Month: March 2024

I got up early this morning and was on the sunny and warm pickleball court at 8:30. It was so gorgeous! Everyone was so happy to be out! It was such a great way to start a beautiful Saturday.

I took the dogs with me to pickleball because when I was done we were on the road to Molalla for Rico’s weekly sheep herding lesson. It was so gorgeous and Rico was a good kid! And there was such a surprise! Fresh lambs. Less than a day old!

You know what that means! It’s almost time for me to spend a couple days with my herding instructor during lambing season! It’s just two weeks away and I’m so excited! This will be our third year hanging out with fresh lambs for a couple days in the beautiful Oregon spring time. Truly the best two days of my year!

When we got home I spent an hour on the sofa with ice in various places. I’ve played a good deal of pickleball this week and I’m trying to make the habit of icing after I play in order to stave off issues. I’ve been feeling a bit of a twinge in my shoulder and ice really helps. I felt great this afternoon following my icing session.

After dinner I hit my sewing room and wanted to finish up the green blocks for the remaining 12 centers I made a couple days ago. It took me about 90 minutes and I got them done and all squared up.

Then I tossed them up on my design wall. I’m getting really close to having all the blocks I need for this one.

I think I’ll need another full row of the green blocks to make this the height I want. it will be a throw size quilt. I’ll lose quilts a few inches in height when all the blocks are sewn together. I think I need seven more green blocks and around 20 additional low volume blocks. I’ll finish the green blocks first and get an accurate count for the low volume blocks once it’s all up on the design wall.

I auditioned a little strip of the black and white stripe with the border fabric and I really like it.

I think it’s a nice little detail. I’m pretty sure I have enough of that strip for the binding as well. since I have no plan for this quilt it may be some time before I get it quilted, so I’ll just fold up that striped fabric with the quilt top so I don’t use it on something else.

The last few days have certainly felt like spring. And the plants are responding. My daffodils have finally opened up. My forsythia is exploding with blooms. And my flowering plum tree is looking and smelling wonderful!

I love that my dogs so enjoy days like today that they are happy to hang out in the back yard all day long. . . just enjoying the lovely day.

This is the face of expectation that something fantastic might happen at any moment.

What a great way to go through life!

The evening sort of slipped away from me. I had thought I’d get a lot more of my green quarter log cabin bocks done but I only managed to finish up four of them before I felt tired.

So that means that I have 16 blocks completed. I really have no idea how many I’ll need of finish this quilt, but I’m guessing I’m somewhere around half way done, maybe a little less.

I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to finish the edges of this quilt. I really don’t want to have a wide void of the low volume fabrics on the edge so I’ve decided that I’m not going to make setting triangles for this. Rather. I’m going to add small squares in the corners where setting triangles would go.

And then I’ll trim off the edge of the quilt along the diagonal of that small corner block. this tape measure is representing where the edge of this will be trimmed.

Then I’ll add a green border all the way around… maybe four inches or so. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be this lovely little number. And I’m pretty sure I saw a bolt of that fabric at my local quilt store.

That photo is much darker than this all is in reality. I like this fabric for the border because it’s got all the colors… dark, medium, and light green, with a little teal and lovely pops of orange and pink.

Here’s a bigger view of what that will look like.

That photo seems to be a little more true to color but is still a little dark.

Hmmm… maybe I’ll add a thin border of the black and white strip between the whites and the outer border. I’ll have to play around and see how that looks but it might be a really fun idea and will tie the blocks to the border. Just a touch… maybe a half inch of the stripe showing.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day here today. I had my annual furnace/ac maintenance check today and the dogs were relegated to the back yard for two hours while the technician was here. They were so happy out there that they stayed out there most of the day. So much glorious sunshine and lovely temps in the mid 60s. I’m pretty sure my grass grew an inch today!

My daffodils are finally opening up and the first blooms on my flowering pair trees (I have planted 11 in my back yard!) have just opened up.

My boys and I took a nice walk in short sleeves late this afternoon. There were so many people out walking and so many dogs. They also got several sessions of frisbee in the yard today. The more action they get, the more they want!

After dinner Rico was anticipating that action was imminent!

Rico RARELY gets up on the furniture. He was so intent on convincing me to go out and play that he had to get close to be the most effective in his plea!

I’m going to do all I can to enjoy the gorgeous weather this weekend. I’m heading out early tomorrow morning to play pickleball, then Rico’s sheep herding lesson. Sunday morning a colleague from work is bringing her puppy by for a play date with my boys. Then I’ll head off to deliver my quilts to the binding aficionado and will stop on the way back for a couple of hours of pickleball.

I’ll wrap up Sunday with a dinner of corned beef and cabbage to celebrate St. Paddy’s day with the friends who took me in during my power outage in January. My boys will get to come along and play with their corgi. I’ll be sure to get some photos of their shenanigans.

I got up early this morning and was on the pickleball courts with my new membership at 8 am. And I had a blast! Really fun and competitive play. I was well exercised by the time we finished at 10. I also played pickleball at the same place last night. The play was not quite as robust as this morning, but I had a good time and took the opportunity to practice some skills I don’t always get to use.

And it was a gorgeous day and my Boys, of course, demanded some action and attention. So they got several sessions of frisbee in the back yard sunshine and we took a lovely three mile walk in the late afternoon sunshine. I was in my shirt sleeves!

So with all of that in mind, I’m pretty worn out tonight.

I did want to work a little bit on my green blocks but didn’t think I would be able to stay with it for very long. So I decided to whack out a bunch of centers for my green blocks. I cut one strip of the Sand Dollars fabric, sub cut it into 2.5 inch squares and started adding the black and white accents. Chain piecing is my friend!

It may seem odd to have the strip on the top and the separate pieces on the bottom, but it works better for me. It’s easier to keep everything aligned. I just keep my little pile of centers to my left and slip them under the strip as I reach the end of the previous block. Then when I have a long strip done I snip them apart. I leave about 1/4 inch between the blocks so I have a little bit of room to trim accurately.

Then I cut them apart and press them carefully. I find that If my blocks are wonky it often happens with careless and aggressive pressing.

I managed to get 16 centers made so when I hit my sewing room tomorrow night I can just fly and maybe get these all completed.

You might remember that last fall I traded some quilt tops for long arm services with a friend of mine. I gave her six quilt tops to quilt for herself and she quilted six more for me. One of those quilts was gifted to my pickleball coach in December. My friend sewed on the bindings that I provided but I was left to finish the bindings. I hand stitched the binding on the quilt for my coach and my thumb is still bothering me. I have five more quilts that need the binding finished. I prefer a hand finished binding and do NOT enjoy machine-finishing bindings. I just don’t like the wear and tear on my hands. I need my hands for pickleball and sewing!

So when I was in a local quilt store when my friend was here last month I asked the woman working there if she knew anyone who could sew bindings for me and she said that SHE provides that service. So she called me a few days ago and I’m going to take my five unbound quilts to her at the quilt shop on Sunday.

You can see all these quilts here.

I don’t have any plans for these quilts, but since they’re mostly done, I might as well get them bound.

And what makes this especially fun? The shop where I’ll take my quilts has the new Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics in stock and I’m really excited to get my hands on some!

Today was the most amazing day! It really felt like spring has arrived in Portland. The glorious sun shined all day long and it got up to over 60 degrees! These boys definitely noticed how nice it was.

they were outside almost all day long as I worked.

My forsythia blooms have been trying to open up for over a week and they have finally decided it’s time!

Forsythias always remind me of my mom. Their blooms every year were a sign for her that spring had truly arrived. And now it’s the same for me.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this in its glory this year. Last year my yard guy cut it back in the fall so its bloom was a little underwhelming. I love to have it all sprangly and crazy when it blooms. Is “sprangly” a word? It’s definitely sprangly this year.

My first daffodil blooms have also opened up. It will be a few more days before they are in all their glory.

It’s so wonderful to have spring finally arrive. I know we’ll have more rainy and dreary weather before it’s all over, but the next week is going to be so glorious!

I wasn’t crazy about these blocks last night. So I gave it some thought today and came up with a couple ideas to fix them after I identified what I didn’t like. Here tonight’s version on the left and last nights on the right .

Here’s what I changed:

I used just the sand dollar fabric for the starting square. I think it’s cleaner and doesn’t compete with the stripes… it lets the stripes shine.

And speaking of stripes, I used the narrower stripe that I had purchased originally for this before I thought the broader stripe would be fun. I think the narrower stripe is soooo much better! It reads as a stripe where the broader stripe reads as squares.

Here’s a clear picture of the different stripes.

I also made the white chicken feet fabric a quarter inch wider so you see a little more of that white fabric. And the white is more prominent with that narrower stripe.

I made 12 blocks assembly line style tonight and I was a little surprised I got them all done. Of course, I didn’t stop sewing until around 11:30 pm.

I got twelve green blocks made, squared them up and tossed them up on the design wall with the white nine patches.

I have to say, I’m liking this a lot better! I think part of it is that the stripe, one fabric for the starting block and the wider strip of the chicken feet has made a big difference. These little changes have sharpened the design… made the design less muddy… it feels more focused and organized, while still having lovely variation from block to block, which I love!

I have put the four blocks I made last night aside and will use them in a bag some day. I will proceed with this new design and make more of these blocks.

I’m having a hard time getting a photo of these green blocks that shows them in their true colors. I’ll have to try to remember to get a photo tomorrow during the day and see if the natural light makes a difference.

Here’s some eye candy.

That photo looks a little more true in color but is still a little dark.

I love all the little pops of colors in with those greens!

And finally, today was a gorgeous day! The sun shined almost all day, except for a rainy period during my lunch break. But it came out at the end of the work day and I got my pathetic boys our for a nice 2.5 mile walk!

This was their first walk in a couple days. Once they saw me getting my shoes and coat on they sort of went a little nuts! There were so many people and dogs out walking! I think everyone has been feeling a little cooped up.

Work tomorrow and then pickleball with my new membership tomorrow night. It will be interesting to see how the play is in a different time slot.

I was scheduled to play pickleball tonight but after playing for almost five hours yesterday I decided to pull my name from the schedule. Yesterday’s play session was the BEST I’ve had in months! It was so much fun! The games were real battles and so much fun. I knew tonight couldn’t top that. Plus, I’m tired and I need some recovery time!

My coach was there and I haven’t seen him for at least a month. He just came back from out of town. He was very complimentary about my playing and told me that he thinks I’ve reached a higher rating level than I was aware of. So that was really good news. Let’s see if I can keep up that level of play!

It rained all day today. My poor dogs are so bored and need some action. The only thing that is keeping my head up is the forecast for this week.

It’s hard to believe this is actually true! I’m really looking forward to some sun and some outdoor time this weekend! I’m also looking forward to opening up all the doors and windows to let the fresh air in!

I had to make a trip to Costco tonight to pick up some of Bender’s anti-epilepsy medication and there’s so much construction around here it took a lot longer than I hoped.

I’m pretty sure I sat in that spot for a full six or seven minutes. Luckily I figured out a better way to get home so I didn’t have to wait again. (and yes… it’s time for an oil change.)

When I got home I hit my sewing room to whip up a few of my green blocks to get a feeling for how this new quilt will feel. The green blocks are basically a quarter log cabin block with a little twist. I saw a quilt on Pinterest years ago that sparked this idea. I never did find out who made it. That’s one of the problems with Pinterest.

The twist is that I’ve inserted a small strip of a bold black and white stripe with an accompanying mostly white fabric right next to it.

I love those little chicken feet! It’s a little bit of humor in these blocks!

That little bright green square in the lower right section of each of these blocks is a Brandon Mably design called Sand Dollar. It’s been out of print for some time but I have a few tiny pieces of it in my stash. I thought it would be fun to use a small piece as the starting piece for each of these blocks.

After the black and white rows, I continued on with varying strips of the green prints. And, of course, this happened.

I continued to add strips to these blocks until they measured a little more than 8 inches, then squared them up.

The color in the blocks above is much truer on my computer than the photos that follow.

And hmmm. that one in the lower right is so wonky! That’s why I love wonky quilts. Wonky is my super power!

And now it’s time to combine these blocks with the low volume black and white nine patches I made a few days ago.

My original idea was to set these blocks straight, alternating the green blocks with the white blocks.

I’m not loving these blocks set this way. I think they really need to be set on point.

It’s hard to get a real feeling for this with only four blocks. I think I’m going to like it but I’m not sure I’m going to love it.

I’m wishing I had planned a nine inch block instead of 8 inches. But since I made all those nine patches, I’m going with the original plan.

These blocks took longer to make tonight than they should have. I’ll have to get more efficient and quicker for the upcoming blocks. The good thing is that I’ll only need to make about 40 of these blocks.

I need to get moving because I have a lot of ideas going on right now!!!

I posted some photos of my Brandon Mably Interweave quilt on the Kaffe Fassett Collective page on Facebook yesterday. And today Brandon Mably, the fabric designer, commented on it! Here’s an image capture…

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What an amazing honor to have the fabric designer say such wonderful things about what I made and about me as a creator! I’ve been smiling since I saw this!

I’m laying on the sofa winding down at the end of the day. It’s around 10:30 and I’ve already taken Advil PM so I can get to be early since I lose an hour of sleep tonight. Have I mentioned before that my favorite day of the year is the day in the spring when we go to Daylight Saving Time? I just LOVE having that extra light I the evening! I’m so excited.

You might be laughing that I’ve Taken an Advil PM at 10:30 and am planning an early night. Well, I typically stay up until 2 am every night. I’m a died I the wool night owl and at 10:00 at night I have hours left!

I started out my day at 8:30 for pickleball. Only six people showed up but I got a lot of play and had some good games. After that I high tailed it down to Molalla for Rico’s weekly sheep herding lesson. He was pretty wild today! I think the rainy weather this week and his lack of activity may him especially enthusiastic. The weather was nice…

Toward the end of our lesson a wild squall came through. The rain was falling sideways while the sky was blue in the background. Luckily it didn’t last very long. Good think Rico doesn’t mind if he gets wet.

Our drive home was lovely. I just love winding my way north through farm country after our lessons.

We drove through a few little squalls on the way home.

When I got home I did a little sewing and put together about ten more of the low value nine patches. After a walk with my boys and a good dinner I was back in my sewing room making bland nine patches. I got everything sewn that I cut out last night. I think I have a total of 30 nine patches. I’m thinking I’ll need 40 for this quilt top.

Since I’m using strip sets there are going together quickly and easily.

I might make a few of the green blocks that will make this quilt interesting. I still have a little planning to do, but not much. I’m pretty much ready to start cutting and then get sewing! Can’t wait to see how this looks.

I got invited to play pickleball tomorrow. It should be some good games.

I toyed with the idea of taking tonight off from sewing but I’m pretty excited to get moving on the quilt I decided to make next. I wrote a little about this new project in this blog post.

Since I made my Ice Storm quilt that I gave to my pickleball coach, I’ve wanted to do another low volume project.

So I pulled out the box of fabrics I had put together a month ago or so and started pressing and cutting. The first thing I need to do is make a bunch of low volume 9 patches that will be 8 inches square before they are sewn into the quilt top.

I cut three-inch wide WOF strips from 20 different low volume white and black fabrics.

Here’s a bunch of them, but not all.

Here’s all 20.

There’s a good variety of prints and values here. And aren’t those little fish adorable?

Then I sliced these strips in half and sorted them into groups of three to make strip sets.

Once the strip sets were sewn and pressed I sub-cut them into 3 inch pieces.

Here’s all the sets I got made and sub cut tonight.

I combined some of these into four groups of three and sewed those groups into nine patches.

These are not my typical colorful approach to quilting. But fear not. That part is coming. These will be combined with these lovely Kaffe Fassett Collective greens.

I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing with those green fabrics. It will have to be a surprise. Maybe I can share photos tomorrow if I’m able to get some stuff done.

It was an absolutely GORGEOUS day in Portland today. I spent an hour or so this afternoon with my sliding door open to let in the first warm spring air. It was sunny and over 60 degrees. I just love the first day when I can open up all the doors and windows in the house and let in some lovely fresh spring air!

And the rain comes back tomorrow and stays for four days. Next weekend we’re supposed to be up to 70 degrees with glorious sunshine! I can hardly believe it!

I did get outside today and get some photos of my two recent quilt tops. It’s nice to see them in the sunshine.

This dark one was hard to get a photo of because it’s too big to hang on the fence without it dragging on the ground. It’s still really wet so I didn’t want it to get muddy.

The colors are so pretty, but that is one dark quilt!

I love my Interweave quilt. It looks so happy and looks like spring.

I really enjoyed making that quilt. It was a bit of a puzzle and demanded some attention to keep everything in the right place to maintain the weave pattern. But it was so fun to see all those colors, designs and patterns come together.

Bender, of course, was happy to participate in the photo session.

Here’s my five quilt tops finished so far in 2024.

With the warm temps coming up everything here will be blooming before long.

It’s the weekend so that means sheep herding, pickleball and sewing. I will be doing all of those things tomorrow!

I had a moment this evening when I thought I would park my butt on the couch instead of finishing this quilt, but I decided to push myself and get it done. There wasn’t much left to do.

A reminder… this pattern is Interweave from Springleaf Studios.

All I had to do was sew the borders for two sides of the bottom portion of the quilt, sew them on, sew the stabilizing row of stitches around that section, and then sew the top and bottom sections together. Oh, and press it all. It probably only took me an hour to get this done.

What was my real motivation? I’m itching to get started on a new quilt and promised myself I wouldn’t do that until I wrapped this one up. I still don’t know what I’m going to do next. So many options!

I always love the final press of a quilt top because I love seeing all the fabrics together, all the seams, all the wonderful things and all the flaws.

I do miss having my friend Linda here to do that final pressing because she would keep a snipper handy and snip all the threads as she pressed. I didn’t take the time to do that tonight, but I should have. There are a LOT of threads on this quilt top.

I really liked that I sewed the final stabilizing row of stitches while the quilt top was in two parts. I’m going to do this from now on. It was so much easier to do and didn’t make me swear at all!

Here’s a little eye candy…

That yellow is so gorgeous!

Mmmm. Green.

So much color!

The Brandon Mably fabrics I ordered a few days ago arrived this afternoon. That seems really fast!

I sort of want that green stripe on the far left in every color way!

I’m going to try to get a photo of this quilt top outdoors tomorrow. Oh, and I need a good photo of my Flower Baskets quilt too. I’m glad I thought of that.

I played pickleball this morning at it was a great session! I had some good play and some really good and fun games. I also found out today that I’ve been given membership in a local pickleball facility that is really hard to get into. I’m so excited and it will revolutionize my ability to play during the winter months! It was such a wonderful surprise!

Tomorrow is Friday. It’s supposed to be another gorgeous day. And I’m so excited about the time change this weekend. The day the clocks change in the spring is my favorite day of the year!

One last thing tonight. I have scheduled my two days to spend lambing again this year. I’m so happy I get to get out there again, and the extra fun thing is that there will also be puppies there! they should be around five weeks old at that time, which is a really good age for puppies!

You can read about my lambing experience last year here and here.

I felt confident that I’d finish up my Brandon Mably Interweave quilt this evening, but I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get a lot done.

I sewed all the rows in the top section together and got the borders sewn on.

I had thought I would do the side borders before I sewed the rows together but decided agains that. So I sewed the rows then laid out the border pieces, sewed the border pieces together, then sewed the border strips onto the sides and top of the quilt.

I made a few mistakes on the left side… that was the final side of that piece. I had to unpick a few seams and reorganize it all, then sew it again. Then I screwed it up again!

So by the time I was done with that top piece, I sort of gave up on finishing the borders on the bottom piece. But I didn’t feel like I was done.

So I took the top piece off my design wall and laid it out on my guest room bed to get it out of the way.

I did get the borders on one side of the bottoms section done during my lunch break today.

I was going to move the bottom piece higher on my design wall so it would be easier to lay out the border pieces when I remembered… I can just roll up my design wall!

It’s so much easier to lay those borders out when they’re at a reasonable level.

Note: I’ve had quite a few people asking me about my design wall recently. You can find a blog post where I write about it here. I wish I was able to refer people to the seller but I’m pretty sure he’s not making these any more.

I’m positive I’ll finish up this quilt tomorrow night. Positive.

I have a good deal of fabric left over from this quilt. it’s probably enough to make another quilt, depending on what I combined it with. I’m thinking maybe an all Brandon Blue Swirly quilt as a palate cleanser. These are all third yard pieces with one 7 inch square cut out.

I had an inspiration today for a way to use up these scrappy blocks that I made about a year ago. You can see them and get more info in this blog post.

I had originally planned to arrange them into a color wash piece but I sort of lost interest in it. Arranging blocks on my design wall is not my favorite part of the process. And these blocks have been sitting in a drawer in the closet of my sewing room for a year… untouched and unloved.

@Tilkunviilaaja on Instagram is combining these little scrappy blocks with wonky varying shades of gray backgrounds and then arranging them into a quilt top. I like what she’s doing and it would be a quick way to make these blocks into something more substantial.

I’m pretty sure I have in the neighborhood of 160 blocks.

I’m thinking maybe using different values of one color of batiks to border these. Maybe yellows. Maybe indigos. Maybe use up some of my scrap KFC 2.5 inch strips to border them. I have a few ideas and will give it a few days to develop.

That might be a perfect palate cleanser. Bordering those blocks would go quickly and I could be onto something else in no time. I could also make them into economy blocks (square within a square). That actually might be really fun!!! Hmmm.

Here are the exciting photos of my boys from this evening.

Rico has now retreated back behind the end table and rocking chair.

I’m plaing pickleball first thing the morning and it looks like the weather will cooperate. Maybe even sun, but likely quilt cool. It will be good to be outside and invigorated.

It was so nice to see the sun today after so many wet days. It was wonderful to do a couple meetings this afternoon with the sun streaming in my sliding glass door.

I managed to get away from my desk between meetings and got my boys out for a glorious 2.5 mile walk.

Bender’s age is showing and it’s kind of nice to see some sense in him. He KNEW he couldn’t get up on that log. He did put his front feet up on it but he never attempted to jump up. But it is hard to see the years pile up on him. He’ll be 11 in April. He is definitely slowing down a little.

Rico, on the other hand, had no problem jumping up on this huge log.

The surprising thing with Rico is that he actually looked in the general direction of the camera.

After dinner I hit my sewing room and sewed together a couple rows of my Interweave quilt. Then I took a quick trip to Costco close to closing time. That’s the best time to go in my book. People are a bit scarce that time of night and I can get in out quickly.

Once I got home I was back in my sewing room and managed to sew the remaining three rows of my Brandon Interweave quilt together.

That entire top row made of the little squares is the border. It will go all the way around the quilt top. You can see the start of the side borders on the far right.

I didn’t get the rows sewn to each other.

I need to add the pieced borders to this quilt… all made from 2.5 inch squares. I want to add the borders while the quilt top is in pieces, rather than sewing on long strips once the quilt top is one huge piece. Since the border is all small pieces, that seems like a good plan to me. I could even add them row by row on the section that isn’t assembled yet.

Even though I’m not quite done yet, I’m really pretty surprised that this quilt top has come together so quickly. One thing that’s made it easier for me is that my brain does well at recognizing and understanding how things go together and once the repeat of the pattern gets in my head, I can really fly.

I mean, come on! Look at this!!!

I’ve been giving a little thought to what quilt I might want to make from all the Brandon Mably fabrics I ordered yesterday, and I have some good scraps left over from this Interweave quilt. I thought it might be fun to make a bright and bold version of this quilt I made for my bed. It’s Moss Garden and is a free pattern. You can find it here.

I am picturing in my head what this would look like with all those bright, saturated colors and vibrant designs. That’s one option.

I had an idea for another quilt this afternoon as I was looking at Facebook during my lunch break and saw an ad., This is a quilt that is mass produced, but I love the big blocks and the bold and saturated colors.

It would be easy enough to replicate this. Big blocks of different sizes, rows of different heights, some thinner strips here and there. I hopped onto Excel and dummied up this “pattern.”

It’s basically made up of three rows that repeat. I’ve tried to set it up so that there are no seams to match when the rows are sewn together.

I would have to do some cyphering to get the blocks and strips the right size so I could maintain a square quilt. I’m thinking there is some magic formula to figure this out. Some stellar math skills would come in really handy about now. I might just come up with several different block designs that are the same size that can be put together to achieve a random and casual look.

More ideas. They just keep coming!