Monday Meanderings 11 -- 11 -- 2024

It's been a week! Just as I wrote the first paragraph of my blog the power went off.  We gave up and went to bed to read on our Kindles.  And, almost fell asleep but the power went back on -- maybe 10?  I got up to turn off all the lights and tv and then crashed.  Monday I was busy most of the day so, nope, no blog writing until Tuesday. 

We've had a lot going on.  I've decided I'm cutting back on my news reading.  I am happier and less stressed if I read or listen to audio books.  In fact, 4 ebooks and 1 audio book were read in the last week.  I was actually reading several books at the same time so three of them were finished the same day! Weird -- I know.  But all that reading did not stop me from getting a lot of green check marks. Yea! Here are the details. 

11/4/24

✅Attend machine mastery class — done. Boy there is a lot to learn!

✅Work on Christmas ornaments -- 3rd one is started.

✅Buy border fab for Frolicking Frogs — done.

✅Quilt a quilt on Ruthie — Malted Mystery is now waiting for binding.

✅Work on one of the unfinished UFOs from this year’s list — Fall Appliqué blocks. Mostly figured out what fabric I'd use, and what I needed to buy to finish it.

✅Finish some more Christmas tree blocks — 5 done, 1 waiting and I think I’ll make two more for a total of 8. I have lots of green scraps. 

Here's a peak at Malted Mystery at the beginning of the quilting process. 

I did spend some time finding binding for this quilt.  I would have liked the green or the orange fabric but I didn't have enough. However, I had a bunch of the dark purple. (Yes, it is purple but it often looks black in pictures.) You can see the whole top here. Doesn't the dark purple look black? 

The UFO pick was 12 which I listed as "Pick something to work on in Dec." Except I should have said something like pick something to work on -- cause, yep, Dec wasn't pulled in December.  Not to worry. I decided to revisit 6" Fall Appliquéd blocks.  I listed them twice over the year. The 1st time I turned the blocks on point and added fabric to make them 8.5" blocks. When they came up in September . . .  nope, didn't do anything with them.  Fast forward to November and I'm planning to put this top together.  

I know, this pic looks weird.  I was trying to figure out which color would be the best background.  The orange won out over the light mauve mainly because you can't really see that color in the black that surrounds the blocks. Plus none of the blocks have that mauve in them.  Good reason.  Sharon asked me if I really wanted the sunflower's leaves pointing up and down. Um, no -- but I did want the directional black fabric to be going the same way as all the others. Yep, I took off the triangles and turned it so the leaves would be going right to left rather than top to bottom. 

While at the quilt shop yesterday I purchased an orange gold fabric to do a small inner border. I'd tried every thing close to orange or gold to use but nothing struck my fancy. So I picked up something that should work well.  I hope to have this a top without the final border by next week so I can buy the final border for it when I go for my last mastery class. I'm ready to finish this one off. 

Here are goals for this week. 

11/11/24

Bind Malted Mystery quilt

Attend 3rd machine mastery class

✅Buy binding and bind Lone Star -- weird that I've already done half of this goal! 

Put border on Frolicking Frogs

Put Fall Appliqué together including inner border 

Quilt a quilt on Ruthie 

I've been really good about getting my time in the studio.  Here's my current info: 

W/ending 11/10  — 315 days in to 2024. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7
• 15 minute days/Nov = 10/10
• 15 minute days/2024 = 306/315 days
• Success rate = 97.%

I'm happy with my continued success. I've actually done a little of cleaning up of the sewing space some days. (Note - very little but I can tell I've put stuff away!) 

Have you bought any Color Catchers lately?  I used up one box and started another a couple of weeks ago.  Um, here are the two (from different boxes). I used these in the load with the blue wide back fabric I bought on quilt retreat.  

Can you guess which one was the old box and which was the new box?  Yep, the smaller one is the new.  But what has me wondering is how different the two sheets are regarding color.  As I have no other of the old ones left I'm concerned the new one aren't working as well as the old ones do. Here's what the 10/22 looked like along with two brand new ones I used today.  There wasn't a lot of fabric in the washer: 1.5 yards of a very dark navy blue, less than a yard of a green, and a fat quarter of dark blue with different colored words on it.  Um -- so why did the two new Color Catchers not attract any colors -- maybe a muddy blue? The 10/22 was the lighter colored one from above.  Very weird! Let me know if you're using the new version of Color Catchers and whether you've seen a difference.

And, FYI, I do wash all fabric that comes into my house.  I didn't at one time but after piecing and hand quilting a Christmas quilt that bled like crazy I always wash new fabric unless it's strips, charm squares, or layer cakes. How about you?  Are you a fabric washer before sewing? 

I'm linking with these parties: Stitching Stuff, Oh Scrap!, Design Wall Monday, Monday Musings,  and To-Do Tuesday Linky Party.

It's time for a Sunny update.  Since the last time I wrote about her she has been having lots of scratching issues.  She seemed peppy and happy. Although she had scratched off a lot of her fur on her muzzle and above her eyes. She'd been chewing and scratching at her legs.  Last Monday we took her back to the vet and her yeast infection was back. So she got a couple of new medicines. They are Apoquel for itch, Ketoconazole for fungal infection, and Simplecef, an antibiotic to treat strains of bacteria. Yikes! She is still getting baths 3x a week. And a monthly Cytopoint shot.  We've changed her to a food specifically for better skin and cut out other food. (She likes Salmon and every once in a while we'd give her some of that.) 

Fast forward a week and we have a new dog.  She's been playful, doing zoomies, and she's started to play with a squeak toy. She has a new pep to her step.  Here's a pic I just took of her.  You can see she's just beginning to grow her muzzle hair. But her tail and back hair has grown in thickly.  We're hoping she'll actually look like a West Highland Terrier by Christmas.  

 It's time I get on with the day.  

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie