Saturday, May 31, 2014

The last day of the month is maintenance day in my studio. I change the blades on my rotary cutters, and I clean, oil and change the needles in my sewing machines. Since starting to cut scraps the Bonny Hunter way I also sort through the scraps I’ve cut and put them away in their proper drawers. I should really add a task to update my web site at the end of the month but I wanted to get at some stitching today. Perhaps that will be a first of the month thing.

I finished up a Farmer’s Wife quilt block before lunch. While I ate lunch on the deck I browsed through my Bonnie Hunter Leaders and Enders book looking for a pattern to use up some of the scraps I’ve been cutting. Of the dozen quilts in the book, I narrowed it down to my top three. The winner turned out to be Happily Scrappily Irish; how could I resist with a name like that. I have 50 two inch squares already prepared. Sadly the quilt, if I make it the full size of the pattern, requires 1122!

When Pat and I got home from picking up a few groceries I sat on the back deck with my coffee and a book. I’m not enjoying the book very much but it is due back at the library in a couple of weeks so I’d better get on with it. It was one of the books mentioned in “The End of Your Life Book Club”. I’ll have to reread the chapter that mentions it to remind myself of what they had to say about it. I’ve read a couple of their suggested readings and, although I never would have picked them out for myself, I enjoyed them.

My afternoon was spent with My Crazy Life. I’ve got the block that represents the present ready for quilting. I won’t do much in the way of fancy stitches on this block; I have so many “do-dads” to put on it the stitching wouldn’t show. I’m trying to come up with a way to hold the three blocks together. Do I quilt it all as one piece? Do I quilt them as separate pieces and, if so, how do I join them back together? I’ve never done anything like this before but I must say I have been inspired by this challenge project.