All posts by Sherry

Debbie

Quilting
From Little Handfuls of Scraps by Edyta Sitar (10.5″ x 14″)

This was supposed to be an easy project to put together on my April sewing day with Stacia and Deloise. It turned out to be a two-day project. All of the little pieces were pre-cut and all I needed to do was stitch together the background strips, place and press the pieces onto the background, and then quilt. Easy peasy.

All went well until I moved to my quilting machine. I picked a new quilting stitch that was very similar to the mattress stitch that I often use. My thread kept breaking and after quilting a couple of lines I gave up. I changed my needle and cleaned my machine but the next two lines were no better. I spent the rest of the day taking out all of those little curvy stitches.

On day two I went back to the mattress stitch and did some testing on sample pieces – all seemed to go well. But on my first quilting line on the project I noticed I had some skipped stitches. So out came that row of quilting and I moved to my regular piecing machine.

I ended up with random straight lines up and down and across the piece in order to catch all those little leaves and flowers. As I was sewing the binding on I realized I had forgotten the sleeve for hanging but I wasn’t about to start ripping out stitches again.

I like the finished project but it was definitely not easy.

My Name is Barbra

Books

Author: Barbra Streisand

This was a Christmas gift from Christy. I’ve read Streisand biographies before but this was so much better. It is a big book (970 pages) and my reading was interrupted several times with books that needed to be returned to the library.

Every story in every chapter revealed not only what Barbra was working on at the time but her thoughts about the movie or album and the people involved. She also is clear about the way she was treated by the media throughout her career.

I have quite a few of Barbra’s albums but I’ve only seen a few of her movies. Some of the movies I’ve never even heard of and I wonder if they are still available at the library.

Goodreads Rating: * * * * *

I can do a little

Journal

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

My plan for today was to get out in the yard and do some weeding. Our gardener has had a couple of medical issues and hasn’t been able to come yet this year. In the meantime our plants are all coming up, along with the weeds. Having the green compost pickup every week is a real motivator and, since it has been too damp to do a proper mowing of the lawn, I wanted to get it filled up for collection day on Friday.

But it rained over night and the forecast was for showers this morning so I didn’t go out. Instead I wiped down the outside of all the kitchen cupboards and drawers. It has been on my list to do for awhile (I won’t tell you how long) and I felt that since Pat was out for the morning it would be a good opportunity to get it done. I put on my music and I was surprised that it went as quickly as it did. At some point, when I feel motivated enough, I’ll start cleaning out each of those drawers and cupboards.

By the time I finished my cleaning the weather was looking pretty good so I went out and got at some weeding. I didn’t feel like doing the patio so I started on the beds. I didn’t get through the whole width of them but I managed to get all the way around the fronts. When Pat came home he picked a few weeds too and the compost bin is relatively full. If the sun really shines this afternoon and tomorrow we may get a chance to cut the grass and we’ve left enough room for the clippings.

So I can’t do it all, but I can do a little!