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.

Back to School

School started today.  I can’t believe summer is over already.  I could swear that last week we were doing all of the last day of school activities.  How can summer be over if it is 113 degrees?  I should knock on wood, quickly, since we haven't had a lot of 11* days so far but they are coming this week.  Brady's school added a third class for his group so class size will go from 28 to 21.  We're looking forward to that.

On the very first day of summer, we started an 11 day vacation driving all over AZ, UT, and NV.  It was meant to be my birthday trip but it ended up as a family list of destinations.  That’s ok by me. 

We returned from vacation to  sports camps, two ongoing basketball leagues and prep for fall baseball tryouts.  A couple more weeks went by and we scrambled to make another trip a success.  There were so many hurdles and changes of plans but we were able to take Brady to an 8 day “camp” with his aunt, uncle and cousins.  He had the time of his life.  Camp was mostly Brady and his 8 year old cousin from CA, Keira.  To watch these two play acting and making up voices and stories was hilarious.  We even managed to talk them into a brief goodbye hug. 

Mike and I got to enjoy those days, just the two of us.  We managed to survive after Mike optimistically took us to a rough area of town late one night, in search of Portland’s signature donut shop.  See Mike's voodoo doll donut with pretzel stick below.  Luckily, my info was correct, and not Mike’s (that the trains weren’t running again until 4 a.m.).  I ended up shopping at three quilt shops.  Two were unexpected and the planned shopping trip was a disaster.  New rule:  don’t shop at unfamiliar places when they’re having a sale (40% off most fabric and the place was bigger than the Door Mouse).  They had two cutting lines and one must have been 40 people long.  The traffic and terrain getting there were no fun either.  I left with nothing and was happy just to get out of there without derailing our trip any further.  We are usually lucky with minimal travel delays but, on this trip, we got delayed in PHX with the first monsoon of the season and delayed in Seattle with a plane issue.  We didn’t get home until 4 a.m. and … I was supposed to get up for work at 5:30.  That didn’t work.  What’s one more vacation day?

 

I was certainly awake a few hours later when I noticed a live scorpion in our bedroom.  Why am I always the one to discover these things?  We had done a sweep of the yard and house when we got home from vacation but saw nothing.  We have decided (rationalized?) that it came in with our luggage or with Sherman’s stuff from the pet sitter.  We continue to sweep for them after dark but …. Grrrrr.  Two live scorpions in the house in two years is two too many.

With all of these activities, sewing has been sidelined again.  I’ve been busy trying to keep my sewing room organized and the guild’s charity sewing fueled with the right supplies when needed.  We ended up being out of town for the meeting when my Jinny Beyer was “due” so that made it easy to miss that deadline.  Sigh.  It’s together but needs the pieced border.  I’ve been a bit stymied on the best way to do it without distracting seams.

I need to find the energy for some retreat planning and prepping.  I’ve made a list so that’s a reasonable start.  It will probably include putting together a couple of sets of blocks into tops, a couple of pillowcases, a simple modern top to comprise the back of a quilt that already has a front, and maybe even something NEW for a change.  I tend to get a lot done in these pre-retreat weeks but I will have to be creative with my time.  Fingers crossed!

 

End of Year 2017 and Early 2018 Finishes

I've worked on a few odds and ends in the last few months. 




For our guild's small quilt auction in October, I made a McKenna Ryan wallhanging and I cut the pieces for two.  In December, I managed to get the second one finished for a friend who needs a distraction.

Another friend asked me in December if I'd make this hand-stitched, hand-embroidered ornament for her.  The pattern designer makes some very cute and detailed patterns!  I can't remember how long it's been since I made something like this. It took a few hours but I managed to get it done in time for the holidays.

To keep the holidays low-stress, I decided to make only one gift and it was a stuffed bunny for Brady.  He and I have a thing for bunnies and a blogger that I follow sucked me in with her post about a bunny she'd made for her daughter.  Her blog and patterns are highly recommended.  I've never made a stuffed animal before.  It went pretty well except I couldn't find the eyes in stores and embroidering them evenly was pretty challenging.  Also, I had marked the white fleece with a blue washout marker (on the wrong sides) but the blue showed through.  I ended up giving the whole bunny a deep-water bath the night before Xmas eve (after taking a deep breath).  Luckily, it dried in time and the marks were all gone.

I worked on a few projects at the January retreat although, it is not a long list.  I made a jelly roll quilt in the race, of course.  I made an Indians pillowcase for Brady.  I made three blocks from the Holly Jolly QAL, too.

I finished two stars for the Moonglow quilt (5 year project, lol).  That leaves only one star to make and I am waiting to finish the sashing and choose from leftover yardage in the kit before I make that star.  Two stars seems like pitiful progress, especially since both had components already started before the retreat. One of the stars has twice as many points as the other most-pointy star so you can imagine it was time consuming.  I also worked on the sashing for stars and it looks like they will align well with the setting blocks.  I have 5 blocks with centers to applique.

Read here for the saga of the Indians quilt.  I'm not sure why Blogger has published that post out of order.

All People Quilt UFO Challenge

In the fall of last year, I was reading a blog and came across a post that referenced the All People Quilt UFO Challenge .  I liked the idea of the randomness of it so I decided to join in for 2018.  Sometimes I wonder whether I spend too much time working through the old UFOs and never starting anything new.  Since many of the ESF groups shut down and now I’m not there for the monthly Diva challenge progress, I don’t have much reason to start anything new (besides doing something with the new fabric I buy).  I don’t buy a lot and it is mainly targeted towards finishing something.  I’ve been using the generous gift cards from the Divas to fulfill those fixes. I’m down to one card and I’m looking forward to visiting that shop since it may be becoming the closest one to me after this week.  Sadly, two of my favorites have closed or announced they are closing in the last couple of months--first, Three Dudes and now Quilter’s Ranch.  Apparently, Quilter’s Ranch has been in business for 40 years. I was worried when they announced they were giving up their Bernina dealership.  Sigh.  I will skip the closing sale this weekend.  There’s nothing I really need and the stories about the crowds and the Fire Department queueing at Three Dudes didn’t sound appealing.

But I digress …  Since I’m doing the APQ UFO Challenge, I should do some blog posts to monitor my progress.  I thought it may be “a sign” in January when they pulled the number that corresponded to a quilt that was ready to sew on the binding.  Wahoo!  It was January 1 and I was already almost done!  The photo is underwhelming but it is a mostly a vintage kit from ESF with all of the wonderful, thick flannel that Mary used to buy (maybe Maywood).  The more peachy pink was never a pink that I bought but the bundle was too pretty to pass up.  I finally pieced it at a March retreat (maybe 2 years ago) after buying some coordinates to finish it off.  I had a lot of the border print so I made it fairly wide to make this a bit bigger and put the same print on the back.  You may be surprised to know that our favorite quilts here in Arizona (and those that get the most use) have flannel on the back so this is intended to be MY couch lap quilt.  For a few months of the year, throughout the course of the day, it goes from downright cold to hot and then back to cooler in the evening.  The desert temps combined with leather furniture keep us coming back to the flannel.

In February, they pulled the number corresponding to the Have a Jolly Little Christmas QAL.  I’m in no rush for this quilt so I had hoped to get a few more blocks done but didn’t necessarily have a goal to finish it. I had kitted up all of the blocks last year so I could easily take them to retreats.  As luck would have it, I had gotten 3 blocks done at the January retreat. I finished 3 more when I got home and, still, I’ve been inspired to work on these since they are easy but each one feels like a mini quilt.  I have two blocks nearly finished (I needed to recut a piece for the cardinal and partridge) and then 3 more before they are all completed (wreath, reindeer and moose).

In March, they pulled the number for a new table runner for my office.  Since I wanted a couch and coffee table in my office instead of a desk, the coffee table from our Ohio living room is in there. We used the big ottoman table from the basement in our living room here.  Knowing my boys, when I bought the table from friends, I made a quilt to cover it.  It’s basically a giant placemat and, as such, it’s seen some hard wear.  It needs to be rebound since it is fraying a bit from all of the washings.  Ironically, two of my Ohio friends asked me to make them one like it for their tables.  I’m not sure why they liked it so much since it is so simple.  I’ve always liked pinwheels so I decided to just remake it with the new office colors.  I also chose to use Bonnie Hunter’s HST techniques to see if I can embrace them or if I’ll just go back to using triangle paper.  In that vein, I’ve been working on these HSTs for a while, carrying them to meetings to finger press and trim dog ears, etc.  If my math was right, I have all of the HSTs I need but I need to make blocks and finish the quilt. We’ll see how that goes.


Here is the original one.

This is the color scheme for the new office.

In the midst of these projects, I’ve been spending a lot of time on my community quilts commitment to my guild.  We committed to making 30 twin sized quilts for a project that helps a group of homeless people get jobs and homes.  The quilts stay with the program so we’re trying to get them done ASAP so that people can start benefitting as quickly as possible.  Since I keep the charity stash, that’s meant lots and lots of cutting.  I’ve also been making quilts from the bigger panels in our stash.  I had cut nearly everything in our stash to be used for these twin quilts when, by complete coincidence, we got just the fabric donations we needed to start making backs for the twin quilts. 

We also got a huge donation of precut flannel squares with about half of them already prepped for rag quilts.  Since it is isn’t practical to kit those for the guild, I’ve been making rag quilts of all things.  Kind of odd, I’d say but I’ve been having fun with them.  The prints are really adorable and they are only 5x6 blocks so they go quickly.  It’s a challenge to make a reasonably combination without looking like a hodge podge.  I have four more to make then the rag quilt blocks will be gone and that will be one less box in my quilt room.