Quilting Weather

 I know for a lot of places quilting weather involves rain or snow, but here it's all about the heat.

Here is our weather forecast. That 83 degrees, that was at 8:30 AM. If you prefer weather forecasts in Celsius, here you go.

Anyway you look at it, it's going to be HOT! I've never been a summer girl, and now I live someplace that has TWO summers! We have dry summer, followed by wet summer. Anyone who insists Arizona only has a dry heat hasn't been here in August. It's still not as humid as some places, but if we are having a good monsoon year, we can get rain for a short time every day. It's the super high temps of June that bring the moisture up from Mexico, and cause our monsoon season. June is typically our hottest and driest month. 

When it's 110 degrees outside, I don't want to leave the house. Air conditioning is my friend. The air conditioner has a hard time keeping up with these kind of temperatures, so I do my best to not make it any hotter in the house. I try not to use the oven this time of year, the slow cooker doesn't heat up the kitchen. If I need to make bread, it's in a bread machine. As far as quilting goes, the major issue is the iron. I try to use the iron as little as possible, and for as short a period of time as possible. I'm more likely to do several short ironing sessions than one long one. 

Last year we had an unusually cool June, and our monsoon was the second worst on record. Since we get half of our yearly rainfall during monsoon, that's a really bad thing. I'm actually routing for the high temps this year, because we really need the rain. I'm just planning on staying home and quilting during those high temps. 

I started quilting one of the three wedding quilts I need to finish ASAP. This one is for a wedding in July. It is a large throw and I backed it with a purple minky. Minky creates a lot of drag, so I'm opting to crosshatch the center with a walking foot, which is much easier on my arm. When I'm crosshatching squares 6" or smaller (these are 3"), I tend to just aim for the opposite corner and not mark anything. When I get to the edge of where I want that quilting, instead of breaking thread, I just pivot the quilt and keep sewing. Depending on whether your rows are odd numbers of blocks or even numbers, sometimes I can crosshatch the whole section and never break thread (unless the bobbin runs out) Sometimes you might have to start over in a different corner to get it all done. If the quilt is square, the two center diagonal lines must be started and stopped, but after that you can start at the corner of the second block and use the pivoting method. If that doesn't make sense, and if that interests you, let me know and I'll do up a tutorial on it. 

I'm still debating how to quilt the borders. I think with the fussy cut border print, I'm just going to stitch in the ditch, then echo that on those green lines. I'll do some FMQ on the purple borders. 

Since I had to take down the sewing machine in the living room due to company, when I set it back up I switched machines.

It's best to sew on your machines from time to time, to keep things from freezing up on you. This living room set up is a good place to use the machines I don't sew with as often. I've gotten rid of a few of my vintage machines, and I'm open to passing on a couple more, so sewing with them can give me a better idea of which ones I'm willing to part with. I really like the colored machines though, they just make me smile. 

Sometimes deadlines don't bother me, and I'm really motivated to get them done on time. Right now I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, and my method of dealing with that might surprise you. This machine in the living room? I'm only allowing myself to work on non-deadline stuff on it. Even if I only sew for 15 minutes a day on it, it has to be something that has no deadline. Sometimes a little playtime goes a long way in reducing stress.

I am getting deadline stuff done too. I'm doing one hour of quilting per day on the wedding quilt above. I quilt on my Janome M7. I'm piecing another wedding quilt on my vintage Singer 201, which is my piecing machine of choice. I've been piecing at least an hour per day. My Bernina is open for other projects, I have one quilt in rows, and I'll likely sew the rows together on the Bernina just because the cabinet it's in is better suited to that than the table the Singer 201 is in. I need to make DH some new scrub tops, and I'll sew those on the Bernina, and I have another weighted blanket ready to fill, and that will be done on the Bernina too. 

I cut out the first scrub top yesterday, and as I looked at all the various flatware I was using as pattern weights, I decided that some of these poly pellets I'm trying to use up could go to work in some real pattern weights! I've been looking up DIY pattern weight tutorials, and I'm debating which type I'd like to make. I think I like the pyramid-ish ones best. 

Lest you think all I do is sew, June is a decluttering month for me and two of my girls. We are getting rid of one thing on the first, two on the second, three on the third, etc... Since today is the tenth, I need to come up with ten things to weed out. I think today I'm going to go through my jewelry, and I'll likely have enough to count for tomorrow too. I declutter pretty regularly, but I'm still finding stuff that can go. We have a chat group going and we have to show photos of what we decluttered that day. It's a good way to keep us accountable without any drama of a large group. By the end of the month we'll each have gotten 465 things out of our houses. I'm donating or recycling what I can, but some things are bound for the trash, and I'm OK with that. My main method of cutting down on clutter is being mindful of how much I buy. If it's not coming in the house, it won't be having to leave it either. It's easier to manage that now that we don't have a houseful of kids. I've always been big on buying secondhand too, and I think that's good for the planet as well.