Getting Unstuck

 I have been stuck. Stuck trying to find a way forward with my sewing. I do understand that it comes and it goes and I'm not worried I will never sew again or anything weird like that. And I know why I'm stuck. Grief can do that to a person. I do have some days where I sew, and I enjoy it. Other days, I don't feel like doing anything at all. I have a couple of projects in process. One, I can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for right now, and that's okay. It's more of a winter looking quilt.

My temperature quilt is one I am slowly plodding along with. I at least update the charted temps every week or so. I know I will sew them up eventually. I did some last week and am now mostly caught up.

This is January and February. I have decided to do each month as a calendar page. Whenever there is extra space in the month, I will use a piece of fabric that represents the month. Here, January is white on white that looks like snow, and February is hearts.

This is March, which has shamrocks for St. Patrick's day. Can you see how the temperature colors are changing?

This is April. April showers are represented here. Now, each month has 5 horizontal rows, but because of the way things fell in April, the 30th was all alone in a sixth row. I checked the rest of the year and it was the only one like that. So, I opted to split the last block between the 29th and the 30th. I know they usually do this on a diagonal line, but the houses don't lend themselves to that. So I guess I am caught up for the first time on this project.

Then, I got a bee in my bonnet, unlike anything else recently. I started a new project and finished the quilt top in one week.

This is from the book, Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. One of my all time favorite quilt books. I go to it a lot for inspiration. This is the High Five quilt. Amanda Jean's version is totally scrappy and I do love the look of hers. But I used some scraps and some yardage that I was looking for a way to use. I also made it a few rows shorter that in the book. I am very happy with how it turned out and now I just have to find the energy to pin baste it so I can quilt it. This got me a little unstuck.

What really got me unstuck though, was this quilt.

I started this quilt two years ago. I made the top while living in California. My plan was to have it available to quilt when I moved home. I finally basted it, using thread basting, because I had thought to hand quilt with Perle Cotton and big stitches. Until two days ago, I stopped and started many times. I really wasn't into it and working on it was a struggle. You cannot do something you are not enjoying. 

I called on a friend of mine for help. I said I don't know what to do. She said she had only hand quilted one quilt in her life and that was one too many. That really struck me. I had hand quilted many quilts back in the day before I learned to quilt on my home machine. But hearing her say this freed me somehow.

I spent a couple of hours picking out all the hand quilting I had done. It was somehow satisfying to cut those stitches and pull the threads out.

I wanted, and needed a quick and easy finish. So I did an all-over large sort of stipple. Remember stipple quilting? It used to be so popular when we were all learning how to free motion quilt. I loved it!! The quilt is soft, and crinkly. It was enough.

I found a half yard cut from the same fabric line and did the binding. The entire process of quilting and binding took me about7-ish hours. I can't tell you how good it feels to have this one done! But I'm sure you know.

Have a great rest of your week.

June Spring Chicken

 I'm sure by now you have seen pictures of Sweetwater's Spring Chicken line. When I saw this back in October, I was smitten. This is the first time that they have done a fabric line that uses the colors that they used in Sunkissed. That was the first fabric line I ever bought on line. I fell so in love with it, and I have asked many times over the years if they would ever reprint it, but I never got an answer.

Well, now I have decided to just go with Spring Chicken. It is super cute and I think the colors have satisfied my needs. This line was supposed to be out in March, but Covid delayed it until May. I pre-ordered a half yard bundle from the Fat Quarter Shop back in October. I have never bought so much fabric all at once like this, and never an entire line either. But I had to have it, and there might not be another chance, right?

I have already sketched out a simple quilt to show off the fun fabrics. I know this will only be the first of several quilts, because there are 19 yards of fabric here! So much fabric!

I just had to get out my Sunkissed Squares quilt and lay all the fabrics on it to compare. My Sunkissed Squares quilt was made in 2011 and is my most favorite ever! The checkered gingham looking fabric is a part of the Sunkissed line, as well as Spring Chicken. When I bought Sunkissed, I did not have the whole line. I was an on line fabric newbie at the time. The other thing I noticed is that they did not use the pale yellow in the new Spring Chicken line. But all the other colors are there and that's okay by me.

      These are all the gingham like checks in the new line. Aren't they pretty?

Here is another print from the new line. I highly recommend that if these colors are your thing, buy some of this while you can. You never know if you will have another opportunity. Thus ends my PSA for today. I will be back when I have more of this quilt to share.