Wensleydale – Page 2

What a crazy weather day. The sun was shining when I got up this morning. The rest of the day included downpours, ice balls, rain, rain and more rain, moments of sunshine, and a high of about 45 degrees. I had to check the calendar to confirm that it really is April 20 as I type after midnight. I wore a parka and gloves for our evening walk!

But even with all that, we had this too.

That’s sort of magical.

The good news is that the forecast tells me we will have a day of 80 degrees with sun in about a week. I can hardly believe it’s true!

After our evening walk I headed down the hall to my sewing room to dig in and make a few more Wensleydale blocks. I was having so much fun seeing these new fabrics come together that I made four blocks!

I keep saying it, but one of my favorite things about this quilt is that every block is completely different! It also makes It more fun to make… I don’t thrive on making the same block over and over.

Here’s all four blocks.

This means that I’ve made a total of 47 blocks! It’s hard to believe I’ve made so many of these. I timed myself the other night and it takes about a half hour to sew a block. By the time I finish the final 13 blocks, I’ll have 30 hours of sewing time in these blocks. That doesn’t really seem that bad.

I’ve been noticing the last few days that I’m getting little flaps of fabric folded over when I sew my lines on the paper templates. I’ve also been seeing pins getting stuck on the edge of the sewing machine bed as I sew. I finally realized tonight that the legs on my extension table had adjusted themselves and my table was too low. The bed of the sewing machine was sitting up above the top of the extension table about a quarter inch.

So as I was sliding my paper template with the fabric on the back under the needle, it was catching on the edge of the machine and getting folded over.

My extension table has little legs that are easily adjusted by turning the little feet. I’m guessing they’ve lowered over time from all the vibrations.

I took a few minutes and adjusted this before the last block I sewed tonight.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. I’ve never had issues with the fabric folding over when I’ve paper pieced in the past. That last block went together so smoothly!

Oh, and that extension table? It’s an amazing thing. They are custom made to fit your machine. Really a fantastic thing if you don’t have a sewing table that your machine sits down into.

I’ve had mine for years and I just love it. One of the best purchases I’ve made. This is where I got it. They even make them for Singer Featherweights!

Something I noticed in a drawer of my sewing table tonight was this block of styrofoam I have where I put all my broken needle and pins. I’ve been sticking sharp stuff into this for quite a few years. It’s a great way to keep all those sharp items away from fingers.

I even use this to store different needles that are still good for use. I just write on the block what the needle is and then stick the needle in.

Now I’m gonna sit back and remove some more paper from blocks as I watch some late night TV.

My budget has been submitted! It was due on Friday, but a last minute critical thing we had to handle took up my entire day on Thursday so I got an extension on getting this wrapped up. It feels good to have it done and I’m looking forward to working on something else.

I stepped away from work today right at 5;00, hurried and grabbed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and headed out to play pickleball. I played from 6:00 – 9:00… and there were few enough people there that I played the entire three hours. I’m really happy to say that I’m getting better and better! It was really a fun night.

By the time I got home it was around 9:30 and I was tired and it was raining. Big surprise there. So my boys didn’t get an evening walk. But they settled in nicely and have been snoozing since then.

I hit my sewing room for a few minutes to cut some KFC fabric strips for the centers of my next twelve Wensleydale quilt blocks.

Oh, yum!

I cut enough for twelve more blocks and combined two fabrics for each block.

Then I pulled out the indigo batiks I cut the other night and put together a dozen kits for the next set of blocks.

After three hours of pickleball, that’s all I had energy for. So I headed for the sofa. And sitting on my coffee table were the 18 blocks that still needed the paper removed. So I sat down in front of the TV, pulled up a pickleball tournament on YouTube and cracked away.