It's a Start

Yesterday was spent figuring out how to put my Shop Hop quilt together, and I think it's all nailed down now. Here's what I've done and what I'm going to do.

Recall from yesterday's post, I printed off two sheets with names and locations of the quilt shops to be included.

Yesterday I decided on a yellow fabric for the names, and I cut a 10-inch wide width of fabric piece, then cut it at the fold line. One side will be plenty of fabric to hold a row's worth of names. Then I traced out the names and places for the first eight blocks.

My embroidery pieces are always backed with something because, well, let's just say I'm a sloppy embroidery person. I travel from spot to spot and I'm not very good about trimming my tails...oh yes, there are tails. I even tie knots. (Gasp.) A backing will hide all of my sins. Usually I'm using some kind of stabilizer, either a Pellon fusible 931-TD or else a Pellon SF101 Shape-Flex. Don't ask me why I choose one over the other. I can't explain it. If you're going to force me to explain it, I'll just say I spin around on my heel with my arms held wide. Whatever hits my hand first is what I choose.

And all of that to say that sometimes I use muslin. I had some in my stash, and so I'm using it this time. It's lightly sprayed with a spray baste to hold it in place while I'm stitching.

Okay, now here's where I wasted about an hour. Some time ago, while I was working on Hocuspocusville, I accidentally ordered the wrong embroidery floss online. I always use cotton floss, but when my order arrived, it was five skeins of this satin floss. Huh? Who even knew such a thing existed?

And I was already well along in Hocuspocusville, so I couldn't switch floss in the middle of the stream. So, I'm thinking, well, this is a fresh project. I'll use it for this. And so I set about rolling it onto a floss bobbin. But take a look at that. It separates into strands just sitting there.

And I thought...no problem. Some Thread Heaven will take care of that. Only...it didn't. And not only did the floss separate into six strands just sitting there, but each strand also wanted to come apart. And, honestly, what good is this stuff if it won't hold together, even with thread conditioner. Well. Don't you know I took all five skeins and deposited them in the appropriate receptacle. Sheesh. Lesson learned.

Okay, so getting back to the fun part, I started a new skein of cotton floss and got to work on the embroidery.

My goal was to embroider two names and then cut off the bottom one and try it out on my block. I'm experimenting just now to see if my idea for these quilt blocks is going to work. I needed to embroider at least two because when I cut off the bottom one, I need to leave enough fabric for the embroidery hoop. So, with interruptions...namely, the kitties brought in a vole (Bad kitties! Bad, bad kitties!)...I spent about an hour on the embroidery.

Then, I moved the hoop to the next position and got to work trimming off the bottom quilt shop.

I'm making these strips 2 inches wide. I had to readjust my original idea because I'm putting a flange around each one, and I neglected to take the flange into account when figuring out my measurements. So...here we go. A two-inch name strip.

Next, I cut the regional fabric to size (i.e., 8 1/2 inches x 7 inches), and then sewed the name strip to the bottom.

Each block will have a coordinating flange around it, and so I sewed that on next.

And that's all the sewing I can do for the time being. I'll be adding the sashings when all the blocks are made. I'm not sure how I'll want to arrange them, and so I'll hold off at least until a whole row is complete. Nevertheless, I did lay my selected sashing fabric around the outside just to see how it was going to look.

And that seemed a little boring to me. But then I got the bright idea to use the cut off bits of that yellow fabric for cornerstones, and hey...I like the look of that.

So now, it'll be just block after block of these...64 in all, although two of them will be double the size to accommodate the large scale of the print. When it's all sewn together, I'll put a narrow stop border around the whole thing, and then add a border of the quilt shop fabric. (I absolutely love this fabric.)

It's going to end up a large quilt...somewhere in the 80-inch range...but it's going to be a very fun memory quilt. Just sorting through the fabrics has been great fun. I'll keep working on this until the first row of blocks finished, and then I'll move on to something else.

For now...Miss Sadie is adhering to the don't-step-outside-this-circle rule. She's a good girl...oh, but then there's the vole...so, never mind.

My sourdough starters are causing me angst. They appeared to be alive, but now I'm having doubts. The white one, in particular, has turned soupy, and there's practically no bubbling action. Today I need to pick up a few more groceries (a never-ending task), and I'm planning to pick up some unsweetened pineapple juice to start over. Why pineapple juice, you ask? It seems that some environments (mine included) have a bacteria that kills the yeast, and I'm afraid that's what has happened to my starter. If you're interested in learning more about this, you can read this post from the Breadtopia website. When I first was getting my starters going, they'd be bubbling along, and then they'd die for no apparent reason. The article explains it all. When I used pineapple juice, I was able to get them going great guns. Anyway...I might need to start over with the white starter. The whole wheat is still looking promising.

Since I spent the whole day sewing yesterday, I didn't get my housekeeping chores done. I'll need to do a couple of things today, but then, I should have plenty of time in the sewing room this afternoon. It's a busy day ahead. How about you? What's on your agenda?