Careful Cutting

I spent a lot of Saturday measuring and cutting.

First - I finished my stacks of shirt blocks!  All 90 or so of them.  Some fabrics were easier to deal with than others, so I finished all the difficult shirts first.  I'm thinking about how I want to arrange the blocks as I moved to the next project:  the dress.

Oh, it's been years since I've made clothing.  I forgot how tedious it is to pin the pattern.  Then there's the cutting - I triple checked the pieces because if I cut one of the big pieces wrong, there's not enough fabric left to fix it!  I left it pinned on the floor for about an hour before I was ready to take the scissors to it.

The pattern has long sleeved and sleeveless options.  I want short sleeves.  I had just enough fabric to cut some sleeves.  I'll sew them together to see how they look - I suspect they're really short!

I dropped off the charity quilt tops on Thursday evening.  Yay!  I got a tour where the group meets on Mondays and a peek at their supplies.  They've got quite a setup, including fabric swapping with other charity groups all going to good causes.  Very cool.

Fussy Plaid

Plaid shirt fabric is difficult to cut.  Well... it's difficult to cut squares that are aligned with the plaid.  I considered starching the fabric first, but that still requires squaring it before ironing with starch.  So I'm just slowly, carefully cutting squares.

I had hoped to have this quilt done by the time I dropped off the other two charity quilts.  Ha!  No chance of that.  I barely started cutting squares by Thursday.  Besides, I must switch gears next week to sew my dress, so this project keeps getting pushed out.  I plan to make disappearing nine patch blocks.  I'm excited to see what it will look like.

The five shirts are yielding more 7" squares than I had anticipated.  I will easily get a throw-sized quilt from this; maybe a twin?  That could be fun!  I'm also generating a ton of smaller scraps; more than I want to throw away.  I wonder what kind of crazy quilt design I could do with them.

I Like Thursday: A Few Days Away

We spent a few days in Maine this week.  Most of my likes come from there.


Before we left my volunteer sunflower bloomed.  I doubt I'll harvest any usable seeds from it, but I like the cheerful, bright yellow flower.  I love that it looks the same several days later.

A Little Quiet

We headed north over the weekend; spent a few days at Thompson Lake in Maine.  Friends had rented a cabin and invited us to stay.  Sunday was beautiful sunny weather.  I'm glad I brought my suit - I splashed around in the shallows and swam out to the boat.  It's been ages since I've swum in a lake.  It was fun to paddle under the trees.  I had a curious fish nibble my toes.

Later in the afternoon I read.  This was my view from the hammock.

There was some traffic on the lake during the day.  The evening and the next morning it was so wonderfully still.  The light rain just added to the beauty.

Strawberry Treat Balls

My first attempt with the cardboard treat balls were met with mild interest.  Both pigs got bored quickly and failed to remove all of the treats.  I kept trying.  Lo and behold, strawberries did the trick.

Boadicea had the biggest learning curve.  She kept rolling the cardboard balls around expecting the treats to pop out, just like the egg-cersizer.  The strawberries were enough incentive enough to keep trying.  Her favorite move was to grab a flap and shake it up and down.  Wedgwood preferred to chew the flaps until she could reach in and pull out the strawberry top.

Hey - whatever works!

I Like Thursday: Yard Art

There's some interesting yard art in the neighborhood.  I finally got a chance to photograph a few of my favorites.






I really like this saxophone playing ant.  He's gotta be five feet tall.  It's hard to tell in this photo, but he's smiling, too.  Happy, musical ant!

Zag and Weave

The idea was to make a few quilt tops for charity from the vintage fabric I brought home in March.  It took forever to get this project off the ground.  Then suddenly, I have two completed tops!

The first is this zig-zag diamond quilt (which is what I'm calling it, since I can't find a name for the image I copied).  I ended up using black for the setting triangles.  I wishy-washed so many times over the blocks and the color and the design and the setting triangles.  Now that it's done?  Love it.

I picked a strip pattern because the fabric had a few discolored spots - it was either in sunlight or had gotten wet while in storage.  So cutting it in strips seemed the best way to cut around the bad spots and hide the variegation in the solid colors.  The blocks went together really easily and all the points lined up without much work!

Getting Comfortable

Most guinea pigs excel at being loafy; Boadicea is a master of chill.  We caught her several times over the last two weeks.  This pig seriously knows how to veg.

First Rob caught Boadicea trying to bury herself under the hay.  This was probably her most unsuccessful attempt of getting comfortable.  The bundled hay didn't really allow her to hide under it, which I suspect was her end game.

But later attempts were far more successful.