Sewing Drought

 Our visit with DS the Elder and family was great! Easter went well and we all had a good time. During the time they were here we made it out to the Sonoran Desert Museum, and to DD#1's homestead where we held the baby goats and pet all the animals. We had quality time with family and nothing beats that!

They left last Friday,  so you'd think I'd dive right back into the quilting studio, and I have sewn some, but not as much as you'd think. The thing is, we've needed our ductwork replaced for a while now, but kept putting it off. Now that DH is seriously talking retirement, now is the time to tackle those jobs we've put off. Timing ductwork replacement is tricky because you can't use heating or cooling while it's being done. I'd much rather be cold than hot, so I really wanted it done in March, but March was really busy, and we didn't get estimates until late March. 

The first estimate was crazy high, and the company was unfamiliar with our style of house. We own a tri-level house, which is much more common in the Midwest than the desert Southwest. I had done some internet research on how much duct replacement should cost, so I knew they were way outside of normal pricing. The next estimate we got was very reasonable, and when the repairman walked in, we found out he was from the Midwest and had owned a house just like ours! Just the familiarity he had with this style of house made us feel much better about going with this company. 

So, days before DS the Elder arrived, we scheduled the duct replacement for the week after he left, which is this week. We knew it would take multiple days, and on at least some of those days I wouldn't be able to get to my sewing room at all. I had all of last weekend to sew, but I didn't want to get into anything that mattered, because being interrupted on a major project can be really frustrating for me. Rather than work on a deadline project, or be in the middle of FMQ a quilt, I opted to just work on a random project or two. 

A couple posts ago, I showed you a block that used partial seams. That project has been cut out for a year (or maybe two).

Here are a few of the finished blocks, but I've actually finished all the blocks!  Right now my colorway of Indigo Way is up on the design wall. so I laid out a few blocks on my bed to see how they'd look. This is one of the rare occasions that I only cut out as many blocks as I needed for ONE quilt, and I cut out the borders at the same time, so once the center is assembled I'll be adding borders immediately.

I also worked on some other blocks that, again, have been cut out for a long time.

This project is quite typical of me. I was cutting up 3.5" scrap strips, and I cut as many blocks as I could from the colorful scraps. No counting, no sorting, no plan. I took a length of white fabric and cut as many 3.5" squares from it as I could. I knew that wouldn't be enough, and some of my colored scraps were quite light in color. I had a piece of darker gray fabric lying around, so I cut as many squares from it as I could. Again, no counting, no sorting, just cutting what I could from the lengths of fabric I had. I knew that wouldn't be enough squares for the blocks either, but no worries, I can cut more fabric later. I started with the blocks with white squares, and sewed up blocks until I ran out. Now I'll be working on the blocks with gray squares, which I'll be matching up mostly lighter scraps. When I run out of gray squares, then I'll count and see where I'm at. I'm planning on using these for donation quilts, and 9" blocks add up pretty quickly. I'm sure I'll end up with multiple quilts, but how many I don't know. I might mix up the background colors, and go for a positive/negative thing, or keep the same colored backgrounds together. Will I end up going for a third background color when I run out of squares? All of that is yet to be determined. I have another gray fabric that is close to what I am using, and of course I have more white, but not the same white. Until I finish the blocks I can make with what I already have cut, I won't be making any decisions on that. 

My pile of bonus HST's is piling up as I finish these blocks too. I didn't draw lines on these squares to get my bonus HST's the exact size I want them, so I'll be trimming these before I press them open. That's an easy job to do in my living room while I can't get to the sewing room. I get four bonus HST's from each bigger block, so I should have enough for a bonus quilt when I'm done. Doing sew and flip corners is never wasteful for me, because I always use the "waste" in another quilt, or sometimes for borders in the same quilt. 

Wondering how the replacement is going?

That was some rusty ductwork! This house had been cooled with an evaporative cooling system for years, also called a swamp cooler. Systems like that force air through wet filters and use the evaporative process to create cooler air. They work well during the dry months, but just make things humid and miserable during monsoon season.  They also rust out your ductwork. We took the evaporative cooler off the house years ago, and only use an air conditioner for cooling. Replacing the ductwork with definitely help it be more energy efficient like it should be, and since we no longer use evaporative cooling at all, we shouldn't have rusty ductwork again. I am very happy we are getting this work done before summer hits again, but we cut it close. The forecast says it will be 90F today. 

This afternoon the drywall guy will be coming by to start repairing the holes they needed to cut in the walls and ceilings to replace the ductwork. I'll be glad to have this project behind us. Now to decide which house project to tackle next!