Smitten Quilt Progress

This is the Smitten Quilt, which I started on June 4. The pattern is from the Jen Kingwell Collective, designed by Lucy Carson Kingwell. I am using acrylic templates from paperpieces.com and a color palette that is kind of strange. I'm still not sure it works but I am pretty committed at this point. I am handpiecing the blocks which is an enjoyable process for me. I like finishing a block and then starting a new one - it feels like a good way to measure progress and feel like I am getting somewhere. 

Stretched Hexagon Baby Quilt Top

When I was finished with the Rainbow Fade quilt, I had a bunch of leftover 3" x 4" rectangles. I drew up a stretched hexagon shape like I had seen used on a project by Red Pepper Quilts and cut out some papers for English paper piecing. I have done this sort of stitching before, but for some reason, I really had to fight the paper this time. I used light and heavy paper, tried glue basting and thread basting and used all kinds of threads and needles. I never really found my groove. 

My intention was to make a full size quilt, maybe 66" x 82". Oddly specific, you say. I first sewed the pieces into 12 patch blocks, measured one, then calculated how many blocks I would need to make for the size I wanted. It didn't take long before I moved the goalpost to 58" x 75" then to 58" x 68". After three weeks of making lozenges, forming blocks and sewing them all together, I turned it into a baby quilt. I was done. I added a scrappy border to frame it and to make it bigger and called it a completed top. Once I find the right backing and binding, I think I will enjoy quilting this. For now, I'm glad the top is finished. 

43" x 49"

Head Start Preschool

I wonder if my days at the preschool are over. I wrote about it earlier here. I have continued to volunteer there 2 mornings a week during the school year. In early March, as the threat of COVID-19 began to be felt, I didn't go in and within a week, the school was shut down. As far as I know, it has yet to be reopened. I likely won't go back until there is an effective vaccine or if I happen to get infected, recover and become immune. I do miss the kids a lot. 

Zambia Nine Patch

This quilt is bright! I bought a lot of fabric when I lived in Zambia in 1994 and this is pretty much the last of it. I used solid fabrics in the blocks with the traditional African prints in hopes of balancing the colors and breaking up some of the large patterns. 

I machine pieced the top and then got completely carried away with the quilting. It is sewn by hand with #8 Perle cotton in a very dense design. I started by stitching circles and squares of lines 1/4 to 3/8" apart then added diamonds, rectangles and triangles. I used many different colors of thread. When I tired of all of the shapes, I filled in the rest of the top with Xs. When it was done, it just seemed like too, too much and I quickly gave the quilt to my friend, Maureen, who loves color. I recently borrowed it back because I had failed to take any pictures and now I have more photos than I need!

The quilt is 51" x 61" - it was completed in March 2018. 

scrappy binding

Rainbow Fade Quilt

I was inspired to make a rectangle quilt after seeing this lovely one made by Jolene from Blue Elephant Stitches. Mine is different in a lot of ways but that quilt was definitely my jumping off point.

I made scrappy 12 patch blocks and stuck in two framed fussy cut rectangles just to break things up a little. I hand quilted it with #8 Perle cotton along two sides of each rectangle and used a striped binding. The rectangles were cut at 4" x 3" so finished at 3.5" x 2.5" and the quilt measures 62" x 79". 

 

Baby Hats

We have a new grandson due any day. I made him a few hats! I had a bag of leftover sock yarn which was perfect for these small projects. At first, I couldn't decide whether to use the knitted ball for a topper but then I couldn't stop. Alaska babies need hats year round so they will get some use. 

Second Vintage eBay Quilt

This second eBay quilt that I got from Dianne was in worse shape than the first. It was also stained and dusty and looked like it had been on a shelf for a long time. The blocks were in decent shape but there were holes in parts of the sashing. I found some fabric in my stash that looked similar and used that to make repairs. It was pretty wavy and wobbly but straightened out a bit after it was washed. I don't have any information as to who made this but I salute an unknown quilt sister from the past for doing the work. 

This quilt measures 70" x 84". The blocks were hand pieced and I did all of the quilting by hand with #8 Perle cotton thread. It has a scrappy binding and a wide text fabric for a backing.

First Vintage eBay Quilt

There was a time long ago when my friend, Dianne, was buying quilt tops from eBay. More recently, she was cleaning out her craft studio and brought 7 of these vintage tops to our stitching group to see if anyone wanted them. I took two. 

This one was hand pieced from a great variety of fabrics - most were cotton but there were pieces of polyester and other types as well. Old bedsheets were used for the background. I have no idea how to date a quilt but this one was dusty and stained and just felt like it had been waiting for decades sitting on a shelf. 

We have no way of knowing who made it. Dianne doesn't remember the origin story, if there was one, so I like to imagine some mysterious quilt sister from the past who was unable to finish her project. I was happy to do it for her and get this quilt out into the world.

The quilt measures 76" x 84". I used 108" wide fabric for the back and made a scrappy bias binding. I had to machine stitch the background hexagons because I couldn't comfortably hand stitch through the tight weave of the old sheets. The rest of the quilting was done by hand with #8 Perle cotton. It sure looked better after it was washed. 

Cloth Face Masks

There were a couple of weeks after we got home from Arizona when life was pretty much normal. We went to a bluegrass festival in Bellevue for one day and then the numbers of people infected with COVID-19 began to climb. Our state was one of the earliest to see large numbers of deaths and everything was soon shut down. I found it hard to believe that hospitals were unable to procure enough PPE for their workers and began to sew cloth face masks for family and friends. Now that more time has passed, we can see that these may become a permanent part of our culture.

I made masks with ties because the elastic bothers my ears after a while. The ties aren't perfect, though. They are unwieldy and Dave put a plastic cord lock device on his to make it easier to put on and take off. Wearing glasses has also been a bit of a problem because of the lenses fogging. We still don't get out much so we don't up wearing our masks for long. 

Back to the Desert - 2020

Washington State ferry

Our trip this past winter lasted about a month. We left home with another couple and picked up four more friends in two trailers by the next day. We traveled down the coast because of harsh winter weather. The roads were good but it was cold and dark enough in the evenings that we didn't get to socialize much for the first few days.

Postcard

California coast

Pinnacles National Park, California

Ballarat, California

I made a few small notebooks before we left so I enjoyed writing in my journal and keeping up with our trailer travel log. We had our guitars and played a lot and I was reading, hiking and drawing. No knitting! I picked up a copy of Johanna Basford's book "How to Draw Inky Wonderlands" to read and learn some tips. 

Dave had let people know when we were going to be in Death Valley and there were 41 of us camping together at one point. We were there for a week, then we went to Yuma for a few days and then to Quartzsite. It was a very social trip and we had a good time. 

Dave and Sarina love Yuma

Dutch Harbor Trip

Last year, in October, Dave and I flew out to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. Our daughter has been living out there for most of the past 5 years and we have been wanting to see it and visit with her, her husband and her son. It is so remote! It is also a very expensive flight so we were super grateful to our friend, Steve, who gave us guest passes on Alaska Airlines. 

Most people know the area from the popular TV show, Deadliest Catch. It is also known for its role in World War II. 

There are no trees and it is windy. It is farther south on the globe than you might imagine and it is so far west. Dave kept saying "You go to Hawaii then turn right." The views are magnificent. The town has 4,500 residents who are mostly young people and the population swells with the fishing season. Our daughter and her husband are both teachers and they leave the island in the summer to fish in Bristol Bay. 

We were scheduled to be there for 5 days but there was an incident at the airport that really tangled everything up. A landing plane ran off the end of the runway, a man was killed and Alaska Airlines pulled their service, effective immediately. Even now, the only way in and out of Dutch Harbor is on a charter, in very small planes. There is no alternative transportation - no ferry, no bus or train, no road. We stayed for 2 weeks before we could get seats on a flight to Anchorage. 

Pictures from Home - 2019

2019 Trip to England

We wanted to do something of significance to celebrate the graduations of Ray and his girlfriend from college in June of 2019. The four of us flew to London and spent 2 weeks together in Oxford, London and on a weeklong narrowboat cruise on the Oxford Canal. Ray and Jazmin then ventured off to Paris and Heidelberg while Dave and I spent an additional few days on the South Coast, in Hampshire. 

Cream scone with tea the way I like it 💖

I have so many pictures, of course, but can't post them all. It was a good trip overall. The narrowboat was slow and unwieldy which wasn't really a surprise but it was impressive. It was harder to find a place to park for the night than I had anticipated but it always worked out somehow. I loved Oxford. It was probably my favorite part of the trip. I'm really glad we did it and now, a year later, it would not even be possible. 

Oxford Canal

Waiting for a lock to fill

London

Mudeford