A Sewing Day

Good morning, my friends. We had another do-nothing day. Kitties are very good at doing nothing. 

We didn't exactly do "nothing." We both did our own things. Mike went out for a bike ride. I hauled out all my sewing stuff and went to work on the Vintage Valentine. I spent quite a bit of time studying the pattern and deciding on a plan of attack. Here's the image from the free pattern.

You might remember several years back when I made this quilt from another free pattern by Sheryl Johnson at Temecula Quilt Company. I finished it off by adding a border of embroidered trees I'd stitched from Mary Corbett's Tiny Trees project.

The original pattern from TQC was just the large center tree portion. 

So, the Vintage Valentine is simply rearranging the blocks used in the Tiny Tree to form a heart-shape.

There was some cutting to do, and it made me wish I'd done more of this at home. No worries, though. I got 'er done. I cut borders and some other background pieces, and then I cut ten 3-3/4-inch squares to create the ten half square triangles that will surround the heart shape. Doing them in the two-at-a-time method, I ended up with 20 half square triangles. Ten will be used as is. The other ten were cut to a 1-5/8 inch size, and those were to be used to make some of the quilt blocks.

After the trimming was finished, I also had twenty 1-5/8 inch squares that I'll probably be able to use in some of the other blocks.

So my strategy with this is to make the heart row by row. I counted up how many I would need of each block. As I come to them, I'll make all of whatever block it happens to be. So, I started with the first block...a pinwheel. I needed two of those. These finish at 2-3/4 inches. I'm going to wish I had my clapper along because it's hard to get them to lay flat when they're so small.

The next block I came to was a Broken Dishes block. I needed three of those.

And then I was able to sew the top row together.

As I'm looking at this, I'm realizing that by using the same background fabric in the little pieced blocks, it kind of messes up the heart shape. I might have to rethink that and remake those blocks with different fabric. As it turns out, I cut two extras of the original 3-3/4 inch squares, it would be easy enough to make more HST's from those extra pieces. As I'm writing, I'm convincing myself of the wisdom of this idea. Sometimes wisdom will win out over laziness.

And that was several hours worth of sewing, including the time I spent studying the pattern and strategizing how to piece it together. As I go, it will take less time because some of the blocks will already be made as I come to them. When I had it this far, I packed it all up and put it away for another day. I expect I'll have some time either tomorrow or over the weekend, and I'm hoping to get it well along. All the cutting is done for the background and the borders. When the blocks are all finished, it should be easy to sew it all together.

Okay, so we had a plan for a hike today. After reading more details about the hike, we decided not to do it. We were going to hike out to St. Thomas, Nevada, which was a town that was submerged when Hoover Dam was built. With dry conditions in the southwest, the waters of Lake Mead have receded, and some things have re-emerged, including St. Thomas. I'd only taken a cursory look at the information I had about it. Looking more closely, I learned that only the foundations of some of the structures remain. It's about a 1-1/2 hour drive (one way) to get out there and then another 2-1/2 mile hike. Upon further reflection, it didn't seem worth it. 

Instead, we'll have lunch at the Boulder Dam Brewery, and then walk over to the fudge place to get ourselves some fudge. It'll be a sweet consolation to my disappointment about the ghost town. Also, this might be a good day to get out for a photography scavenger hunt. There's always plenty to do outside when the sun shines. 

Okay, my friends. I'll leave you to your day. Mike made waffles for breakfast this morning. The only thing for me to do is to get cleaned up and ready to go. If you're coming with us, you might want to do the same.