{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Ordinarily, my very slight OCD and very much "rules following" personality would have me putting up a picture for each segment of {pretty, happy, funny, real}, but the process of creating these blankets and stuffies for Project Night Night has covered all the segments.

Once upon a time, Diane bought five yards of bright green fleece (on sale! at a great price! - hence, the five yards) with the idea of making soft appliqued blankets. That "once upon a time" may have been a year ago or so.

Eventually, the fleece was cut into seven blankies of varying sizes from toddler (27 x 36) to bigger kid (45 x 58). A hunt on a favorite embroidery site turned up some very cute owl appliques - a wise, non-threatening, brightly colored owl seemed like a good choice for security blankets for homeless kids.

Eventually, all seven appliques were done, each one unique. The fabric used is from a line called Birchtree lane, featuring feathers, birds and dots, coincidentally in bright blue, lime green, brown and tan - perfect on the bright green fleece. A bright blue and green stripe fabric from my stash provided the perfect binding.

Sleepy owl, flying in her sleep. The goal was to make
fun owls, not realistic ones.

Somewhere during this process, my favorite online quilting site offered a cute stuffed owl pattern for sale. How perfect would that be to go along with the blankie?

It would have been a lot easier if I hadn't made seven at once.

Heads with eyes attached, a pile of feet, lower bodies folded in
preparation for sewing the darts, a small piece with beaks.

I had just sewn the first beak down when I realized I'd sewn the upper body to the lower without first inserting the wings. Agh. Managed to salvage that one, then unsewed the rest to put in the wings. After that, things proceeded apace.

The end result makes me very happy.

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head at how long
it took me to finish her.

Each blanket and owl has a tiny tag sewn into a seam that says "Somebody Cares", which you can see on the unstuffed owls to the right of the completed one.

I need to take one more picture, of all the blankets and owls together, before I bring the whole lot to the donation box here at work. Then, it's back to looking out for another sale on fleece. Next up: Chickens.

Bonus craftiness:

I've been working on the dozen or so dishtowels that will replace my current, rather ratty ones. While most will have a simple bluework outline of a chef, I did take the time (close to 45 minutes each for the designs to stitch out) to do a couple of filled patterns, again from my favorite machine embroidery site. I also had a couple of not-my-color-but-perfect-for-Christmas towels left over from a silent auction project. Those went to a friend who has a gingerbread people-centric kitchen year round.

All these pretties make me happy, and the process has been both funny and real. What a blessing to be able to bless others!

New Year goal: Project completion

Piles lean precariously in multiple spots in the sewing studio, a sure sign of scatter brained behavior. In other words, not really finishing one thing before moving on to another.

Well, this is going to be the year of endings. Finishing things, or deciding they need to be handed on to someone who will finish them.

Over a year ago, I bought a dozen kitchen towels to embroider. A basket full of towels sits on top of the refrigerator; I generally go through one a day. After almost ten years of use, the ones I'm currently using are showing signs of age. Besides, it would be good practice to do so many, knowing they aren't meant as gifts and I can just...play.

Well, I ended up making a set of towels as part of a silent auction donation for the 2014 Christmas party, then two sets for the 2016 party. There were six towels in the pack I bought for the 2016 donation, two each of red, blue and green borders. The red and blue ones were used for the donation. The green ones? Well, my kitchen is blue, as are the towels I mean to do for me. But a friend has a passion for gingerbread people, and I had a cute set of gingerbread applique patterns, so...

None of these have been trimmed or cleaned up yet, but they are too cute not to share. The gingers are in the hoop applique - the body of the gingers and the bows are pieces of fabric, positioned on the background, tacked down, trimmed, then embroidered over.

The other two are actually two of my towels, finally. These are filled embroidery; the design is made entirely of machine embroidery. It was the first time I'd done a filled design that large (each chef is roughly 4 or 5 inches by six inches), and they took forever to stitch out. The result, however, was worth it.

Well, not worth it enough for me to do all twelve in filled designs. I've done another eight in bluework, where the outline and a few details of the chef are stitched in blue thread. Two more will be done with the high end design company's version of French chefs. That will need to wait until I have an entire weekend and more patience than I did today. Those designs are rather...intense.

Ah, but that's not all. After discovering I had bought the wrong foot for a scarf hemming project (long story not worth retelling), I moved on this afternoon to experimenting with the binding attachment purchased at the closing of my beloved local quilt store (purchased for half price - even I'm not crazy enough to pay full price for it).

When you feed your unfolded bias binding into the hopper on this attachment, it miraculously folds it and snugs it around the edge of the piece you are binding, just before the binding/quilt reaches the needle that sews it down. My "practice" pieces are the owl embroidered charity quilts.

I did the first one today.

As you can see, it works a treat. There is a definite learning curve (which is why I didn't photograph my very clumsy corners) and a certain art to using this thing, but for smaller projects, these single thickness fleece blankets and things like hot pads and placemats, it will be a great time saver.

Ordinarily, I'd have used green or blue thread to sew this on. Somehow, I knew I'd be ripping out, unsewing a bit as part of the learning process; the white thread is much easier to see when ripping.

Note that neither of these projects is actually done. There are still a couple of towels to embroider, not to mention all of them to do the picky, time consuming clean up work for. This owl quilt is done, but there are six more in the stack (each one bigger than the one before it).

Still, a decent start on a bitter cold Monday.

Quick update

Let's see...

Grocery delivery: Royally messed up, by them, not me. You are supposed to get an e-mail when your delivery is next, then another when the driver has arrived. It can be as long as fifteen minutes after that second e-mail before he is at my door, what with getting the right boxes and wheeling them to my door. I was upstairs, moving things in the bedroom in preparation for the mattress delivery, checking the desktop computer every five minutes for the first email, so I could go downstairs to wait. Humpf. The phone rang at ten to ten. It was downstairs, and by the time I got there, had gone to voicemail. It was Peapod, saying their driver had been there at 9:31, but since I wasn't home, they had just dropped the (cooler) boxes at the front door.

Furious. Fortunately, I had only two little frozen items (but they happened to be small strip steaks), along with a lot of refrigerator-type things, all of which are packed in iced down styrofoam coolers inside the delivery boxes. Let's just say I called them and gave them a substantial piece of my mind. Naturally, they couldn't (most likely wouldn't) schedule a pick up of the boxes until this afternoon. My strong suspicion is that the driver had a heavy load due to the holiday weekend, and preferred to dump and go.

Seriously rethinking using them anymore. Not the first time they have forgotten the notification.

Mattress: Quickest delivery ever. From the time I opened the door until they went on their way (taking not only the old mattress and box, but all the packing material), it couldn't have been more than ten minutes.

The set is much taller than I anticipated. Then again, I've been sleeping on a twenty year old, nine inch thick mattress on a nine inch box. The new mattress alone is 13 1/2" thick. That extra four inches makes quite the difference. My feet dangle when I sit on the edge of the bed, nowhere near touching the floor.

But oh, how nice it is for sleeping. The extra width (a whopping fifteen inches more) lets me sprawl out, even sleep sideways if desired. I do miss the headboard, as for some reason I've been sleeping mostly curled up against it for the last year. Breaking myself of that habit now, obviously. I slept straight through the night the first night (that single Tylenol P.M. I took for post-move aches may have contributed to that) and very, very well last night.

Air conditioning service: The poor service guy must have realized I thought he might be a pervert. So much was going on Friday, and I had done so much Thursday, I was already exhausted by the time he arrived (both groceries and mattress came earlier). I asked if he needed the outside water on, having a vague recollection that he needed it. He said yes, so I started down the basement steps...

...and he followed me.

Halfway down the flight I turned and asked, "Why are you following me?"

Not an unreasonable question; this wasn't the tech I'd had at the last couple servicings

Silly me. I had forgotten that a new tech would not know that the furnace/air conditioning interior unit is in my kitchen, in a small utility closet. I apologized profusely. And as it turns out, he has been family friends with my neighbors since he was three. Ay.

Still haven't done an actual "list" for vacation. I warmed up the sewing muscles, sewing four straight lines to create a design "wall" (54" wide white flannel printed with a 2" grid, like giant graph paper - sides hemmed and a casing at the top for a hanging bar - it works like a giant flannelgraph for quilt blocks, so you can move them around and try out different layouts without getting little threads all over the floor). Next up were several more straight lines, to make a cover for a 14 x 28" pillow form. The fabric is the leftover stuff from the bedroom valance, and the pillow goes in the bedroom (duh). I did the hand sewing of the decorative binding during the Indy 500.

Watched the race. The last sixteen laps (after that last big wreck) were some of the best racing I've seen in IndyCar for a while. Though I must point out that Montoya, Dixon and Power all got their starts in open wheel in the U.S. in ChampCar, not IndyCar. In fact, Montoya's other Indy win came when he was still a ChampCar driver (IndyCar needed the competing series' drivers in order to fill out the traditional 33 car field). As a rookie, he led 167 of 200 laps, spanking the rest of the field.

Did some cooking. Mixed up Cajun burgers, most to freeze and one for dinner tonight with baked sweet potato fries made from one of the biggest sweet potatoes I've ever seen. Blueberry muffins, english muffin breakfast sandwiches and a tomato tart tomorrow. I need to inventory and rearrange the freezer. And start cooking all three meals a day; there's quite a bit of food in the house.

Thunderstorms predicted almost every day this week. Predicted doesn't always come true, but it makes me want to hold off putting out the new patio umbrella and chairs. Warm, though, up in the high seventies/low eighties right through Friday.

Got the air conditioning checked out just in time.

The day after

Quiet holiday, which suits me just fine. Reading, sewing, cooking, eating.

That chicken recipe I mentioned in the last post? Oh my gosh, is it good. I'll admit, when I slid the pan into the oven - the twelve inch cast iron pan with the foil-covered chicken, topped with an eight inch cast iron pan, and, for good measure, the enamel-over-cast-iron lid to the french oven for extra weight - I wondered if it would really work.

Silly me. Dark, crispy but not dry skin. Moist, flavorful meat. I'll make this again in a heartbeat.

Though next time, I'm not going to mess around with spatchcocking a whole chicken. This would work equally as well - with considerably less work - with bone-in parts.

Potatoes baked in the oven with the chicken, to be joined by steamed green beans and carrots. A glass of chardonnay and cheddar for afters.

Leftovers of all for the weekend.

The sewing?

Working on the embroidery portions of the t-shirt quilt. this eventually will be the center of the quilt. Each t-shirt was also embroidered with the location of the various family holidays, along with the year if it wasn't already on the shirt. As of today, those are all done and I've started assembling the top into component rows. The pieced sections of the quilt are primarily blues, with some whites and a bit of grey for variety. Each t-shirt section has a tiny narrow flange of orange around it (classic blue jeans have orange stitching - the idea is that the backdrop to the shirts reminds you of jeans), thus the colors for this embroidery.

Quiet day today, too. Sewing, watching the first Hobbit movie while the pork I'd rubbed and thrown in the refrigerator to marinate Wednesday night slow roasted in the crock pot. Took it out about half an hour ago; it was difficult to get it out of the pot as it was falling to pieces. One of tomorrow's jobs is to do a quick rearranging of the freezer so I can parcel the pork out and freeze it for lunches, dinners and nibbling.

Honestly, while my"fun" list for this couple weeks has some running around on it, being home is very soothing. I'm making progress on the quilt, doing some organizing, reading, napping and generally enjoying the slower pace. There are still lots of things I need to do, but the important stuff is mostly done, leaving me time to do the homey fun stuff - sewing, spending an afternoon going through the pile of quilt magazines, sorting through the linen closet for donations, ditto for the bedroom closet. A quieter pace, a much quieter mind.

It's been unseasonably warm this past week; next week,however, it will be unseasonably cold, with highs south of twenty degrees for most of the week. I'm pretty sure I can arrange it so I don't have to leave the house at all that week...and that will be a good thing.

Little monsters

Way back at the end of last winter, I took a friend's old, reversible comforter and cut it into four smaller pieces. I did a bit of applique and embroidery on each, then bound them in a cute, bright stripe. The intention was to donate them to Project Night Night, a group that packages small blankets, a book and a stuffie in a canvas bag to be distributed to homeless children.

The finished quilts have been kicking around the house for months. The quilting on the comforter is a bit more worn than I thought, and I couldn't decide if I wanted to donate them, since they really want new or very gently used items. I went back and forth, but finally made up my mind to donate them.

Before that, however, pictures for my records.

All four. Two on the bright side of the comforter, two
on the lighter side.

There are three appliqued monsters, and one floral embroidery. The embroidery was a test - first time I'd done anything on something other than a single layer of fabric. While I don't have a picture of it, the back of the embroidery turned out very neat and presentable. Soft as well, which is important for a small child's quilt. The project says they often need the smaller sized blankets - these finish at about 45 x 50 inches.

Isn't she cute?

He is a darling. Should have done the words
in a different color, though.

The girl monsters have long eyelashes and are
apparently wearing blush.

The monsters are done via machine applique, but are pretty easy. You hoop up the base fabric as if you were going to do an embroidery piece. The machine will sew out the outline of the fist applique piece - in this case, the bodies. You place the applique fabric over the space, making sure it covers the outline, then then machine stitches a second straight line outline. You trim the fabric close to the outline, then the machine does the pretty satin stitch over that edge. Repeat for all the applique pieces. Then the machine finishes up the embroidery details.

It goes more quickly than you would think, though it is fussy, having to change out the color of thread fairly often. I think by the third applique quilt, I had my time down to about half an hour.

Little cuties. There are ten more "monsters" in the set, though those are a bit more complicated, with either more applique pieces or more details. These were the fist of this particular type of embroidery I've done - all things considered, they turned out well.

The fine art of distraction

Sigh. The to-do list for the day is rather long, though not particularly tedious. In spite of being up fairly early, not much has been knocked off the list.

The most recent distraction is this picture, or more specifically, ordering an enlargement of this picture. It was taken on a chilly weekend in January up in Sturgeon Bay. Several inches of new snow covered the mostly frozen bay; I simply had to pull over and take this picture. No processing at all after the fact, this image is straight from the under-$100 Canon digital point and shoot. The bigger picture will be part of a grouping that features a winter farmhouse scene a friend photographed. He was kind enough to get me a 9 x 12" print when I said I liked it. It's been professionally framed, and is now leaning against the wall waiting for me to actually put a new nail in my fairly recently painted walls.

Ah, the great fear of nail holes. They aren't as scary when the walls are a light color and filling them isn't obvious, but with darker brown walls, I really would like to get the positioning done correctly the first time.

Along with that picture, I've asked for a print of this one. This is actually a scanned image of the original 8 x 10 print. Taken thirty years ago while I was on a cruise, with a 35mm Nikon point and shoot film camera, this is one of my very favorite photos. The negative is lost somewhere, so the scan will at least insure I have the ability to get more prints.

The sky started to clear a bit after one of those short, hard downpours, and streamed through to the water in visible rays. I knew I needed to have something to anchor the image - the lifeboat seemed a fitting addition. Again, no post processing - and contrary to first glance, this is a color picture. In person, the sun's reflection on the water is much more golden.

Yes, distractions. The laundry is at least started, an egg casserole has been baked to be frozen for breakfasts. In addition to ordering these prints, I printed off a number of other photos, mostly of the move and recent projects for the scrapbook. Printing photos isn't on today's list, needless to say.

Since no one has yet invented a self-cleaning house, I'd better get to it.

New Old year resolutions

Back at the beginning of the year, I set a loose goal of reading a book a week in an attempt to reduce my kindle's backlog of purchased but as yet unread books.

So far, so good.

By my count, I'm about a week ahead of schedule on the total book count. I'm not entirely sure the number of books in the queue has decreased, as I've picked up a few more, but at least I'm making an effort.

It's worked so well, in fact, that I'm setting one more challenge-type goal for 2014. I'd like to finish one sewing/quilting project a month between now and the end of December. Including August, that would be five projects.

Hah! you say - you call yourself a quilter? Most true quilters' volume would be more than twice that!

Yeah, but they don't live my life.

It's been busy, I've been extremely tired, and sewing is on the bottom of the activity list most of the time. At the moment, the studio is in a shambles. I remember the last thing I worked on - the Zentangle-like soon-to-be-a-pillow quilting piece, but I think that was sometime in May, since the class in which it was begun was May 10th.

Yeah, a summer with pretty much no sewing.

I'm giving myself the freedom to count pretty much anything as a "project". For instance, I have four sets of martial arts thingees (the technical term for the ... thingee) on which to shorten both sleeves and pants. Since the hems need to be rather deep and reinforced with a total of four lines of stitching each (four times four hems per set, times four sets is sixty-four total lines of stitching), it takes a while even with a machine whose top stitching speed is 1,100 stitches per minute. Unless my double needle is the right width (woo hoo, only 32 lines of stitching!) I think I can count that as a "project".

There are small and/or easy things that aren't part of the dozen or so in-the-works things that, if I complete them, will give me more room in the studio. Four throw pillows (the pillow forms take up a lot of room hanging around the studio) for one, the valance for the patio doors another (four and a half foot tall roll of decorator fabric leaning up against the wall).

The first order of business: clearing out the discombobulation in the studio. I've guests coming for lunch Friday, but after they leave, I can start shifting things around in there. The following Friday I'm hosting a craft day; that gives me a target for actual project progress.

We'll see...

First Communion

It's spring (in name, anyway) so there are a whole lot of eight year olds making their First Communion in the next couple of months. I mentioned a while back that a friend's son is one of those, and that her church has the kids make small banners to be carried in at the start of the mass. He wanted green lettering for his name, not yellow...and green isn't exactly available in the handy press on letters his mom used for his older brother (who wanted yellow; much easier to find).

After settling on a font (something "curly", but not "girly"), I got down to business tonight getting the embroidery done. This is just a piece of it; his last name is down at the bottom of the piece. It's pretty small - 14 x 12. His mom is going to get me a picture of the completed banner. Meanwhile, here is a peak.

Give him wings

Apparently, there is a tradition among pilots in the Air Force. Whenever a pilot has a boy baby (well, maybe they include girls now too), the baby is decked out in a miniature flight suit, complete with a patch with wings and "Baby XXXX", where XXXX is the father's (well, ok, it could be the mother's as well) call sign.

Cute.

A coworker's son-in-law is a pilot, and her daughter is due to deliver their baby boy near the end of this month. There isn't exactly a booming business in infant flight suits, so Jane is making one for her grandson. But what to do about the patch?

Enter the coworker with the embroidery machine. I was able to find the embroidery pattern for pilot's wings (and they are supposed to be specifically Air Force wings according to the description, and what I can find bears that out). The only catch was finding an alphabet small enough, or one that could be downsized without losing integrity, that would look in harmony with the wings.

The embroidery is done. There are still a few errant threads to carefully clip but I'm happy overall. Jane will have to decide how she wants to attach it. I'd trim it on the lines I've drawn, then satin stitch it to the little flight suit. Up to her.

So...I give you...Baby Goat.

It's a privilege to be able to help our our Armed Forces, even in something as insignificant as this. This is pretty much the niche I want for the future long arm quilting & embroidery business: specialized, small batch projects. If I had more time, I'd have figured out at way to do a satin stitch edging around the embroidery, AND made it iron on. In fact, I do have a couple of ideas I'd like to play with. Hopefully, I can figure out exactly how to do it, as I've told Jane to tell her son-in-law I'd be happy to make these to order for any more of his pilot friends who need them.

Long arm of the...quilter

The local paper has a feature story today on a local quilter. She was the long time owner of the local quilt shop that was closest to me when I first started quilting thirty-some years ago. It was an adventure to make a visit, something that required a clear time frame for wandering the aisles and fondling the fabric.

The store still exists, in much the same format, if larger in square footage, as it did when Trudy owned it. Still fun to wander among all the bolts, and I can find my favorite thread there as well.

It's worth it to view the video linked in the article. In one of the first shots, a little cutie is wrapped in a quilt of the same pattern as one I hope to reveal here sometime next week. Later in the video, you can see a long arm quilting machine in use.

I'm slowly aiming toward much the same set up - a small business providing machine quilting and embroidery services. I don't intend to get rich (not really possible in this particular business, and certainly not in this political climate), but I would like to earn enough to keep me in quilting supplies. I enjoy the actual quilting - the joining of top, batting and backing - more than piecing the tops.

The video shows the long arm in fully computerized mode. It's possible to disconnect the computer and go wild on your own (which would be my preference). Gorgeous work can be done either way. A Swedish quilting pal started a long arm business five or six years ago, and is turning out some incredible quilts. I've been trolling her site for samples of quilting motifs; I'm sure she won't view me as competition, given our customer bases are on different continents!

Company Girl Coffee 060713

Good morning! Grab a cup of something warm (a friend has dubbed our current weather "Juntober", as the calendar says June, while the weather persistently proclaims it's October) and pull up a chair.

Summer on campus means shorter work weeks (running out the last of this year's vacation taking a day off per week) and less stressful work days (the rest of the office is gearing up for the annual financial audit, for which I have minimal responsibilities - yay, me!). A day off per week means more time for fun.

A major fun point from last weekend was finally breaking what seemed to be a personal curse on my ever making progress on the embroidered squares for a class I'm in (see the previous post - saying I'm "in" a class I've only actually been to once in four meetings may be a stretch). The finished blocks are darling; I've gone on to cut out another one and hope to finish it this weekend.

For the last year or maybe longer, I've been carrying around my favorite fine point architect's markers in a gallon zip lock bag. Not exactly cute and classy, huh? One of the smaller projects started last weekend is a quilted zip top bag, sized especially for the markers.

Ordinarily, making a little pouch is an hour's work - I've made them before and it really isn't a big deal. With a new machine to use, however, it becomes an adventure.

1. Create quilted fabric, using the stitch regulator foot when doing the quilting (learning experience #1).
2. Import an alphabet (transfer from PC to USB, attach USB to sewing machine), design the embroidery and make sure the individual letters are lined up evenly (learning experience #2)
3. Hoop the quilted fabric so that the penciled horizontal line matches the line on the hoop template (learning experience #3-5 (had to rehoop a few times to get it right))
4. Stitch out the pattern. Rethread the machine and back the pattern up half a dozen stitches before restarting (learning experience #6-7)

From this point, it's a simple matter to finish. Cut the front and back to size. Insert a zipper. Sew front and back together. Step back and admire finished project.

My brain, however, was tired from learning new things. I should finish up this weekend, and will post pictures then.

Another project is in process, though it's a birthday gift that I daren't describe here, lest the birthday girl figure it out. Let's just say it involves more embroidery, three dimensions and a five gallon pail.

That's the fun stuff here - what are you up to this weekend?

Spring at last

At long last, daffodils.

These poor flowers began the growth process back in January. At this first class we learned the basics of cutwork: how to prepare the applique fabric with a fusible web, the correct method to add stabilizer sheets to help keep the fabric from jumping around during the cutwork process, hooping all the layers of fabric and stabilizer, and finally, using the cutwork tool (a mini chisel that takes the place of the machine needle) to actually cut out the shape.

It was a lot of fun - the prep work isn't difficult once you know what to do, and the machine did all the actual cutting work. We sat around and talked while the machines ran. Even with the shortened work time due to the demonstrations, I managed to get the flowers themselves cut out.

We were going to learn how to stick the applique to the background and to set the machine to embroider around the edges at the next class, so I did the cutwork for the leaves at home a few days after the first class.

And then....

In February, we had a snowstorm. I live forty minutes from the shop in good weather; I called to say I wasn't going to make it. Class was ultimately cancelled.

In March, I was hacking and coughing. I couldn't expose the rest of the class to my crud; I stayed home.

In April, there was no water in the condo when I got home from work. Finding the cause and checking things out took some time and wore me out; I didn't make it to class.

In May, I made it to class...with an embroidery module that wasn't working.

In other words, as of yesterday not a single block was done for this quilt.

As you can see, the daffs are done! It took almost no time this afternoon to follow the on-screen prompts for placement and embroidery. It was so much fun, I went ahead and did the next block.

I'm still behind, but at least I'm making progress. There are a few traditionally pieced blocks in this quilt that are finished with large triangles around the sides in which there are additional flower appliques. The tulips for one of those blocks were also cut this afternoon - twelve of them - in a lighter red.

There were a few missteps, but all in all, it's fun to see these take shape. I'm not sure how far we are supposed to be for the next class (and wouldn't you know, we are not scheduled to have a class for June). Even though I'm doing one of the smaller of the projects for this pattern, there are still quite a few blocks and border blocks to make.

In the meantime, I'm working on a baby quilt that is about a third of the way quilted. There's a special feature on this machine that gives you even, regular stitches even when doing free motion quilting. That, too, has been a bit of a learning curve.

Still, I can't complain. Puttering in the sewing studio is the perfect way to relax.

Ah, Friday

Why is it that the short work weeks always seem to be the longest? Friday has been a long time coming.

Last weekend - a long weekend extended even further by two and a half days of vacation the week before - was lovely. In addition to a flurry of cleaning energy, a trip to a friend's new condo and an unexpected deer sighting, there was a productive craft day, extra sleep and lots of reading.

I should have known it wouldn't last...any time I dare realize I'm really, actually happy, something dire happens. Every.single.time.

Anyway, on Monday morning I hooked up the embroidery module to the sewing machine and stitched out a sample of the block I needed to finish for the next night's class. It looked great - I love sipping a cup of coffee while the machine does all the work.

But when I went to sew out the actual block, the sewing machine did not recognize that the embroidery module was attached. Nothing I did - cycling on and off, taking off the module and reinstalling it, moving the machines...helped. The sewing machine worked perfectly; it just didn't acknowledge the module.

The good news is I was going out to the quilt shop the next night for a class, and could leave the machine to be looked at.

The computer board in the embroidery module was bad; the warranty covered the repair. Yay! The downside of a computerized, high end machine is the complexity and expense of repairs. Glad this was both an easy fix and free.

I'd planned to go out to the shop this Saturday for "bonus bag" day (19% off anything you purchase that fits in a shop bag), so I've put off picking the machine up until then. Naturally, from that point on, the weekend will be all about embroidery. Or machine quilting. Or just sitting in the sewing studio enjoying it.

Assuming the random thunderstorms we've been having leave the area, I'll get plants and finally fill the patio urns this weekend, too. Begonias for one, at least. They seem to be hardy and low maintenance. Not sure about the other two. I need one small hanging basket, to use either on the small hook that is already on the privacy fence, or to put on the mini-shepherd's hook that is in one of the urns. It's time to get some color out there, wipe down the furniture and start enjoying it.

Between the rains, that is.

Week in pictures

I've not been very diligent in posting the activities of the week, in large part because I seemed to be overtaken with a case of the "ehs". While you'll see I did quite a bit of playing, for a lot of the week, I just wasn't feeling it. That may have something to do with my sleep cycle; I'm still waking up in the middle of the night for half an hour or more. It's just enough to throw me off.

On to pictures.

First, a non-picture (just wanted to make sure you were paying attention). The fabric shown in this post is now cut, sewn, recut and sewn again into a cute baby quilt top. I've no uncluttered space in the studio to lay it out for a picture, though I took one of where it currently lays sprawled over the traveling case for the sewing machine (there are three long seams that need to be ironed, and I have to press the whole thing before layering it, so why fold it nicely...right?). If the picture I just took makes it from the phone to my inbox before the rest of the post is done, I'll add it.

As I said, just tossed over the case...

Here we are. The colors are a bit goofy - the natural daylight lamp is on, but the light you see coming from the left is the floor lamp with an incandescent bulb and a beige shade...take it that all the colors are brighter. The fabric is all rainy day themed - multicolor raindrops, a cute umbrella print, storm clouds.

The pattern is the same as this quilt, although the quilt is smaller and (oddly) the individual blocks a little bigger. Kara's quilt was made from an antique kit, where all the blocks were already cut for you and had to be sewn to each other one by one.

The author of this current pattern tried to have you do the same thing, but she reckoned without my inborn laziness. There is a way to cut strips, pair them, sew them together and then recut them that shaves hours off of the assembly time. You do need to do some purposeful unsewing at strategic points, but all in all, this was much easier to put together than the other.

Who said grocery shopping can't be fun? Even online grocery shopping has its perks. My order this week included an impulse buy - a dozen red velvet mini cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They taste just as good as they look. Bless the person who invented cream cheese frosting.

A hot cup of coffee, a cupcake and a good book was the activity of choice for most of the week. I've finished or read most of the following:

That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life, Margaret Peterson Kim
A Fatal Grace, Louise Penny
Still Life, Louise Penny

While sewing and when in need of a mental break, I've also managed to work my way through two seasons of Game of Thrones. Nothing like watching people hack one another to death to relax you.

This afternoon I finally got around to a mini craft I've had the supplies for since January. The directions were part of the e-mail magazine for owners of my machine - projects that are, of course, designed to encourage you to run out and purchase all sorts of add on doo-dads.

Pretty pink, cream and brown ribbon. The
 cover is more raspberry than red. Really, I  need
to start using the "real" camera for pictures.

In spite of not having the specific presser foot called for in the instructions, I managed just fine.

Simple as pie. Cut two, 15" lengths of one inch wide grosgrain ribbon. Using invisible thread and a narrow zigzag stitch, sew them together side by side. Fold two inches to the back on either end. Fold one end up five inches (so the sewn down raw edges are inside) and sew the long edges together.  Add elastic just a smidge shorter than whatever you want the pen holder to go around.

In my case, I want it around the cover of my journalling Bible, to hold the really fine markers I use to jot in it (obviously not the Pilot pen that is in the holder for illustration).

All in all, everything worked very well. Invisible thread is usually the dickens to work with. Aside from the fact it's difficult to see, it also tends to be wiry and slick, sliding off the spool, not wanting to go where it is supposed to go. But I reduced the machine speed, loaded it up (even in the bobbin) and started sewing. I didn't notice any difficulties (thank heaven for an automatic needle threader, though). The wrinkling on the finished pen holder is entirely due to my lack of desire to set up the iron to press it when I was done.

This is the last of that project. The reading plan I'm using this year has you read both testaments and a psalm every day. The pages of this book are very thin; I'd grown tired of the time it took to flip around. Certainly a three-ribbon bookmark was in order.

You can see the three ribbons (and the original satin ribbon bookmark from the Bible itself) in the picture above. When I was buying the ribbon, I ran across these really cute ribbon flower things. They are self-stick; we will see how long that lasts before I have to take a needle and thread to tack it down.

It's been a crafty, relaxing, but sleepless kind of week. I'm handling the media at church tomorrow, so I need to see if I can get a decent night's sleep tonight. I'm running off The Hobbit right now - it's a bit of a trio of yumminess with Richard Armitage, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch all in one movie. A grilled cheese and some carrots for dinner, then some more reading before bed.

A pretty decent week off.