Beach in a Bag

Someone very close to me just got a cancer diagnosis, and as can be expected, there is lots of worry and fear involved. Just like me, this person's happy place is the beach, and the sound of the waves and ocean views bring calm like nothing else. Going to the beach right now is completely out, as doctor's appointments are almost daily, with treatments starting soon. If they can't get to the beach, I was determined to bring the beach to them, thus, beach in a bag!

I bought a beach tote to put it all in. Starting in the back left-hand corner with the beach tote you'll see a water bottle (bring to treatments???), some kinetic sand to build mini sand castles, though honestly, if you are stressed, just running kinetic sand through your fingers is super relaxing, and makes no mess, because it only sticks to itself. Next to the sand is a fan/spray bottle to mimic those ocean breezes.

In the middle row you see a bag of salt water taffy, a beach ball, a Tranquil Turtle I've dressed in beach gear and named him Ted. Somehow to me Ted just really needed flip flops and a sun visor, so a fat quarter and some time later, he's got them. A Tranquil turtle is actually a projector that shines watery designs on the ceiling, and it has built in wave sounds. Next to Ted is a sensory bottle I made with a combination of blue water, mineral oil, and some silver glitter. When rocked back and forth it makes some nice waves. 

In the front row is a DVD of ocean views with nature sounds, next to a novel because any good beach trip requires some reading. All of those things are on top of the beach blanket, which thankfully, was a UFO stalled at quilt top. 

When I decided to make the beach in a bag, I originally had no plans to make a quilt, as I've been pretty short on time lately. I glanced in the closet with my UFOs and remembered I had an ocean themed quilt top done, just waiting for quilting, THAT I could make time for!

I dug out some ocean fabric I've been saving for a special project for the backing, got it quilted, and I've got a finish in about 24 hours from remembering it was in the closet.

None of this will battle cancer, but if it brings even a small smile, I'll consider it victory. 

You Know That Time...

I did something really stupid today. I was working on sewing blocks for the pink background quilt in my last post. I had more HST's left, but no more room on the design wall, so I did some figuring and decided if I set the quilt four blocks by six blocks, I would only be six HSTs short. I knew I had no yardage of the pink left, but I raided my scrap user system and found some squares I could make the correct size HSTs from. I made those and started assembling blocks. After a bit I counted my finished blocks and the blocks still on the design wall, decided I had miscounted the first time, and I would be a block short. After much deliberating, I figured out a way to make one more block worth of HSTs with a different background color and just have it look like a design element and not just look weird. I made the extra units, and when I refigured it all out, turns out I was correct the first time, and didn't need the extra units after all! UGH! So much wasted time! Someone please tell me I'm not the only ditzy quilter out there!

Not only did I do some stupid stuff today, I found mistakes this week that I made a few years ago. 

One of these corners is not like the others, and I found two different blocks I made this same mistake on! I did the necessary frogging (rippit, rippit), and it's all fixed now. I have this quilt sewn into rows now, I just need to sew the rows to each other to have that quilt center done. This UFO is going to grandson Mr. L, as I'd rather finish a UFO to give him right now than have a new start, and he's happy with this one. 

I did have one quilt finish this week. A few years ago I made a quilt for DS the Elder in all Australian fabrics. He went to Australia for three months several years ago and LOVED it! I had some extra Australian fabric after making his quilt, and I liked the fabric in the big blocks of the Garden Path quilt pattern so much, I made as many more blocks as I could from the leftover fabric. Thus Aussie 2 was started. I pinbasted this quilt about two years ago, then life got crazy, so it never got quilted. Finally, it is a finished quilt!

It was pretty windy the day I took this pic, and the quilt is 96x110", so not small by any means. DS the Elder's quilt is 112" square, because his has one more row and his border is a little bigger. This quilt is huge considering it was made from leftovers. This quilt used every bit of leftover border fabric, and I only have some misc. strips of Aussie fabric in my scrap user system, yardage has been busted!

I managed quilting this quilt with my bum arm by setting a timer for one hour, and I would only quilt one hour per day. Of course having the sit down longarm makes it much easier to deal with huge quilts, and the quilt suspension system was also helpful to keep the strain off of my arm. I did do additional sewing on the days I quilted, but nothing where I was dealing with huge heavy quilts. 

So what's next? I'm still working on wedding quilts, as none of those are finished. I have two into quilt tops, and I hope to get those pin-basted in early July. Once I have them basted, I can work on quilting them one hour at a time, the same way I did Aussie 2. 

I am piecing a wedding quilt as my main project, and assembling a couple other quilts as leaders/enders. Sometimes I just need to look at something different for a little while, and if I can assemble a UFO into a quilt top instead of starting something new and still get that feeling of change, so much the better. 

Design Wall!

I have been waiting rather impatiently to get a design wall. I make a lot of BIG quilts, so I wanted as large of a design wall as I could have. We debated various mounting techniques, and in the end, I decided to not mount the boards at all. 

We bought three sheets of insulation board and some spray adhesive. I had DH cut the 4x8' boards down to 7 feet tall, because 1) our ceilings in the basement aren't quite 8 feet tall, and 2) I can't reach any higher than 7 feet anyway.

I had king sized Warm and Natural batting on hand, and cutting on the fold gave me 60" wide pieces to wrap around the boards. We used spray adhesive on the boards, held the batting taut and lowered it onto the adhesive. Once we had all the batting adhered, we brought the boards into the house to staple the excess batting on the back of the boards. We could have stapled outside, but it was 108 degrees, so doing as much as possible in the house seemed to be a good idea. 

The insulation boards are very lightweight, so very easy to move around, which is very important in my sewing room.

The wall I have to put my design board on isn't actually much of a wall. The board on the left blocks the closet, the board on the right blocks the door to the bathroom.

When I add the third board it blocks most of the doorway to the hallway. Since the boards are easily moved, it's not that big of a problem. I never use that door to the bathroom, there is another door to that bathroom from the hallway. I do have lots of quilting stuff in the closet, but  I can get whatever I need from the closet before I lay out a quilt. Only the largest quilts I make will require all three boards next to each other, and since I won't be laying out a quilt until I'm ready to assemble it, I think I can squeeze by the third board to get in and out of the room during the couple days a quilt is likely to be on the boards. 

When I'm not using the design boards, I can stack them in front of each other on the section of wall with no doorways, so not in the way at all. 

Now that I've got a design wall, Time to start laying out some quilts.

My grandson, Mr. L, just got a full sized bed, so he needs a bigger quilt. I am so far behind on wedding quilts, I didn't want to start one from scratch, so I dug out the Allietare mystery quilt I did in men's shirts. I did Allietare in two colorways, but neither is assembled, both just have all the blocks done. This version should work fine as a full sized quilt once I add a border. I'll be assembling the rows as leaders/enders while I make units for one of the wedding quilts. 

Since I only needed two of my design boards for this quilt layout, I moved the third board to a spot not in my way, and started laying out another quilt.

This quilt just makes me happy. Such bright, happy colors. These were bonus HST's from making 4x8" Flying Geese units. 

My sewing room isn't all neat and tidy right now, I've got projects going everywhere.

I'm in the top 20 for my online UFO challenge, so I dug out a quilt I had pin-basted, and I'm setting a timer for myself to quilt one hour a day. Right now my suspension system is not holding up the quilt, I release the quilt when I'm done for the day, so I don't stretch out the bungee cords prematurely. It's very easy to move the clamps around as I need to. 

I'm making Flying Geese units on my Singer 201 for one of the wedding quilts. Of course I'm double sewing those sew and flip corners so I get lots of bonus HST's to play with later. 

My Bernina has a couple different things piled up on it. I need to hem two lightweight baby blankets, then I'll be back to making HST's and four patches for the same wedding quilt I'm making Flying Geese units for. I really like having one machine have a seam guide screwed in, and one set up without a seam guide. Normally I'd have my vintage machine have a seam guide, and be doing everything else on the Bernina, which I will probably will switch to as soon as I'm done making Flying Geese. I was itching to use the Singer 201 (my favorite vintage machine), but I wanted to do the Flying Geese first, so I didn't put the seam guide on it yet. I've got to take the seam guide off the Bernina to hem the blankets, so I will probably just leave it off, and when I finish the Flying geese units, I'll just put the seam guide back on my vintage machine and finish the four patches on it. Keeping my Bernina free for when I need specialty stitches usually works best for me. I sew all my bindings on with the Bernina, and hopefully, that hour a day of quilting will lead to a finish soon!

With a bit of a mess about, it definitely looks like the new sewing space is up and going!