Easy Week

 I'd say this week didn't go according to plan, but the fact of the matter is, I didn't really make many plans for the week. I got the J&J vaccine on Monday, and I wasn't sure how I'd be feeling, so I didn't plan much. As it turned out, besides some swollen lymph nodes, I felt perfectly fine, not even a sore arm. DH has struggled with nausea and headaches all week though. 

The little bit of plans I did make were derailed by the post office. The seller of my white poly pellets sent them Priority Mail, and as such they should have been delivered last week. I had hoped to finish Miss S's weighted blanket this week. Well, I didn't get the pellets until last night! The only progress I've made on the weighted blanket front is to get the third one's top almost assembled. The rows are in pairs, just five more seams and all the tops will be done. 

My design wall is empty, and even though I have several projects ready to go up on it, I didn't feel like laying out a quilt, so nothing there.

I did get half of the last basted quilt quilted, so there's that. I'm using a peach colored thread, and it's amazing on many fabrics the peach almost disappears.

When I was looking around my sewing room, I spied the brown 2" cut strips, the only color of 2" strips I hadn't tackled in my scrap busting projects. I've debated several plans for those strips, and changed my mind several times. Then, I remembered I had a container of fall colored strips and cream strips I had set aside for a particular project. It was supposed to be a gift, but circumstances changed and I now no longer have to make that quilt. That quilt was even listed on my UFO list. I knew those were 2" strips too, so I dug them out too. I started with the non-brown fall colored strips, and sewed each of those to a cream strip. When I ran out of the golds, oranges, reds, and greens, I went into the browns. I continued sewing a colored strip to a cream strip until I ran out of cream colored strips. Most of the creams are tone on tones, with a couple solids mixed in. I then made strip tubes out of the strips, since I've been watching a bunch of strip tube tutorials on YouTube. I don't have any of the Strip Tube rulers, but I do have a ruler with the same markings. I have the Quilt in a Day Triangle Square Up ruler. I had quite a few reds, but not much in the golds or oranges, so after I make the blocks with what I've got, I may decide to cut more strips in those colors just for variety's sake. 

This is most of the strip tubes I'll be making. I still have a few stripsets left to sew into tubes. I've got my ruler ready to subcut the strips, and I've moved all of that into the living room, because I do all my subcutting while watching TV (more listening than actual watching) Once I subcut all the strip tubes and sew those units into blocks, I'll decide if I need to make more strip tubes, or if I have enough. I have no expectation of what size quilt I'm making, projects like this are completely improvisational for me. I've had times I've had to cut more, and other times I've sewn up so many units I ended up with four quilts from the same fabrics. It doesn't matter to me. I really like using multiple tone on tone fabrics for a background, because if I do run short, I can cut whatever tone on tones I have currently and just mix them in with no drama, since there are already so many different background fabrics. 

I still had a bunch of brown strips left, so I sewed them into sets of four strips. It took some sorting to divide the strips by length. I didn't have many WOF strips left. 

I'm subcutting them to 3.5", and I'll add a strip of another color to each side to make a square block. I'm thinking I'll use a dark red, but I won't know for sure until I audition a couple options. I want this quilt to be pretty dark. There are always a lot of novelty fabrics in my scraps, so when I say these are brown strips, I'm really only talking the main background color. Depending on the scale of the novelty print, certain patches might not have any brown at all. 

Neither of these quilts were what I had planned for the brown strips, and that's OK by me. Sometimes I have specific quilts I make with scraps, other times it's just play, and whatever I feel like at the moment. 

I got a sweet surprise this week. 

I shared some poly thread with one of DH's coworkers. I had hit the jackpot at a thrift store a while back, and I just wasn't using the thread as quickly as I thought I would. The thread I had was meant for machine embroidery, but it works just fine as a quilting thread too. DH's coworker has an embroidery machine, so I sent a bunch of the thread I had to her. She's already using it in her embroidery machine, and gave me these fat quarters as a thank you. I can guarantee I'll use up the fat quarters faster than I would have the thread I gave her. I wasn't expecting anything in return, but it was a nice surprise. 

I haven't given much thought to next week's goals. Since Sunday is Mother's Day, DH is grilling steak and we are having my sister and my MIL over for dinner. Hopefully next week I'll get back to the weighted blankets, and maybe finishing the last of the long basted quilts. 

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!

Saga of the Poly Pellets

 I've mentioned several times lately that I want to use up the pellets I have, and be done with making weighted blankets forever. I finished the weighted blanket for Mr T, that I showed on the blog last week, and I finally got the replacement blanket for Miss S ready to fill. The top has been done for over a year! Procrastination that bad is a sure sign I don't want to do it. 

I knew I didn't have enough pellets for her blanket and Mr. T's, so I ordered more pellets, like a year ago. I didn't open the box until this week. 

Ummm....these pellets are black. The backing of Miss S's new weighted blanket is a very pale pink. They are going to show through and look like bugs. I know I didn't order black pellets, but a lot of the companies sell multiple colors. I got the wrong ones, but I didn't open the box in time to return them. So, guess who ordered more white pellets this week? 😒

I transferred the black pellets to plastic shoeboxes, because I prefer to work out of those when filling the weighted blankets. The two other weighted blankets I have in the works should be fine with black pellets. While I was transferring the black pellets, I came across a few issues with them. 

The plastic shoebox on the left has pellets from several different purchases mixed together, but there isn't enough left to fill a weighted blanket. You can see I've gotten clear, white and various shades of gray over my many purchases. I'm not sure how much you can tell from this side by side photo, but the black pellets are TINY! Each one is half to one fourth the size of the lighter colored pellets. To top it off, the black pellets have some major static electricity going on. Even transferring them to the plastic shoeboxes I had pellets sticking to everything, me, the table, the wall, they were everywhere! I think filling weighted blankets with these is going to be a nightmare. I have too many of them to just toss them though, and poly pellets aren't cheap. It is totally on me for not opening the box in a timely manner, I would have returned them if I had. 

I stuck dryer sheets in with the black pellets, hoping that might cut down on the static issue. The light colored pellets I ordered are supposed to arrive Saturday afternoon, so I won't end up filling Miss S's weighted blanket until next week. I finished the top of the next weighted blanket yesterday, so I'll start sewing the channels in it, and I have yet another weighted blanket on the design wall, that needs to be assembled. 

I'm pretty frustrated about the pellet issue, so I might just need a day to blow off some steam and start another quilt that was already planned. Nothing like a bunch of chain piecing to improve my mood. 

Oh, my FMQ an hour a day is going great! I finished quilting the quilt I was quilting last week, and I will finish quilting another one tomorrow. I only have one more quilt basted and ready to quilt, but I'm going to quilt it next, just because I get asked all the time how many basting pins I have since I can baste so many quilts at once, and I honestly have no idea. I want to be able to get a photo of all my basting pins together before I start another basting spree. I'm not going to bind those quilts until they are all quilted, just because I really need to get basting. Sewing on bindings will be a good activity when I need a break from basting. My goal will be to baste until I run out of pins, so I should have another big stack when I'm done. 

I'm very blessed to be able to keep one sewing machine always set up for FMQ. I do use that machine for walking foot quilting and sewing on bindings too, but it's basically the quilting/binding machine. I do all my piecing and other sewing on different machines. Quilting an hour a day is really helping me get through my UFO's. I still have a lot of UFO's, but I think I'm finishing them at a similar rate to finishing the tops, so I'm not falling further behind, and that's improvement. 

Reflecting on What Works, and What Doesn't

Each quilter has different things that works for them, and different ways of working. A storage idea that's great for me, may be a nightmare for you. I can easily have a half dozen projects going at once, but you may be a start to finish quilter. I have fabrics from just about every quilting genre, and am absolutely fine with mixing them in a quilt. Maybe you only like reproduction fabrics or batiks, and never mix them. You know what? It's all good. None of that is right or wrong, it's just different. 

I find identifying something that doesn't work every bit as useful as finding something that does. I like trying different things I see online or read about, some of those are winners, and some I decide are not my cup of tea, even incredibly popular options. 

I've seen lots of quilters in online forums complaining they've tried Bonnie Hunter's scrap user system and it just sits there unused. It didn't work for them. It does work for me. I keep tweaking the sizes I save, but overall, it is incredibly helpful to me to cut my scraps into strips. I also use smaller squares pretty quickly. Charm squares (5") don't work for me. I find most of the time you have to cut them down and end up sliver trimming units which I hate to do. I'd much rather cut to an accurate size to start. EZ angle and Companion angle rulers work with my strips perfectly. 

One day I was reading an online forum, and several quilters were talking about using their die cutters to cut other shapes from scraps, and keeping those on hand too. Well, next time I processed scraps, I tried that. I cut HST's, QST's, even some tumblers and drunkard's path blocks. I had them all sorted, then life happened, I had to dismantle my sewing room because another family moved in with us, and all of those pieces got dumped in together, and that's how they stayed, long after I got my sewing room back. The fact is, keeping anything besides strips and squares doesn't work for me. I never think to use them, and even if they had stay sorted, I still don't think I would have used them. 

This week I took the time to start sorting the random shapes dumped in together. I also made a lot of headway on sewing the units together. 

I ran out of neutrals for the 3" finished QST's, and I ran out of colors on the 4" QST's. I'll hopefully be cutting more in the near future, but this time I'll be sewing them into units ASAP.

I haven't finished pressing the 1.5" finished HST's I sewed up, but I've got a basketful, and you can see in the small white basket in the background that I have pressed quite a few. I still have more sizes of HST's to sew up, as well as some other shapes, but I think once they are units, I'll be able to actually get them into something. 

I have a bin just for misc. quilt units; extra nine patches, four patches, HST's, QST's, flying geese, whatever units I made and didn't use for whatever reason. When do I actually use those units? Well, for me, the best time to use them if to make a backing just a bit wider. I tend to make my baby quilts 48" wide, so wider than WOF. My favorite way to make the backing wide enough, is to dig through the extra unit bin, and find stuff in similar colors to the quilt top, and see what I can come up with. I make an off center cut in the fabric and sew the pieced strip in. I have ended up with some really cute backings that way. I may stick orphan blocks in there too, but I start with the unit bin. I  make twin sized quilts 90" tall or so, and I normally piecing the backing with a horizontal seam for those, but even 2 WOF isn't that tall, so again, I need it just a bit bigger. Out comes the unit bin and orphan blocks. Rather than having to cut more yardage, I find it the perfect time to use up quilt leftovers. Now that I'm sewing up those misc scrap units, I'm sure they'll get used in that fashion. I might use some of the units in quilt blocks, but since I don't have enough of any one thing, even if I sew up some blocks they will likely end up with the orphan blocks. 

That's not all I've worked on this week. I finished the quillow I was working on last week.

All these fabrics have white or cream backgrounds, but some are awfully busy. I'm determined to bust a bunch of the busy ones from my stash. I've decided I like calmer backgrounds overall. 

I've been quilting a UFO one hour per day. FMQ an hour per day DOES work for me! I'll finish it next quilting session, but that likely won't be until next week. I've got two of the grandkids this weekend, and one of the ones I'll have needs a weighted blanket, so I need to get that finished so he can take it home. 

I have been having fun quilting the UFO.  It's been basted for two years, and was likely a top for a couple years before that. It was from a floral fabric busting spree (I'm not really a floral kind of girl). I've been having a good time looking at the fabrics, and seeing what memories they bring to mind. A fabric might remind me of where I bought it, or other quilts I used it in. There are some fabrics I was gifted, and some I inherited. This quilt had some of the fabric I used in a quilt for my late sister, which she was using the last time I saw her at her house. That didn't make me sad, it made me smile, thinking that the quilt I made her brought her some comfort in her last days. 

I've also been working on one of the weighted blankets I need to finish. 

Just before I came up to blog, I finished sewing the channels and trimmed the top and bottom so it's ready to start adding pellets. I think I can get it done tomorrow, and if not, the boys go to bed early, so I could probably finish before they go home anyway. 

Although I really want to get all the weighted blankets done ASAP, I decided since they are so hard on my arm, it really isn't wise to try to do more than one per week, and even every other week if I need to. I do want those off my list, so I'm hoping to have them all done by the end of May. I think that's a more reasonable timeline. I'm pretty sure I have enough pellets for four blankets, but even if I only get three out of them that's OK. If I'm way off on estimating, and I have pellets left after four, I'm going to make the grandkids beanbags. I will use up those pellets one way or another!

Some other things that don't work for me? Fat quarter bundles if I keep them together. If I break them up and sort by color they'll get used, if I keep them together, they sit. Most of the time they are "too matchy" for me to use them together. Scrap quilts are my thing, so even when sticking with a strict color scheme I'll push those limits. 

Quilt kits don't seem to work for me either. I've bought so many, actually sewn one, broke up several and stuck the fabrics in stash which then do get used. Oh, I do have one quilt kit cut out! Besides two quilt kits which I paid quite a bit for (one of which is the one I actually made), I've stuck to only buying them at deep discounts, so if I break up every kit I own and use the fabrics for something else, it's still OK. I don't feel like I have to use the quilt kit as designed. I may use the pattern with different fabrics, and use the fabrics that came with it in other quilts. That's all OK with me. I do have a couple quilt kits I do want to make as intended. I have learned my lesson though, and I don't buy quilt kits anymore!

Have you tried something that didn't work for you, even if you heard other people raving about it? (storing my thread on thread organizers where they got all dusty was a fail, now my thread is in drawers) Have you tried something and it changed the way you do things forever after? (Leaders/enders was a total game changer for me) Is there something popular you have no intention of ever trying? (No hand applique, thank you) I love hearing about what works (or doesn't) for other people. 

Full Steam Ahead

 I'm feeling much better, and even better than that is seeing some things in the sewing room come together. 

I finished the second I Spy quilt, a whole month BEFORE Mr. T's birthday!

 
This is the third quilt top I've made from these log cabin blocks, but they are all gone now. This is another twin sized quilt. It's hanging in the quilt closet now, awaiting it's turn in the quilting queue, along with the TWO other quilt tops I finished this week.

I'm really pleased with this quilt top, for several reasons. The 2" four patches were cut offs from the girly quillows I made. Rather than let those leftovers sit around for ages, I got them sewn up pretty quickly. The alternate squares are leftovers from a wide backing. I cut all the scraps from the wide back into squares, and I only have a dozen squares left, so it worked out really well. The outer border worked out well too. When I was auditioning fabric I had three contenders. When I pulled the fabric off the mini bolt to see how much I had, I realized I this paisley was just shy of 15" wide, but four yards long. I know I used it for borders on another quilt, but how I ended up with such a long piece I don't know. I do like to cut borders length of grain when possible, but I know I haven't made any four yard long quilts, so that's a bit of a mystery. I determined the width of the border with fabric annihilation in mind. 

This is all that's left of that fabric, except for the one four yard long skinny piece I tossed in with the black strings. 

Today I sewed the borders onto the sunflower quilt.

This is one of my favorite quilts ever. It started out just because I didn't want to put the weird shapes of sunflower fabric back in my stash, and really turned into something special. This photo absolutely doesn't do it justice. Once its quilted I'll have DH take it outside and have him take some photos. 

If all that weren't enough, I also finished quilting another quillow, the last of the ones I was supposed to finish before Christmas. It's late enough now, that I decided to save it for Christmas 2021 instead. I've started making the quillow pocket, and hopefully I'll finish the quillow entirely tomorrow. 

I also got a top assembled for another weighted blanket, and next week that's my goal, to get at least two weighted blankets finished. One of the weighted blankets has been ready to sew the channels for a year! Making weighted blankets is hard on my arm, so I don't really like making them. I'm determined to sew weighted blankets until I'm out of pellets, then I'm so done. Now that discount stores are selling them, you can buy one ready made cheaper than I can make one. I think I might have enough pellets for four weighted blankets, so I'll be working on a couple more tops for those next week as well. I want those off my to do list for good!

Gingersnap Week

 I don't know if any of you have the same connection to gingersnaps I have, or if this really seems out there. When my kids were little, they all were prone to motion sickness. It was like a motion sick switch turned on when they hit 18 months or so, and from then on travelling was an adventure. I struggle with motion sickness too, especially when pregnant, so since I had 5 kids in six years, a lot of the time we had several of us sick at once. Dramamine never worked for my kids, and although Bonine did, they couldn't have it until they turned six. When researching natural nausea remedies, I came across gingersnaps, and that worked for all of us. I always had gingersnaps in the car, and it was the only time my kids had carte blanche to eat as many cookies as they wanted. Pro tip- Ziploc bags are your friend for motion sickness.

I tried giving the kids gingersnaps for a stomach bug, and it worked for that too, so rare was the time I didn't have gingersnaps in the house. I remember one year a nasty stomach bug was going through DH's place of work, and he lovingly brought it home to us. I brought out the gingersnaps and we made it through. His workmates kept talking about how their families couldn't keep anything down, and DH told them to give them gingersnaps. They were like, "My family keeps vomiting and you want me to give them cookies?" DH assured them that was exactly what he recommended, and it worked. We've turned a lot of people onto that trick over the years. 

Well, my kids are grown and have families of their own, and DH is gluten free now, so we don't keep gingersnaps in the house anymore. I caught a nasty stomach bug though, and after a day of really feeling nasty, I finally sent DH out for my old friend. 

I actually prefer the ones in the brown bag, but he couldn't find those. That's ok, this is eating cookies for medicinal purposes, and I can indeed keep them down. Not spending all my time in the bathroom for one reason or another is a good thing. It's really been a lousy week. 

Before the stomach bug hit, I started quilting on the second I Spy quilt. Today I felt well enough to quilt a bit more. I've got it halfway quilted now. I think that's all the sewing I have in me for today though. I have some quilt rows that need to be pressed, but I'm not feeling like that's something I want to tackle. Being sick is easier without a houseful of children to care for while you are sick, but it's still not much fun. 

Is there a quilt pattern called Gingersnaps? If so, I should make it for a sick quilt. I did go straight for a quilt in every room I was in. Nothing, not even gingersnaps, gives quite as much comfort as a quilt when you are sick. 

I'm definitely on the mend, so hopefully next week will be more productive, and require fewer gingersnaps.