Lessons from The Count

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? I always think it's best to start with the good news, otherwise I'll be so bummed at the bad news that I won't fully appreciate the good news. Also, the good news can sort of cushion the blow, right? Well, none of it changes anything, so let's just start with the good news.

First of all...autumn leaves. With every new season, I proclaim it as my favorite. And, this being fall, it's my favorite season of the year. Winter kind of takes a beating, and I won't claim it to be my favorite. Ever. On the other hand, when things start blooming in spring, then spring will be my favorite. I'm seasonally fickle that way. As for fall, here are some pictures of our showiest trees. This first one is  around back where the hot tub is. Mike curses it every year when it starts dropping its leaves all around the hot tub, but it is very pretty. There's another one like it on the other side of the hot tub.

This is another shot of the one I see from my office window. It's to the left of our patio area.

This little dwarf maple is right outside our living room window. We call it the "umbrella" tree. The kitties like to hide out there on the warmest days of summer.

Okay, and so here's some more good news. I'm more than halfway along on my commitment for this go-round of hand-quilting. My friend Sharon says I have to finish the quilt this time around. She says I have to finish it before the end of the year. And, it's going along so well, I think I just might.

My success is owed to Ms. Ears, who sits with me every morning while I do my slow stitching. I gave up trying to make my stitches perfectly even and 1/4 inch in length, and I've resorted to eye-balling it. It isn't perfect, but the adage fits: Finished is better than perfect. It'll be like getting a new lease on life when I can take the last stitch in its binding.

Okay, so here comes the bad news. You might want to brace yourself for this. It started out innocently enough. I was going along making cornerstones for the Appalachian Memories quilt. I was going to need 20 to finish it. (Notice how I'm talking in the past tense now? There's a reason for that.)

Since I was going to need 20, I just went ahead and selected 20 different ones from the larger yardage. Smitty assisted me in keeping track of which ones I'd already used so I had a good mix.

I'm backing up to Saturday here because yesterday's post was about the challenge quilt. So by day's end on Saturday, I had the first row of blocks set. I loved how this was turning out.

One of the kitties obviously thought I was doing this all wrong and so here are some suggestions for changes.

I'm not sure who did this, but let's just say I have my suspicions.

Yesterday, I had it this far along when I decided to take a little break. 

When I came back, I started sewing strips together for the sashing, and realized with horror that I was going to run out of strips before I was going to run out of sashing. So, I figured and counted, and counted and figured, and realized I'd miscounted when I counted the sashings I'd need. The pattern was partly to blame for this because it told me the number I'd need. It said to cut 48 each from dark and light. And I said to myself, that makes sense...12 blocks four sides...48 sashing strips. What I failed to take into account was that I'm using an extra of the dark all around the outside, which brought the number to 62, not 48. And I'd used all the branding iron fabric I had. (Insert bad words starting with "F" here.)

I made a half-hearted attempt to find more online, even going to the manufacturer's website, but no luck. I purchased this fabric in 2014 at a quilt shop located in a remote part of Montana. (I was actually very surprised to even find a quilt shop in Shelby, Montana, with a population around 3,500.) And the fabric was manufactured even before 2014, so I suppose someone somewhere might have more, but I'm not going to put a lot of time and effort into finding it. Smitty was bummed too. Apologies to Shakespeare for co-opting Romeo and Juliet: Sewing is such sweet sorrow.

Okay...so moving on to Plan B: Obviously, I can't put those sashing strips around the outside of the quilt, and so I took the time yesterday to remove the ones I needed to. I didn't actually take a picture, but here's the new layout. I just cropped out the parts I took off:

The saddest part of this is that I won't be able to use as many of the quilt block cornerstones. The original plan would have included 20. Plan B will use 10. I'll continue on with this and then put two borders around the outside with a quilt block cornerstone in each corner of the whole quilt. The rest will get used at some point in the future. 

Today I'll need to make a trip to the fabric store. Now I'm on the hunt for a mottled fabric to match the orangy-brown in the branding iron fabric. It's the same color that appears in the wheat fabric I'd always planned to use for the outer-most border.

I'd prefer something mottled, but I can't be too choosy. At this time of the year, I figure that color won't be hard to find. So, it was kind of a bummer of a day in the sewing room, but nobody died. You know our rule here at the Three Cats Ranch: If nobody dies, then it's been a good day. 

Okay so finishing off with a bit of good news, I'm making a trip to the fabric store today. I'll probably drown my sorrows by shopping the whole store and loading up on stuff I don't even need. It's a good plan, I think.