In Lieu of Sewing –
I spent Monday doing a clean out and reorg of my cutting table.
I just couldn’t stand it any longer.
I was finding it hard to find actual cutting space on my mat as the available area became smaller and smaller due to the piles and stacks on both ends of the table –
Random rulers, piles of strips and fat quarters –
Leftover lengths of backing margins –
Yardage not chosen to be binding even though it was in the line up, just stacked on the end until I could get myself around to putting it away.
The catalyst? Somewhere under those piles was the rotary cutter and a pair of scissors that I could not find.
I went from clearing the cutting table to moving on to a box of scraps that arrived from my friend Carrie –
I am short on neutral strings, so I went through one bag and pulled out what would work for pre-cut strips for the Scrap User’s System and set those aside and focused on this:
Extra wide strips were placed on my Accuquilt Studio – not to cut to an “actual” width, but placing over the blade to cut them somewhat roughly in half but a bit off center to maintain the appearance of STRING instead of even strip.
Does that make sense?
It does to me!
These lovelies will find themselves in another string project down the road.
Anything really narrow is set aside for working into my current paper-pieced log cabin project.
And yes, there is a bag of cut-off triangles I can work right in to my sawtooth sashing strips too.
Yesterday was an absolutely NO SEW day.
The wonderful March Quiltvillians had already done much clean up and started in on the laundry before I even got there. SO NICE!
And it’s a good thing because Housekeeper Susan has had a fall and twisted her ankle badly and is unable to come this week.
So I have been playing Housekeeper Bonnie and appreciate Housekeeper Susan all the more (She is worth her weight in gold, truly!) as I did all the things.
I didn’t stop from the time I arrived until it was time to go home for dinner.
Hubster Dave came by late afternoon to help me make beds. Bless him too.
The downstairs is done – I only have to finish the upstairs today before Celeste’s Quilty Pleasures group arrives around 4pm.
Meanwhile on the home front:
Son Jeff arrived right before I left home to work on the deck!
Mabel and Zoey are infatuated with Jeff. You should hear the squeals of delight when they hear his car pull up the drive.
Mabel can’t get enough of him.
This side section is now done.
Two short walls leading to the stairs are done.
And best of all – they’ve agreed to leave it all galvanized grey! I simply said “We are not getting any younger and I don’t want to have to face repainting everything in a couple of years, do you?”
Cost + Time + Aging. It’s a wonderful equation that had them checking the facts.
Great job Carol!
And you saw a couple of retreats back where Charlotte was working hers in everything?
These two tops are Charlotte’s – her Big String Quartet is sewn from selvages, and I love that she made her Silk Path in scrappy rainbow.
Each time I make a quilt I wish I could make it again in another color way, or change some things and do variations, but I just can’t – so I love having YOU do it for me!
I’ve seen several posts asking where they can find our Hearts of Hope quilt that we ran as a sew along 3 years ago when Ukraine was first invaded by Russia.
It is included as a bonus in my Solidarity PDF pattern booklet.
