Sewing and Thinking about Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was way too early when I awakened this morning. Right away, my brain went to work thinking of everything under the sun...both important and not...and my night of sleep was over. This often happens when we're anticipating something new or big or uncertain or exciting or whatever. Anything different, and my brain becomes a noisy place. Of course, we're thinking about our carpet installation on Monday. There is still a little bit of prep work to do. Also this morning I was thinking about our upcoming trip, beginning in March. This problem with thinking began when I was a mother of two with a job and graduate school. I can recall waking up at night and willing my brain to stay quiet...usually unsuccessfully. Oh well. Now I have fewer obligations, and I can go back to bed if I feel like it. And I probably will. But we're talking just now. Sleeping can wait.

So here's what happened yesterday. I'm closing in on a finish of the Girls' Getaway panel.

Here's where I am with this. The most densely-stitched areas are done, and there are just a few inches on the right side to finish it off.

From there, I was ready to try piecing together a back for the Painted Ladies quilt. Yesterday, I showed you this fabric from my stash.

I had about 3-1/2 yards total, but cut in two pieces. Smitty was there to help me with the math. 

I did some figuring, and eventually came to the conclusion that I didn't have enough to get both width and length. I could get one or the other, but not both. Clearly, I needed more fabric.

So I went searching through my stash again, and came up with this mottled blue and lavender fabric. It had the right colors. Also, it made me think of a foggy San Francisco sky. Probably, I could have found something I liked better on our upcoming trip, but there's a lot to be said for using fabrics from your stash. With some careful measuring, cutting, and piecing, I came up with this back for the Painted Ladies.

There was just enough of the gray background fabric from the quilt top to cut binding strips. 

Now the Painted Ladies have made their way to the quilts-to-be-sandwiched pile. That makes nine quilts to be sandwiched. That won't happen before summer.

With that finished, I went pawing through my ridiculously huge stash of flannel scraps. My goal was to find enough fabric to make another double four-patch rag quilt. The kitties were all about this. After I took this picture of Smitty, he plopped himself down there, clearly ready to take a nap.

Sadie danced cheek to cheek with her piece. Doesn't it go beautifully with her furs?

After thinking and counting and figuring, I came up with these pieces that I can put to work. I have different ideas about how I'm going to use them. 

I'm going to need some larger pieces though, and some are coming. My quilting fairy godmother, Ila, informed me a box of flannels was on the way. Thank you, Ila. I can't wait to see what's coming. Also, I have a couple of fabrics coming from the Fat Quarter Shop. So, I packed everything up again, giving the selected fabrics their own bin. I can't really do anything more with this until I choose the rest of the fabrics.

Next up was to make another block for the Barn Block Sampler. This is the next block I needed to make. Some of these have been very complicated and confusing to piece together. I sucked in my breath when I saw this one. Oy.

When I started these blocks last year, I was going along with the colors of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Now, 11 blocks in, I'm starting to run out of color ideas. Since I still had a bit of the gray background from the Painted Ladies, I decided to go with that. When all the cutting was done, I had these pieces.

The piecing was a little complicated, but there have been more frustrating ones. For this one, I think I only made one mistake as I was piecing it together. I didn't really expect to finish it with the time I had left, but I did.

There's just one more block before all 12 are finished. Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And that was the end of my sewing day.

Today we'll probably make a run into town. I'd like to get in a Bow-flex workout, but I'm not sure I have energy for that. We'll see. When I get into the sewing room, I'll piece together another two blocks for the Girls' Getaway quilt, and then two more blocks for the Shop Hop quilt. That should be enough to keep me busy for the day.