Sometimes you just need a week to play catch up. I hadn't worked on my temperature quilt in a month, and I had two blocks to do for my Murder Mystery quilt.
I did catch up on the temperature quilt, and I was hoping to have the first six months of rows sewn together, but alas, ironing is no fun in these high temps. I need to press all the columns before I can start any kind of assembly.
This is July's column so far, even those couple of pinks are 100 degrees. Thankfully, I haven't had to use the darkest red I have yet, that's for 113+ and the highest we've been is 112. We had measurable rain once more this week, so I have another down FG to add on. In this pic it looks like there's a lot of down pointing FG, but in reality there is only one. I just have it flipped around to fit it in a reasonably sized photo.
I was supposed to make the dragon head for the Murder Mystery quilt back in May, but I had no printer access at the hotel. Since I missed the May deadline, and I was pretty sure we'd end up making a tail for the back of the ship, I just waited until that block came out and did them together. I'm pretty happy with how they came out, and very happy I'm now caught up on the Murder Mystery quilt.
I've been quilting on Mr. L's quilt, and it looks like I'll have the grandtwins for a couple days before school starts. I'd like to give him his quilt when I see them, so the clock is ticking.
Lately my goal when making a quilt is to use up all the fabric I took out for the quilt, For me, that's usually at least one more quilt. In the case of Mr. L's quilt, it's turning out to be three more quilts! I didn't pull out enough fabric for 4 quilts originally, but I hate wasting any part of stripsets, so I ended up cutting up the leftover parts of the stripsets in different ways which led to three different patterns going on. After evaluating what I had leftover, I actually pulled more fabric, to make the three bonus quilts the size I wanted. I've been very careful when pulling extra fabric, sewing up just a bit at a time, and counting to make sure I don't end up with ten more quilts in these colors.
The quilt on the left uses the same blocks as Mr. L's houndstooth quilt. His quilt just has plain blocks as well. I'm going to assemble those and add a border or two. The checkerboard quilt on the right still needs a few more blocks made for it.
These are the other style blocks I got from the beginning and ends of the stripsets. Since half spin one way and half the other, I always set these with sashing. I've decided on a pieced sashing and cornerstone for this quilt, and I've figured out cutting requirements for that, but haven't done the actual cutting yet.
My goals for August are making a baby quilt for my niece that's due in early October (it's cut out) and making the quilt for the scooter rally in November. I really love the pattern I chose for the baby quilt, so I'm actually cutting a bunch of extra blocks out and I'll use those for donation quilts. Oh, I have everything to make more burp rags now, so I need to get those made too. I don't mind staying in and sewing when the weather outside is so hot and miserable. I haven't been wanting to go anywhere!
I've had a chance to catch up on some other things too, not quilting related. Now that DH and I are both home and things are back to normal, I've taken the time to evaluate the pantry and freezer a bit, and start getting things built back up. I needed to make some gluten free flour blends, and order more of certain ingredients for that. I like to do certain food prep so meals are quicker to make (more sewing time that way.) One of the things I do for that is to buy a large amount of onions, slice up half for carmelized onions which I cook in the slow cooker. Once those are done I freeze them in small recipe sized amounts. I chop most of the remaining onions and freeze those in a ziploc bag. I usually keep a couple onions for anything I need fresh onions for, but if they are going to be cooked, using them from the freezer works just fine.
I was in the middle of a freezer/pantry cleanout when we ended up going to Yuma, so it's taken a while to figure out where I was in that process. We had used most of the homemade freezer meals I had, so I'm starting to restock those. There are still a few things I'd like to clear out, so I'm meal planning around that. It's good to get a handle on what you have and what you need. Something I likely don't do as often as I should.
The slow cooker is getting a workout these days, because I'm trying so hard to not turn on the oven. When it's 110F outside, cooking just doesn't seem like a good time. Slow cooker meals work perfectly with long sewing days though, so that's a win anyway!
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