Creative Hijacking

 I was working on my deadline quilt, really I was...then it happened...a creative hijacking.

Surely I'm not the only one this happens to, you're working on a project, and then an idea strikes that is so invasive it cannot be ignored, and you find yourself putting aside what you should be working on, and following a rabbit trail of creative thought. Yes, it's a creative hijacking.

It started out so simply. My deadline project has attic window blocks, and I used the cheater method of using a half square triangle in the corner instead of doing those mitered corners.

As usual for me, I didn't count the half square triangles, I just cut a bunch of them. I needed 80 for my deadline project, but I cut maybe 120 or so. After I finished the blocks for the deadline quilt, those extra HST's were calling to me, I LOVE playing with extra HST's. 

I made a couple of these blocks, and tried to get back to my deadline project. This is where things got out of control. I've been looking over old projects, and old plans for projects, because last year I tackled a couple languishing projects and got them into quilt tops, and I felt really great about that. I'd like to do the same this year. During a declutter, I came across the curtains I made for the grandtwins nursery. DD#3 had chosen a geisha/samurai theme for the nursery, and I found this really colorful fabric to make curtains. I kept the curtains and always wanted to make a quilt with the fabric.

 I realized that quilt block would look pretty good with the fabric I wanted to use in a quilt. The thing is, the lighter purple fabric was some Donna Dewberry crackle fabric from either the 90's or early 00's. I didn't have much left, only about 12" WOF. I had plenty of the darker purple fabric left. I made as many HST's as I could, even digging through my strip bins and finding two 3.5" strips of that lighter purple, that I cut down to 2.5". I still didn't have enough blocks to make it work. I evaluated how much of the novelty fabric I had, and I figured I could make a twin sized quilt pretty easily using it as alternating blocks, depending on what size I cut the blocks. The focus fabric is so busy, I knew I needed a divider fabric, so my first thought was to make a 1" frame for the stars in black, then cut the novelty fabric into 10.5" squares. Well, those dimensions didn't work for making a twin sized quilt. I couldn't get enough squares that large from the curtain panels to work. I could get plenty of 6.5" squares from the novelty fabric, and I could frame that instead, but I didn't want to cut the novelty fabric that small. I decided to cut the squares 8.5" and just use black sashing instead.

The thing is, I still didn't have enough star blocks. I started pulling fabrics from stash, to see what I had to make more star blocks. That's when things really ramped up and the deadline quilt was completely set aside. 

I've spent long hours sewing this week, and here's what's on the design wall.

I haven't cut the black sashing yet, though I did pull a solid black for the sashing and a black with white polka dots for the border. It looks pretty busy now, but I think the black will calm it all down and there is a lot of black in the print. 

Of course, I never counted any of the pieces as I was cutting them, so I have extra blocks, and more novelty fabric blocks. I have enough novelty print squares to make a throw, it's amazing how many 8.5" blocks I could cut when I couldn't get enough 10.5" blocks from the same amount of fabric. I'm not quite done sewing the star blocks, so I'm not sure if I'll have enough of those for the throw sized quilt. My plan is to finish the star blocks I have HST's for today, then go back to assembling my deadline quilt. Now that I can see where my hijacking went, I'm not so frantic. 

I need to get going on that attic windows deadline quilt, my granddaughter's birthday is in less than a month, and I need to mail the quilt! It's just in rows now! I still need to sew the rows to each other and get the border on, plus figure out if I have enough of the fabric I want to use for the backing. If I do, it will need to be pieced, if I don't, I'll use a purple wideback that I have in stash. If I can clear the decks from the quilt that hijacked me, I should be able to finish assembling the deadline quilt this weekend, and baste it next week. Wish me luck, and no more distractions!

Barn Quilts

 DH is really into barns. Back when we lived in the Midwest he was always taking photos of them. Obviously I'm really into quilts, so barn quilts being something we both enjoy is pretty much a given. In fact, for several years now, I've bought barn quilt calendars to hang in the kitchen.

When DH bought a big shed to be his woodshop he chose a shed that looks like a barn, and he wanted a barn quilt on it. We've actually had the barn quilt up for a while, but I don't think I ever blogged about it. We hemmed and hawed about which quilt block we should choose, and I finally decided that since it was going on a wood shop, it should be Carpenter Star.

DD#2 knew we really wanted a barn quilt for the shed, so she talked to her husband, and he made it for us.

He did a fantastic job, and DD#1 and her husband liked it so well, this past Christmas they asked DH to make them one for their new chicken coop/duck house.

So, even though DH didn't have to make our barn quilt, he did make one. DD#1 had me choose the block, so I chose Duck Tracks.

They are going for an Americana type look on their homestead, so this worked. 

Here is a photo of some of their eggs. The duck egg is the odd man out and the only white egg in the photo. All the other eggs are chicken eggs. They give us eggs regularly, so I've gotten used to my eggs looking like Easter all year round! 

DD#1 and DSIL really liked their barn quilt, and I know I never posted what they got me for Christmas. 

I hung it on a door in my sewing room that I actually never use, it goes to a bathroom, and if I use that bathroom I usually use the door from the hallway. It's covering up a really ugly mirror the last homeowner glued to the door. I much prefer looking at this than that hideous mirror. 

I know it's kind of an odd post, but I really didn't do anything quilty this week that's photo worthy. I've got Miss X's quilt into rows, and I made a bunch of units for a future quilt, but the blocks aren't even done yet. I did cut the rest of the fabric for those blocks yesterday. I also received my March/April Quiltmaker magazine, and I cut all the blocks for clue 2 of the Ruby Jubilee mystery quilt, but I haven't sewn any of them yet. 

After I press what I sewed up today, there will be no quilting action going on for a few days. Tomorrow we're doing an outing to the zoo with DD#1's family, then I'm keeping their two girls for the weekend. I've got crafts planned, a tea party with my sister, and maybe even an outing for ice cream! Playing with the grandkids is a good reason to take a quilting break! 

First Finish of 2022

 The baby quilt is a finish!

The minky backing looks good with the front I think. I have enough of all the fabrics except the border fabric and the purple to make another baby quilt. I have a little bit of the border fabric left, just not enough to play a major role in making another quilt. The purple I only started with a fat quarter, so anything left from that is already in the scrap user system. 

I should be working on the other deadline quilt, but I needed a break. DH's work travel plans were cancelled at the last minute, but we did get to do his birthday dinner with some of our kids and their families, so that's good. 

I finished the blocks for clue one of the Ruby Jubilee mystery in Quiltmaker magazine. I just received the magazine with clue two in it, so I'll have to get those blocks cut out. Since I'm using men's shirts, there are a lot of stripes and plaids. I'm not usually a fan of sampler style quilts, but the limited color palette and an overabundance of blue men's shirts made me want to try this one. I easily have more than twice the number of blue shirts than any other color. I only buy blue shirts at the pay by the pound Goodwill stores, if I'm choosing shirts at a regular thrift store I avoid blue since I have so many, but I hunt for pink, yellow, orange and purple especially. I'll grab other colors that are marked down too, but I am pretty cheap when it comes to buying men's shirts for quilting, and $2 is my upper limit per shirt. Even at thrift stores it's hard to get shirts for that price anymore, everything has gotten so expensive! 

I've been cutting up my stash of shirts that don't read as one color. I've worked on them and put them away multiple times already. In fact, I put them away today, because I'm watching three of the grandkids tomorrow, and I don't need rotary cutters out and tempting them. I try to put away everything sharp and close the door to the sewing room when my grandkids are here. I'll get back to cutting them soon, and happily I've got almost half the shirts I want to cut up cut into at least strips. I have several patterns in mind for those shirts, so I'm cutting strips in the sizes that will work with those quilts. I can always supplement shirts that do read as one color, which I'm not working with right now, aside from the blue and neutral shirts for the Ruby Jubilee mystery. For the most part I am just cutting the largest strips I need first, then figuring out which other sizes I can get from from what's left. My stash of shirt strings is growing quickly, so I'll have to work on a string quilt or two later this year. Since I stopped saving 1.5" strips, I'm considering anything between 3/4" wide and not wide enough to get a 2" strip from a string. 

Today I dug into my 2.5" strips and cut more for a leader/ender project. I realized the project was looking very blue, and I needed some other colors since it's supposed to be a very scrappy quilt. I did get one row of my next deadline quilt together today, but I was more into cutting than sewing today. 

If any of you have any good ideas on how to discourage cats from hanging out on your yard let me know. I have a pretty serious cat allergy, and it seems like two cats have moved into our yard. The larger one has a collar, the smaller one doesn't, but because of my allergy I can't exactly go catch the bigger one and see if there's an address on the collar. The smaller one I think is feral. They look just alike, so the smaller one could be offspring of the bigger one, but it's not a tiny kitten, more adolescent sized. I keep trying to talk DH into getting a couple dogs, but he's not in favor of that right now. They have been spending all day in our yard for the last couple weeks,  so I don't think the bigger cat belongs to one of the neighbors. We don't have any food out there for them, and we don't even have bird feeders , so that's not attracting them. We do live in the desert, so I'm sure there's plenty of rodents out there for them. If we have to we'll go the live trap route, but I was kind of hoping there was an easy deterrent I'm not aware of. 

Rollercoaster Ride

 Things have been in constant state of flux around here! It's just been crazy! The hospital here is short of nurses so DH has been covering for other nurses, then he finds out there is another hospital elsewhere in the state that is shorter on nurses, would he be interested in being detailed to another hospital temporarily. It's in the same medical system, so a temporary assignment is totally doable. Well, he said yes, and it it seems like the terms of him going are constantly changing. They want him two weeks, no, four to six weeks, or maybe 120 days, or maybe not at all. The hospital here is willing to let him go for six weeks, no two months, or maybe one month, or maybe not at all. No one is willing to give him info on lodging, even though it will be covered. We thought he'd be going this week, but now it looks like next week, but who knows??? I've packed, unpacked, made lists for various scenarios, this is crazytown! Details are literally changing multiple times per day, and it's really frustrating. 

To add in a complication, I've had a cold (NOT Covid) that has me coughing enough at night I spent a couple nights in the guest room so DH could sleep. During the day I'm pretty much fine, but get into bed and the coughing starts. Last night I hardly coughed at all, so definitely at the tail end of the cold now. Last week I had a great case of laryngitis and could only get out a croak, which is typical for me when I have a cold. I've been drinking a lot of tea, which is saying a lot because I don't really like tea. I'm a coffee girl. 

Since it looks like DH will be here this weekend, we're going to try to celebrate his birthday on Saturday. Not every day you turn 60. We never did get a family Christmas, so we're hoping to get a couple of our kids families to attend IF everyone is healthy. We've been cancelling things left and right if anyone is sick. I'm expecting my cold to be completely over by then, it's much better now, and I've already had it eleven days. 

Since I'm so out of sorts with other things, my quilting life is reflecting the chaos. I promised myself when February hit, I would drop everything and make the two March deadline quilts my priority. This past weekend I started getting ready for that change and I cut out the baby quilt, (and an unrelated king sized quilt kit, when the mood to cut strikes, I try to make the most of it). 

I not only got the baby quilt cut out, I sewed it into a top yesterday, this morning I pin basted it, and I'm already halfway done quilting it! 

I was thinking of quilting daisies on it, but when I sat down to quilt I opted for fans, because they looks like rainbows which better fits the sky theme. I'm hoping to finish this quilt tomorrow, then make the soft book "I Love You to the Moon and Back" that I bought a panel for. The burp rags are already made so if I get the quilt and book done I've got the baby gifts done! My niece asked for a moon and stars quilt, and it's more star than moon, but the book makes up for that I think. There are moons in the border fabric, and on the minky backing for the quilt, so there are moons on the quilt. I really like star quilts though, and this carpenter's star was a good choice since I was pressed for time. 

I started sewing the rows for my other March deadline quilt, but the baby quilt takes precedence. I did manage to finish assembling the three orange/yellow quilts I've had in rows for a few weeks. I normally press all quilt tops before they go into the quilt vault (A.K.A. sewing room walk-in closet) but right now I am far more concerned about getting stuff out of my way than putting it away neatly pressed. I sometimes have to press it again before I pin baste it, so this way I'll just press it once. 

After I get my deadline quilts done I can get back to the quilts I was working on, like the mystery. I finished another leader/ender project too, so it's ready to assemble into a quilt (or two). Oh, this weekend while cutting I kitted up the blocks for the first clue of the Ruby Jubilee Mystery in Quiltmaker magazine. I'm making mine with blue and neutral men's shirts, so maybe more of a sapphire jubilee!