Such a Day

Overall, the last few days have been really low energy days.  I think the vertigo that returned a week ago after a five or six month absence is zapping my energy...it takes effort to focus you know, so that you don't swirl right onto the floor. 

A large portion of SoCal has been burning up, and it's taken energy to watch the wall-to-wall coverage.  One of the fires was in our general area, but the wind took it away from us so we didn't get even the smoke from it.  Still, with the high winds that were relentless, and can be unpredictable, tensions have been high all week.  Humidity drops into the single digits and all of this combined just grates on me.

For the last couple days, I've been feeling an inner nudge to get back to work on En Provence.  I last worked on it on April 10th.

Well, this evening I received a message from an old friend in another state clear across the country, and she deeply explained some very sad and disturbing situations going on in her family, and it breaks my heart.  It's the kind of situation that just drops you to your knees to plead with the Lord to bring change, peace, comfort and support on their behalf.

With this on my heart and mind, I felt the need to focus on something else while I could pray, and process the trials she's going through, and there was En Provence, waiting patiently. 

First of the blocks to get back under the needle.

When I left off back in April, I had been working on putting the blocks together.  The blocks are a set of smaller blocks sewn into rows, and those rows sewn into one large block.  I knew I had pinned together many, if not most, of the final two sections of those blocks, but really could not remember where I was within the directions.  I began by going ahead and sewing the seam of those that were pinned, then I pressed those seams before looking at the instructions.  All was good, but I'm sure I probably pressed some in the wrong direction.

The stack of pinned block components.

Once those were done, I had all but four finished; for some reason they weren't with the ones I finished, though I found them and they are pinned.

The required number of a border blocks are done, but then there's another border block for the outside of that which is only in the primary block sections.  I'm thinking I have a whole lot of time yet to spend on this project....it may get set aside again.

On Monday, I'm planning to go with my friend Panda, to the nearest quilt shop to see if I can find a satisfactory black for the Bow Ties quilt borders.  I might check Joann's, it's across from our Walmart and I need to do some shopping there too...should have done it today as I don't generally like to go there on the weekend.

More Progress

There were several days this week that I thought I wouldn't be getting back to my bow ties quilt work, but today, I decided to just set everything else aside, and worked on it for just under 3.5 hours.

The duplicate was re-done with a unique fabric...I didn't take any pics of that process, nor of putting together the six that seemed to vanish, get stolen, or that I incorrectly counted.

Today's work also got these blocks and rows put together.  

Approximately 1/3 of the uniques in that lower section.

A 4 x 12 section completely sewn together.  I got to thinking too, for my plan to use black as a border between the 13 x 12 unique sets unit (once they're all sewn together) and an outer single (maybe double) row of duplicate bow ties all the way around, that I will have to shop for a black that works.  Well, I'll cross that bridge eventually.

What? Well, who are you?  Little scalawags! They're the missing six bow ties! 

Original six uniques that went missing!

It would appear they jumped out of the bin and landed in a little pocket on that shelf.  So now, instead of being in the center unique section, they may get to play in the border rows.  I am relieved that I truly didn't mis-count the original number of pieces that had been on my design wall!  I second guess myself a lot lately though.