Studio Post #21 - Five in One: I Lost a Month

 If I had blogged each week, this is how it might have looked . . . 

May 26 - Nothing. I had a bin of sewing projects prepped and packed for our twelve days at the lake. I did not, however, open it.

June 2 - Nothing. Again. Too darn busy with this, that, and the other.

June 9 - Frenzied preparation for the quilt show! I sewed a sleeve onto the back of Benjamin's Trail. I added a second sleeve (regulation directions) over the sleeve on my God Heals wall hanging. I made a second fabric quilt bag for entering my work. I worked feverishly on the 2024 Challenge which I called Morning Glory. 

June 16 - In Duluth on Monday, June 10, I finished stitching on the "leaves" of my Morning Glory and added the hanging sleeve. It was done "enough" and I hope to add the rest of the detail later this summer. The quilt show was both wonderful and exhausting. I should have lots of lovely pictures, but I'm just playing catch up on my blogging. But I had THREE things in the show this year! No ribbons, but I had THREE things in the show!

June 23 - Last week, I mostly just put away things from my MN Quilt show trip and worked. And had a grandma day. And packed to come up to the lake. I have my small hand-stitching bag with me and may work on some hexies later. I just needed to get back on track with my blogging. I hope to actually do some sewing this week so I have something more significant to post next Sunday!

Studio Post #20 - What's in a Name?

The main sewing thing I did last week was pack up all my 2024 Challenge bits and pieces to bring to the lake to work on here. It's a new week and I haven't taken the pieces out yet.

The other thing I did was brainstorm names for my queen sized quilt in process. It started out as the MQ 2017 Challenge "Go with the FLW." I've already blogged about it when I took the parts of it to the in-town retreat in January and almost finished the top. Now the top is finished AND I've long-armed it. I had fully intended to trim off the excess batting and backing, make the binding, and sew it onto the top so I could bring it with me to the lake to finish. Alas, I got too darn busy at the end of April and start of May, so it sits at home.

I have, however, come up with some name possibilities for it:

• By Committee (because I kept asking others for their opinions)
• Go Against the FLW (instead of Go with the FLW)
• Directions? What Directions?
• Make Up My Mind!
• I'm No Architect (FLW = Frank Lloyd Wright)
• Neither Structure Nor Style ("Neither Nor" for short)
• It May Be Wild, But It's Mine

 

Some people think naming quilts is pretentious. I don't care. I think it's fun. And it's easier to refer to specific quilts that way. (I don't make enough quilts to get really confused, but I still like naming them.) I didn't bring my quilt "journal" with me to the lake, but I'm curious to check and see if I've recorded all the quilts I've made and what I named them.

2024 Studio Post #19 - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Since I didn't want to blog that I did nothing, but I had an over-busy week, I went into my studio to work on my 2024 Challenge piece. I'm very excited to do this piece! (And since I've entered it in the show, I need to get going on it. I need to drop off the finished wall hanging on June 11.) No pictures until I'm done, but I cut out the two-sided interfacing to start building my tree and branches.

That was the good. The bad is . . . my iron leaked all its water out. I was surprised, but started to fill it with more distilled water. Then I noticed that the water was pouring out. I've broken my iron! It got knocked to the ground last time I used it when I was trying to access the hallway closet and the door fell off. I'm sad. I hope it's fixable.

The ugly is my studio . . . it's been a dumping ground lately. I've pulled out bins and projects and then not put things away properly. I don't know that I'll have time to straighten it up before we head to the lake.

Studio Post #18 - PJ Pocket

I was ready to make an entry that said "Nothing - again." But then I realized that I had prepped some hand sewing to bring to Saturday's MQ meeting! It's not much, but it is SOMEthing!

Two winters ago, I dropped my fuzzy red monkey PJ bottoms on the hot stove at the lake. I replaced some of the melted plastic-y fabric (yay polyester) with a piece of red fleece. But as I wore those PJ bottoms this winter, I realized that the right hand pocket was semi-singed and had two little holes in it. It bugged me.

So I took a small piece of super-fuzzy grey fleece with a lamb on it and pinned it in place. While I was listening to the presenter, I stitched it onto the icky pants pocket fabric. I did it on the inside of the pocket so I could feel the lovely softness!

Not much, but it's something!

I Have Never Before Loved a Car as Much as I Love My Volt

I have owned a Vega, a Chevette, 3 Suburbans, and an Impala. But in December of 2020, we bought a 2017 Chevy Volt. I tell all my family regularly how much I love my car! I have also never had to spend so much time learning about how a car works.

For the first month or so, I would take out the manual after parking and read about another feature or use the index to find out how to . . . do whatever I wanted to do that I couldn't figure out. For a while, I joked that my phone and my car were smarter than I am!

The Volt is a hybrid and that is perfect for me! When we got it, the lifetime average was 163 miles per gallon. (This picture shows 160 mpg because it was a month after we bought it.) I'm guessing the previous owner had a short commute and mostly ran it on electricity. I've driven it hundreds of miles - sometimes in one weekend! When I do a lot of highway distance driving, I'm sad that my mileage is so "bad" - only 40 mpg! Louie has to remind me that only my Chevette ever came close to that kind of mileage. (Also in this image, I had only driven 9.6 miles. But it didn't use a drop of gas. Short commutes and in-town driving along with warm weather make this car almost gas-free!)

I'm really glad we bought it in December and I got used to it during a cold Minnesota winter. That helped keep my expectations low. This car definitely prefers summer weather and city driving. Last summer, there were several times when I put in 7-8 gallons of gas (the tank holds a max of 8.9 gallons) and I had traveled over 1,200 miles since the previous fill! That is one of my favorite things about this car! Whether the gas prices are high or low, it just doesn't cost much to fill it up.

Sadly, my lifetime average is below 100 miles now. But it doesn't make me sad to think about road trips to Michigan, Grand Marais, Strawberry Lake, Green Bay, . . . and I love that I don't have to worry about finding a charging station and waiting until the car has enough power. I could just treat it like a gasoline-powered car if I wanted to.

It isn't primarily gasoline powered, though! My typical routine is to plug it in when I pull into the garage. I can leave it to charge at 8 amps or set it to 12 amps. It tells me what time it anticipates being fully charged. The charging cord is easy to unplug (if the garage isn't too messy) and take with me if I want. The first few months we had it, I tracked the difference in the increase of our Xcel energy bill and the decrease of our "transportation" budget. We definitely were saving money on powering this car! The comparison got a bit muddied by the increase in Xcel rates soon after, but overall I believe this is more economical. And I love it.

It's fun to drive and peppy. It has encouraged me to be a more careful driver instead of acting as though I'm driving a sports car because I can see how quickly I'm draining my battery if I do quick starts. The battery is recharged during braking and coasting. (I've also been reading more articles about things like regenerative braking and the difference between a Volt and a Prius.) Technically, the Volt is considered a PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) but I am still trying to understand the technology.

I'm shocked that Chevy stopped making the Volt after the 2019 model year. I think they were ahead of their time with this car. I now understand why our friend Marty Coddington raved about his Volt. (He and his wife have owned at least three that I know about.) I have enthusiastically gushed to many people about my wonderful car! I really, really, really wish that Chevrolet would bring this back. I would be 100% up for buying another one . . . though that may not be for another decade or so!

Maintenance is so easy. I check the oil regularly, but the dash system also shows me the "oil life." So far, Louie has changed it twice for me . . . after about 16,000 miles. That is so bizarre to me! I used to make sure the oil got changed every 3-5 K and I would check it for level and color. Now I check it, but it's that lovely caramel color and doesn't go down. I realize that the battery technology means that the internal combustion engine doesn't get as much of a workout, but this is crazy!

I love my car!

2024 Studio Post #17 - longarm quilting and misc small projects

It's ironic to me that I'm blogging about my studio, but I spent almost no time in there this week!

 

I went to my friend Rose's house for most of two days to longarm my FLW quilt. I'm not posting a picture here because I've already posted some and I still need to bind it. It feels so good to have the quilting done! I should have been better about planning the quilting, though. I started getting bored and doing whatever random thing occurred to me. Ah well, I get better at some things the more I do them. I hope to plan better next quilt and take the time to do it well. This is for our bed at home and it's already a wild quilt in terms of the colors and design - why not the quilting, too?

 

I also did some sewing yesterday during our MQ Committee Zoom meeting. I stitched up a little pillow I like to use in the car for my grandson's carseat (to fill in some of the car's contours). I also sewed Louie's green jacket lining that was a bit shredded. It's not the neatest, but it's much better! I had more meeting than repair projects, so I sewed on some of my hexies. (Note to self: prep more hand sewing before another Zoom meeting!)

 

No pictures this week. Oh! One picture of Rose's cat, Fearless. He's huge!

I have size 10 1/2 feet. Trust me, this guy is a very big cat!

Studio Post #16 - Queen Size Quilt Top for Our Bed

Nothing momentous this week, but I (and my sister Louise) both pressed fabric yesterday. (The pieces I had laundered last week, mostly from the "Free" table at Minnesota Quilters.)

I pieced together enough fabric for a backing.

I'll finish basting together the batting either tonight or tomorrow evening. (I thought about buying a big enough piece, but decided to make do with what I have here at home.)

Tuesday, I'll head to my friend Rose's house to start quilting it! I hope to come up with a quilting plan before then.

I wasn't going to bother with a photo, but then I decided it would be helpful for me to have one to plan out my quilting.

 

This is the Go With the FLW (Frank Lloyd Wright) challenge that I started in 2017. It has turned out to be a bit bizarre - both in the color scheme and in the design I ended up making. Ah, well. It's for our bed at home and I'll like cuddling under it. Louie humors me.

 

It's bigger than the open space in our house and I didn't want to lay it outside on the grass. It measures 98" wide x 106" long. I took the photo on the side but them rotated it to how it will lay on the bed. This perspective distorted the overall look.

Also, in writing this, I realize I need to come up with a name for this quilt. I'll add that to the To-Do list. This is the design Mike created. At some point, I decided I didn't care for it . . . and went off on my own crazy-train!