Finally Hit My Stride!

 Between DH being retired now, and doing quite a bit of traveling, trying to find a new normal is tough. Since I've been an empty nester, most days I went to the sewing room as soon as DH went to work. Even during the year he was working at home, work started at the same time every day, so when he went to his home office, I went to the sewing room. When he started working from home, I started matching my breaks to his, and we ate lunch together. I jokingly called it "Retirement Lite". 

I honestly didn't think it was going to be much of change once he retired, especially since he only retired from nursing, and still runs a business. He still spends a LOT of time in his office, so surely I can sew while he's working, right?

It took me longer to adjust than I expected, and largely because I hate waking up to an alarm. One of the things I was most looking forward to about DH retiring was no more alarms in the morning. It's not like we are sleeping until noon or anything, we usually get up between 6-7 am without an alarm, but now we have leisurely coffee time in the morning, which I love. DH is big on breakfast, but I hate eating as soon as I wake up. In the working days, I went and quilted for an hour, then I came up to eat breakfast. We never eat breakfast together because of my aversion to eating right away. The thing is, our leisurely coffee time, where we are reading the news and discussing everything from what's for dinner to world events, lasts anywhere from 45 minutes to almost two hours. If it's the longer period of time we both end up eating breakfast during that time. I am pretty much a cottage cheese and fruit girl, so not a lot of prep required. 

I really enjoy our new morning routine, and it's probably the most retirement-y thing we do. BUT, this new routine completely derailed my sewing routine. I've done the whole, quilt for an hour, eat breakfast on my break, get some household chores started then go back to sewing for years now. This week I finally figured out a way around that!

We eat lunch at noon, pretty much without fail. It's a predictable time. I realized if I switch my quilting time to after lunch, I could get myself into a new routine. This was huge! Why was this such a game changer? I was struggling with getting anything done. I didn't have anything basted and ready to quilt, and I had deadline quilts that needed to be made. I needed to baste something so I could do some quilting, and I needed to sew to get the deadline projects made. The thing is, I wasn't getting anything basted, and when I was sewing I was feeling so guilty about not spending any time quilting, I was distracted and not being as productive as normal. 

This week it all clicked. I didn't need to feel bad about not quilting, if I could make a consistent time to quilt. After lunch! Now I am sewing as much as I can in the morning, mostly switching between deadline projects and getting UFO's to the next stage. I'm seeing some real progress now that I'm in a better headspace.

After lunch, I go quilt for an hour, today that is some walking foot quilting, but earlier this week it was FMQ. After that hour, I spend some time either basting a quilt, cutting out other projects (Christmas stuff currently), or tidying up some of the disaster that is my sewing/fabric area. 

Now that I'm figuring out the new normal, I actually have a couple finishes! 

The quilt for my great-nephew is finished. It's finish #3 for the year.

I made his older sister a doll quilt, and it's finished too! I don't always count small finishes, but this year has been such a lousy year for quilting, I'm counting this as finish #4. I need the encouragement that I am indeed making progress. 

I'm feeling more encouraged than I have been in a while. We have quite a bit of traveling planned for the foreseeable future, but now that I figured out how to maximize my time at home, I'm feeling much better!

Running Late

This year has been so incredibly busy with non-quilt related stuff, I just keep falling further behind. 

 I did get to spend a great weekend with two of my grandsons, and two of the granddogs as well. We did some crafts, though nothing sewing related. We watched movies, ate cookies, and just had a fun weekend. Monday I didn't get much done, because even a good weekend with the grandkids can be tiring. 

I had hoped to get the overdue baby quilt done this week, but I still need to sew on the binding. I also realized I hadn't made his older sister a doll quilt, which I normally do if there are older sisters. (I've made older brothers quilts for their stuffed animals too, if they are into that) Since I didn't have a doll quilt ready, I looked through my orphan blocks to see if I had anything I could make into a doll quilt quickly.

I found a small pile of broken dishes blocks leftover from another project, and I came up with this layout. I have a piece of lavender minky just the right size to back it, and I know I have a batting scrap that will work. 

I've been piecing with a darker gray thread, but I'm almost finished assembling the next scooter quilt, as well as the blocks I've been using as leaders/enders while making it. To make this doll quilt, I really should use something with a white background as my leader/ender and switch to white thread. Since the scooter quilt is already in rows, my design wall was free, so I looked around the sewing room for something I could use as leader/enders. 

I found a stack of larger broken dishes blocks that I had made from bonus HST's from two other projects. I could have made a baby quilt with the one with white backgrounds, but I didn't really have enough of the gray background ones to do much with. I didn't have enough gray ones to make a border around the white ones, and no matter what I was going to have a couple blocks leftover. I opted to just bust as many blocks as I could in the same quilt, so I put an off center gray stripe down the quilt. I won't add borders, so the quilt will finish at 48x64, a good kid sized quilt. 

As far as things I actually got done in the past week, here they are...

1) Basted and quilted baby quilt, ready for binding.

2) Got scooter quilt sewn into rows

3) Almost done making alternate blocks for another UFO

4) Basted two more quilts, one smaller quilt for donation, one larger quilt for a gift. 

5) Cut out what should be enough 2.5x4.5" pieces for a potato chip quilt made from men's shirts. I will cut more if I need to, but I think this will be enough. 

6) got the doll quilt and another UFO on the design walls

It makes it seems like I got more done when I list it out. I think I tend to look at what isn't done more than what is done. I really need to get that scooter quilt finished so I can get it basted and then use my cutting table for cutting out the Christmas gifts! The holidays always come up faster than I think, and we've got quite a bit still coming up for this year. 

Not My Favorite Thing

 I've been assembling quilts, which is not my favorite quilting activity, especially in the summer. Ironing big stuff is always cumbersome, and having long rows of quilt blocks in my lap to assemble the quilt is always a chore, but worse in the summer. 

Since I live where summer is REALLY hot, if I'm making blocks, I just use my small travel iron which doesn't heat up the space like a full sized iron. If I'm assembling a quilt I need the big iron, which absolutely makes the air conditioning work harder. I don't mind doing those chores so much during the winter, because I normally keep my house pretty cool in winter, so some extra fabric on my lap can be welcome, and warming up the room I'm in with an iron makes it more pleasant. 

At any rate, I do have some new quilt tops complete.

The border is on the quilt for my great-nephew. I'll be basting this as soon as I'm finished with this blog post. That baby is already six months old, almost seven, and I really need to get this finished and mailed. 

DH is really loving this quilt. It's my version of Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail. It's big enough for our queen sized bed, but I'm debating switching to a king sized bed, in which case it wouldn't be large enough. The quilt I am purposely making for our bed could go on a king. 

The other blocks I made from the RT mystery quilt border units I am using for a different quilt. I really love this border fabric with that color scheme, and I have enough of that fabric left for another border. I decided I'd start making the alternate blocks I had planned to use for that quilt, so I can assemble it soon, and use the same border fabric before I forget and use the fabric for something else. The alternate blocks I need are just 16 patches, which are easily made as leader/enders, so they'll get made while other things are my main project. 

 I just sewed the last seam on this baby quilt. I am going to trim the sides straight, but I haven't even pressed this yet. Now that this quilt is together, I need to put the scooter quilt up the design wall. It's equilateral triangles and hexies just like this one, but it will be larger. The outdoor scenes in the baby quilt were cut from a National Parks pillow panel. I really do enjoy using panels in unexpected ways. I do enjoy assembling equilateral triangle quilts more than most. they are just pretty fun to see come together, and my Studio cutter dies cut them perfectly! 

Aside from working on quilts, my next big project is cutting out Christmas gifts. There are some health issues going on with family members (DH and I are fine) that could completely hijack things for a while, but if the projects are cut out, I might have a chance. People are always more important than quilting or gifts, so if I can't get it done but end up helping people through a crisis, that's ok. If I can do both, that's fantastic. 

Easily Distracted

 Sometimes I am super focused and get a lot done, and other times I'm easily distracted. I hate summer with a passion, so it tends to be my distracted time of year.

Distraction is why my design wall looks like this. The space baby quilt has the center sewn together, but I still haven't added the borders. I started laying out another baby quilt, but I need to move all of that over to actually have enough space to lay it out properly. The big hexagons are for the rally quilt. 

I've got everything cut out for the rally quilt, and I even have the blocks with smaller triangles sewn up. It just needs space on the design wall. 

I got the center of this big quilt sewn together, and I've chosen a border fabric. Once I get the border fabric cut this one goes in the quilt closet to wait its turn in the quilting queue. This quilt started out as Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail mystery quilt, but actually became two different quilts. The second quilt from the parts and pieces of that mystery isn't a top yet. The last mystery quilt I tried also turned into two different quilts.

I think the last mystery quilt I did completely by the directions was Allietare, and I made two of those! Even the murder mystery quilts I made changes to. 

I suppose some people might think not making the quilt per the directions is a failure, but I never look at mystery quilts that way. I never take any quilt pattern as Gospel, mystery quilt or not. In the end, it's my quilt, so if I want to add sashing, or eliminate sashing, change the borders, change the setting, that's my decision because it's my quilt. My rule for mystery quilts is that they come from stash, so I don't have a ton of money invested in them. When I'm not dropping a bunch of money on a project, I feel more free to ad lib the end result. The quilt above had solids from stash for background and sashing, and everything else is men's shirts. The border I chose is also from stash. 

I've already been thinking about this year's Bonnie mystery and whether or not I'll participate. I absolutely do not need another project, but that doesn't mean I won't join in. If I've made progress on the Christmas sewing front, I may just join in as a fun thing for myself. Last year I was feeling a bit behind, and I opted to not do the mystery. I was fine with that. Other years I've been drowning in deadlines, and did it anyway. I usually decide by whatever will be better for my mental health at the time. If my deadline projects are overwhelming me, doing a mystery quilt and using my deadline stuff as leader/enders can absolutely be the way to go. It may sound strange, but for me, the more I sew, the MORE I SEW. If I'm really busy on a project, I tend to get several other projects done too, just by using each project as a leader/ender for another. If I'm procrastinating and avoiding the sewing room, I don't get anything done. The blocks in the quilt above have been sewn for years, but assembling that baby quilt made me assemble this quilt too. Progress begets more progress. I've got time to decide, and we'll just see what I get done in the meantime.

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!