RSC Light and dark Blues

So the new batch of Spools and birds are in blues

Confused Geese

Many spools

2 birdies

Anyone know what a ganglian cyst is and why it attacks? I had one, which I don't recommend, took 2 weeks to calm down!

More Birdies

I dislike when my body decides to misbehave on a whim......

It's all better now but damn that was inconvenient. I am starting to embroider beaks on my birds with a blanket stitch as there are about 50 of them at this point it's going to take a while.

Irises are happy

though if it keeps raining It may take shorter than I think!

There are Beezzzzz

This one is so dark!

 

Paris bead tutorial CQ Block

So you all may remember, 

or not, 

way back at the end of the first millennium of plague, 

in february of 2021 I was asked to do a tutorial, (to review go here)  

for Lisa Plooster Bonie's Crazy quilt magazine  

I know that's a lot of links. But I like to attribute things where I can.

Any way here's what I finally did with it.

I found the perfect silk ribbon for those confetti colored flowers,  

from Mary Jo Hiney's "Flower Therapy" just to give you one more link, 

which were so much fun to make, I put them everywhere.

But it was mostly to cover up that yellow swoosh, which looked so off I put the block aside.

For a year. or more?

Ever done that before? Made a design choice, stuck with it, because it wasn't bad......just off.

Then revised it, then did it again but got so discouraged with all the holes you were putting in your fabric, it you stopped loving on a project?

Here's one of mine. (yes, there are more!)

I started this as part of my 2017 crazy quilt journal project and totally lost steam after six blocks

All that said, I encourage you to take one of those out of your stash and look at it again.

Stare at it for a few days, let it stare back.

It is probably not as bad as you thought it was, and actually, you cAn do something with it.

It may just take a while, a few stops and starts. 

What I am trying to say is, don't be afraid to take those old languishing blocks out of the closet/drawer/blackhole

you banished them to for "not rightness" go look at them again. you might be pleasantly surprised 

But eventually some designer bug wakes up at the back of your brain and woosh! It's done!

  

And it's pretty

Speaking of bugs, maybe it needs a dragonfly or two, and a few more bugs..........hmmm

RSC Sage and Forest Green part #2

Just a few left over birds

I had lots of scraps for these fellows

Funny how the more you use the more you have.

The bins are never empty, just more organized

How does that happen?

I need another Scrap catcher.

 

RSC Sage and Forest green

Making geese, just a few, 2 different sizes

 and spools, which are quick and easy when your'e busy

 

Stays!

I made a pair of stays

It's about 1/2 and 1/2, machine sewed and hand sewed

so impressive but not crazy making

There is enough out there to make me crazy I don't need help

so far they fit well though now that I have been wearing them for a few house the are a bit short wasted but I need to loose a few pounds which seems to even it out.

Whatevs

They are not symmetrical because I am not symmetrical.

I'm ok with this. 

Cool thing is they are reversible!

Wish I had more of the William Morris prints though!

I ended up combining two different prints cause I only had 1/4 yard of each so there are 4 panels of on print and 4 panels of the other

I made it work and it looks good to me!

If other's don't suffer.

We have the best medical care in the world, 

IF YOU CAN PAY FOR IT

But that is the point for these people isn't it.

I can't be seen to be winning, if you don't loose.

I can't have the best, if you can have it too.

My wealth and privilege, isn't as satisfying if other's don't suffer.

My piety, isn't as heavenly, if other's don't suffer.

My control, over those beneath my contempt isn't as pleasurable, if other's don't suffer. 

If other's don't suffer. 

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

Cathy's Block is now a box!

I finished this block and mounted it quite a while ago but then it sat on my table with nothing to do 

but look pretty fabulous for a long time 

until I got my excrement together to finish what I intended to do with it

Even the inside of the box was ready

I just hadn't yet decided on the fabric for the outside of the box

So needing to get SOMETHING done

I finally shifted myself and went through my fabric stash


And there you go

Easy peasy

Bob's your uncle 

I finally did it

The culprit

 Don't get all excited, it's nothing good,

 although it had a good outcome.

So at 55 I have finally sewed myself to my work with the machine

Ungh

I have always been cautious about this eventuality as most of the women in my family sew in some capacity and they all have "War" stories about putting the needle through a finger.

And I distinctly remember having to help my Mother, pull the needle out of her thumb with a pair of pliers, when she did hers

So I knew this was a possibility

It is quite a shock when it happens you though

At first I couldn't understand, why had the machine stopped?

What could it have possibly hit?

There was no pin to hit there

Pro-tip: don't try to yank your hand away, it's attached.

As I realized what had happened, at first I was astonished, It hadn't yet begun to hurt.

Then worried about the piece I was sewing, no blood YAY!, Yet.

Unscrew the needle from the machine, look to see the damage, 

Wow! good machine it went clear through the finger, thread and all!

poke it, ow, OK don't poke it

Grab a pair of pliers on the way to the bathroom, find the bandaids and the gauze, 

now where did I put the damned things?

Try to pull it out myself........................Herngh!.........................nope it's stuck

*Sigh*

Go look up the nearest urgent care facility

call doctors office and see what they can do, go tell DDH

who react's like It's baby time, It's just a needle honey, Icandrivemyselfdon'tbesilly. 

Needless to say I did not drive myself

By the time we got the "so sorry we're booked you need to go to the urgent care facility"

20 minutes had come and gone, we were already on our way down the hill, and the finger started to hurt

I'm adding the gory details for those who are interested but if you are at all squeamish, don't look.

you have been warned

Yep that's the tread I was using

OOOwuie!

The two dots down by the knuckle are from the lidocaine shot, much better.

Good thing I'd taken off my Wedding ring the day before to clean it and hadn't gotten around to putting it back on yet! Otherwise it too would be stuck and I was informed they might have had to cut it off!

The nice doctor and nurses fussed over me for about an hour and a half giving me a lidocaine shot.

AAHHHHH! Much better! 

It ended up taking two of them to pull the needle out, with hemostats (Not the tool for the job)         turns out my pliers would have been better! Then got my hand x-rayed 4 different ways to make sure It wasn't through the bone, it wasn't.

Bones are surprisingly sturdy things, I love my skeleton!

Anyway, back home again, with a bottle of hydrocodone which now that the initial trauma and swelling are gone I don't really need. 

This morning you can barely see where it happened and it doesn't hurt unless you poke it hard,             so don't do that!

Just a little bruised, poor thing

It's that dot on the 4th finger

Happy Eoster

 The sun is shinning and the bunnies are bouncing, the earth is awakening to the spring, blessed be! 

RSC Pink

Geese don't migrate in April, do they?

All I know is I'm going to have a ton of them by the time this year is over

I all sorts of glorious colors! Woo-hoo!

and enough birds to make 2 quilts, 

maybe more.

One never knows

I have no real plan other than I like the pattern

And there you have The impetus behind most of my projects

I want to! Says the inner brat-child, and so it is done.

Then there are the end pieces that are to small to do much with 

so I sew them together those upper left blocks are now 2" square and big enough to actually do something with

I make them from the smaller part of all the HST I get off the birds,

since they are made from 2" squares by sewing down the middle of a color and a background it's much "easier" to sew the smaller HST before you cut off the end. other wise your WASTING FABRIC

OMG!

Can't have that now can we?

And since the ends are only a bout an inch or so they aren't useful for anything else all by themselves

Am I being silly? Quite probably

They are for me in that grey area of, to small to use and too big to throw away

So I appease my inner OCD "waste-not" hoarding freak, by doing this.

Don't judge! It's not nice to make fun of the mentally challenged!

And last but not least the spools

For a wonder I actually have a plan for these

It involves some applique and fiddling though.

I'm still thinking on it



 

Why am I so exhausted?

 I was thinking about this all last night. I am Fatigued.

 Not in a First world sort of "Oh me oh my" sort of way, but in more of a trying to sort it all out, sort of way.   I realize, I am a white woman of privilege and I am not obligated to fix any of what is broken, but I can't help but feel I should at least know what the hell is going on.

There is so much going on in the world and trying to keep track of it or even keep it in some sort of order is crazy making. I want to be informed but the more I try the more knackered I get. Then I don't pay attention and I feel horribly uninformed. Trying to keep a balance between my peace of mind and staying abreast of what is going on is getting harder and harder. 

It was bad enough before Putin invaded Ukraine and started killing everyone. The news is heartbreaking and there is so much suffering we can't do anything about, it puts more pressure on the pile of things, I can't do anything about. "Just throw money at it" seems inadequate but what else to do?

 I can't just disengage myself, turn off the news, be less informed and still look myself in the mirror and like what I see.  Am I doing this to myself?  Yes, probably. It doesn't help that the news is a fire-hose of badness. So how to overcome the feeling of helplessness? The feeling that I don't do enough but what can I do?  If I ever find out I'll let you all know. For now it's time to play in the dirt. Dirt don't care, neither do worms.

I can take my frustrations out on the weeds, so there is that.

RSC Yellow

Here is what I have gotten done for this month

It's not for a lack of Yellow scraps though

just no time to sew

I did do 4 spools in total I didn't get pictures

but you get the idea, spools are easy and usually done last to use up the inch or less Striping scraps from the ends of things

There will be more but the will probably be finished next month

mostly because i haven't gotten around to cutting anything for the other patches

I could go spelunking in stuff I have already don and store away till I need them but that would be cheatin,g wouldn't it.

I was able to get a bunch of geese off the ground

Have I mentioned how much I like sewing geese?

there are a whole flock of yellow

and then there are the birds

I have more but they too are parts yet to be completed

I still have no Idea what these will become 

but they are fun to make

Candytuft fairy finished

Flower spray with added bling

Remember when I said

"that bit should stay relatively unadorned" ?

 I thought about it 

and I thought it needed some more bling

before

and a bird 

After

I also asked Cathy Kezerian what she thought about it.

Her advice was the web needed to look like it attached to something,          not just hang in the air. 

so I extended the yellow flower spray from the other side of the spider

Added white iridescent sequins to the green trim

Which makes it look less like that nasty fake easter candy people used to use for decorating cake when I was a kid

You know, the spongy stuff that's "edible" but tastes like disappointment

Added clear iridescent sequins and white beads to the white seam treatment

I originally made an embroidered bird for this spot but it ended up being too big,  which made room to gave this little fellow a home

It's made with bullion's and 2 kinds of tubular net ribbon for the wings head and tail

This added just enough to make it more but not too much

It just goes to show when your are unsure, ask 

Feeling Scattered

 The news just keeps getting worse so I have turned it off.

This week has been the kind that makes me feel randomized.

Like I have gotten nothing done

Like I have to start from the beginning

and will get nothing done ever again

Well that's just silly.

We had 2 days of bright sunny weather that were warm enough to go outside and work in the garden

So I got a bunch of needed things done there. I fixed the broken raised bed and made a new one. Turned the compost bin and started to move the old one into the new one and scraped the moss off the concrete around it, Yes that's a thing around here. Started to clean out the garage so we can fix the leak, that has developed in the roof, over the winter.

Taken my MIL to an appointment a day all this week. they got all piled up together because a few needed to be rescheduled when someone in the office got covid. ugh. They couldn't do it all on one day and get it over with? She's 90 this year and slowing down quite a bit but still going, on sheer stubbornness.                                                                                                                                                 I wish she would ask for help before things go pear-shaped but she "Doesn't want to bother us, dear"

The car had to be taken in for oil and filter service and a computer update, so we won't see them again for another 6,000 miles. I love my Hybrid!

So I have been running around getting groceries and other chores done, between picking up and dropping off, since I can't "just sit there". sound exhausting yet? 

Meanwhile, I have gotten a few little things prepared for doing.

Yellow scraps for the RSC, little stuffed velvet birds birds for Mary Jo Heiney's class, finished fa few more orange peel blocks for an applique project. and finishing the last little side of the candytuft fairie CQ block. There are things in flight, as always, that need gathering and prep, before I start on them everything needs to be organized or It all feels out of control. 

Candy Tuft Fairie

Isn't she fun!?!

OK I know a big shiny spider is not what most people call fun

 bUt

Shes so pretty!

I'm still working out this corner of the block

so It's not entirely done, done yet

Though in the whole scheme of the block it may not need more

Like I said I don't know yet

Maybe that bit should stay relatively unadorned

to give the eye somewhere to rest

The more I look at it the more I like that Idea

I just know I need to think about it for a bit

The yellow SRE flower spray came out nice 

And this bush of Orange flower beads

I added a few Bees

and one who went visiting our girl