Quilting and other Things

While I had great goals for April quilting I got sidetracked by a Photoshop virtual conference, sketching and transcribing old diaries.  Some libraries / museums online have handwritten journals that they are trying to transcribe.  They've put images of pages up and asked for help transcribing them to make them easier to search.  I also have access to some old family journals that I'm looking at.  So many possibilities for working on.  I also did some reading and have been able to get out for walks.  Most days I try to get my main walk early in the morning as there are fewer people out walking so maintaining my distance is easier. I did spend sometime on the Milkweed 3.  Most of the components now have their internal stitching done.  I need to still make the caterpillar and the butterfly.  I had fun(?) pulling potential backgrounds out of the stash.  I pinned one to the design wall and pinned all the components to it.  I did not wan...

It looks like most of April will be spent safe at home, staying away from others as much as possible.  The schools here won't be re-opening on Monday.  I do need to go to the store this week for fresh fruit.  This month I'm working on three things.  I started Milkweed 3 and want to complete that this month.  Its a summer version of my milkweed series.  The components are all cut out and the centres and veins have be fused since I took this photo.  I think I've also cut out more components since this was taken as a trial layout said there wasn't enough pieces.  The second thing is this little quilt made with blocks I won at the guild block of the month many years ago.  The paper with one possible layout was printed from EQ5 which means the blocks have been lingering for more that 15 years if my google searches are correct. This isn't the suggested layout but I think I like the little stars better so I'll go with it.  I found a...

March has been a very interesting month.  So many cancellations and trying to minimize how much I'm out and about.  I still get my daily walk in although I'm trying for earlier in the day when fewer people are out.  That hasn't worked so well the last couple of days because I am definitely a fair weather walker when I have a choice.  Its rained the last few mornings and cleared in the afternoon.  My goals for March's OMG was to quilt Milkweed 1 and 2.  Both of those got quilted at the beginning of the month and I was able to take them to the show at the Monday sewing group before that got cancelled.  The biggest problem was how to quilt the background of piece 1 but I ignored that until the flowers and pods were all quilted and suddenly thought quilting the flower shapes in the background would work well.  So I grabbed a spare flower shape and traced around it and that was the quilting for Milkweed 1. For milkweed 2, I had written words I ...

Its been wonderful to be able to quilt again.  Hand applique is still a bit of a challenge.  The fingers don't like holding a needle for very long so I take looks of breaks if I want to do hand work.  With that and some deadlines in mind, my goal this month is to quilt my two Milkweed tops.  One was completed after the Jane Sassaman workshop in December and the other was a result of ideas not explored during that workshop.  Its also part of  a working  in a series group for an online class run by Katie  Pasquini Masopust   I want to get these two done, so I can get onto the third piece.   I also need to make my Trendtex challenge quilt for CQA.  This is the third time I've purchased a kit and the first time I know what I want to make.  The quilt is due at the beginning of April although no pictures until later on.  These should keep me busy for the rest of the month. Linking up to Patty's One Monthly Goa...

Last summer I started working on an old collection of courthouse step blocks from an exchange.   I made a mistake while assembling the second half of the top so I was going to have a square quilt with very large triangles in two corners instead of a rectangular quilt.    I wrote about it here  This past weekend was the annual guild retreat.  The courthouse step quilt was one project I took with me.  I spent Friday taking the rows apart, removing the two setting triangles and moving one block to the other end of the row — undoing what I did last July.   It took all day as I had to do the ripping slowly but I’m pleased that the wrist is healed enough to allow me to do the ripping with breaks.    The previous day I worked on a Caddy Bag by Sisters Common Thread.  I had done all the cutting and marking at home.   I didn’t have the needed buttons but went on an outing Friday morning with  another guild member to Fabricl...

One of my goals for a long time has been to cleanup my photos in Lightroom.  I mentioned several years ago  what I am doing to keep track of progress.  The method hasn't really changed that much. I don't use the colour labels at all so I went to Metadata, Color Label Sets and picked custom.  Then picked one with a number short cut to rename.  I renamed the green label as I couldn't bear to look at a screen with too much red or yellow.  I set the name to be the actions I want to take and a reminder of how to remove the label when I'm finished.  Labels are a toggle.  Press 8 adds the label and pressing it a second time removes it. Then I went to All Photographs under Catalog and clicked on a photo and pressed Ctrl-A to select every photo in my catalog.  Once they were all selected, I pressed the number 8 which assigned my review photo label to all my photos. If I need a reminder of what my label means, clicking on the little green ...

Yvonne is hosting a planning party again. Before I look at next year I want to look at this year.   Quilting: 1.  Clean and organize quilt room (and office since they are in the same area).  Its gotten so messy, I've no desire to go down there and work on my quilting or anything else for that matter.  This is a recurring theme.  I got part of it tidy up but if you looked today it would be hard to tell. 2.  I'm going to continue with the Motivation Monday ideas.  I'm still working on the list I created for 2017.  The goal at the time was to move things forward.  I think that will still be the goal for some things as they are quite large.  The list still includes Canada BOM from Guild 2015/16 no change.   Stainglass Manger - Quilt and bind. Started quilting ABC Applique. Centre done and ready for borders.  Need to look for an appropriate fabric.  One Block Wonder - Quilt and bind done Common Bride top co...