I will continue my previous thread at a later date. I can’t believe it has been several weeks since my last post. Where does time go? I remember as a child hearing older people say, time goes faster as you get older. Thought that was a strange saying but it is true. However, when I retired I thought things might slow down a little and nope, still waiting for that to happen.
I just finished the blocks of my red, white and blue quilt. Each block has 29 pieces — two sizes of squares and half square triangles and quarter square triangles. If I had a little bit bigger than fat quarter sized fabric, I could have skipped the two quarter square triangles and save myself putting 12 per square together. LOTS of little pieces and lots of short seams, pressing, squaring up. I still need to square up the 12 1/2 (with seam allowances) blocks, then will work on deciding layout. I was originally going to make the quilt 5 rows wide and 7 rows long but have decided to make it 5 x 6, which means I will have a few left over blocks, which I am probably going to use for the next donated quilt (along with either nine patch, or four patch) to make up a 12 inch block). So I have 3 colors of background fabric (red, white and blue) and there are 4 different fabrics in each background fabric and 3 that are exactly the same. I will be using 10 from each background and then deciding which blocks (6) not to use. I will have the daunting task of matching 2 points on each side of each square and I think I figured out a relatively easy way to do that (LOL!).
To continue……On Saturday, I decided to change gears and started working on my jelly roll rug. This will be made with a Clover Hollow jelly roll and will compliment my Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt which will hopefully be finished before the end of the year, but could take most of 2020 to finish (since I am hand quilting. There will be 35 hexagon flowers put together using EPP and then appliqued on 9 1/2 inch blocks (four patch blocks). Anyway, I did my first ever chain piecing to make one lllloooonnnngggg strip 2 and 1/2 inches wide —- 42 approximately 42 inches long each. I still wasn’t as quick as I imagine some would be, I did pin each joint but didn’t mark the diagonal seam, I eyeballed it. I imagine it was about 1/2 as quick to do it this way and the next time I get ready to put together a binding, I will use this technique. Then pressing, added the batting (I am lazy and bought rolls already cut to the 2-1/2 inch width. I have the fabric ready to sew together in an oval and will probably try to do that tomorrow. This requires me getting my older machine ready because my new machine does not do zigzag. Today I took a break from all sewing and went to church followed by a daughter and mom’s day out to go see my Mom’s favorite movie, the Wizard of Oz on the big screen for the 80th anniversary. Next month they are doing a limited engagement of My Fair Lady (an anniversary but not nearly 80 years) and we will probably check that out too. My mom loves musicals and I know the music in combination of fantasy is what attracted her to this movie. Most of her life has been lived in a somewhat dream state.
I’m out of steam and am going to move this from the draft column to the published column. So are always, Life is like a quilt, take one stitch at a time and I will be back in a few days to add some more to the story.
Life is like a Quilt 