Category: EPP

Goodbye 2020!

Ugh, I was so hoping to get more quilting done this year! We had all this time at home and I could have done so much. However, I did have an absolutely wonderful year for my business and had lots of time spent with the hubby and kids.

I have started hand quilting my first hexagon quilt, it’s slow going because I have so many hand projects that I rotate through. I’ve only been working in the white areas, because I haven’t decided what thread I want to use in the hexie flowers yet. I figure there’s a lot of white and I can decide the other color(s) later. You should be able to see the detail if you click on the pictures. My stitches aren’t 100% uniform, but I’m getting the hang of it and as it’s not going in a show/contest I don’t care. It’s mine and it’s been 100% stitched by hand. I don’t think I’m going to put a regular binding on it either, I’m thinking of doing a knife edge to it – I think I’ll need to do the edges before I quilt that last border though.

In October I started working on the pentagon project. It’s changed a few times since I decided what I wanted to do with it, so now I have 4 pentagons with a square in the middle appliqued to a background. I’ve gotten enough done that I put together the first row, used a ton of 1.5″ squares from the bin, and there’s a lot more that will be used by the time I’m done with this top. I’m working on putting the sashing together while I put together bow-tie blocks and the 9-patches I need for the border on that quilt. It’s all pretty mindless sewing when I need it.

As if I didn’t have enough hand projects, I pulled out some cross stitch and started working on that again. This is a piece for Alex and I have one I want to make for Cassie as well as one I want to make for 2 special teachers the kids have had. I have a bunch of Star Wars ones to make for Alex and at some point they’ll get done. In the past I’ve done all my cross stitch with paper patterns, but lately I’ve wanted to do it with an ipad. The app that I really want to use isn’t available for ios yet, and the android tablets we have are WAY to old for it to work. So I found a pdf app that will allow me to annotate the file and we’ll see how that works. I just got it updated last night but didn’t have time to try and see how well it works, might try that tonight.

Kids are off until next Monday (1/4), and I’m hoping to get some time to work on quilting. I got everything ready yesterday, because I intended on starting the quilting until I realized I may have inadvertently tossed my quilting gloves! I ordered a new pair yesterday, but who knows how long it will take for them to get to me. I’ll have to start quilting without them I guess and hope I have enough black thread to last until the new spool gets here with the gloves. I know I won’t be able to finish it before the end of the year, but I’d still like to start working on it and maybe start the new year with a finish.

Here’s hoping that 2021 is a better year for everyone and that I finish some projects in the new year!

Reorganizing

So I’ve been working on cleaning my office like I mentioned in my last post and I’ve been planning this cleaning for awhile now. Back in July or August I ordered another cabinet for in my office. Today my dad came over and put it up for me. A full cardboard box and items from other areas in my office now reside in the last cabinet on the right (in the picture). I still have room to access everything on my embroidery machine, but anything I don’t use a lot is now in the cabinet. Everything in my office feels open again since I put so much away!

I mentioned yesterday that I found cigar boxes with what I think were meant to be EPP projects. My EPP papers should be here Monday and I can start working on putting them together. I need to decide what color fabric I’m going to use for all the octagons, and then the backgrounds. I’ve used all the EPP papers that I had on-hand so that project is in a holding pattern until Monday. I do still need to figure out a setting for these, after I looked at each set I had a handful that did not have enough pieces so I’m down to 21 pentagon sets to work with.

I ordered an entire roll of batting and it just arrived yesterday. I’m ready to baste a quilt and get started quilting it!

October Already?

How on earth is it already October? The last week has been busy in cleaning! My office has been a royal mess for quite some time and there’s a closet outside my office that has things just thrown in it and not put where they belong. So, the closet is now cleaned and organized, some things going to the basement and some getting tossed. Items from my office that don’t need to be up here are also going to the basement.

While I was working on cleaning off the mess of my sewing table I found 2 cigar boxes that a friend found at a garage sale that had fabric already cut out. Each box had various cardboard shapes for cutting out the shapes. I spent some time this afternoon trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do with these pieces, and looking at the EPP pieces that I have here that I could possibly use.

What I believe I have is 3 different quilts that will be made: Pentagons, bow ties and diamonds. The bow tie quilt will probably be the last one I work on, I don’t have any EPP pieces that will work for that right now, and there’s no cutting template for them either.

The pentagons I’m going to put together in rings with an octagon in the center – EPP papers are on order from paperpieces.com right now. I found 1 pack of papers here so I started glue basting some this afternoon/tonight just so I have a head start on them. Once I have the rings put together they will be appliqued to a background and the blocks then put together. It looks like there are 27 pentagon sets so I’ll have to play around with a setting – might have to make a couple extras in order to have an even setting. I’ll have to wait and see when I get these all together.

The second box had pieces that I think might have been going toward a wedding ring quilt, but there’s no way I’m going hand piece one of those! So I had to figure out something else I could do with all that fabric. 1″ diamonds fit nicely on the fabrics and I’m going to do them like tumbling blocks. I even basted and sewed one block together – this is going to take a LONG time since they finish so small. I had a small package of diamonds I ordered years ago, so I ordered a much bigger package with the rest of the EPP pieces. Not in any rush on any of these projects, because I have so many hand projects under way already!

I have a few finishes to share, I’ll get pictures taken and get a post up in a few days. I also have a roll of batting on it’s way so I can baste another quilt and start working on the quilting, especially since I now have a fairly clean sewing table!