Project Planning

Good morning, my friends. Hopefully, everyone survived the weekend. It was pretty quiet here. All the tasks from last week are completed. Family has been fed and sent home. Rain has started up. So, it's pretty much business as usual from here on. We're getting our vaccines this morning, but aside from that, we'll be sticking close to home for the next several months. There's going to be plenty of time for sewing.

My morning started with baking some muffins for our breakfast. For years, I cooked a traditional morning breakfast...eggs, some kind of breakfast meat, some kind of toasted item. Over time, I think we both got tired of the repetitive offerings. Lately, I've been baking a small item, and we'll follow-up with a small yogurt. It makes the mornings less hectic, for sure. This morning's offering will be these Zucchini Nut Muffins, made with some zucchini from this summer's garden.

With those safely in the oven baking away, I went to work on my slow-stitching. The muffins took enough that I was able to finish off February’s block for “Pieces of the Heart.” If I’m remembering right, one or two of you suggested adding an “s” to the word “cat.” That was a good idea, and so I did. We certainly don’t want anyone getting their nose out of joint, thinking they’re the one who was left out.

Here are the first two of twelve blocks for this project.

Well, and that created a stitching emergency. Nothing else could happen until I traced out the next block for the “Quilters’ Retweet.” Now I have something to stitch this morning. Phew! That was a close call.

Okay, and then I could finish top-stitching the Tree block.

All that remained was to top-stitch the Orca block.

And now all the blocks for this project are complete. Here are all sixteen blocks.

So I’ll be moving this project to the “Quilt Tops to Finish” section of my white board. There are two quilts in line ahead of it. But that opened up a slot on my list of WIPs. I’ve decided to do this “Kitchen Love” project. This pattern has been in my stash since May of 2017.

It was purchased during a visit to Quiltique in Henderson, Nevada, where I saw it made up and hanging on a wall. That’s a good quilt shop there in Henderson. It’s just north of Boulder City, and I generally stop in at least once when we’re visiting the area. Their version is shown in the image below.

I liked it so much, I had to have one for my very own. They were selling kits, but I just purchased the pattern. Now...9-1/2 years on, I'll finally get around to starting it. That will have to wait until I reach the WIPs section of my white board next time around.

Now, I'm moving on to the "Quilter's Choice" section, and I've already decided to start on this Zebra quilt for Matthew. Since I volunteered to make this for him, I've been gnashing my teeth thinking about how to figure the right amount of fabric, and how to make it queen sized. It comes to me little by little, and I decided to spend the remainder of my quilting day counting out the squares and figuring this out.

Sadie was on hand to make sure I counted everything propurrly. She's also very good at math.

The squares for this will be cut to 4 inches (unfinished), which means I can get 90 squares from a yard of fabric. Knowing that helped me to figure out how much fabric I needed. I counted out all the various colors, adding 1/4 yard to the amount I need. Also, I had to add two rows on each side to get the right width for a queen. That took a little figuring to get the colors ordered correctly, and I needed to count those too. Now I have an order in at Missouri Star Quilt Company, and I'll get started on this as soon as the fabric arrives. 

In the meantime, I can make two more blocks for the Inverted Stars project. This is my project for this year's Rainbow Scrap Project. October and November's blocks are next.

 

So I didn’t make any more progress on the Cats in Pajamas yesterday, but that’ll be my first sewing priority today. It should be easy enough to quilt that final row. Hopefully, I won’t be bothered by a sore arm. If I have a reaction to either vaccine, it usually happens on the second day. COVID hasn’t bothered me in the past, but the flu vaccine can make me feel a little ill. I’m all for vaccines, though. The little bit of discomfort is worth the season of protection, and at our age, we’re more at risk of serious illness if we’re not vaccinated. 

As you might already know, my brother was a polio survivor. He contracted polio in 1952 when he was five years old, and he spent 60 days in an iron lung. He had the more serious bulbar form of polio. He wasn’t expected to survive, but he did. He was fortunate that his residual disabilities were minor, although they affected his life in ways that were more experiential (for him) than visible to the casual observer. I’m certain polio shortened his life, although he died from another cause. 

You might remember the quilt I made of him. It was created from a photograph my father took of him just months before he got sick. It’s done in the style of Ruth McDowell, and I call it “Snips & Snails.”

It’s my brother as a playful little boy…one I never got to see because I was born when all of this was over and done with. Often I wonder how different his life might have been had it not been touched by polio.

So, okay…I didn’t mean to get all preachy about vaccines, but you can see why I’m strongly pro-vaccine. And so that’s on today’s agenda. After that…sewing. It’s going to be a good day. I hope you have a good day too.