Will It Stack?

I'm still on Nana duty until Monday, so taking care of Mr. LJ is my number one priority. Mr. LJ does not live in the same town as we do, so I don't get to see him as often as I'd like. This has been a great opportunity to really get to know the little guy.

He REALLY likes to stack things.

Stack your milk on top of your train engine and drive it around? Sure thing.

Stack on a leg? Yes.

Stack on the slanted arm of a chair? He can do it.

He even stacked five blocks on my hand!

As I walk around the house I find random stacks hanging around. Like this stack on the trashcan.

He doesn't just stack blocks, he'll stack any toys he has, random things he finds around the house, whatever he has near him. Drink coasters, cups, shoes, toy trucks, books, may all find themselves in a stack. 

Hey, maybe when he's older, I'll be able to harness his love of stacking and get him to help me clean up any creative messes in my quilting studio! 

On the quilting front, I've drawn a bunch more lines on squares, but still have a ways to go. I also got a tiny bit of cutting done. I'm finding keeping up with a toddler quite hard on my arm injury, so I'm having to ice my arm almost every night. I was hoping to get right back to quilting after he leaves, but I think it's going to take a few days for the inflammation in my arm to go down. I will just keep doing a little along, and eventually I see progress.

Prepping

I've still not been sewing, because our house has been like Grand Central Station lately. Starting today, I have a grandbaby for the rest of the month, so I'm not thinking much sewing will be occurring at all. 

If I can't sew, can I get anything quilty done? Well, yes, I can do some prepping for sewing. I finished cutting strips from the green fabrics I was working on in my last post. I can't sub-cut those until I get the cream fabrics cut into strips. I will have a little bit of time today to press some cream fabrics and strip cut those, then I'm thinking that will be a good naptime activity while I have Mr LJ. I have to keep my cutting sessions short anyway. 

I've also got this going on.

I need to make 1200 Flying Geese units for a quilt I've got planned, and I'm drawing diagonal lines on the squares. I'm drawing the first line corner to corner for my sewing line for the Flying Geese unit, then I'm drawing a second line to get a bonus HST at the size I want. I hate trimming, and cutting is so hard on my arm, that drawing lines is really my best option. Well, I suppose it could be a better option to just cut the units to the correct shapes originally, which I have the rulers to do. I know a lot of people hate doing sew and flip corners. The thing is, I LOVE bonus HST's. I will have 2400 bonus HST's to play with from this quilt...that's another quilt! Does it take more fabric to do it this way? Yes, it does, but I am getting two quilts from that fabric, and there is no waste doing it this way, so, honestly, it really comes down to personal preference. 

Yesterday I actually sat and drew lines on a bunch of squares. During part of that time, I was on the phone with DD#2, and part of the time I was binge watching Dr. Quinn on Amazon Prime. The small baskets are squares I haven't drawn lines on yet, and the plastic shoebox has the squares that are ready to sew. Yesterday was an exception though. Drawing two lines on 2400 squares can be a bit overwhelming, even though I don't mind drawing lines. To prevent feeling overwhelmed, I've been doing 10-20 squares at a time, multiple times per day. Even with a minimum amount of effort, I can get at least 100 squares done per day, so my finished container is filling fairly quickly. I think I can likely continue my mini sessions of line drawing with a baby in the house, so I'm hoping by the end of the month, all of these squares will have lines on them. 

The last of the furniture has been assembled, and I'm really liking the green. It's still a fairly neutral color, but a change from years of brown furniture. 

By the way, since I mentioned I've been binge watching Dr, Quinn, if you are looking for a show with a LOT of quilts in it, that one is great. I had seen the first couple seasons back in the 90's when it was new, but I had never seen that last couple seasons at all. I noticed in season 1 the quilts were made from the wrong era fabrics, but as the seasons went on, the quilts changed and became more appropriate for the time period of the show. 

Company and What's Next?

Well, the shower last week was a success! DD#1 got some very nice gifts, several of which were handmade, besides the ones I made for baby. 

I had been planning Sunday as a rest day, but I ended up hosting dinner for 20 instead. Rest Monday?

Nope, Monday we assembled the furniture we ordered from Home Reserve. I ordered two chairs, two loveseats, and the one ottoman you see here. All but one chair is assembled, one box was horribly damaged in transit, and one piece was broken, but the company has already sent us a replacement. I looked at furniture locally, but couldn't find anything I liked. Home Reserve is an interesting company. Everything they use is American made, the frames have a ten year warranty, and everything is replaceable. If one cushion gets ruined I can replace just that one cushion. If I decide I want a new color, I can replace all the fabric. All the furniture has storage space under the cushions. 

Tuesday we went up Mt. Lemmon with our out of town company. We had a great picnic up there, during which I got sunburned a little. The pine forest smelled so good! 

Wednesday I actually did get some rest! I slept in and we even went out to dinner. 

Thursday and Friday I've been working on misc. stuff. I started cutting for the wedding quilt I'm starting over on.

My arm is still not liking cutting, though it's handling sewing and quilting much better. I can only cut for about 30 minutes before I need to take a break.

There are rumors in the family grapevine that three engagement announcements may be happening soon, so I really need to get the five wedding quilts I'm behind on finished. I've already got plans for the next three wedding quilts. I'd rather have a plan and have them decide to wait than to be overwhelmed with decisions to make on their quilt. 

This weekend is busy. I've got company spending the weekend, I'm making a huge family dinner for Sunday, and I'm not thinking anything quilty will be happening. 

I think the most quilty thing I've done this week is shopping. I bought some fabric online with specific projects in mind.

I picked up these fat quarters at Joann for 70 cents each. The fabric quality isn't fantastic, but some projects don't need premium fabrics.

I also bought 12" cuts of some Asian-inspired fabrics along with a bolt of Kona black. I have more Asian fabrics coming from my online purchases. The only serious yardage I got was the solid black, and one bolt likely isn't enough for the two quilts I have planned. Everything else I bought was fat quarters. I'm not no-buy, but I have been trying to buy as little as I can and still make what I want to make. Since I have two Asian quilts I want to make, as well as one I want to do in Civil War repros, I needed to make some purchases. I might have three or four Asian fat quarters in stash, along with maybe a half dozen Civil War repros, but you can't get a quilt out of just that. Fat quarters are a great way for me to get the variety I want and add the least to my stash. 

I just heard my company is on the way! Time to get off the computer!

Baby Shower

Today is the baby shower for DD#1, so I've scheduled this to post, since I'm a busy Nana today! This is not  DD#1's first child, she's already got three, but the other three were born in South Africa. Since they moved to the USA with only their suitcases, bringing baby stuff along was not a priority. I'm not normally a fan of baby showers for anything but your first child, but moving internationally seems a good reason to break that rule. 

I've spent a bit of time this week decorating for the shower. I decided to do a Little Golden Book theme, and we scoured thrift stores in the area for a bunch of Little Golden books, which I'll give to DD#1 for her kids. 

The coffee cups on the middle of the mantle are prizes for the games. I actually stuck a bit more in them since I took this photo. There is an Amazon Kindle gift card, two tea bags, an instant latte packet, and two packets of hot chocolate mix in each cup.

A couple of the books on top of the bookcases are missing the toys I'll display with them. I've got to borrow them from my grandkids!

I packaged up the quilted bookmarks I made as shower favors, and stationed this basket (which I also made) by the front door, so people can grab them on their way out. There are 3 little chocolate bars in each package with a bookmark. 

Friday was all about food prep, since I'm serving brunch at the shower. 

To keep this quilt related, I managed to finish the baby quilt with only a couple days to spare!

This quilt is from a kit that's called Postcards from Sweden. It uses 36 different Kona solids, and buying the kit was easier than tracking down all those solids. This is actually the first quilt kit I've ever used. I've heard of people being shorted on fabric, but this one was quite generous. I can probably make another quilt larger than this one from the remaining fabric, but the color profile will be quite a bit different, since the colors I have the most of are the ones used fewest in this quilt. 

In this photo you can see that I quilted leaves all over the quilt. DD#1 and DSIL recently bought a home with acreage. They named it Nuwe Blare Homestead. Don't ask me to pronounce that first part, because I have no idea how to say it. I do know it is Afrikaans meaning New Leaf. With that connection, and this being their first US born child, I felt quilting leaves was a good choice on the baby's quilt.