well. Since I make a ton of scrap quilts, I asked it she had scraps hanging around. I know that most people do not use their scraps as quickly as they make them, so I figured that was a safe thing to ask about. She had two medium sized totes full of them, so I took them all. She had me look through her drawers of fabric, and I tried to pull out the smaller pieces. In my fabric drawers, I don't have anything smaller than a fat quarter, because once I cut into a fat quarter, I cut any leftovers into my scrap user system sizes. Once they are in scrap user sizes, they are stored with my scrap user system. I know all too well, that what works for me, is not necessarily what works for someone else, so in her fabric drawers I found leftover border pieces, squares of fabric up to maybe 10", plus fat quarters and larger pieces. She does sort her fabric by color like I do, and even has her repro fabrics stored separately just like I do! She keeps her solids separately too, and I don't, but it was fun to see how we were similar and how we were different. I have a lot more space for quilting than she does, so I have a lot more options. 

I did take a lot of her novelty fabrics, because I make a lot of I Spy quilts for kids, and then we got into her larger pieces of fabric. She didn't really have a good storage option for her larger pieces, so I told her I'd take whatever she didn't want. She kept out a few pieces she really loved and I took a lot of what was left. She also had a black track bag full of fleece, that was stored on a shelf so high you needed a big ladder to get it down. After thinking about it, I said I'd take the whole bag. I figured it if was being stored in that inconvenient of a location, it wasn't likely to be used, and fleece is a great backing for kids quilts. 

I tried to be aware about how she was feeling about things as we went through her fabric. I had asked early on about what she most liked to work with, and she immediately answered batiks. I didn't even look in her drawers of batiks, because I want her to keep what she loves working with. I mentioned that I work with strips a lot, and she dug out all the jelly roll strips she had, some of which hadn't been opened. She said she doesn't like working with strips very much. I chimed in with the fact that my least favorite pre-cut is charm squares. I'll use them if I have them, but I prefer other precuts over those. 

I haven't had time to go through all the fabrics I brought home and sort them, but here's an idea of how much I brought home. 

 This is pretty big box. the bottom half is all scraps, and the top is larger pieces.

This box is a lot smaller but massively overflowing, so it likely has the same amount as the larger box. I also have the black trash bag of fleece. 

This is one of my favorite fabrics I got, and there is enough for me to make myself an iPad sleeve which I've been wanting for quite a while. 

Did I take too much fabric? Did I not take as much as she had hoped? I can't tell. I can tell you I am looking forward to incorporating her fabrics into my projects, and I'd be happy to meet up with her again just to talk, no fabric gifting required. 

I'm still working on luggage tags, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I think by mid- week next week I will be finished. Of course didn't I find a few more scooters I had cut out this morning, But I had enough of the main parts of the luggage tags leftover to use those extra scooters too. Once I finish the current batch of luggage tags, I'll dig out my poly threads to applique the found scooters and then I can finish up the last of this project. I'm not sure how long the luggage tags will last DH, but it should buy me some time at any rate. 

Finally Seeing Progress!

 Any time I'm sewing a bunch of the same thing, I have times where I'm going a little crazy. The last couple weeks I was definitely struggling with that. Although I'm not finished all the prep work for the luggage tags, I'm done enough that I can start assembling them, and alternate between prep work and assembly. 

Now that I'm in assembly mode, I'm seeing progress pretty quickly. I've got about 75 luggage tags completely finished. I'm busting a lot of colored denim for these tags. Most of this batch has the same color on the front and back, but a lot of the tags will have blue or black denim on the back, but various colors on the fronts. Basically, the luggage tags will get scrappier as I go along. These have loops that match the base color, but some of the colors of denim I had, I didn't have matching loop fabric for. In those cases, I'm going to try to match the loop to the appliqued scooter. 

DH and I both had Covid this week. I got sicker than I usually do with Covid, but still wasn't very sick. It was like having a cold, no fever, no aches, just runny nose and cough. Unfortunately DH was not so lucky, and he ran a very high fever for several days. He's still feeling pretty cruddy, whereas I am back to normal. We missed one of granddaughter's concerts, which stinks, but it is what it is. Next week we have two school promotions to go to, plus a birthday party, and we should be able to make those. Since I never felt all that bad, I still sewed every day, and with DH being so sick, we didn't go anywhere or have anyone over, so I actually had a lot of uninterrrupted sewing time. 

I've been doing some prep work for Christmas presents already too! Mostly just making sure I have all the supplies for what I'd like to make. I ordered a few things, and once they arrive, I'll start cutting things out so I can sew them up as I have time. It may seem early to think Christmas, but we've got a lot going on this year, so I need to fit things in when I can.