Month: October 2025

I finished sewing the scrappy Australian Aboriginal quilt blocks on Saturday and then added the final border piece and sewed a victory lap this Morning.

It’s a nice throw size quilt. I had thought about adding another border in the black color way of the black and white fabric here (the background is black with white writing), but I couldn’t find the piece of fabric I KNOW I have. So I’m considering it done.

It was a nice and quick project. Just what I needed.

I have almost enough of these blocks left that I could make the same quilt top again. I almost start cutting border fabric yesterday but decided I wanted to move onto something new.

It was a rainy day today so I thought I would start my black and white version of the Interweave quilt. Here’s the one I made from almost all Brandon Mably fabrics last year.

I’ll use black and white prints for the horizontal pieces and Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics in purple, pink and orange for the vertical strips. I think I still need more of the pinks/purples/oranges for the size I want to make.

I was all ready to start pressing and cutting fabrics today and couldn’t find my pattern. I looked high and low. I’m usually pretty good about putting my patterns away when I’m not using them. And since I haven’t been doing much sewing, my sewing room is in pretty good shape. Luckily, I called my friend and she has a copy she is going to mail to me. I’m sure that I’ll find mine before hers arrives in the mail.

So with a bit of an itch to scratch, I decided to use Aboriginal scraps that were gifted to me by two different people. I’ve been wanting to make a string quilt from Aboriginal fabrics for a few years. So it seemed like a good time to dig in.

I had a package of the Missouri Star Quilt Co paper foundations in my close so pulled them out, grabbed a bunch of the Aboriginal strips and got going

I have a lot of Aboriginal scraps!

I have a thought that I’d like to make my next few projects only from what I have in my stash. So I found this yellow Aboriginal fabric, Three pieces of it, actually, and decided to use it as the common center strip for each block. I cut the strips then lightly glued the strips to ten pieces of the paper foundation.

Then I sat down at my Featherweight with all ten pieces of paper and started adding strips. I chain pieced the blocks and Had ten all sewn pretty quickly then pressed and cut to size.

After dinner and a walk with my boys I made another six blocks and got them all up on the design board.

The yellow fabric is actually more mellow… sort of a creamy butterscotch color. This photo is much more true to color on my devices.

Had to keep booting Bender because he kept falling asleep in the next place I needed to be. On top of the foot pedal, in front of the ironing board, or the design wall, etc…

I’m pretty happy with the yellow for the center of each block. It makes it feel real warm to me and I like a nice definition of those diagonal lines.

My Bernina is still in the shop for service/maintenance. I talked to the tech yesterday and I could have picked it up yesterday but didn’t have time to get to the shop. He did tell me that my machine has over 11 million stitches on it! A rough calculation and some help from AI tells me that is nearly 20 miles of stitching!

The tech was quite impressed about the 11 million number!

I took Thursday and Friday off work. I decided that I was going to pretend all weekend that I’m retired. I have to say, it felt pretty luxurious! I loved the feeling of being in control of my time. I loved the feeling of not really having to be anywhere. I loved the feeling of much less stress than I’m accustomed to.

The only things on my calendar for four days was pickleball and my annual flu and COVID vaccines. And I’m glad to have that done!

We finished our fall membership drive at work yesterday. I’m very glad to see the end of it. It is the final full length drive I will do before I retire. I celebrated my 30 year anniversary of raising money for public broadcasting yesterday. A rough calculation shows me that I’ve been responsible for over 200 on air fundraising campaigns across those years. That’s a lot!

I have set my retirement date. December 12 will be my last day of work. That means I have just over two months to go. It’s hard to believe I’m that close!

It’s been a rough year at work. I never would have guessed that the final year of my career would be like this. But I’m happy to say that I’m leaving a strong program and an amazing team as I depart.

With work being hectic the last few weeks I haven’t gotten much sewing done. But I have made a little progress on my scrappy Australian Aboriginal impulse project. You know, I really love an impulsive project. They are usually the most fun for me.

I got all the bocks done and up on my design wall a couple weeks ago.

This will make a good size throw quilt. And I do like it. Of course, scrappy quilts are my favorite.

Earlier this week I sewed the first four rows together, so that’s 1/3 of the top done. The bottom section in this next photo is the four rows sewn together. The top section is still loose blocks that need to be sewn together.

I sewed the center section into rows this evening.

I still need to sew these rows together. That will go really fast.

The dogs are good. Bender had an odd head tremor a couple weeks ago so off to the vet we went. After an exam and blood tests, the diagnosis is that he is old. He has been fine since his vet visit.

He is at the stage where he doesn’t hear me come home so I’m always checking to see if he’s breathing as he sleeps.

So far so good.

He’s been enjoying himself eating the last of my cherry tomatoes.

Rico is great. Very healthy and enthusiastic. He will be nine soon. I can’t believe my baby is nine!

I found out after my vacation last month that I still have two weeks of vacation available. So I’ve scheduled some days in the next two months to take my days off rather than taking a pay out when I retire.

I’ll be off this Thursday and Friday. I actually need to buy a new car. My current car is a 2012. I bought it new and it has nearly 190,000 miles on it. I drive alone in the countryside all the time and want to have a new car. I love my current car but need something with lower mileage. I really dread buying a car. It’s such a terrible ordeal.

I’ve been playing pickleball five or six times a week. The weather has been lovely. Fall here in Portland can be really lovely. We have had some days of rain but it hasn’t completely settled in yet. Hoping for a few more weeks of nice fall sunshine.