It takes a Village

     I spent Labor Day Monday packing suitcases for my trip to The Villages here in Florida for a lecture and class.  If you are not familiar with The Villages, it is a senior community in central Florida, about 50 miles north of Orlando.  It is definitely not your average senior community.  First of all it is HUGE and growing.  It is well planned, active and filled with incredibly friendly people.  Those people are fond of saying that if you are bored at The Villages, it is your own fault.  That is not too hard to believe if you spend even a few minutes talking to anyone that lives there about the classes and clubs they enjoy.

    My reason for visiting was to present a lecture to the guild and teach a class using my Scrap Crazy 6" templates.  This program was scheduled and canceled twice because of the pandemic.  Third time is a charm!  I was just glad to be out doing what I love.  The 100+ members that attended the lecture were warm and welcoming, especially considering I arrived with a carload of trash bags filled with quilts and boxes of disorganized materials.  The air conditioning in our mini van died the day before the trip.  That would be the mini van that we own ONLY because it makes it easier to haul everything to classes/lectures/shows.  The idea of going old school with the windows down for the 3+ hour drive in 90 degree weather wasn't all that appealing.  At the last minute my husband decided everything I needed would fit in our smaller car.  We unpacked and stuffed, wedged and squeezed what should have been organized in suitcases into smaller trash bags to make it fit.  Never a dull moment around here!

    Despite being a bit discombobulated when I arrived an hour early for the lecture everything went fine.  I think everyone enjoyed what I had to offer and I certainly enjoyed interacting with the members I had a chance to meet.  Now I am back home, unpacked and I have everything, well mostly.....sort of.... for the most part.... put away.  

    Time to jump back into the thick of things and get some sewing done.  My stack of nine patches from the summer Nine Patch A Day challenge is waiting to be put together.  I have finally decided on a setting for them. If you aren't a member of the Nine Patch A Day Group on Facebook, come join us!  It is a private group.  It is not private to exclude anyone.  It is private because of Facebook rules.  Unlike public pages, private groups can share files.  That allows me to upload handouts or diagrams.  Everyone is welcome!

    This is the setting I have chosen for my 6" blocks.  What you see here is an assortment of my scrappy nine patches stuck on my design wall in no particular order.  I'm trying to decide how to fill in the "holes".  This is going to be a wall hanging for my daughter.  White seems too stark.  Black is too dark.  Grey would be an option, but her walls are grey. Hmmmm.... any suggestions?  Feel free to comment.

    This one is going to spend some time on my design wall while I consider the options.

    

What's Under My Needle?

I looked away for one minute and August was GONE!  That month sure went fast. 

    I truly enjoy creating.  Unfortunately sometimes I create without thinking about how that creation will fit in the real world.  Those creative ideas sometimes come back to bite me.  I have often joked that my tombstone is going to read "It was a good idea at the time".  

     This photo is of one end of my Simple Gifts Table Runner.  It is one of my single sheet $2.50 patterns.  Any pattern with SIMPLE in the title, should be simple. This pattern includes the simple shapes for an easy to applique bow.  

    My granddaughter was visiting and thought this runner needed a fancier bow.  Because this sample isn't for the pattern front, I agreed.  It seemed like a simple thing to do to make Madeline happy.  Except... Now the sample doesn't match the pattern and you will see this version in social media.  If you see that image and buy the pattern, you will want THAT bow.  Great!  Except that bow is a three page handout.  It won't fit on the single page pattern.  To make everyone happy, I have made the bow a free handout available at all of my Sewposium shops or in my Nine Patch A Day Group on Facebook.  I do like this bow better, but some decisions are made to make good publishing sense.  Others are made to have some fun with your granddaughter.

    Mid month I received a box of supplies.  That order included a huge pack of hexagons for English Paper Piecing.  Oops!  I ordered the wrong size for my project.  FOUR HUNDRED of the wrong size!  It isn't worth the effort to return them.  I placed a correct order and  I started wondering if I could machine piece these.  It worked!  I have no need to machine piece with foundation papers, but I had to try.  One thing leads to another around here, so I justified my experiment by thinking that these may end up in a sample for my new Grab & Go Bag pattern.  That pattern is for a great little bag with interior and exterior pockets including one that zips!  I expect to release the pattern later this fall.  The problem is, if I use these hexi's to make a sample, I should include instructions for how to machine piece them and that isn't in the original plan.

    These photos are of the working samples of the Grab & Go Bag.  There are 4 more discarded pieces hovering around my trash can. Those were trashed because I wasn't thrilled with the results of the stabilizer.  Although I love working with foam stabilizer, not everyone can handle that bulk on their sewing machine.  My job is to produce patterns that anyone can make.  That means testing lots of readily available products to see which works best in a particular situation.  The discarded samples are like the leftovers in the back of your frig.  I can't seem to toss them until I am sure that they have passed their prime.  You on the other hand can take my basic instructions and upscale the project to fit your sewing needs.  I love when you take a project and make it your own.

    As long as August was for experimenting.  I thought I would toss a little digitizing into the mix.  I have an idea for a series of embroidery designs so I spent several hours working on those.  The designs are seasonal so why not start with ..... February?  

    If you have ever wondered why embroidery designs are so expensive, I have the answer.  It takes FOREVER to digitize a design!  It seems simple, until you get into the details.  Stitches, layering, outlines, tack downs, jump stitches, stitch width, stitch length, hoop size.  It is like juggling a dozen options and one change makes a difference on multiple layers.  Then you have to stitch out the design multiple times to make sure your changes have been incorporated properly.  Crazy as it is.  I love the challenge of getting the designs to look the way I want.  

    To be honest, all this other sewing was just my way of justifying the fact that I am avoiding the 244 half square triangles that I don't really want to make!  

   I agreed to write this pattern, which seemed like a good idea at the time.  The instructions are the easy part.  Now I have to MAKE it. I'm going to love this quilt when it is done.  The colors are beautiful together.  It definately isn't one that I will tell you I really "enjoyed" making.  I prefer to eliminate as many seams as possible when I design a quilt.  For this pattern it just makes sense to create sheets of half square triangles in the correct color combinations. That is easy enough, then you have to sew them together.  The same fabric you just cut apart.  I'm going to do it... I really will... just not today... possibly tomorrow.  Unless something more "important" comes up.

Oh look... FedEx just delivered a package.  

It looks like important fabric!