Thursday, April 23, 2020

Past and Present







Well folks, I am not in quarantine, definition:  

  1. a state, period, or place of isolation in which people or animals that have arrived from elsewhere or been exposed to infectious or contagious disease are placed.
    "many animals die in quarantine"

But my lifestyle has been somewhat crimped forcing me to invent things to do around here.      

I should be in Cape Girardeau, MO right now at my sister's house and heading to the AQS show in Paducah, KY.  The show is thankfully rescheduled for September.

One thing I had on my list of things to do is to start an Etsy site and sell some of my quilts.  (photos above). These are former show quilts and are kept stored away.   My tastes have changed over the years, but I did absolutely love these colors and fabrics and traditional quilt blocks adding my own appliqué. 

But now looking at them again, I really don't want to part with them. It's not the money I'm after, just feel the need to downsize my collection.  

So, I think I'll just X that off my list. 

Another item on that list was to shorten some drapery side panels hanging in my spare bedroom.  When I actually looked at that job:  off the list too.  There is nothing worse than working with sheer gauzy fabric. Let them "puddle" on the floor.

I did design and start a new quilt project, pulling fabrics from my stash.  It requires lots of bias stems and since I don't have a bias tape maker, I made my own. I wanted them to be 1/8" in width, very narrow!  So, I made 1/4" bias tape, then folded that in half and used Sharon Schamber's glue tips to fuse into 1/8" strips.  I used the same glue to anchor them in place on the background fabric before appliqué stitching.  It has worked like a charm.


I have also started doing some needlepoint which I had given up years ago.  I needed a basket of some sort for my threads and found a pattern I  purchased long ago.  Fun project, except for the 20 steps involved.  And that extra firm Pellon interfacing is a bear to work with. 


Finally, my new kitty Birch is always interested in everything I do.  He loves packing tape, Cheetos, peanuts and of course, fabric.