Getting there

 I am making progress on the anniversary quilt.  I hope to finish the quilting tomorrow and that gives me 5 days to bind it.

The Golden Threads paper managed to stay put just enough.  I had a hiccup with my water soluble thread shredding but, luckily, I had purchased a new spool probably 5 years ago and opening that factory sealed spool fixed the issues.  Trimming the high loft batt from the trapunto seems to have messed up my thumb but I am limping along with that, ice packs and ibuprofen.  

I used Zoom meetings with the quilt guild to remove any of the remaining paper with tweezers.  Still hoping to meet my deadline on 9/18.

Progress photos--of course Sherman had to get in on it.

On a Mission

I am sure I am working on too many projects at once.  

This week, I am focused on a quilt top that Lynn, Jan, Kathy and Syd made for our wedding.  The silly thing is, it's been pin-basted for over four years.  I had the delusion that I would work on it after we got the first moving POD packed in January of 2016 and put our house on the market.  I thought I'd have less to do with much of the house packed and during a time when I didn't want to mess up a neat and tidy house for sale.  Sure thing.  The reality was nothing like that.  I never really liked the backing I used either. The final thing that kept it unfinished was that I had decided after basting that it was a good application for machine trapunto.  Fast forward until now--about 3 weeks from our 15 year wedding anniversary. Our gift to each other was supposed to be a splurge trip to Europe, retracing some of our favorite trips--dating, honeymoon, and babymoon.  Since that's not happening, it seems like a good gift to get it finished.  It's so beautiful and I hate to see it shuttered for any longer.

There will be 48 motifs to trapunto. I actually enjoyed the prep work because I was able to clear out a lot of the polyester batting in my stash (always intended for trapunto).  As usual, starting was the hardest part.  I don't keep the water soluable thread at my fingertips and it's been so many years since I used this technique.  Hopefully, the dreaded yellow paper won't be more brittle in this climate.  

My first session was fairly short but I managed to get 12 motifs done and I trimmed away the batting while watching tv one evening.  I know it is only one of many steps but ... I'm a quarter of the way done on that part.  I'll wait for a big reveal when it is completely done but here are a few photos.  I wonder how long it is going to take for Mike to ask what I am working on since most of the time, I'm working about 3-4 feet away from him.  I don't have much of a poker face but I'll come up with something.

We have barely had any rain but we have had a few dust rainbows.

LTG milestone!

 I finally finished all of the LTG blocks.  I need to audition for sashing fabric and, hopefully, have something on hand that will work.  I honestly don't have a vision for what I'm looking for.  The piecing has been uncharacteristically blended and I like that look for this quilt.  I tend to gravitate towards high contrast but it doesn't seem like a good choice with my blocks.  We will see.

I got the bear's paw back from the quilter.  This is my no-basement set up.  No frills, as you can see, and I had to wait until the outside temperatures went below 110 so it was bearable to work outside.

Here is a full shot so you can find your blocks.  :-)  I am pretty sure I have a couple in my orphan block box too.  I bound it with a batik because it was a good color/value but you know that adds an extra amount of fun to that process.

Our neighbor posted this photo of a turkey vulture that was lingering just beyond the property lines.  Things that make you go hmmmm.

I'm still collecting more uplifting sunset shots to counteract vultures.

Slow-mo

I finished up the online mystery and it reinforced how much I appreciate it when a pattern has good pressing instructions.  It was not a fun process to get the blocks together but it is finished and ready to be quilted for charity.

I was looking forward to finishing up my Farm Girl Vintage blocks but then noticed that one of them would require surgery.  Also, after actually reading the directions (!), I realized that I had missed one block and needed to make 3 more of another for the cornerstones.  I had to summon up my patience to regroup.

I took a brief break after the blocks were done to cut up some of my random stacks of WOF scraps into Bonnie Hunter's scrap user's system.  The stacks were taking up space that I want to use for solids so the scraps needed to be dealt with. I think they were in the same condition as when I unboxed them four years ago and much of the scraps were from my original ye olde stash that is probably better suited to cutting it up smaller.  They weren't calicoes but fairly dull solids and a lot of other "safe" fabrics.

I also let myself get distracted by prepping a vintage Friendship top for long arming.  It was made at least 20 years ago and my request was large (14" maybe?) bear's paw blocks in yellow, green and blue.  It is set on point with giant setting triangles and, annoyingly, was not very square.  First I removed the borders because I felt they detracted from the blocks.  I spent the rest of the weekend making a back and pressing the top plus fixing some flipped seams.  The finished top is about 97x76 and, of course, it has huge sentimental value but I'm pretty sure I am not interested in quilting something that large, especially in the AZ summer.  When a guild friend mentioned that her business is slow due to her customers' financial uncertainty, I thought it was a good time to get it done.

By the time I finished the bear's paw, I had run out of good excuses not to revert to LTG.  I have not yet put together the units/blocks I've made into the larger units and I still need to make the 60 degree triangles, the trip around the world and the pineapple blocks.  Boy are those pineapple blocks slow and tedious.  I had a brief, false start using the Creative Grids ruler.  I'm not sure why I didn't have success but they weren't straight so I stopped after a few rounds and switched to paper piecing. 

I'm tempted to create a paper pieced template for the 60 degree triangle rows too.  We will see.  I hope to finish the remaining 6 pineapple blocks this week.  I can say with 100% certainty that I never would have gotten this far if I hadn't listed to (or maybe over-compensated for) the comment on our initial blogs saying to keep cutting extra strips and Dianne's advice to starch before cutting.  Having the big box of precut strips was INSTRUMENTAL in getting this far.  If I had had to stop and cut for each block type, I would have really stalled.  As I mindlessly work through these pineapple blocks, I am thinking of ways to use up the leftovers.  All of the sizes I've cut will fit into the scrap user's system but I'll probably keep them together for a few projects.

Dino Distraction

I am down to one more Farmgirl Vintage block to go but I had to take a break to finish the latest clue on the mystery in time for our weekly Zoom meeting to show progress.  It is basic but the fabrics are cheerful so it will make a nice quilt for community service.  I spent a full day in the garage sorting the 10 bins of community service fabric and kits.  It was a lot of work but I now have a more detailed inventory for my successor.  Six more weeks.  The great debate continues in my guild regarding when to physically meet again.  Most meetings have about 65 people and there is only one person who is anxious to get back together in person anytime soon.

Tomorrow is my brother's birthday, my grandmother's birthday and, apparently, a little boy in the neighborhood's birthday.  When his parents said he is into dinosaurs, cars and construction, I decided there was no better time to finish the dinosaur top I made earlier this year for a pattern testing.  I saw a remnant of this print when I was at Mrs. Miller's a few months ago and couldn't pass it up, although I had no idea what I would do with it.

I had just enough to cut the larger blocks.  On that same trip, I pulled some Judy fabric for the four patches.

I had the skinny panel for the back (what an annoying size!) and I used exactly the amount of the constructions signs that I had to finish the back.  The pieces I trimmed off before binding were as small as an eighth of an inch so I'm lucky I didn't get myself into trouble with cutting it that close.

I had two pieces of the black dot fabric but I used all of one of them for the border and binding.  I had a batting scrap that fit after a couple of cuts and seams.  The whole thing just seemed meant to be. I hope little Levi enjoys it.  It was a fun weekend diversion.

Arizona has opened up with great enthusiasm which meant we were forced to quit the basketball team and will not be at baseball practices starting later this week.  It's just the first in a series of tough choices, I'm sure.  Onward and upward.

Moving on

My mask making group has essentially stopped now that health care facilities are no longer placing requests.  Typical requests were for batches of 100-300 masks.  I think the last totals I saw for the group were over 6,000 delivered.  The group can be proud of those efforts and I hope it is an encouraging sign that our healthcare workers are getting the equipment they need and/or patient intake is slowing.  It all ended fairly suddenly but I was able to send my last batch of 100ish to the Navajo Nation.  I am a big fan of the USPS Click and Ship processes that mean I don't have to leave home to mail things.

I am working through the online mystery I mentioned last time.  Join in if you want a very low key distraction that will result in a lap size quilt. https://www.thequiltersmarket.com/blog/  Here are my fabrics from the charity stash. I have always loved the Merry and Bright line and the white on white is so lovely.  Usually white is boring but this one is designed by Jim Shore and has a beautiful pattern.

I have also been working on my Farm Girl Vintage blocks. I think I have three more to piece. I may keep a Jan Box (registered trademark goes to Mrs. O). of the fabrics I used because I really like all of them and could see doing future projects based on them.  The more recent blocks I did are much softer contrast so I'll have to see how they mix with the others. This is one of my recent favorites.  It is not pressed yet but you get the idea.

We have been going in the pool a lot after I finish my work day.  The evenings go by so fast.  The number of Zoom meetings after work has increased but it is not exactly a hectic schedule.  My employer pushed out the date when 42k of us would be able to come in to an office (at the earliest) to September 1 so that has calmed a lot of my teammates, as evidenced in all of the Zoom Happy Hour meetings I am invited to.  We just keep clearing away all of the little challenges to isolation.  Basketball will continue to offer virtual practices.  Baseball season was cancelled a couple of weeks ago.  We worked out an alternate plan for a school text book/yearbook exchange that doesn't involve the collective parade through the gym and cafeteria (uh, no).  We are figuring things out and enjoying the simpler schedule.

COVID state of mind

Mike and I talked and talked and talked (you know us) about whether to go on our March trip to Punta Cana.  Based on the international and national news in the days leading up to the trip, we decided to go but, as things go with a pandemic, things changed quickly and the news on Wednesday, March 11, sent us scrambling to see if we could come back sooner than our Saturday flight.  There were no good options but the trip home was really harrowing.  

The Punta Cana airport was absolutely mobbed and people had lost their minds regarding how to check bags.  We were flying Southwest so we know the drill for self tagging your bags and doing the two second bag drop. Even with the extra international steps, tagging was really quick but we waited in line for almost two hours to drop the bags.  There was a snafu at the gate and we ended up being the last three people boarding the plane.  It was one of those airports where you board from the tarmac so there was definitely an evacuation feeling about it.  

In Houston, Mike's passport wouldn't scan so he had to wait in the line rather than zipping through global entry as Brady and I had. In the line, they saw he had food wrappers and a breadstick that Brady hadn't eaten from the airport food in Punta Cana.  They flagged us for an agriculture violation and took his passport.  We had to go to a private room to be interviewed and our bags rechecked, all the while worrying that we were going to miss our connection.  The TSA folks were super nice but things take TIME.  We finally rechecked our bags and got to the security line where the TSA lane was closed. There were about a 100 people in front of us and we had about 15 minutes before takeoff.  I started begging people in front of us to let us cut in line.  Many, many people wanted to debate the exact time of our departure, did we really need to cut, etc.  It was awful.  We finally got through and started running.  I was hobbling due to my Phoenix airport hand sanitizer incident.  We sent Brady ahead and told him to get to the gate asap.  By the time we all got there, there was no staff at the gate.  Sinking feeling for sure.  Finally we decided to just board ourselves and went down the gangway and boarded. It seemed like they were waiting for us because the flight attendants quickly asked some folks in the last row to move for us so the three of us could sit together.  A+ to that woman because we were frazzled by that point.

We stopped at a grocery store on the way home from the airport.  It was just before closing time but we wanted to get milk, bread, etc.  We got the last loaf on the shelves and had to buy tiny little bottles of milk because that was all that was left.  Nearly all of the shelves in the store were bare.

Needless to say, the conversations from Wednesday to Saturday and the return trip itself formed a plan and a position of how we would be handling things going forward.  Mike went to the store on Monday and stocked up as best as he could and then we decided that was it. We were in self-imposed lockdown.

Mike was not feeling himself while we were on the trip.  He had no appetite and his chest felt constricted  He has the usual sinus problems.  There was a guy walking around the resort telling people he was trying to keep it quiet that he was sick but didn't want to miss the destination wedding he was there for.  Based on our travel, we decided that we had to stay in for at least two weeks to self-quarantine.

The lockdown has made life different, that is for sure.  So many things became more complicated overnight.  They day before we flew home, my company decided that IT should start working from home immediately.  When I returned to the office on Monday, my coworkers were feeling stressed, panicked and they were scrambling to figure out the technical and logical issues.  Over the next week, nearly all employees shifted to working from home--nearly 41,000 people.  That's quite impressive.  Suddenly I had lots of meetings scheduled to keep us all connected--a great thing since I was no longer the exception.

Brady still had a week of spring break left so we had some time to see what the AZ schools would do.  Because of all of our conversations about our position on lockdown, it took away some of the stress because we had decided we weren't sending Brady to school anytime soon.  Luckily, they made decisions pretty quickly to close in the short term and to close for the rest of the year.  Similarly with sports, they were slow in deciding but our decisions meant that we knew we weren't sending Brady to practice anytime soon.

Things got more quiet and calm after some of those decisions were behind us and we got into the rhythm of ordering food deliveries, prescription deliveries and postponing appointments.  My coworkers had figured out telecommuting and Brady had a plan for school and sports virtual meetups.  I started to really enjoy putting a pause on some things but I hadn't really decided how I'd focus my time--books? quilting? home improvement?  We were scheduled to have a home renovation in early May so that was disappointing to postpone but, otherwise, it was nice not to be pulled along by other people's deadlines.

By that time, all of the sewing social media groups I am in were bickering bitterly about all of the mask making posts.  It was really making me riled that it was so contentious.  A neighbor who is a nurse at a local hospital put out a request on our neighborhood page asking people to make masks for her floor of 40 nurses so I started making them for her and dropping them off in a box on her porch each night.  Soon, other neighbors were asking for them and I heard about a more organized group that was making them for healthcare staff across the state.  I "adopted" a facility and started fulfilling their order for 25.  Since then, that has been my routine.  Work my usual day and then sew masks for a couple of hours working on orders.  Before our vacation, I was up against a tight deadline to make a raffle quilt for the MS bike ride but that had been cancelled and I wasn't really inspired to work on it anymore.  I just kept going with the masks.  I've been enjoying the singular focus and the demand persists so I keep sewing the masks.  

My guild posted a virtual mystery QAL this weekend.  It uses only three fabrics and it is lap sized--doable.  I dug into the charity fabric bins in the garage and pulled some Xmas prints.  We will see how inspired I am working on something other than masks here and there.  I think there are only 5 steps and I've done 1, 2 so far (fabric selection and cutting).  We will see!

Long time ...

I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted.  I think I ran out of things to say for a while. 

Last summer I decided that I was just going to dump the things/thoughts that weren't working for me.  That was a good move and helped to clear the mental clutter and cobwebs.  Mostly, I was hanging onto things that I thought would be sure-fire successes when we moved here but have not panned out.  I was holding my quilt guild to the expectation that it was going to be great because it was bigger and I could find a niche or move from subgroup to subgroup until I found the right one.  Mostly it's been a grind with a few bright spots here and there.  Hanging onto that expectation was making each and every meeting seem like a punishment.  I decided to resign my board position asap (this fiscal year) so I just have 2-3 months to go.  That will mean that I can skip meetings if the program isn't interesting and I won't feel like the hired help so much.  I can continue to support the charity group by sewing when it suits me.

I should probably post during these COVID-19 days so I can remember how the time went by.  The weeks are really moving quickly.  Maybe it's because I still have so much to learn in my new job but there seems to be more to it.  I finish my workday at 2:30 p.m. and it seems like I blink and it's bedtime (that's with me still going to bed later than I should).  I really don't know where the time goes or how we did all of the things we did before. 

We were really in a rut with Brady's sports and it was a constant topic in our family.  We had something sports-related 6-7 days a week, often leaving one thing early to get to another late because they overlapped two nights a week.  Brady kept asking to rejoin his basketball and baseball clubs but it seemed like he was relishing the routine as much as the activities.  It seemed like he often wasn't enjoying it but didn't want to practice more or quit.  Who knows.  As parents, we were burned out by some of it and weren't sure where it was headed in the long term.  Since kids can play year round here, it is relentless and expensive.  Mike and I are really enjoying the pause on sports.  Brady has virtual practices and lots of equipment in the backyard when he wants to do other practice.  We have suspected that sports restarting will be the first thing to push the envelope from a staying-in perspective.  Baseball is going to try to restart on May 15 but we will be opting out.  Brady is on board with that so we will go one step at a time.

We are being very conservative about staying in and doing near complete social distancing.  Mike has always had lung and sinus issues.  He had a bad case of pneumonia a few years ago and it was pretty scary for weeks.  We are not taking the attitude that this virus is something you catch, endure and get better.  So many folks have had severe and fatal reactions to it.  We don't want to take any unnecessary chances.  We are considering home schooling options and trying to map out what a year plus at home might look like.  We will see. 

Taking it day by day.