Slowdown Sunday

 

There are so many projects that need to be done in Virginia. The mower was broken so we had quite a wheat filed going on. A giant rainstorm tried to wash away the driveway and then some trees fall down. I spent a couple of days cutting downed trees into logs. Then, when I was nice and exhausted, our kind neighbor with a tractor came to help us dig up the old drainpipe under the driveway to put in a bigger and longer version where the water wanted to go. Boy is my back mad at me today. Our dirt always seems to be more rocks than soil. I guess that is what happens when you live on the side of a mountain. 

I think that makes today a perfect time to finish up the hand quilting on my hexie diamonds. All that is left is orange, red and the black ending border. I was smart enough to pack up the correct thread colors which I keep in this adorable tin that came with the scissors. I use a button magnet to keep the needles handy and make sure it is all in my "on the go" zipper pouch for sewing on the go opportunities. I have some cheap school scissors that I use on flights in case TSA objects to sharp objects. Dental floss also has a built in thread cutter in case of emergencies. I am quilting in straight rows with matching 12 wt. pearle cotton thread, so the quilting goes pretty quickly. I marked the rows with a fixion pen, but it is pretty easy to find the center of each block. I have been finishing the edges as I go to the point that Kurt woke up in the middle of the night and pulled it out to snuggle up. He seemed confused when I told him it wasn't done yet. It is a good thing that I used wonder clips instead of pins to keep that last edge secure. 

We are enjoying the deer and they are enjoying the garden. I found some more plants on 75% off clearance at Rural King, so I we will see if they have enough time to grow anything. I think there were peppers and tomatoes. We covered everything in the raised beds with fences and netting to try to keep the wildlife away. Did I mention that my back is really unhappy that I overdid it?  Back to hand quilting with rest breaks to stretch and recover.  I have been streaming quilting videos on youtube. If it weren't for graduate school and my job it would be fun to make some youtube videos. Maybe when I retire?  My next set of classes don't start until next week, so I have plenty of time to relax and enjoy. I plan to enjoy every minute! Are you taking some time to recharge your batteries today? Be sure to visit Kathy for slow stitching Sunday if you are looking for some hand work inspiration. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Home Again

We are back in the continental US again after an amazing trip to Alaska. Truly a once in a lifetime trip full of so many bucket list checkmarks! We had the perfect itinerary with each day better than the one before. 

It looks like both scheduled posts went up as planned while I was away. Orange is wrapping up and I am excited about purple for July. Yay!

We were traveling during the summer solstice and experienced 20 hours and 29 minutes of daylight. Thanks to room darkening curtains we were still able to sleep at night, though with the 4-5 hour time change and extended daylight, we were never quite sure what time it should be. Fjords, trains, moose and bears were all on my list of things to see and I was not disappointed. 

We got two train trips! One up a mountain in Skagway and the other from Denali into Anchorage at the end of the trip. 

I made sure to have some hexies along for slow stitching during those trips. There was also some stitching time on buses and a long days of glacier viewing in Glacier Bay and the College Fjords

This is my progress so far on the new hexie snake quilt.  I took some time one evening after Kurt was out cold at 8:30 to pair up lights and darks. I still have plenty of yellow and blues to stitch, but sadly, I didn't remember to bring along any purples for July. I did pick up some purple fabric at a quilt shop during our trip though. There was a shop in Skagway that was looking for seasonal help. Housing provided.  So tempting. 

Our day in Glacier National Park was amazing! Glaciers of course, but also whales, grizzly bears, sea otters and bald eagles. We should have brought the good camera to be able to zoom in on some of them for better photos. 

Then we moved on to the land portion of the trip with stops in Denali state and National Parks. Our goal was to get in some good hiking. I think our best day was 23,000 steps. 

Everyone was so worried about how dangerous the moose were, I was safely on a bus headed into Denali for this sighting and never saw one during our hikes. We hiked so much! Up mountains and around lakes and through a big rain day in Ketchikan. So many beautiful sights!

There was only one hike we missed. The last lodge we visited had a treehouse, but the trail was closed for a moose sighting. We kept trying, but eventually it was time to head back. 

We ended with one night in Anchorage before our flight back home which is when we had our scariest wildlife encounter. We were on a walking path. Not a hiking trail, but a path with moms and kids and joggers. Quite populated. Then suddenly this black bear came rambling around a corner headed straight at us. We "calmy" reversed our path and warned a nice mom cycling with her three kids that there was a bear coming our way. Then we all just stood wondering where to go as he ambled right past us and scrambled over the fence, apparently confused by all of us staring at him. Who would have thought that our scary wildlife encounter would be in downtown Anchorage and not in a national park?

ScrapHappy Saturday - Vacation Edition

If everything is going well, then I am gazing over the fjords of Alaska while stitching away on my new hex-snake quilt. I finished one orange set in car, but made sure to go through all the orange scraps and use my new die to cut as many sets of four as I had varieties of orange. So hopefully I will come back with a few nice oranges to start a new row. I am not sure whether I will sew the rows together or keep them in pairs for now for portability. The plan is to have a row of each color with the intertwined light and darks. It feels strange to be working with such large shapes after the last hex-diamond quilt, but this is the more standard size I think with 1 inch sides. 

I cut up all of my school junk mail to make the hexies and it felt great to clear out a bunch of stuff while still making something useful. I use cardstock weight papers and then sew through the fabric but not the paper. I put a hole punch in each hexie and then will use a chopstick or crochet hook to pop out the paper after the blocks are all sewn together. The die cuts a slightly smaller seam allowance than I would leave if I were cutting the fabric by hand, but it sure is quick and easy for tackling a big stack of scraps. I did find a couple of forgotten papers in the last hexie quilt as I was doing the hand quilting, it was smaller hexies with bigger seam allowances, so the papers weren't easy to see. I don't think that will be a problem this time. These papers would be hard to miss! I was watching Last Homely House on You tube and she uses lighter weight paper and sews through both the paper and fabric. There are so many ways to do English Paper piecing and none of them is wrong. I used to use glue basting, but I really hated trying to get the papers out after, so this way works best for me. I hope that your oranges are coming along well. I should be back from my trip any day now and will check in then with updates on the new color for July. Next Saturday is still an orange day, but I will try to post the new color a bit early as I know not everyone is overflowing on orange. This is also a good month to catch up if you got too busy in any of the earlier months. I know my greens could use a bit more attention. It is my second most abundant shade after blue. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Orange Haze of Summer

It is finally officially summer! I had two days of a leadership conference this week and then we headed out to the mountains! Just enough time to make sure everything is packed and then we are off to Alaska. I will schedule posts for this Saturday and next while hoping for the best. I can at least check on this one, I have it set to go out super early so that I can make sure it is up before we leave for the airport. I try to never get Wi-Fi on cruises because it forces me to go offline and relax a bit. Kurt might need to check in for work, so at least we won't be completely cut off if something drastic happens. Right now I am busy making sure that I have enough kindle books and audio books to keep myself entertained on the days at sea. We have whale watching glacier trekking and a train ride scheduled for the days in port and then there is time at some national parks for hiking. 

I carried the hex-diamonds along in the car for hand quilting. I am mostly done with the yellow row and started on the orange. I made sure to pack a spool of red thread and then one of the variegated for the dark row. This one should see a finish before too long. I have never done the knife edge before, so it isn't perfect, but I love the borderless look for this quilt. It has been in progress for the better part of a decade, but I am still happy every time I work on it. How are your oranges coming along? 

ScrapHappy Saturday Orange

 

The hazy days of summer are starting to settle in. Yesterday was my second day of vacation and I hand quilted for  most of it. How are your oranges coming along? I need to spend a bit of time cutting up a few more squares for my leader and ender project.

Then I hope to get to the orange rows on the hexie quilt. I have two days of work next week but then it should truly be summer. I am looking forward to having some time to catch up on projects. How are your oranges?

Last Green Day

It is the last day of May and I hope that you have made some progress on greens. June is going to be orange this year, which is quite a change from green. I will admit to having trouble finding any orange at all in my stash when the Rainbow Scrap Challenge began, but I make an effort now to have at least some representation for all the colors so that no month is left feeling sad. I have, amazingly, had several days this week to sew! Monday was a holiday, and so I got worked ahead on my graduate school assignments for the week so that I had an entire day to sew. It was lovely. Then yesterday marked the official first day of summer vacation. And so I sewed some more. There are some greens working their way into the leaders and enders project. 

And the log cabin blocks are done! I just have a few of the large subunits to sew together and I might be able to load this guy onto the frame before our vacation. It will take some digging to find all of the pieces to extend the frame to its full length. The final size is 112 by 112. First though, I have a summer college application bootcamp next week, but only for partial days. Then the next week there is some district leadership conference, but only for two days. So it isn't fully vacation time yet, but it is looking more like fun and less like work every day. 

How are your greens wrapping up? Misterlinky is below. I would love to see how everyone is coming along. I just spotted a couple of rotated blocks in the log cabin quilt. Isn't it funny how you never see them until the photo is posted?

Green

A few green blocks have started to work themselves up onto the design wall. Slow if not steady. 

I am trying to puzzle the log cabin blocks together. The diamond subunit is pretty big and so I can't just repeat 4 times without making an absolutely huge quilt. I will need to make some half units I think or work out some sort of clever border design. I don't have a ton of open space though. I might piece this center together and move the whole thing to a bed. 

It is a three day weekend for those in the US. It is awkward to have a three day weekend with only 2 days of school left, but I will still enjoy every minute. I am trying hard to take a summer break this year. I seem to keep getting called in to school for various things. So I have things the first two weeks after the end of school this year and then the firs week before we head back. I am firmly turning down anything that falls in the middle of that. By my math that should leave 7 weeks in the middle of full vacation mode. I can't wait! We have a trip to Alaska planned and Kurt has been saving me lots of projects at the cabin. There is a garden planted and a tree that fell down and a big rainstorm that tried to wash away the driveway. I will have so much fun! 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Green Day

 

A bit more digging into the green bins revealed a bunch of partial crumb and orphan blocks. I remember using them to piece a backing at one point, but it looks like there were plenty leftover. Things at school are wrapping up quickly. We just finished two busy weeks of AP testing. There will be more makeups than usual because of some glitches with the new online testing system. I have some time in classrooms with the juniors to get college applications started before they go away for summer. This weekend there was an end of year school party and a birthday party for a friend.  So much going on and all of it is good. How about you? Lots of great spring sewing or too much going on? Either way, please link up and share with us all. 

ScrapHappy Saturdday - Growing into Green

I love green for May. It my Birthstone and both of my girls were born in May as well, so it is emeralds all around. So far I found plenty of green squares. Hopefully some of those will come together soon. How are your greens coming along?

Sydney is home for the weekend on the way to her summer internship and so there is the pitter patter of children's feet around the house again. Strange! Anna has headed to the cabin for her birthday weekend. Pretty calm honestly. We had a family game night last night and then they all went to do their own things. 

This week was lots of AP testing which meant that I got my steps in most days walking around while they did their thing. One more week of that before makeups and graduation.  There is an end in sight!

Green in Spring

It is starting to get warm in Florida, but I know in other places, it is still feeling like spring. I have two bins of green scraps, but it looks like the dark one is more full, so I will start with that. 

Thursday was the last day for seniors to make college decisions. We had a few last minute debates and changes, but everyone seems to be settled on a choice. There were awards for seniors and then AP testing starts on Monday. I will get in a lot of steps in the next few weeks as I proctor standardized tests, and then we will be ready for graduation. This year has flown by! I wish there were more time for sewing, but fabric is patient. How are your green scraps looking? I hope you find lots of fun variety and have some time to play.