Sewing on the road

Al and I are on our way to my brother's farm in the U.P. of Michigan. They called us to say they needed help with the harvest...which means they've canned all they are able to and would like us to haul tomatoes and other stuff back home. I usually can tomatoes into sauce each year because my husband (being Italian) requests spagetti about once a week. We go through a LOT of sauce!

So yesterday I dug through my 30's for scraps to for the tumbling blocks quilt so that I could work on it as we travel.

I have quite a few 30's reproductions and originals, that I've collected over 20 years or so. I'm trying to use up all the small pieces in this quilt. And if I need some color that isn't a scrap, I'm cutting one. 

Having these papers cut and pinned to fabric makes basting so much quicker. I prepped about 25 of these diamonds then grabbed a stack of scraps so that I'm not bored in the evening up there.

We are on the road, I'm sewing, he's driving...both of us doing what we love best!

 

Current projects

This is my newest quilt start. It's long term ...a hand sewing ( #epp ) project. My last English paper piecing quilt top took 7 years to make and it's taking about 6 months to hand quilt then bind. This one will be faster since it wont be just worked on during car rides and doc appts. I'm doing some blocks each evening. I've hauled out my bin of 30s reproduction prints and vintage fabrics and am sorting in color order. Then I have daughter Jenn finding coordinating light/medium/dark sets for the blocks.

Also, in the evenings or early morning, I'm putting in a bit of time on that first EPP quilt, my 6-point diamond stars. It's getting to the end. This week I flipped the quilt frame around so that I can quilt the last few rows. It should be finished some time in April.

Hand sewing HEXIE flowers

 When I'm on vacation, I love to do a little hand sewing...especially EPP (English paper piecing).
This "stay at home" period isn't exactly vacation but I thought if I looked at it that way, it might improve my spirits.

So I asked daughter Jenn what color hexies she still needed for her quilt. She wanted tans, neutrals, browns and olives.

Well, I can do that. A few of these were already cut out so I stitched those up first.

Then I dug through my "drabs".

I didn't find many...I seem to collect brighter, cleaner colors.

But there were some shirtings...

And homespuns.

I stitched up 10 flowers for her and about 1/2 were darker or drab.

Then I decided to bake. Instead of buying bread, I'm baking loaves once a week. This week I did one sandwich loaf and one cinnamon raisin 😋

I love this recipe that I found online. It needs kneading for 7 minutes so I let my kitchenaid mixer handle that. So easy!

Here's the link:

homemade bread

STAY HOME & STAY SAFE everyone😷

Almost Christmas

I'm still in hexie mode... These pretty Kaffe fabrics are going to become hexagons that I will appliqué to background fabric. Sashing? Maybe. Quilt? Pillow? Who knows. I'll see what it needs to be later...  

My class will be to teach English paper piecing, fussy cutting, and appliqué. I want the project to be fairly easy so I'm going to include a mug rug pattern (Link to my HEXAGON FLOWER MUG RUG PATTERN)  made with just one hexie flower... that way it won't be overwhelming if someone is struggling with the hand work. Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching.. Kathys Quilts

And since it's almost Christmas, it's my annual cookie bake week, I've started getting the 10+ different batches baked. These have to go in the mail by December 15th. My two bachelor brothers that live out in CA and OR, look forward to this treat. 

And to think I was (somewhat) complaining that the temps were too high for December... missing the snow... well, not anymore. We've had snow EVERY DAY since the day after I mentioned the lack of it. We have plenty now and it keeps on coming... Sure is beautiful!

Took a trip to the U.P. of Michigan

As Al drove up to my brothers farm, I was able to get some hand stitching done. These 1930 reproduction fabrics are becoming hexie flowers for a medallion quilt. 

I packed plenty of fabrics but forgot to grab extra hexagon papers so I had to resort to cutting up flyers and magazine covers... Not pretty but it works!

My brothers farm needs LOTS of work to get it producing like he wants. He's still in the process of repairing outbuildings and planning fields. 

Potatoes were planted in the spring, then neglected till now because he works full time in Detroit. This will become a retirement farm for him. In the meantime, my sister and I will harvest, can and freeze some of the fruits and veggies. 

I worked on one long row and two short rows to get these beauties. The plants could REALLY use more growing time so we'll be back in a month to dig the rest.

These are just a small amount of the potatoes....we wanted to try all the varieties. Purple potatoes are a new thing for me... I haven't ever had a chance to try these and was very surprised at how creamy and good they were.

After we came home I had a chance to work on my Double Nine patch blocks. As of today, I have eight blocks left to make :)  seeing a light at the end of the tunnel!

Working on RED scrappy blocks

Al and I just got back from a two week vacation in Florida. We had a great time...the weather was perfect. I did miss my sewing machine though. Our new car is a whole lot smaller than the SUV we had last year. It forced me to pack much lighter and that meant nixing the sewing stuff...except for my Englush Paper Piecec Stars. 

Now that we're home I've gotten to work on stitching up March's scraps...reds (soscrappy.blogspot.com). I finished up on Scrap Jar Star block and three of my little log cabin blocks...I should give these a name. 

I didn't quite finish my red spool block...maybe tomorrow. 

The block below is just selvage scraps I had stuffed in a jar. On Pinterest or Instagram, I saw a cute bag with selvage pockets... This might become a bag or if I'm lazy it'll become a mug rug. Just hate to waste them, you know?

So here's my epp stars...working on them as Al drives. I NEED to get this quilt done....not only because it's been 7 or 8 years in the making but because my daughter picked it as her wedding quilt. Their first anniversary is in June. It would be a great time to give it to them. 

I can't tell you how long I've been working on this project....feels like FOREVER! I did a little math on the way home from Florida... It takes me one hour to cut, baste and stitch one star. It takes another hour to cut some white pieces, baste them, attach them to the star then attach the star to the quilt. I have 15 rows of 14 stars...so 210 approximately. Two hours per star is 410 hours and that's not counting the half pieces to finish the edge. Also not counting the hand quilting I'm planning on doing. 

I know my daughter appreciates the work into this one because she's a quilter..and I know it will be in good hands in the future.

Okay, so the only sewing I brought down to Fl with me was the EPP... So when I got a little bored with that what could I do but SHOP! :)

Rainbow's End in Dunedin Fl was having a march sale... 35% off Kaffe, Tula a Pink, Brandon M., cat/dog prints and more. Couldn't resist that!!