The First Week of January

They say that how you start the year is how it will continue.  For me, I hope that means lots of stitching, as New Year’s Day was spent joining in on a Zoom sewing session with Chookyblue that went for 14 hours.

After 28 girls joining in on New Year’s Eve, there was a large number popping in and out again on New Year’s Day.  This photo was right at the end before we all signed off.

The project that I worked on was putting together the Wensleydale Quilt top.  The poor girls had to put up with lots of cursing and wingeing, as I struggled to get the points to match, as they don’t nest, due to the construction method.  Some were restitched up to five times.  However, I did get there in the end and I am satisfied with the outcome.  I know I may be a bit pedantic, but I do want it to look nice.

It will now wait patiently until I quilt some other simpler quilts before I tackle the quilting.

Next on the stitching agenda was working out what I want to make for Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  In the end I have chosen three projects.  My grand plan is to get them kitted up now, so that I can quickly make the blocks as their relevant month arrives.  I have chosen ten colours to work with for each.   That way I only have to make blocks for ten months, and will have two months to finish the quilts.   If the colours don’t quite align with the nominated colour, that’s too bad.  

Firstly, I will make a quilt with my six inch crumb blocks.  For the size I want I need three of ten colours.  I already have some made from the last couple of years, so that shouldn’t be too hard.  I decided that I will just make them into a shadow block and went ahead and worked out all the details.  It was only then that I watched  Kate at The Last Homely House and discovered she had made the exact same quilt that I intend to make, although her blocks aren’t quite as crumby.  Obviously, great minds think alike.  I have pulled the fabric for the shadows, sashings and borders, but still have to cut them out.

The second one will be a variation on the Potato Chip Block. I just found a photo on Pinterest.  I’m sorry I can’t credit the maker or designer, as I don’t know it. It will have a centre of two black and white prints, which will be surrounded by one round of the colour.  I need 48 blocks, so five for most months, but just four for two months.  I have gone ahead and cut all the black and white strips, which didn’t make much of a dent in the collection.  However, it did mean that I have now tidied up the black and white tub, which was a good outcome.  When I look at it, I really do wonder why I didn’t just use a square in the centres, but it doesn’t matter.  It will take a little while to get all the different scrappy bits cut.  I will persevere.

The third one is going to be made from solid colours.  This is therefore going to be more of a Rainbow STASH quilt rather than a Rainbow SCRAP quilt. The pattern I have chosen has a cross with two tones of the colour.  Of course, I had no trouble having enough colours.  

My once tidy sewing room became a big, colourful mess during the process.  Once again, the solids tubs had a nice tidy up when I finished cutting, which is a good feeling.  I still have to cut the white background and grey corners.

I will hopefully have some completed blocks to share in the next week.

I did have to break my wish of only using fabric that I already had.  I had plenty of the background for the two quilts, but didn’t have a suitable grey, so visited Spotlight.

Now, I have a question I would really like some feedback on.  How are the patchwork fabrics displayed in your local Spotlight?  In the Bathurst Store, they have changed their layout.  Where there used to be all the solids together, all the blenders together, the aboriginal together, the novelties together and any specific ranges together, now they are all jumbled together by colour.  It is an absolute nightmare trying to find things.  It’s like how some people arrange books on a shelf by colour rather than author.  Obviously not readers.  I digress.  I asked about it and was informed that it was instructions from higher up, and not the store.  However……..the store at Orange is arranged like they always were.  I’d be really interested to hear if it is across the board or just Bathurst.

Now back to our regular programming…….while I was in the Orange store to buy the grey homespun I noticed that their clearance table included their Liberty fabrics.  They were all designs that hadn’t been in Bathurst, so I bought up big.  The original price was $30/m, clearance was $6/m, but with their sale they were $4.80/m.  13.3metres came home with me.  That is cheaper than homespun and some will even be pretty for backings at that price.  Win, win.

Yesterday was our first day back at my Patchwork Group, so I needed some hand sewing to work on.  Yes, I have started yet another project. 

I bought this kit quite a few years ago, and having seen Lin make her version last year, was inspired to finally get it made.  

I traced all the stitcheries on Tuesday and just worked this simple one yesterday.  My next job is to prep all the appliqué and get them stitched down.  It is a fairly simple project and will be ideal to take along.

That’s all I have done in the sewing room, but I am happy to be getting everything prepped to make the rest of the year easier.

Meanwhile, Mick has been enjoying watching the Fifth Ashes Test in the cricket.  The Sydney Test is the Pink Test to raise funds for the McGrath Foundation, which provides cancer care nurses.  We always buy our “virtual tickets”.  The third day, Tuesday, is the Pink Day where everyone dresses in pink and they make special presentations.  Mick joined in, despite being in our lounge room, rather than at the cricket ground.  His shirt even has cricketers on it.

We had a quick trip to Orange to deliver some chairs Mick restored on New Year’s Day.  (Hence my visit to Spotlight up there.) His sister has an outdoor setting with wrought iron ends that the wood had rotted on.  Mick has fixed them for her.  He had to test one out once he had it put together and delivered.

Our garden has been producing plenty of veges.  I am picking and freezing about 500 grams of beans a day at the moment.  The garden doesn’t like the extreme heat we are experiencing at present, but it is doing OK.

I was surprised to see these strange mushrooms in one of our plant pots.  The spores obviously were in the potting mix.  No, we won’t be eating them.

I have tried my first new recipe for the year.  It wasn’t really all that different, but we will count it anyway.  Quiches made using a wrap instead of pastry have been popping up on Instragram, so I gave it a go.  Very simple, and they come out of the pie dish nicely.  A win, that I will probably do again.  A slice would be good to take for lunch.

And that about wraps up the week.