Busy Saturday

 

I forgot to post yesterday that I finished quilting the blocks for my new quilt. I know I opened my computer, but I must have been distracted by something. That seems to happen a lot these days!

This morning I finished reading The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier, the story of a glass making family in Murano, Italy. The story was interesting but a bit bizarre. The family ages normally, but they skip through time. Everyone else in the world stays on a normal timeline. The story starts over five hundred years ago, and ends after the 2020 pandemic. It was interesting, but not something I would read again. I do plan on reading at least one more book by this author with the hope that everything happens in one time frame!

Tollway Tatters met this morning. We had a nice sized group, and I managed to tat a Curds & Whey bookmark from Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior. Since I used larger picots than I have been lately, my three mistakes are pretty well hidden.

We talked about tatting with polyester thread and King Tut. I've decided I'll give the Serafil another try, and I'm really tempted to start a hanky edging in King Tut. Getting together with other tatters sets my mind spinning with ideas!

I squared up all of my quilt blocks this afternoon, and then I arranged the layout for my quilt. This one will be a little smaller than my last one, only 30 blocks, 5 across and 6 down. 

I've decided that I will machine stitch the binding, but hand stitch the blocks together. I need something that will keep me awake when Dave and I watch t.v. at night!

Half way there!

 

My allergies were really bothering me today, so I didn't feel like doing much of anything. I did take some time to quilt this afternoon, and I was surprised when I checked my progress to find that I have half of my blocks quilted. Yay!

13

 

I wasn't quite as tired when I returned home from school today, so I did some quilting. 13 blocks are quilted with 19 to go.

Tatting didn't happen last night. My hands just didn't want to work with shuttles and thread. I think they might have been protesting the number of books I've been moving around the past few days!

Back on track

I was exhausted when I got home from school. The beginning of the year gets tougher every year. I took a nap, something I rarely do, and then I headed for my sewing machine.

I'm keeping the quilting design very simple for these blocks.

The fabrics are so busy that I think anything more complex would be lost. 

Tonight I'll see if I can focus on some tatting!

Nothing to post

Thursday and Friday were filled with back-to-school activities.

We had a staff breakfast on Thursday, followed by a district wide staff meeting. I didn't have any other meetings to attend, so I headed home until lunchtime. Our district has been very generous with providing breakfast and lunch on that first day back. After lunch, we had another brief meeting. Then, I was able to head home to work on my online training sessions.

While watching my training sessions, I managed to knit three dishcloths. I had 14 to complete, ranging from 15 to 25 minutes each. I had until January to complete them, but I like to get them out of the way so that I don't forget about them! No, I didn't get them done in one day. I worked in spurts through Sunday.

Friday morning, I helped the new elementary librarian work on setting up the library. In the afternoon, Dave and I helped daughter Carol move Drama Club supplies back into their designated areas. There was renovation work done over the summer, and everything had to be moved out for the work to be accomplished. Naturally, it all had to be moved back!

Saturday and Sunday, all of my free time was spent making beaded pens for the middle school and high school students. Nothing new there.

Today, I'm heading in early to help the new elementary librarian. After that, I'm headed in for lunch duty. I hope to get some crafting done this afternoon. Making beaded pens was fun, but I'm done with that!

Blocks

 

Yesterday was so busy, I forgot to post on my blog! I finished sewing the last three strip sets in the morning. The next step was to cut the strips into 10" squares. After that, I layered the blocks with batting and batting so that they're all ready for quilting.

My math skills are not the best, but I knew something was off with my squares. I should have had an inch or two left after cutting each strip set into squares.

It wasn't until I was stacking the blocks in layers that I realized I had cut the squares at 10.5". I'll have to do some trimming before I start the actual quilting.

We have back-to-school meetings this morning. I should be finished around 10 a.m., but the full-time staff members will be working all day. Monday is the first day of school. We're starting about a week later than usual because of improvements being made at the elementary school over the summer. I'm really looking forward to my daily strolls around the cafeteria!

Starting over

 

I finally gave up on my Criss Cross bookmark over the weekend. I must have taken out the stitches on the end eight or nine times. I never did figure out what I was doing wrong. I finally snipped the threads and decided to start over.

My sister Janet loves rescuing bits and pieces that Mom and I have decided to discard. I'm not sure what she does with them, but she's welcome to all of my mistakes!

I started over using the same thread as my mistake piece, size 20 Hakelgarn, hand-dyed Buttercup from LadyShuttleMaker. I'm taking it slowly with the hope that I tat everything correctly this time around!

Last night, I sorted my jelly roll strips into eight groups of five.

The pattern that Joanne and I are following has the strips going from dark to light.

In the pattern, the fabric strips are a gradation from dark to light in shades of gray and brown.

My jelly roll doesn't have the same type of shading, so I just sorted them the way I thought they looked best.

I managed to sew together five of the eight strip sets before calling it quits for the day.

Tomorrow, I hope to finish sewing together the strip sets. Maybe I'll even start cutting them into 10" blocks!