A Contemplative Life

Skies, fabrics, etc.... My right shoulder is BETTER! It's not to the point where I'm hand sewing like previously, but it doesn't hurt when I do hand stitch. Every other night. For about an hour. Which is approximately a quarter of the time I used to hand sew, but I'll take it. Very slowly beats not at all, and as I have several EPP projects, not to mention Kawandi, I wish to complete, hand sewing will truly exemplify SLOW STITCHING on a grand scale. Lol. A few days ago, while figuring out the next round of my Peace Around the World quilt , I played with some fun squares, turning an extra swan into the center of yet another coaster. I have So. Many. Coasters! Yet I love the brevity, experimenting with different fabrics, as well as adding a layer of Insulbrite to make them more heat-resistant. It kinda works, but it's not perfect. Guess I'll need to try it again, hahahah. What I DID LOVE were how woven fabrics worked amid regular cotton prints. I love how green me...

I saw these earlier today and snapped them late this afternoon. Reminds me of some of the fabrics I encountered, hehehe. After I finished cutting fabric today, I had some four and a half inch wide strips left, and I put them in a tote notable for four and a half inch wide strips, among other scraps. I carried the tote into the living room with the desire to go through it later. Well, I just did so, and to my delight, what amounts to at least an entire quilt top/back is waiting for me to piece it together. Maybe more like two tops/backs, what with MANY strips as well as two stacks of varied sizes of large scraps, my goodness! It was like revisiting the last five-plus years of my stash, perhaps longer. One particular autumnal-hued piece went into the autumn-6.5" stack to be cut into squares, while another small collection of already cut 4.5" squares went into another tote. Only a few pieces were tossed from prints I don't need, and those pieces were small. Funny to think ho...

The inner panel does the heavy lifting here, but quilt math was employed to make sure the sizing was correct, as well as enough of the green border fabric to make that border! Kawandi as well as a panel completion. Yup, I love me some sewing! Except.... That sentiment is not this post. I'd planned to gleefully expand upon these two projects until late yesterday when my right shoulder ached not merely near my shoulder blade but actually at the top of my shoulder. Not that I'd done a heap of hand-sewing yesterday, but what I did wasn't what my body wanted. Sigh. It's better today, but still not a hundred percent. What it has done is make me reassess what I wanted to do with both projects, and the answer is to shelve them for now. The Kawandi wall hanging will live in a tote while the panel quilt top/back and its accompanying top/back will be folded, then placed on a stack of finished pieces. And that's what I can say about my hand-stitching endeavors. Sorting the bord...

A year ago I was IN LOVE with Kawandi quilting. Hand-stitching thoroughly grabs me, and this was a way to make the quilt top WHILE quilting, what could be better? I actually thought I'd give up machine sewing, lol. Because I was delving into a method so THRILLING, as well as making my Heart English paper piecing quilt top ; it was like hand-sewing heaven. By early summer, my right shoulder was achy. I kept hand-stitching. By late summer, I was nearly done with a Mandolin EPP quilt , and I had a second Kawandi quilt underway . Yet that shoulder.... An X-ray in early October showed no visible issues with the shoulder, WHEW! I had cut WAY back on the hand-sewing however, finding myself in a routine of using my sewing machine every other day. Why every other day? Because even when using earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones, my ears would ring if I used my machine daily. Talk about FRUSTRATING. As well as not being able to get any PT for that right shoulder, sigh. Fast forward to 2...

Before I slip into all about writing, let me say that Gigi is no longer broody! She didn't need to be placed onto the wall-shelf last night, and has spent the last two days out with her sisters. Yesterday we received SO MUCH RAIN, over three and a half inches in twenty-four hours. Owl and Nadia were out in the rain MOST OF THE DAY. Camilla joined them for the latter half of the afternoon, and by evening, as a mere drizzle fell from the sky, all eight hens were poking around the grass and gravel as if worms had fallen from heaven. Eight hens preening or chillin' out, sweet chickies! Also, I completed the medallion-Minnesota quilt, but it was TOO WET to hang it out for photos. My husband acquiesced to act as holder, and I'm very happy with it. Right after the photo session, I carefully folded it, and now it's on the stack of finished quilt tops/backs that are beginning to pile up in the closet where my stash lives. Not sure at all when I will get to them, or in what manne...

I had planned to use pictures from the Winnie the Pooh quilt for this tutorial, but as I prepped the rainbow quilt, I snapped shots of that process for this post. Heads-up: This is long, lots of photos, and probably more words than you need, but I don't often (if ever because I use tried and true methods borrowed from quilters long before me) write tutorials, so please bear with me on this. However, might I add, not merely in my defense, but to strengthen my belief that if one isn't averse to hand-stitching, that this method, heavily borrowed from Kawandi quilting, is a marvelous manner in which to throw quilting bindings out the window. Okay, having said ALL THAT, here's how I go about securing the perimeter of a quilt! First, make a quilt sandwich just as you normally would, however, the extreme excess backing and batting can be eliminated for this method! Less waste = more materials for future projects, lol. Now, I like to sit for the rest of this procedure, but if you p...

Too many nice photos to simply chat about chickens. Probably a Welsummer egg due to the speckles. But yes, the hens are LAYING like there's no tomorrow! Five of the eight, we think, are acting as if winter doesn't matter, youth has no bearing, and who cares if the solstice is right around the corner! That's what those chickens would be saying, if they could do more than cluck, cluck, cluck. The other Welsummer egg, freshly washed, why it appears so dark. Am I really one of those chicken owners who feel it necessary to display various eggs? I guess so.... I have a lot of pictures to share, of eggs, and the beach, and coasters completed. None of the hens, lol, maybe in the next entry. We're heading into the homestretch of Advent, Christmas preparation, Hanukkah. Heading into what I hope is a quiet time, a time of reflection, thankfulness, peace. A time where I want to embrace my faith in Christ Jesus, revel in grace, eat some eggs. Eggs.... Oh my goodness, how did the Bar...

If I did own a Christmas quilt, it would look a lot like the placemat above. Lol. A few mornings ago I took the photos for this post, in part I was thinking how I don't have a Christmas quilt, although I have made several for beloveds. And that I truly love these mats, made from what Katie Pederson calls Magic Numbers sewing. I still have 2.5, 4.5, and 6.5" squares in my Christmas Fabrics bag, and maybe one of these days I'll sew up more placemats, as I only made four when I fashioned these. They won't have bindings, but the layout makes me HAPPY! And small projects are easy finishes, 'nuff said. I wonder if my chickens think of their egg-laying as easy finishes, LOL! One laid an egg in the dustbathing box yesterday; DUDE! That's not cool, chicken. We think it's a Welsummer egg, from the hue and slight speckling, and if that is true, I'd guess Cami laid her first egg because Cami LOVES dustbathing. But I am very sorry, Miss Cami Chicken; eggs are to b...

  I did try to hang the quilt outside to photograph it, but it was too heavy and fell to the ground. Today my husband held it aloft, and while not the perfect photo, it's good enough. This quilt seems to have had two lives; the English paper piecing blocks have been around a LONG time. Many were done, the fabrics not my faves, then I fully finished them earlier this year or late last year after a big PUSH when I had Covid last summer. While quarantining in my bedroom so said husband wouldn't get sick (not that it worked, but....), I sewed Lucy Boston (LB) blocks because I didn't want to touch/contaminate anything I truly adored, haha! Come to find out, these at times obnoxious, at other times sweet blocks from my early EPP days have wormed their ways into my Kawandi heart. And what's especially precious (not in a sickly sweet manner) is that this quilt is WHOLLY HAND SEWN. No machine was employed in its creation. The back is a flannel twin-size sheet, the front i...

Quilt top DONE! A quilt top that's been on the wall for, um, weeks. A quilt top that until yesterday afternoon was loose squares, waiting so patiently for me to, um, get to it! Git 'er done, as my daddy would say. I put it up there well over a month ago, in anticipation for rain that came and went, followed by copious storms that didn't make a single dent in all those squares. Aligned they rested, lingered, loitered.... Then yesterday morning I had a new shiny pop into my brain, but to attend to new shiny, old faithful had to go. LOLOL! Maybe that's what I'll call this quilt, Old Faithful. Made up mostly of Anna Maria prints, it's some of my oldest and newest faves. Made for.... Maybe me, maybe. Or maybe it will be for someone else, because let me tell you, the corners are PRECISE! Some of the best nesting of seams I have accomplished, which makes me wonder if it's going to again wait for the perfect moment to be gifted. Of course, I need to finish it first....

I've had this in mind for a while. Didn't anticipate making it quite yet, but.... So my shoulder remains fiddly. Har-rumph! Yesterday I eked out a truncated evening of handsewing, feeling a *wee bit guilty* about it, because if I was smart, I would do NO handsewing, but last night that notion made me feel twitchy. So I sewed. And I ached. And I went to bed, sleeping on my left side to coddle my right shoulder, but instead the odd position made my right knee twitchy, oi! Thankfully I slept in this morning, but have done no hand-stitching, nor will I this evening. Instead I'm gonna blather all about it, as well as remark on making a quilt top in an afternoon as if hand-sewing meant nothing to me. (WAH WAH WAH!!! Insert crying face emoji HERE!) What I noticed right off the sewing machine bat was how easily it was to slip back into machine sewing. With my earplugs firm in my ears. And noise cancelling headphones over my earplug-protected ears. Lol. I've used earplugs and he...