The Kitting Up Day That Wasn't -

I’ve had a lot of discombobulated days lately. A lot of them.

It seems days of best laid plans (Which is how I generally roll) have become thrown to the wind and what gets done gets done, and what doesn’t gets shoved off into the next day’s to-do list mayhem.

And I find the big question of the day when things remain undone is “What does it matter?” “Does it matter?”

Honestly, I wonder what would happen if I just stopped everything. Everything.

If all the plates on all the poles stopped spinning and crashed to the ground, what would happen then?

What if I let it all go?

And that’s likely the most honest thing I’ve said in weeks if not months.

But some things did happen yesterday –

While recovering the pressing stations with new freezer paper for the arrival of the November Quiltvillians, I cut myself an extra length of the extra wide paper because my own ironing board next door in the QPO Studio was looking pretty grungy. Time for a fresh-up.

In the photo above I’m using the iron to reheat the old paper so I can peel it up.

It came off the old ironing board cover fairly easily – and though there are scorch marks on the cover, it’s not nearly as bad as it would be if I didn’t keep freezer paper on top.

My ironing board is extra wide, so this is 17” wide paper. A standard ironing board could likely get by with the standard 15” paper. This new piece is going on. Just like this. With all of that hanging over the edges. Just iron it in place until it is secure.

At this point I took my paper scissors – you know how when cutting wrapping paper if you hold the blades still you can kind of glide through the paper? Same thing here. I’m holding the scissors steady and just gliding them around the edge of the board to cut the paper to size.

More gliding around happening up here as I reach the “nose” of the board.

This was a quick feel good to give me a new clean ironing surface and more life to my ironing board cover.

Last week son Jeff brought Ashlyn’s Janome Hello Kitty machine to me because it’s circuit board was making things go weird. Like possessed weird.

The start/stop button no longer worked, the machine would run on its own –

So I called Lester at Ashe Sewing Center in West Jefferson, NC and made an appointment for 2pm yesterday to have it looked at.

We tried several things – but it was determined that the machine was just tired. The circuit board had started to go. The machine was a goner.

Ashlyn has been diving in to making clothing and costumes for the Renaissance festival and really needed a good basic machine that was a bit bigger than her Hello Kitty but wouldn’t give her the issues that a computerized machine could.

She is getting her Christmas early. I bought this mechanical model that does everything she needs new in the box for a great price.

Jeff will take it home to her next week. He’s coming to stay on Saturday until Hubster Dave arrives home on Tuesday. I leave Sunday for Vancouver Washington to stay with Jason.

I hope she likes it.

And the big draw was – it comes with a warranty and 4 cleaning/adjusting sessions over the next 2 years. That pays for the machine itself.

By the time I got back to the retreat it was 3:30 pm and folks started arriving – in the rain – right about that time.

No time for kitting up blocks as I had hoped!

But I did cull through the miscellaneous bin of strips to see which strips were long enough to cut blocks from – and I put all of the “too short” strips in another pile to determine what can be done with them.

Today I’ll sort these strips into color families making them easier to pull from.

At some point I must have been working with blue because there are a LOT of blue strips in here – too many blue strips – so quite a few of those are likely to be rehomed into the blue strip bins.

There is not much pink, red or yellow so I may be pulling strips out of the sorted strip bins to round out the colors a bit. Some colors are just lacking and we need them for punch.

I did find this sweet thing – it’s long enough – and it’s going in.

In 1992 I was pregnant with my daughter. I’ve talked a bit about her before. She lived 2 1/2 weeks but we never got to bring her home. Jason came 1 1/2 years later. This was the fabric I made my first maternity top out of. I wore it through both pregnancies.

Jeff was born 6 years after Jason, and I don’t know what happened to that maternity top by the time I was pregnant with him.

This is the LAST strip of this fabric I have, and it will be sewn into a quilt – saved in a quilt.

Isn’t it crazy how fabric can be so recognizable and take you back to where you were when you first claimed it as your own? It’s like an oldie but goodie playing on the car radio. It’s instantly 1982.

I got one block kit cut yesterday. Just one.

But I’ll get more today.

Border progress.
I’ve been watching Grace on Britbox. It’s a murder/mystery thing with a detective whose last name is Grace. It’s good.
More border length was stitched last night with a cat between my knees and a dog against my hip and before I knew it, it was nearly 11pm.
I’ve reached half way. Except I’m now thinking I need to add one more neutral row at the outside edge to float the center design a bit more. Is that crazy?
The quilting machine is still down. I’m still waiting to hear back what my next step should be. I sent another plea for help this morning.
My hope was that if I had to send the tablet or anything in that I could do it before I left for Vancouver – but I’m still waiting to hear back.
As to the questions on the rulers for the Lupine & Laughter mystery. “Do I need to have all 3 rulers?”
That question just lets me know that you were so excited you didn’t read the actual text within that post – just looked at pictures!
You don’t need ANY specialty rulers to do the mystery as I will provide standard rotary cutting directions as well.
The rulers just make things easier. They work with the sizes of the scrap strips I already keep on hand.
It is up to you whether you want to work with rulers or not.
I will let you in on this though – as soon as I put out information on the mystery, all of the shops GLOBALLY put in their orders for rulers and now even my distributor – the folks I get them from – are sold out. Half-rectangle ruler? Sold out. I can’t get anymore.
There may be other brands of half-rectangle rulers out there, but I am not getting more in for a while. Not until my distributor restocks. I will keep on checking to see if and when they have more in.
I will be providing paper piecing template sheets for these units if you wish to piece that way. Or google and find another ruler.
Or…just save your clues until later when things become available and after you know what the quilt looks like and you can determine what your preferred colors would be, to make the quilt in your preferred size at your preferred time with your own preferred tools.
This is where I am right now.
My son had brain surgery to remove a large tumor just over a week ago.
And this brings me back to the top section of this post where I mused:

Honestly, I wonder what would happen if I just stopped everything. Everything.

If all the plates on all the poles stopped spinning and crashed to the ground, what would happen then?

What if I let it all go?