Monday Meandering 11 - 15 - 2021

It has been a great week or two.  A week and a half ago Pat and I went down to our beach house in Nags Head.  He had some windows to replace and I was going to count silverware.(It's amazing how much silverware vanishes when tenants are at the house.)  And, we were going shopping.  I came down a day later than he did as I had things to do at home and I was going to visit Sharon after Nags Head.  

By Friday all the windows were done.  I'd pulled out my sewing machine and had stitched a bit. But our main activity was to get new furniture for the great room.  So off we went to a local furniture store that actually had furniture in stock. (Thank goodness!)  It didn't take us all that long to pick out a sofa, love seat, barrel chair, two end tables, and two new lamp shades.  It helps that there weren't a thousand choices and everything pretty much gave off the beachy feel. Everything was delivered the next day. (Our saleslady said that ordered furniture was scheduled out 14 months!) 

Our house allows dogs.  I started the dog quilt long before we owned the house. We decided it looked good with the previous furniture so it was finished and hung.  Not so much now.  I actually have a pattern and fabric picked out that might work with the new look.  Someday I might even make it. Heck I might even pull it out and see if it would work -- it has under the ocean theme! We've had a couple of mishaps with dogs and both times dogs pulled up berber style carpet through their crates. Our plan now is to change to a non-looped carpet and see if that protects it better. If we continue to have damage we might have to stop accepting dogs. We no longer have out own dogs. Time will tell. 

Lots of progress was made on the goals, but, not everything was done.  Here's the scoop.

11/8/2021

✅Enjoy sewing with Sharon

✅Finish sashing 16 patch stars

✅Border glorified 9 patch and oops friendship stars didn’t get bordered

✅Finish all the turquoise blocks and nope, not sewn together

✅Sew some string blocks

Sew more ombré log cabin blocks — nothing done on this either

Here's this week's list: 

11/15/2021

Quilt Jenny's quilt

Border friendship stars

Sew ombré blocks together

Clear off the right side of design wall 

Figure out turquoise blocks

Keep making string blocks

I was happy I worked on almost everything listed on the goals list.  As usual, Sharon and I had fun. I came home Thursday ready to sit around and not do all that much.  But by Saturday I was back working in the studio.  Sharon inspired me to clean up some of the mess on my cutting table.  (Of course, what I did was get an empty plastic bin and put lots of scraps in it.)  The fat quarters strewn about were put in my storage system mostly based on colors. 

Then I went back to work on my to do list. All the turquoise blocks were made but I ran into problems trying to figure out a layout.  Here's my first layout.  I had planned to alternate dark strips on the outside of the blocks with light strip blocks. 

Um, this didn't do anything for me.  I love the fabrics but they just don't work this way. I decided to see what it would look like in greyscale.  Hum...

Do you know about using grey scale? On my iPhone or Mac I can choose to make it black and white.  It really looks horrible without the color but does show what reads dark and what reads light. Of note is the one 2nd row, 1st block.  It's really light compared to the rest of them. I took a close look at the pattern (a Villa Rosa Designs postcard pattern called Voyager. Click on the link to see their version.) They didn't alternate light and dark blocks.  In fact most of the blocks are more medium to dark and are scattered around rather than placed purposely. So everything got moved again.

Oops, that really light one (and maybe the wrong color) sticks out still. This is better but the second row needs to be dispersed so the whole row doesn't look light.  My plan now is to make some decisions about placement and possibly changing some of the blocks that stick out.  Definitely the one that looks light pink. (It's really light purple and blue....) 

Here's the plan for the lightest block.  I've put an alternate fabric on the bottom left to get an idea.  I've already used one strip of this in the quilt so it will work and make this one blend in better.  I may end up doing a double swap because I'm not thrilled with how yellow green it looks in a sea of turquoise.  Nothing will happen really soon on this one.  But I've made forward progress.  

I'll keep you posted on this quilt although I might let it rest a bit before I get back to it.  There are always other quilts I can work on. 

This has been a long post so I'll finish off now and let you get back to your own sewing. I'm linking up to these parties. 

Oh Scrap! 

Monday Making

Design Wall Monday 

To Do Tuesday

That's it for me.  I'm so late getting this post written.  Hopefully I'll get back on my normal schedule soon.

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie