Four Projects

Good morning, my friends. Life has been busy over the past week, and it'll continue to be busy into next week. As I mentioned, I took yesterday off from blogging since I was scheduled for a DEXA scan. (No change from my last scan, which is good news.) Next Monday I'll be getting everyone's favorite "oscopy" procedure. Yeah...let's just not talk about it, okay? You'll also be happy to know that I now have a prescription so that I can get my COVID vaccine. That isn't for a couple of weeks, but I'm covering all my bases medically. We're still hoping to get into that vaccine study, but I haven't heard anything more since signing up.

So amongst all of that, there's been plenty of sewing. When we last chatted, I had all the cutting done to make another row of blocks for the Gumballs project.

I was in the process of sewing together the pieces.

Finally, on Monday, I was able to sew everything into blocks. I'm making this quilt one row at a time. Each row has five blocks. These are the blocks for the second row.

And here are the two rows of blocks I have for this quilt so far. I see a pattern emerging. Can you see it?

How about now?

With so much sewing happening over the past couple of days, I was glad to have my very helpful stitching cat nearby.

There wasn't a lot of time left for sewing on Monday, and so I decided to use the remaining time to trace out my next embroidery project. This is Autumn's Harvest Pumpkin. 

When I had that finished, I stopped for the day.

Then yesterday morning, I spent a little extra time finishing off the third block for Le Jardin. 

I used the wrong colors in this. My only excuse is that I wasn't paying attention. The outer stitched border(s) were supposed to be done in pink. The inner yellow border(s) was supposed to be blue. Oh well. It doesn't matter.

These are the three stitched blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Recently, I realized these blocks aren't really finished until I sew a log-cabin-style border around them, and so I did that yesterday. This was the first block, the poppy block. I had to fudge a little with this one because the pattern was traced wrong. 

This is the second "daisy" block.

And this was the block I'd just finished. It's another "daisies" block. The pattern calls them "English Daisies." I guess they're more expensive than regular daisies. Inflation, you know. I blame the tariffs.

Here's now they look now.

Okay, setting that aside, it was time to make the 6th block for the Raggedy & Friends project. The two embroidered sections for this block were already complete.

This pattern is frustrating me mightily. Take a look at this block:

The designs are traced from the printed pattern, but I've found them nearly impossible to cut to the dimensions listed. Most all the blocks have a row of running stitches around the outer edge. If they are to be trimmed to the sizes needed for the pattern, I find myself trimming perilously close to the edge of the stitching. This one is the worst so far. I might think I'd traced the running stitch in the wrong place, but then, look at the block above. On the right, see where the Raggedy's foot is? And look on the left toward the top. The bird is actually outside the running stitches. So...how can I possibly trim that to the right size (6-1/2 inches square) and still have enough room for a seam allowance? The answer is...I can't. 

And just to complain a little more...there has been a cutting error in every single block so far. The pattern was a free download. I shouldn't complain, but I am anyway. Even free patterns should carry a warning: Errors ahead. Oh well. No one has died, and so we persist. Smitty was equally frustrated.

That is so exaspurrating.

Okay, so moving forward, these were the pieces I needed to create the block.

When it was sewn together, it looked like this. And, yes, the bird and the foot are cut off by the seam.😠 Oh well. I guess this quilt won't win any ribbons at the fair.

Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far. I like the pattern, and I love the Raggedy theme. Too bad it has so many errors.

Okay, so that brings me to this morning. Mike and I are going to take our boat out later this afternoon for a dinner cruise. It'll be the only time this summer we've had our boat in the water. It's not unlike last summer. We haven't used the boat much for the past couple of years, and we're talking about selling it. It's a lot to keep maintained and insured if we aren't going to use it. Possibly it's time has passed. 

We used it a lot when the boys were still living at home. We used to take it up to a lake in Washington every summer. Mike used to take Friday afternoons off, and he and a couple of guys he worked with would go wakeboarding. Those days have passed, and so the boat gets neglected. And all of that to say that I'm going to make some food to take along for our "dinner" cruise. I'll say more about that in tomorrow's post.

For now, it's time for some breakfast. I'll do my cooking, and then I'll get started on Autumn's Harvest Pumpkin. 

I woke up too early this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep. There was too much on my busy mind. I'll get the cooking done so that I can rest easy, and then the slow-stitching can sometimes make me drowsy in the same way reading a book can do that. It'll be a good way to get a little more shut-eye before we go this afternoon. It's supposed to be a nice warm day. There won't be many days left like this. It seems like a good plan to get out and enjoy it while it lasts.