January OMG Complete

Woo, it's been a week. I have been a busy little thing. Lengthy post ahead.

First, today is the actual link up for Denise's Flower Patch SAL.  You can see my individual blocks and commentary in last week's post. Here are all of my blocks put together so far.

Something I forgot to share about this last week is that my son came looking for science help while I was sewing and I didn't have paper handy, so I wrote on my foundation paper. I love this newsprint for paper piecing. You can buy a ream of it on Amazon quite reasonably. 

Next, I have completed my January goal, which was to assemble at least 1/4 of my Grassy Creek blocks. I have about half of them assembled. Now that I'm seeing it together, I see why the border exists, but I am unenthusiastic about actually creating the border pieces (more strings). I am also unenthusiastic about the actual sewing of the rows, so I will probably take a break for a few weeks before going back to it. It's sideways here. The bottom of the quilt is pictured on the left.

Here's what's still left to sew.

I have lots of other things I can work on. I have set aside Rhododendron Trail for now. Based on last year's schedule, I think that the Macaron Mystery should be close to wrapping up, so that may be something I strive for in February. I need to assemble my guild mystery BOM from last year. My original plan was to make one that I could show the block for each month and one that was all finished and quilted for the reveal in December. The former is ready for assembly and the latter is still just a pile of fabric. 😒 I need to bind a small quilt. I really, really, really want to sew this little Elizabeth Hartman kit I have. I bought background fabric so that I could join another block of the week program, but haven't had time to start it yet since I've been working on Grassy Creek. I have several other projects that I'd like to finish off too. Time is not on my side. I've been really good about not buying fabric unless it's a backing or a background for things I already have, but not so good at the actual getting the things done. Anyway, this is all material for a post for next week with a new OMG. Let's move along.

I've been quilting every single day (not what I aspire to, but out of necessity to meet some deadlines). Here's what I've quilted this past week.

This absolutely gorgeous quilt of Elle's, quilted with Persephone 3. She provides Warm & Natural for all her quilts.

Another of Elle's quilts, quilted with Loop the Loop.

Sonja's amazing Log Cabin quilt. These strips are like 1/2" finished. Quilted with Basketweave. Sonja often sends me Pellon Bamboo batting, which quilts just beautifully. I do have to be careful not to pop holes in it when I load it, but boy is it nice. I'd definitely recommend giving it a try.

Sara's flannel quilt, quilted with More Square Drama. She brought me Hobbs wool batting, which I hadn't used before. It felt different than I expected it to, but quilted quite nicely.

Elle's blue quilt, quilted with Ginger Snap. 

Elle's labyrinth quilt, quilted with The Tempest.

I was trying to figure out which Glide threads I needed to reorder or add and my thread drawers were a mess. I took the time to really organize by colors and two of my drawers look so nice and organized. And now it's easy to see what colors I'm running low on and find them by color family. First is the neutral drawer (which has overflow So Fine in it too). 

And the color drawer. Isn't it pretty?

You'll notice I have a lot of tiny spools of Glide (1000 m, about 1094 yards). You can quilt at least one quilt, usually two to three, with one of the small spools (assuming you use pre-wound bobbins like I do and don't wind your own). For example, Elle's 90 x 94 blue pickle dish quilt above needed just over 400 yards of top thread, as did her green quilt (98 x 100).

I haven't reorganized the So Fine drawer yet. It's in a "wherever it fits so that the drawer will close" state.😆

On the home front, last week I saw a FB post that one of the local restaurants was doing a Canada-themed dinner special. We had some gift cards and I didn't have anything planned for dinner, so it seemed like a good time to try some different cuisine. We tried each thing on the menu--my son ordered the poutine appetizer as his meal, my daughter had the salmon and veggies, and my husband and I got the Montreal smoked sandwiches. We ordered the nanaimo for dessert. It used up all of our gift cards and then some. My daughter said hers was really good. My son liked his, but his fries were not overly crispy. It's pictured below without the gravy poured over it. Our sandwiches tasted largely of yellow mustard with a hint of corned beef flavor. My fries were soggy, but we did have our meals as takeout. The dessert was quite different, a bit sour and not as sweet as I would have expected given the ingredient list. I was a bit underwhelmed overall, particularly given the cost, but it was fun to try something new on a whim. We don't get to do that much anymore.




Meanwhile, our robotics team is wrapping up their season. They had a practice interview session via Zoom last week. They had two competitions on Saturday and ended up in third place for league play for the season. Not bad considering they go against middle and high school teams and one of our two members is a total rookie. I was able to watch their matches via live stream. Their championship tourney is this Saturday (again, I'll be watching the live stream), with their judged virtual interview session tonight.

If you're keeping track of my lettuce, here it is this week, 2.5 weeks after I started the growing process. Be sure to scroll down to last week's post to look at last week's growth (1.5 weeks post-planting). The difference is startling! My last seeds have sprouted, but not made their way above the paper thing yet. Now that the lettuce is really growing, I have to add 1-2 cups of water to the tank per day; it's using that much.

I'll leave you this week with a shot of our snail in the fish tank. You never know where you'll find him. He was missing for almost a week before Christmas. I kept asking if it could escape and my family assured me it couldn't. My daughter found him in the carpet near the tank. Gross. I guess they can survive up to a week out of water.  He is good at keeping the algae knocked down though.
Have a good week.

Linking with For the Love of Geese and My Quilt Infatuation.


6 comments

  1. Lots of beautiful quilts! A shop owner recently talked to me about taking on some of her LA service (more than she can handle); she really recommended the Hobbs over the Warm and Natural that I use so I'm curious how you compare the two. Do all of your customers provide their batting? I was planning on providing my own as it's cheaper for everyone when I can do bulk. Loved seeing your drawers of thread. I've been eyeing the thread bundles on Superior--a little early to start buying that much but I thought I'd start with the neutral one at some point. I personally prefer neutral colors but I know others seem to like more colorful quilting?

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  2. I enjoyed your post -- the red cardinals in the blue blocks pulled me in and I kept reading. Your Grassy Creek colorway is stunning!

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  3. Congrats on your OMG Finish. I am really drawn to your SAL project. The cardinals are wonderful and your color choice is great.

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  4. You are one busy quilter--good job! Your Grassy Creek is amazing. Love your colorful thread drawer! And it was interesting to read about the Canadian style foods. Well, everything was interesting, including reading what pantos you used.

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  5. I'm loving that Flower Patch quilt. I've been trying to download the clues, but I haven't started it yet. It's definitely a quilt I'm hoping to get to.

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  6. Wow, you ARE a busy thing! I really enjoyed reading about all your projects.

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