Trying to Get Something Done

I'm almost at the midway point of having three grandkids for two weeks. I knew personal sewing wasn't going to happen, but I do have a pillowcase project planned with the grandkids. I just finished making a pillowcase with the youngest. We used my 1918 Singer 66 handcrank, and Miss A was a champ! 

With the handcrank, you only have one hand available to guide the fabric, so I help the beginners keep it going straight. Having the screw in seam guide on is a good help too. It would be a bit easier for the grandkids if I had a Singer 99 handcrank, so they didn't have to reach so far. If I find one at a good price someday, I may add it to my collection.

Pretty nice pillowcase for a four (almost 5) year old!

All three of these grandkids have chosen their fabrics, the hardest but most fun part! Miss A wanted puppy fabric, and I had several but she opted for the 101 Dalmatian fabric. For the cuff and accent pieces I just had her choose colors out of the main fabric and I showed her a few fabrics that would work. 

I'm not letting any of the kids near a rotary cutter, and I've got the two boys pillowcases cut and pinned ready to sew the first step. I've had a chronic headache for 15 years now, but I'm also coming down off a three day migraine on top of it, so I think one pillowcase per day is all I've got in me. I've never sewn with any of these grandkids, so we are having to start instruction from the beginning. 

Just so that I am getting a bit of my own stuff done, I decided I could get away with sub-cutting strips from my scrap user system. I need 6.5" pieces for the quillow project, but I've decided I am just going to cut all of my 2" strips for several different projects. I know my strip drawers will fill up quickly again, so I don't mind total annihilation right now. I'm cutting by color. I finished the blues before my company arrived. In the last week I cut all the pinks (which I had the least of) and now I'm working on purple. I'm not counting any pieces. I have several ideas of patterns to make with these sizes, and if I need more fabric I have plenty more I can cut into 2" strips then subcut to whatever size I run short of. Most quilts I plan out to exact specs, but sometimes I like to just work with scraps, cut without counting, and see what happens. 

The grandkids are very curious about my rotary cutter, so I've been hiding it in a different spot each time I cut. I'm not worried about them messing with my ruler or fabric pieces, but I don't want them to get hurt. 

I'm going to need a vacation after six weeks of non-stop company! I know the migraine that I'm still battling is likely due to all the commotion and lack of sleep. I may take a week off after everyone leaves. Usually I don't feel old, but this summer has let me know I'm not in my 20's anymore. C'est la vie!

Lacking Willpower

I either have a huge issue of lacking willpower (most likely), or I was just presented with too good of a deal to refuse.

I've been trying to be no-buy/low-buy on quilting supplies, goodness know I can make a ton of quilts on what I already own. If I need something immediately, I have no guilt about buying it, and I've got a wishlist of Studio Dies I'm waiting to go on sale, which I have no issues with buying. I've mostly been trying to stop buying fabric and thread unless I honestly don't have something that will work in stash. 

I know myself, and I know the more I'm sewing, the less likely I am to buy, but when things come up and I can't sew for whatever reason, I am more likely to shop. 

Guess who has had a constant steam of company for the last month, and has company for another two weeks? It's been like running a bed and breakfast. No sewing time in sight. I've been really good about deleting or unsubscribing from quilt shopping sites, but I stumbled across a sale from someone's ad enabled blog the other day. 

I totally blew no-buy! I bought these two boxes of fat quarters, which are all tonals but from different lines. Each box has 90 fat quarters in it, so I got a total of 180 fat quarters, for a total of $220. That's 45 yards of quilt shop quality fabrics for $220, would you have held out? 

I can make excuses until the cows come home, i.e. tonals will help me use the prints in my stash, I use a lot of tonals as soon as I acquire them, the color variety will keep my stash workable, etc... The simple fact of the matter is that I caved, and I'm not sorry. I refuse to feel guilt over my stash. I use a lot of fabric, and I like having it readily on hand, so I can make a quilt without shopping at all. If I die tomorrow, and other people have to deal with my stash, so be it. I've done plenty for my kids in their lives, if they have to deal with some fabric, let them. 

Even with this purchase, I've used more fabric this year than I've bought. I'm not going into debt to make quilting purchases, and I am regularly using stash. I feel no guilt or shame for my quilting stuff. 

I've downsized tons of stuff in my house. I have two closets that are basically empty, and a couple more that have only a few things in them. I've purged our book collection from thousands to a couple hundred, I've gotten rid of lots of kitchen items, linens, clothes, collectibles, furniture, and yes, I've even purged things from stash. I buy less of everything these days, because I don't really need much. 

I've been reading all these articles lately that seem to want to shame people who have a stash of quilting supplies. Yeah well, I'm not buying into that. If you don't want a stash, that's perfectly fine by me, but don't try to make me feel bad about mine. If I fall off my self-imposed no-buy, that's OK. I have quilting goals, and I'm still heading in the right direction overall, even if I do slip a bit from time to time.

Stash or no stash, no-buy, low-buy, buy ALL the things, take all the classes, self-taught, quilt by check, longarm, quilt on DSM, join all the guilds, lone quilter, whatever, can't we all just enjoy quilting?

My Family

We think it's been 8 years since we had all five of our kids together, but we couldn't find any photographic evidence of that. If it wasn't then, it was 12 years ago, before DD#1 moved to South Africa.

Last weekend, we had all five kids for a couple hours. It was only a couple hours, but those hours were priceless. We were missing one son-in-law, but we had the other four spouses and lots of grandkids.



^This is the whole gang.



^DH and I with our five.

The last photographic evidence we found with all five was this pic from 12 years ago.

This was taken right before DD#1 moved to South Africa.






They recreated the photo and the youngest said it was much harder this time ;-)

I wanted a photo of the three youngest grandbabies, which turned out to be be too much to ask.



This was the best of those, and it's not a great photo. These three grandbabies are less than a year apart in age. Our oldest grandson is turning 10 this month, so mostly they are pretty spread out, but these three came rapid fire!

I've still got a houseful of company. Both my sons have gone home. One almost came back due to a gas leak, but they got that sorted. DD#2 and family are here because their air conditioning is out, and due to an emergency in South Africa, I'll have three grandkids for two weeks while DD#1 and DSIL see to that. I've got various other grandkids staying the night here and there due to childcare issues, so it's been crazy around here. 

I doubt any sewing will happen until at least mid August for me. I may do some sewing with the grandkids that are staying two weeks. We've had so many people in the house, all my sewing cabinets in the sewing room are folded up and there's an air mattress in there. In the last ten days we went from 2 people, to 5, to 10, to 11, to 13, to 5, and in the next couple days we'll be up 2 for one night, then up 6, down 3. DD#2 is a complete unknown, because they are waiting for a new air conditioner to be installed in there house. The inside of their house is almost 100 degrees, and with a newborn that's not a good situation. Best to be flexible and just go with the flow. 

If I don't get a chance to blog, don't worry, I'm just crazy busy with family.

Out of Pins!

I finally ran out of basting pins! I now have 12 UFO's basted and ready to be quilted. 

How's that for a stack of basted quilts? Six of these quilts have Frankenbatts. I am finished with the poly batting scraps. I have three extra poly Frankenbatts I didn't use this go around. One is a baby size, one throw size, and one twin. I measured the battings after I finished piecing them, and wrote the size down and pinned it to each. I had some very small poly batting scraps left, but I'm flinging them to my sister who uses them for stuffing.

I am not finished with the cotton batting, but I did use up all the long strips. I think I likely have enough left to piece a couple baby sized Frankenbatts, maybe even one of those a throw sized. I have some really small pieces of cotton batting left, which I'll likely piece for potholders or placemats.

I could have finished with the batting scraps today, but I needed a break from that. Instead I got the binding sewn on the dinosaur quilt.

It's been washed and I even have it wrapped already!

I also whipped up a couple of placemats for Mr. LJ. The last time I made placemats for the grandkids he was too little to get any. He likes everything that goes. I only had a fat quarter of Thomas fabric, so the backside has airplanes. The car fabric I had enough for both sides. I'm not sure how he'll do with placemats, he's just as likely to use it to easily throw his whole meal on the floor as he is to enjoy it. I told DD#2 if he likes them and does well with them, I'll happily make more, but this is enough to test the waters. After doing so many intense projects lately, it was pretty fun to just decide to make a couple placemats and whip them out in a day. 

Tomorrow DS the Elder arrives with his family for a visit. It was funny, I was summoned to do jury duty while DS the Younger was in town, and it was rescheduled to tomorrow. I just called and now it's been cancelled, which thrills me to no end, because I didn't want to miss any time with my boys or their families to do jury duty. 

I'm not expecting any time to sew in the next week or more, family time beats sewing every time! With the wedding quilts finished, Mr. J's birthday quilt done, most of the batting scraps dealt with, and a dozen quilts basted, it's a great time for a break. It would have been great to be finished with the batting scraps, but I'll take this much done. I've been working hard to get this much done, and I deserve a break. 

Time to Frankenbatt!

Some people toss batting scraps, others only piece batting scraps for small projects, but I hate to waste anything, so I make Frankenbatts. Most of the batting I buy is on a roll, I only buy king sized batting packaged. If I could find a good source of king sized batting rolls, I'd likely buy that on a roll as well. I feel like rolls give me the best value with the least amount of piecing Frankenbatts. Even off a roll I tend to give myself a couple extra inches on each side,  and if it's too tall, I end up with batting scraps. 

When I set up my current sewing room, which is much larger than my previous one, I took batting scraps into consideration. I have a pop-up mesh hamper I bought specifically to hold batting scraps.  I stuck the hamper into the walk in closet, and added a large laundry basket next to it, with my thought being I would put basted quilts waiting to be quilted in the laundry basket. It worked nicely.... for a little while.

The last couple of years I've been overtaken with deadline quilts. I made five wedding quilts last year, three this year, and numerous baby quilts in between. I've also been trying to get a handle on UFO's. When I'm doing a bunch of stuff with deadlines, I don't want to stop and take the time to piece Frankenbatts. So my pop up hamper, which was basically empty when I stuck it in the closet two years ago, was overflowing with batting scraps. The laundry basket I had planned to store basted quilts in, yeah, that was overflowing with batting scraps too. 

This week I dumped all the batting scraps out, and started divided them into piles by fiber content. In this photo the cotton batting is on the right, poly on the left. The cotton batting pile only looks small because I didn't think to take a photo until after I had made two cotton Frankenbatts and basted them into quilts. The cotton pile was originally close to the same size. 

At this point I've already pieced four Frankenbatts, all of which are already basted into quilts. The largest of the quilts I used a Frankenbatt for this go around is 90x90. Most of the UFO quilt tops I have ready to baste are twin sized or smaller though, so I don't need to piece a bunch of huge Frankenbatts. 

There are a bunch of different methods to piece batting scraps together. Some people overlap the batting scraps and just use the quilting to hold it all together, others overlap the batting and sew a basting stitch. Some people buy fusible tape made just for that purpose. I prefer to use a ruler and straighten up the edges of the batting scraps, to make even strips. Using my blind hem presser foot, I use the widest zig zag my machine will do, and I butt the straight edges together and sew. I love the blind hem presser foot for this purpose, its got a flange down the middle of the foot, so I can butt each strip of batting against the flange, then it sews over a finger like extension on the back of the foot, which keeps the batting from bunching up or puckering.

I'm not done piecing batting, but I did put the empty laundry basket back into the closet and I'm piling up the basted quilts in it.

Isn't that a great pile of basted quilts, all UFO's to boot!

My goal is to baste quilts until I'm out of pins. This is how many pins I have left. I am reclaiming pins during my hour of FMQ every day though. I don't baste as closely as I used to, except on the edges of the quilt. With an 18" throat on my Tin Lizzie, I can keep a lot more area flat while quilting, so I have no issues with pinning 6-8 inches apart, where before I used to pin no more than 3-4 inches apart. Since none of the quilts I have ready to baste are that big, I'm thinking I may have enough pins to baste 3 more quilts. I'm hoping to be finished with the Frankenbatts and basting by Sunday at the latest, I have out of town company coming next Thursday for a week. 

This may leave you with a smile. I've been quilting my grandson's dinosaur quilt this week, and with all the lights I use to light up my longarm, it really charges the glow in the dark fabric in the border. Every time my timer goes off and I stop quilting, I hit the switch on the power strip and all the lights go off at once.

I get to see the green glow of dinosaur skeletons before I go take a break. It makes me smile every time!