Lasso The Moon

What we've been up to

This summer schedule is a killer!  I tend to do a lot of single parenting in the summer, since Donnie (a youth pastor) is busy with the youth group.  In the summer, our youth activity schedule is ramped up to a rolling boil. 

So, that said, we've been busy...even too busy to stop and think about how busy we are.  But here are a few things we've been up to:

(Abby)

I mentioned a while back that I was doing a little sewing class with some girls I know.  This summer the class has grown from 2 to 5 and we are having a blast.  Emma is even joining in on some of the projects...and all of the chatting.

 

(Grace)

 

I joined a virtual quilting bee.   This is a group of twelve ladies who each take one month this year to be the "queen bee".  When it is her month, the Queen decides what pattern we'll do, and and each of us make her one or two blocks in the pattern.  Sometime within the month, she'll receive all of the blocks, and have enough for a finished quilt!  Such a cool idea.

Every bee has a theme of some kind, and this bee's theme is vintage sheets!  We are using our own supply for the blocks.  July's block was a string-pieced block.

 

I joined a vintage sheet fat quarter swap, too.  We cut sheets into fat quarters, shipped them to the hostess's house, and she sent me back just as many, but in all different prints.  These are the 80 that I sent in.  I've gotten my box back already, but haven't taken any photos yet.

 

Had a yard sale while Donnie was out of town one week.  It was wildly successful, but super HOT!  Here are the kids taking a slushy break. (Only the 1st and 3rd are mine!)

There's much more going on around here, but I'll save some of it for next time.  Be sure to stay cool and hydrated! 

--Anna

Oops

Everybody makes mistakes.

Case in point:

 

I thought I could finish piecing the entire thing in one evening, and I was playing this game with myself (my dad used to do this on car trips.)  Okay, now I am 1/5 of the way finished.  Ooh.  Now I'm 20% done.  Somehow if you occupy your brain with a little math, the task itself seems less mundane. 

At this point I was so excited to announce to Donnie that I was 80% (even though it was nearly midnight) that I sewed one whole strip on backwards.

 

Do you think anyone will notice?

I have a rule that if I make a little mistake, just pick it out and barrel through.  But if I'm tired and I make a big mistake, it's time to stop for the night.  I'll pick it out and fix it in the morning.

Getting close

I have been sewing until my fingers are just nubs, and now I'm trimming and laying out the squares. 

 

Isn't the illusion of the diamonds lovely?  Sigh.

It's nice to take a breather and admire the progress...okay, back to work!

ZZzzzooooooooommmm!

That's the sound of my sewing machine lately.

Before trimming:

 

After trimming:

 

The center of each square is kona "stone" and it is the same fabric I used on Ethan's bunk quilt top.  There will be many more squares in this quilt, so I used a thinner strip, one inch.

These are so fun to make, but exhausting!  I have to make each color combo 6 times, and with five colors, that makes 60 squares total.  I've been trying to do all one color in one sitting, but even that is a beating.  I had to make 24 of each half-square.  So of the blue triangles, 6 will pair with orange, six with green, six with brown, and six with yellow.  Ok, I think I've shared too much.  I might have to write a pattern when this is done, just to keep the details straight!

Sometimes you need a plan

I have mentioned before that I prefer any project that kind of plans itself.  If I have to pre-cut 1000 squares for a quilt, I'm likely to run out of steam and never piece them together.  It's just a tendency that I've learned to live with, so I avoid anything with tons of prep work. 

And that's why I love the idea of the string quilt with its paper foundations.  It's a kind of plan-as-you-go style that suits me perfectly.  But don't get me wrong--these are not shot-in-the-dark-grab-a-scrap-out-of-the-bag-and-use-whatever-comes-out projects.  They are carefully designed...by the seat of my pants.

But then I came up with the design for this string quilt for the top bunk:

 

The sketch is so, well, sketchy because I had to keep redrawing the thing to get it right.  If you look closely, each square (mine will be 9 1/2 inches) is actually two different colors, so I'll have to refer to this "map" constantly as I piece the squares. 

Here's an idea of what they will look like.

 

Yeah, sometimes you need a plan.