Midget Block 39 and 40

I found some inspiration today to pull out my Midget Blocks.  They got seriously pushed onto the back burner when things got busy with the new job.  This one is called Pine Bur.  It is block #39 and has 65 pieces. 

It is paper pieced (easy but slow) and then sewn together with inset seams (impossible for me to do well for some reason).  Sewing by hand is the preferred method for inset seams, but I didn't want to take the backing out, and I'm definitely not hand sewing through foundation paper.  The corners are a bit puckery, so I may try to straighten those out a bit.  

#40 was sitting finished in the binder already, I skipped ahead just a bit to have some hand sewing on our Thanksgiving car trip. It looks fine to me now, but I remember spending some quality time with an iron convincing it to lie flat.  I cut the pattern out of freezer paper with no seam allowance and trimmed around each adding in the extra quarter inch.  Then I just sewed along the edges instead of taking the paper off and marking the seam allowance. 

Anna's dress rehearsal for the ice skating mother's day recital was this morning.  She is John Darling from Peter Pan.  I popped out the Goodwill yesterday to find her an extra large men's shirt to use as a costume.  I found a bagful of blue shirts while I was there which will make great quilt fabric at some point in the future.  Then she went to her play tryout.  There were only 32 kids for 50 parts, so I think her chances are good. Most of today was spent sitting by the porch watching the kids swim.  Summer is in sight and it is looking good. 

Ice Skating Pictures

Feel free to skip this post. I've been living at the ice skating rink lately though and I thought I should post some pictures of the girls during their dress rehearsal. My mom reads my blog and zooms past all the quilt talk in order to find pictures of the kids.  I'll do a quilt related post next -- promise.  Then all my non quilting readers can zoom past that to find the other stuff. 

This in Anna in her feather bottom costume.  It is somehow supposed to relate to Christmas in the 1940s and has something to do with World War II and and Andrews sisters.  There is quite a bit of plot woven into the show somehow. 

Sydney was a snowman in her first number.  Frosty had some sort of altercation with the Abominable Snowman centered around a magical snow globe. 

 This is one of Anna Theater on Ice numbers where all the toys come to life.  See the giant teddy bear costume?  She likes it because it keeps her warm.  OK, I think that's enough of that.  I took about 200 pictures, but after a while they all start to look the same, even to ME. 

31 Blocks and Whole Lotta Halves

 I spent the morning working on Anna's teddy bear costume for the ice skating show.  I think she has 5 costumes, but this is the only one I was asked to make.  I needed to leave the legs big enough to fit over her ice skates, but I might have gotten a bit carried away.  I can put some elastic in the sleeves, but I'll have to think about what to do with the legs.  It still needs a tummy and some velcro in the back, but I'm not going to get too carried away for an outfit she's going to wear for 10 minutes during each show. 

This afternoon I spent some more time working on RRCB step 3.  These string blocks are taking a REALLY long time.  On the bright side, I did finish with step 4 at ice skating practice this morning, so I feel like I have the rest of the week to work on step 3 and I still won't actually be behind.  Strange logic, but it works for me. 

MIdweek Muddle

Just back from ice skating (as always). Poor Ryan went straight from Legos to ice skating without ever getting to come home in between. The girls and I had some down time though and I used it to get midget block 37 prepped. It is called Imperial Fan and looks to me like a Dresden Plate variation. The pattern calls for 20 fan blades, but I could only get 18 in. It also wants lavender circle behind the fan, but I decided to leave that part out. I used a freezer paper template for each blade and then ironed the point before putting a basting stitch in the top to hold it down. I spent part of my two hours at the rink sewing the pieces together.  I'll tuck in the extra part at I sew applique it down, so far it is just pinned.

I'm a Chauffeur

More driving and juggling today.  I also got to do science with Anna's class.  That was fun.  We're doing Physics now, which isn't my thing, but it is good stuff.  After that it was Legos and lots of ice skating.  We're just now home and the kids were so tired they all walked straight up to bed without even asking for hugs and kisses. 

I found a few minutes though to finish off a scarf for Kurt to take on his trip.  He's supposed to go skiing and wanted something to keep his face warm.  This is something I started last winter when it was so cold and then shuffled around from place to place until I couldn't find it anymore.  It was hiding in the end table waiting for me to remember about it again.  I have more yarn to make a hat and mittens, but I don't know how to knit fancy things.

Logistical Nightmares

I think its going to be like this for a while.  At least until after Christmas.  I had to check the girls both out of school early to take Anna to the dentist.  Sydney went last week, but I had to reschedule Anna because of a conflict with her field trip.  I wasn't sure I could be home to meet the bus though, so I pulled them both out.  Ryan had Lego Club after school so we went from the dentist to get him.  Sydney had ice skating rehearsal at 5:45, but Anna's didn't start until 6:45.  Kurt was in a training session until 5:30, but it was too far for him to make it in time.  He was feeling pity for me though and took off early to make a 4:30 meeting back in his office which put him within driving range of home in the target time range.  He took Sydney up for the early rehearsal, allowing the other two to eat dinner and be at home for a few minutes.  Then I drove them both up, relieving Kurt so that he could make it to volleyball at 7, taking Ryan with him.  Sounds perfectly reasonable, right? The frightening thing is figuring out how I'll make it all work when he leaves on his business trip.  Single Parents do it all the time, surely I can manage for a week?  My mantra lately has been, "I'm doing the best I can, its just going to have to be good enough". 

I the midst of all of that driving and sitting and waiting I got some more work done on Midget Block 58, Diamond Field.  I managed to loose one of the white hexagons somewhere along the way, but everything else seems to be fitting together.  It is taking an extraordinarily long time, I'm sure it isn't worth it, but it has become a bit of a challenge at this point. 

RRCB Step 1

It seems like ages since I've had any sewing to post.  I've just finished off step 1 of the Bonnie Hunter mystery though and am feeling the need to get some sewing done this afternoon.  I'm using blue and green and brown color scheme. 

The girls have been busy with ice skating lately.  They are both going to be in the Christmas show this year, so there have been lots of extra rehearsals for that.  I've been borrowing Kurt's i-pad and getting quite a lot of reading done.

Ryan has joined a Lego Robotics league and had his first tournament this morning.  I don't entirely understand exactly how it works, but he seems to enjoy it, so that is the most important thing I guess.  Kurt has been helping out with that and so has been pretty busy lately balancing football and OM and the Lego thing. 

Happy Mole Day

For everyone that doesn't teach or take high school Chemistry, today is mole day! At 6:02 a.m. we began our celebration of Avogadro and his number which allows for the conversion of grams to atoms or molecules.

After the Mole Day fun, we had a signing ceremony for one of my students who is going on to play basketball at the college level next year. He gave a moving speech where he thanked his teammates and his mom and left us all choked up in the audience.
I have still been going to Anna's school on Friday afternoons to do science labs. Today was physical and chemical changes. Then Ryan had tryouts for Lego Robotics after school and I stayed to help out with that. By the time I got home at the end of the day I was done. I can't remember the last time I took a nap, but it sure felt good.
While I didn't have a lot of motivation to sit at the sewing machine tonight, I did pull out my Elm Creek Quilt to work on a bit of hand quilting while watching a movie with the kids. Kurt was kind enough to take Anna to her ice skating practice, and I was happy to have a bit of time to relax.

Tiny Steps

Yesterday was another busy day. We had a make-up lesson for ice skating which overlapped with an academic team match. Kurt and I did the kid swap which allowed me just enough time to pop into Hobby Lobby on the way to the competition. I got home just in time to head to bed so I could start all over again today.
Today was a better day. I don't have to go to the meetings that happen on the third Tuesdays after school, so I took advantage of the extra free time to do a little sewing. I decided to swap out the sashing strips on the postage stamp blocks and go for a more uniform look. Initially I envisioned a white on white strip, but it seemed too stark. I'm still not sure about the green, but I'll let it simmer and see what I think in the light of day. The design wall hasn't made it back up again after the new carpet, so I'll let the floor do the work for today. I am starting to notice a visible difference in the 1.5 inch strip drawer. I wonder how many more blocks I can make before they are gone?
Sydney got one of her costumes for the holiday show. I made her promise not to wear it around the house until after the performance, but she did ask permission to try it on before putting it away. The kids swam this afternoon. I had to turn on the hot tub for them because the solar heater sprang a leak last week. It has actually been quite fall-like lately, at least by Florida standards.

Little Bits

My weekend has been full of little bits of this and little bits of that. Between loads of laundry this morning I got block 17 done. It is an Airplane, so I used some blue and white cloud fabric for the background. The tail is a little crooked, so I might fix that before the paper comes out. It was much simpler and more relaxing than the last block. I did fix the top of the tree this morning, so it looks a little pointier and without resorting to the green sharpie.
Sydney was my photographer this morning and wanted Lizzie to be in the shot. Lizzie wanted to share kisses. We are headed off to an ice skating recital this afternoon and then I have Girl Scout things and school work I need to do. I'm sure I'll slow down on these little blocks soon enough, but I'm working through the initial momentum before I settle down to a more reasonable pace.

Wonderful Weekends

I love starting school on a short week. It's only been 3 days and already we have a weekend to recover.
I spent part of the morning making block 15 which was a string block. It was pretty straight forward and simple even though the strings were pretty skinny.

I have started on the next block, a Christmas tree, which is truly frightening. If I were not doing these strictly in order I would skip this one for a very long time.
Anna has her ice skating recital this tomorrow and there was the usual practice this morning, but football hasn't started yet, and there is not a lot on the schedule for the weekend. It should be nice and relaxing I hope with some time to tidy up around the house and putter away on my blocks.

2 Sleeps

We all went to see Anna's ice skating performance last night. It was exactly like a dance recital except on skates. Each of the age groups had two numbers and then they all came out for the opening and the finale. Sydney was fast asleep before intermission and Ryan was pretty grumpy about having to sit there for so long. Reminding him about how many football games we all sat through for him didn't seem to add any perspective to the situation.
Kurt finally had the idea to let him take some pictures with the new camera and that finally cheered him up a bit.
Today I have been cleaning non stop in preparation for Christmas. Somehow everything just feels more festive to me when the house is tidy. I lost count on the laundry at about load number 8, but I can almost see the bottom of the hamper. I was planning on watching TV while all this folding and sorting was going on, but apparently the TV broke last night. Kurt took it all apart and figured out it was a bad color wheel. We pondered ordering the part and fixing it ourselves, but eventually realized that TVs have gotten a lot cheaper since we got our last set and it was going to make a lot more sense to just start fresh. So off he went to pick up a new TV while I watched Hulu on the laptop. Still no sewing going on, but I am still hopeful.

Happy Quilt Festival

I decided to celebrate the online Quilt Festival by making some wonky star blocks. They started with a 3.5 inch base square and then I double sewed the corners to make 2.5 and 2 inch base squares. I think I'll float all the blocks in a wide white sashing and mix all the sizes together. Another column should make it about twin sized with a dark border of some sort. I'll make a few more tomorrow I think.

This morning we ended up double booked with Ice Skating and the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. We had to pass on the chess tournament, but it's hard to be so many places at the same time. Anna passed her test to go to the next level of skating and Ryan won in his age group at the Pinewood Derby. Even Sydney took 2nd place in the sibling division. His den took the first three places overall and will all be headed to the next level of competition. We all came home happy and spent a nice relaxing afternoon at home.

I'm supposed to run in the morning, so I'd better get some sleep before it is morning. I hope everyone else is having a happy quilt festival weekend.