Rayen

My camera doesn't like to photograph blue or purple quilts in the sewing room, so these colors aren't true, but I did finish the little crazy patchwork quilt I made from some blocks my mom gave me that I found in the gifted UFOs bin. After I hand quilted it, I decided to slay two dragons by using up some extra-wide premade purple binding I had on hand, and machine-stitching both sides of the binding rather than one by machine and one by hand, as I usually do. I've never tried to do that, but I need to start using the sewing machine more as my hands are slowing down. I was nervous, and I made some mistakes, but I did okay with it. I can finish a project a little faster this way, too. I considered adding some embroidery to the quilt, but the colors are so crazy it just would have added visual confusion. So in the end I just quilting-stitched everything. This is a better pic of the colors of the quilt. I'm going to leave it on display through Mother's...

Having my favorite nephew stay for a lovely two-week visit last month was wonderful. My guy is very lonely these days, so it was really fun for him. I got the chance to cook bigger meals and pamper him, which made me very happy. It also made me appreciate what an amazing guest my nephew is -- no trouble at all. He's extremely polite, always cleans up after himself, does his own laundry and tries to help out in anyway he can. We've invited him to move in with us so he can take his time looking for a house, and I hope he takes us up on that offer. That said, having a guest for an extended stay for the first time in years really made me aware of the limits old age has started to inflict on me. I'm tired all the time, but with the additional work I was exhausted almost every night. Keeping everything in the house neat (the way you do when you have a guest around) and serve meals on time became a real challenge. My blood sugar kept tanking because I was so busy. Yet I...

Our busiest birdhouse is once again occupied, this time by what I believe is an eastern bluebird. We were able to get this shot of her brilliant blue eggs. Looks to be about four of them. Later I was able to confirm that Mama is indeed an eastern bluebird. She's quite skittish, so we're staying off the porch and trying not to disturb her. Welcome!

I've finally finished sorting through and laundering the fabric and UFOs in my gifted bin. Aside from the green velvet wrap and the purple patchwork block sets, this is everything. Lots of scraps and fat quarters, with a few larger pieces. Most of it is fifteen to twenty years old, but in new condition. I have a better handle now on why I put all these in one bin, too. Most of it is print fabric, and/or in red, dark or crayon colors that I now don't often use for quilts or textile art. I've gravitated more toward lighter colors and hand-dyed fabrics. That doesn't make the fabric unusable, of course, and it's good for me to work outside my comfort zone. There are some pieces that are quite pretty, too. I still can't figure out who gave me the ancient Egyptian print, though. Mom, was this from you? Ha.

Since it's in my favorite color, I assume the green beaded velvet shawl I found in my gifted UFOs bin came from Mom. When you live in a subtropical humid climate there's not a lot of reasons to have anything made of velvet, so it wasn't something I'd buy for myself. It's also made of polyester, which is a material I avoid. Still, it's a pretty thing, so I decided to wash it and see if it would hold together -- only one problem. Both ends were fringed with acrylic bead dangles, which made it unwise to toss in the washing machine, even on delicate. Also, some of the beads were missing. I do love beads, but these promised to have me handwashing the shawl for the rest of my days in my bathtub. So I did the sensible thing for me and cut off all the beads, which I will recycle into something else. The beadless shawl washed up beautifully, and now will be a wrap/lap blanket for me during cold winter days and nights.

While sorting the scrap fabric from the gifted UFOs bin for laundering I found these two old Dresden plate blocks. They appear to be made mostly of feedsacks, and were a bit dingy. Because of their age I couldn't toss them in the washer. Hand washing old fabrics takes a little time and trouble, but it's worth it to me. I set them in the handwashing bin to soak with some mild detergent and a splash of vinegar, and then hung them to air-dry. This was mostly to see if the blocks would hold together after a wash, which they did, so I'm going to make them into spring throw pillows for the sofa in my home office.

I considered making another bag with these wild crazy patchwork blocks, but they want to be a quilt. I put some different fabrics from the UFOs bin with them to see what might work as sashing for the blocks. Black and dark green were just too dark for me. This blue batik tempted me, but batik fabric is difficult to hand stitch, so I nixed that. In the end I chose two calico cottons from the bin, both a medium blue (my camera didn't want to show their true color, so I fiddled with the color adjustment on the computer). According to the tags they hail from 1998, when quilting cottons were $2.99 a yard. So that was what I used to make the quilt last month. :)