It's Happened!

First, there was this:

 My machine has been turned on; see the reflection of the light bulb?

And then there was this:

The center section for my bow tie quilt has been sewn together. From here, it will get a solid border, then a border of more bow ties and from there I still need to decide. This section measures 36.75"x39.5" so will have to do the maths as to how wide I want the border while making sure it will accommodate the bow tie border, but for now, I'm really happy to have finally put my foot to the peddle and accomplish some quilt piecing! Hmmm, now where are the rest of the bow tie blocks? I know they're here somewhere...


[Apologies for the photo quality. I've noticed my camera is not taking good photos any longer, and using my phone for photos & then off-loading & editing is hugely inconvenient. Maybe I should put in a Christmas suggestion to the resident 'Santa'.]

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.

Then There Was This

Hmmm, even though I was very careful in separating duplicates from each unique fabric, it would appear I missed one.  This one:

is the same as this one:

so that one is going to be replaced.  And then, it would appear once again, that I mis-counted the number of unique blocks I had, as now laying them out again on the design wall sewn into bigger blocks of four bow ties, I'm six individual bow tie blocks short, for my planned 12 x 13 bow ties center.  That or my pesky kitty ran off with them or I put them in the wrong pile while taking them off the design wall. Probably the latter. 

Empty space for "missing" six bow ties.

I have a bunch of pre-cut sets I can search through for six more uniques, but will have to find a black that's close enough in tone and texture.  I have a Kona, but Kona tends to be heavier textured than what I used.  I have a piece of a black, but it seems to be a looser weave than I used too.

For six addition, and one replacement.

Good, I do have seven more unique sets, one for the duplicate replacement and six for the bad count.  Now, to see if I have any black scraps that will work, I would only need enough to make 14, 2" squares - 2 squares per block.

Resting on black.

After carefully looking at texture and "color" of black, using a previously sewn block, I chose this one.  It's not exact, but closest of the few choices I had at hand.  Looking at them under my OttLite help in the choosing.

I may tackle that this afternoon after church (online as we decided we didn't want to battle the holiday 'return' traffic on the freeways), or I may figure out where I left off on En Provence...and remove the cat hair since the cat decided to use that bin as a sleeping spot a few times!  Thank God for lint rollers :)

Making an Effort

This year I'm only following along with, and printing out the steps, of Bonnie Hunter's 2017 Mystery Quilt, On Ringo Lake...at least so far.  But something kicked in finally yesterday as I was reviewing the instructions, and seeing the pictures others were posting of their already completed units. I wanted to sew.

I'd also been looking at my Black Tie Party project on my design wall, and while nice to look at, it kept reminding me of all the projects that lay unfinished, so I cleared off the area around my sewing machine, or at least enough room, and took down all the unique blocks, placing them in a bin.  I realized I was off by one of the 156 I had calculated (there was a duplicate I missed) so I had to make another from a fabric that was not already in the mix.  Once that was done, I started putting two blocks together, while watching the Star Wars where Han Solo was killed off as the premium channels are free for the weekend, randomly matching by grabbing without looking, though I admit I'd occasionally say no to a match and grab another.  

When those were all sewn, I placed them all back into the bin (except for the ones I held back for the odd-numbered row) and randomly grabbed and matched two sets and pinned them, and that's what's in the picture, waiting to be sewn.  During this process I found I had one block rotated wrong, so had to fix that.  

It was hot yesterday, 87º and my little room warmed up enough to have to turn on a fan.  It'll be a little cooler today, but still in the 80s; tomorrow too, though Monday will only be in the 60s with a 40% chance of rain.  I hope the rain happens, I miss rain and clouds.

Design Wall Monday, 18 January 2016

Last week was all about my "Black Tie Party" of scrappy bow ties on a solid black background.  I've progressed no further than getting a feel for where I am with that project and making sure I have the unit sets needed.  I was missing a piece or two, and couldn't find a match in my scraps or precuts so those pieces became scraps themselves with other fabrics replacing them.  I've put the bow ties away again for now.  

Bow Tie sets

After reviewing Scrap O' Nine Tails and having worked on the strip sets as of last week's post, I also recalculated how big I wanted the quilt and proceeded to prep the fabric for, and cut, the alternating plain blocks.  I calculated that I needed 336 plain blocks, and 336 pieced 9-Patch blocks.  

336,  2 3/4" neutral squares

Sampling of 9-Ps and alternating squares.

The finished size of each 9-P and of each plain square will be 2 1/4".  Using neutrals as the background (alternating squares) and also in so many of the 9-Ps, it seems a bit blah, but warm in overall tone.  Some of the fabrics are pretty bright (note the blue & red in the upper right corner) yet so many of these fabrics are from the '80s and '90s with their Americana hues and patterns, as with the red and tan stripe near the center and the small red and tan plaid in the lower left corner.  This is truly a scrap-tastic project and has at least 190 or more different fabrics in it.

This has now been packed away as well with a much clearer record and plan put on paper. 

I'll be pulling out and reviewing my Spools project next.  It was also begun as a Leader/Ender project.

Another thing I did last night, so I would know where I stand in my projects, was to review my Excel spreadsheet as to what stage my projects are in, and how many are in certain stages.  I discovered:

• 4 are pinned and ready to quilt
• 17 are flimsies and could be pinned
• 5 need borders to become flimsies
• 1 has completed blocks ready to be sewn into rows
• 5 have all pieces cut and some sewing has been done on them
• 3 have all pieces cut but nothing sewn
• 3 have been chosen to do and assigned a project number but nothing has been done on them other than some fabric selection

I have my work cut out for me.  I'll be doing busy work this week most likely.  So many new projects keep calling to me, but from looking at this list, I really need to get some of these done and 'out the door'.  

Don't forget to head over to Patchwork Times to see what else is happening among our quilt/blog friends.