Starting Something New

With Ella's Flower Garden removed from my list of WIP's there was a new opening on my dance card. After interviewing "idea candidates," I decided the idea with the most, um, experience was the Vintage Linen quilt. And by that, I mean this idea has been percolating for many years. Finally, I'm starting on the project. Part of what has taken so long is deciding how to do it. I've looked at lots of ideas on Pinterest, but finally decided to go with my original idea of making my grandmother's handwork the centerpiece of 12 crazy quilt blocks. I'll call this quilt...what else?..."Vintage Linens."

All of the handwork for these quilt blocks is from my maternal grandmother, Bertha Maust. She was passionate about hand work. I didn't see my grandmother often growing up. What I remember about her is that she had a heart condition. She'd suffered a heart attack in her 60's. Back then, the thinking was that heart attack patients needed to stay quiet and to avoid putting stress on the heart. She was advised to only be on her feet for four hours out of the day. The rest of the time, she was to lie down and rest. She was just one generation removed from her Mennonite roots, and firmly believed that idle hands were the devil's workshop, and so she kept her hands busy with hand work while she rested. 

This is my mother's family. This picture was taken as my military family made our way from Virginia to Hawaii. They lived in Fruitland, Idaho, and we stopped off before heading to San Francisco to board the USS Patrick and set sail to Honolulu in 1962.

That's my mother in the red sweater, and my grandmother to her left. That's my grandfather to her right, and me standing in front of him. It was the only time I remember meeting my grandfather, and he died shortly after we reached Hawaii. We spent a delightful three days together on this visit. I'm so glad I got to meet him on this trip, or I would have no memory of him at all. 

So fast-forward to yesterday, and it was time to start on this quilt that has been an idea in my tiny brain for many years. I started by choosing fabrics from my scrap bins. Like most quilters, I have scraps coming out of my ears. These bins contain larger scraps...fat quarter-sized stuff, but all cut at one time or another. (Just FYI, there's another row of bins opposite this one, stuffed to the gills with uncut fat quarters. Yardage is kept in yet more bins, and there is also a row of bins with my smallest scraps. Yeesh.)

Each drawer was pulled out and I sorted through them, choosing the most pastel fabrics of the bunch. When I was finished, I had a medium sized bin filled with scraps. I expect I'll be digging into my uncut fat quarters before all is said and done, but this will get me started.

And then the moment of reckoning arrived when I'd have to actually cut into one of these pieces. I'd already selected this apple, which is embroidered onto the corner of a small table cloth. There is some staining on the opposite corner, and that explains why this old piece has been packed away for something like 100 years, which is probably only a slight exaggeration.

I once attended a guild meeting where the speaker was Mary Shiffer. Mary taught us something about crazy quilts. You can find the link to that post right here. Mary told us the way to start a crazy quilt is to begin with the center piece cut into a pentagon shape. I wanted to cut across the border stitching at right angles and so positioned a square ruler for the first cut to accomplished that. From there, I simply cut where it made sense to make a pentagon from the hand-stitched piece.

From there, Mary told us to start adding strips in a clock-wise direction, and so I started at the top. I wanted to stitch where I'd cut the embroidery and sew a seam before anything got a mind to start coming apart.

Continuing on, I decided (for no particular reason) to trim the strips to 2-1/2 inches. I don't know yet if I'll stick with this for all the blocks.

When I'd gone all the way around, it looked like this.

About then, my excellent helper cat showed up to offer her expurrtise.

And she had a lot to say, let me tell you. For someone so tiny, she is very bossy. Some might even call her "pawthoritarian."

I'm going to add a bit of my grandmother's crocheted edging...kind of like lace...at least once in each block. I'd already done several rounds when I remembered to add something in. Sadie helped hold it in place.

And Sadie was such a big help. Eventually I had to tell her that her assistance was no longer necessary, and she should probably take a nap within the confines of her little kitty bed. Happily, she complied.

Some of the embroidery motifs are fairly large, and this one is too. With that consideration, I'd already decided to keep going around until I could cut the block to 20 x 20 inches. (There will be 12 blocks in all). But then when I had it to where I could cut to 16-1/2 x 16-1/2, I decided it was big enough and called it quits. Then I trimmed the block square:

My original idea included stitching across all the seam lines with one of the fancy stitches on my sewing machine. I had trouble making this work. Even with stabilizer, the strips of fabric wanted to pucker up under the stitching. I had a couple of false starts, but finally settled on stitch #8 on my Bernina 750QE.

I stitched all around the center piece, and then decided not to do the rest. I was afraid it would be too much, and stitching over those seams was more difficult than expected. By stitching just the middle piece, I think it suggests the tradition of adding a feather or fly stitch without the hassle. Also, I ran a straight stitch along the edge of the crocheted lace to hold it in place.

When I went upstairs, I found Sadie on the catio. She really likes the little catwalk that extends from the corner shelf to the ladder.

Smitty is feeling better, although he's still sneezing and snuffly. He was there with her on his corner shelf. This was the first time he felt good enough to be outside in several days, and it was good to see him acting a little more like himself.

He's still not feeling good, and you can see it in his eyes. This morning he's sneezing a little less than he has been, and he's on the mend day by day.

In the "ways with zucchini" category, I wanted to tell you about this dish I made for dinner last night. It's a stir fry dish called Thai Basil Chicken Stir-fry. 

Originally, I selected this recipe from our diet because I had basil left over from the tomato extravacanza, and I wanted to use it up. The recipe helpfully suggested that I could "use any vegetable" I wanted. Well...and this might surprise you...I just happen to have plenty of zucchini on hand too, and so I added a cup of zucchini that was quartered lengthwise, and then sliced crosswise. It was a good addition, and I liked the color it added. We served it over brown rice, and that was a tasty dish. I downloaded the recipe to the Paprika app, but I liked the zucchini enough to make it a permanent part of the recipe. I added it into the stir-fry along with the onions and bell peppers.

Today I need to make a run into town. There's a sale going on at one of the stores, and I want to pick up a couple of items that were grocery shopping after thoughts. The kids are coming up for dinner on Sunday, and I decided on a couple more items to eat before dinner. We're planning a salsa sampler from all the many salsas I've canned this year. Also, Mike tried out smoking some cheeses on his Traeger. Erik is a smoker aficionado. He gave Mike a little cold smoking tube for father's day last year, and Mike finally gave it a try about a month ago, smoking three different kinds of cheese. I need to pick up some crackers to go with the cheese. 

So there's a little more housework to do today. I can't have my children seeing what a pig sty we live in, now can I? They might get an idea to put us in a home if they start thinking we can't take care of ourselves. I expect there will still be time for some sewing. Next up on my WIP's list is the Shop Hop quilt. When I worked on this last time, I had it this far. The finished quilt will contain 15 blocks total, including the camera block in the center.

The next block I'll be adding is this fabric I picked up on our last trip to Colorado at Durango Quilt Company. I chose it for the many aspen trees we'd seen in Colorado.

You can read my post about Durango Quilt Company right here. As I'm writing this, I'm reminded I'll need to embroider the name and place at the bottom of the quilt block, and I'll need to do that before I can start sewing it together. It shouldn't take long, and then I can get on with the piecing.

Okay, so a full day ahead. Tomorrow I'll need to start making a few things ahead for our get-together with the kids. There are only about ten days left before we take off on yet another trip to Colorado, and so things are about to get even busier than usual.