A Basting Party / Beauties Pageant 103

Whenever I have more than one quilt to baste, I like to hold what I call a “basting party,” but really, it’s no party at all. It involves moving the living room furniture, rolling up an area rug, cleaning the hardwood, and crawling around on the floor armed with a can of 505 basting spray. 

Two inhabitants of my house are seriously inconvenienced by this process. Rose, our furry family member, expects daily naps on the living room couch and regular sewing sessions in the adjacent dining room. When a quilty creation is on the floor, she is not invited into these rooms and instead snoozes in the kitchen smack up against the door to the dining room, as if to say, “If I can’t come in these rooms, Mom, you cannot come out.”

Then there’s my younger son, who has taken up residence in a corner of the living room with his stuffed animals, trains, books, and other assorted treasures. I call this spot his “office.” He is a creature of habit, and he unrolled the rug more than once, an attempt to get things back to normal. Once I heard, “Woo hoo! I did it!”—a sign of triumph that he had successfully moved an armchair back to its rightful spot. 

See what I mean? Basting is no party!

Despite these obstacles, I successfully spray-basted two projects, my two final Christmas quilts for 2020. The first is my second Merrily quilt, by Gingiber, shown at the top of the posted and below. (See my original Merrily quilt here.) I had initially slated this quilt for getting an edge-to-edge pantograph at the longarmer’s, but I’ve since decided an all-over crosshatch by me would do the trick.

When I posted my original Merrily, a no-reply blogger asked about obtaining the requisite panel. If that was you and you didn’t see my reply on the post, Lark Cottons still has multiple panels in stock. (The site is also offering 20% off on selected manufacturers through November 4. Just sayin’. I love Lark because all yardage is available as fat quarters.)

The second project is Camille Roskelley’s Norway pattern. This quilt, too, was supposed to go to a longarmer—at 78 inches squares, it’s a large quilt to put through the 9-inch throat of my semi-industrial Janome—but I’m quilting it myself now. It’s actually on the machine already. I’ve started quilting diagonal lines, sewn from the center outward, every 3 inches. There are a thousand threads to bury with this approach; I’m OK with that. I’m not sure what I’ll do after the diagonal lines are complete, but I find them rather forgiving. It’s easier to spot wobbles on horizontal and vertical lines of quilting, I think. I may quilt diagonal lines in the opposite direction, creating a true crosshatch. We’ll see.

The skies have been gray for days (hence the rather horrid pictures!), and the snow is now falling. All of us here at From Bolt to Beauty world headquarters have a sore throat and a case of the sniffles. You know who wants to hang out with people with simple colds during a pandemic? No one! So it’s a weekend at home quilting for me.

What are you all up to this weekend? Does your plan sound like mine? 

By the way, my apologies for the confusion over last week’s giveaway. I didn’t pick a random winner; it was a first come, first served kind of situation. Pamela was the first to call dibs on the notions, so they’re off in the mail to her. : )

Follow Me On ...

 

* * *

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Notion Giveaway / Beauties Pageant 102

Back in the late spring and early summer, I did a thorough excavation of my stash. I picked up every piece of fabric that was a fat quarter or larger. Those prints that I still wanted to use went back in my storage drawers; those that didn’t were sold on FeelGood Fibers. (To date, I’ve sold more than $400 of fabric to the FGF community!)

I thought I was done. After all, I moved out a bunch of material that was no longer working for me, making the space and earning the money to buy quilting cotton that excited me. Then FGF launched its Declutter to Destash initiative, and I realized I still had work to do.

This challenge is all about getting rid of—by selling, donating, or trashing—what you don’t need and organizing what you want to hold on to. I started small and evaluated my notions. I consolidated my needles, tossed old seam rippers and marking tools at the end of their lives, and set aside duplicate items or notions I don’t use. The whole process took less than an hour.

Then I moved on to my scraps, which lived in resealable bags that I stored in a big plastic bin. Everything was already sorted by color, so really, what more did I have to do?

So much more.

I started by pulling scraps and cutting them for two projects: Plaid-ish by Erica Jackman and Brightly by Allison Harris. Then I went back through each bag. Fabrics that I had no interest in using were set aside for selling on FGF (see my popup shop here). Pieces smaller than 2.5 inches went in the recycling pile (my town recycles textiles). Larger pieces were ironed and placed in a new scrap drawer. The stuff in between was cut into hundreds of 2.5-inch squares (see picture at the top of the post). I have my eyes set on Jessie Fincham’s Scrappy Irish Chain tutorial, which requires almost a thousand 2.5-inch squares, to use up that collection.

The survey of my scraps took a good week and a half. It consumed all my crafty time (I did no sewing while I worked on it), and I found the process overwhelming at times. I employed the use of my AccuQuilt Go! to transform oddly shaped scraps into pretty 2.5-inch squares. Doing so made the process go faster.

Now I have a humble collection of notions—what’s pictured below as well as items that didn’t make it in the shot—that I’d love to pass on to someone who will use them. If that someone is you and you live in the United States, let me know in the comments below, and the lot is all yours. (If you’re a no-reply blogger, please leave your email address; otherwise, I have no way of contacting you.) First come, first served! This collection of notions has already been sent to its new owner. : )

Follow Me On ...

 

* * *

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

The Silver Lining to 2020 / Beauties Pageant 101

 

Hello and happy Friday! I’m continuing the theme for 2020 today with yet another finish because there’s not much to do when I’m hunkered down at home but sew and sew and sew. This year’s 12 finishes for me were all completed during fairly decent weather, and it makes me wonder how many quilts I’ll successfully tackle once the weather takes a turn for the worse. At some point, I’ve got to get bored of quilting, right?

In any event, I introduced this project a few weeks ago. It’s Stepping Stones, by Blair Stocker of Wise Craft Handmade, rendered in purples, oranges, grays, and blacks from Denyse Schmidt. This pattern was a simple sew and proved to be an effective use of scraps and stash. It was also a fun way to play with value. The transparency effect of the black overlapping corners is especially satisfying, I think. My only word of caution is that the Stepping Stones blocks have bias edges. That’s not a dealer breaker for me, but it’s something to keep in mind if you decide to make the pattern yourself.

 

 

Now that my take on Stepping Stones is quilted and bound, it looks less Halloween-y than I originally feared. It’s still not quite Michelle enough to hold on to it, which is fine. I’ve been accumulating a stockpile of finished lap-size quilts. My younger son wraps up his elementary-school experience next spring, and I thought I’d give the many educational professionals we’ll say good-bye to their choice of quilts. So I’ll add this lovely to the pile.

 

Sometimes I make quilts with a specific recipient in mind, but more often, I sew what I will enjoy creating and then figure out who will receive it. This is my first time asking people to pick what they’d like. I’m excited to see how it goes! : ) 

What do you do with your quilt finishes? Do you sell them, gift them, or stash them away?

Follow Me On ...

 

* * *

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Down Syndrome Awareness Month / Beauties Pageant 100

The short version of this post is that October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. If you don’t have someone with DS in your life, I think you’re missing out. : )

The long version of this post is that 10 years ago I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He was my second son (Big Brother was 19 months old at the time) and was born full-term and healthy. However, unknown to me, my husband, and our medical team until the time of delivery, this little guy had a significant chromosomal abnormality: Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome.

Although my husband and I were thrilled to have this baby join our family and were certain it was no accident he was given to us, raising a child with special needs was not something we thought we’d be doing. We had no idea what developmental or medical issues our son would encounter, and those first weeks and months of his life were hard.

But we took it one day at a time, and here we are 10 years later with a sweet, silly boy in our lives. What can I tell you about this kiddo? He loves basketball and bowling. He’s a devout fan of Thomas the Tank Engine and loves books, chocolate ice cream, and babies. He spends more time laughing and dancing each day than any dozen people with the standard-issue number of chromosomes do! Of course, he has some challenges. His biggest medical concern is bilateral hearing loss, for which he owns, but currently refuses to wear, hearing aids. Developmentally, he has significant problems attending, and his speech is very delayed. I assure you that doesn’t prevent him from getting his point across (for better or worse!).

So that’s my story: I have a child with special needs. Parenting a child like this was not something I would have volunteered for. I would never have thought I would be able to take on such a challenge. But his birth is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me as a mother, as a wife, and as a person.

I captured my feelings for my younger son in a quilt I designed and made called 47XY+21. It’s an abstract rendering of his karyotype (that is, a picture of his chromosomes), including the extra chromosome on the 21st pair that causes Down syndrome. As the heart surrounding that trio suggests, my husband and I feel nothing but love for our son’s bonus chromosome. We can’t imagine him without it. We wouldn’t want him any other way.

Follow Me On ...

 

* * *

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter