Second Thoughts on Scrappy Celebrations, Emma Louise Muslin Background for Stonefields + New Specs for Rebecca

Good morning, Quilty Peeps!  How is it Wednesday already?!  And how is it nearly the end of May when it was just February the other day?!!  Time doesn't just march on at a steady pace.  Time is picking up speed, taking shortcuts, and leaving me in the lurch.  All of which warrants a new practice for me: Reevaluating whether or not to keep working on a project all the way to the bloody end, just because I started it!

Here's your last glimpse of my inspired-by-Scrappy-Celebrations project on the design wall before I take it down and put it into a crypt prison project box from which it may or may not ever emerge:

I Celebrate Abandoning This Project Today!

This project has been tried and found guilty of Failing to Sufficiently Challenge and Engage My Brain, Wasting My Time, and Wasting My Tilda Precuts!  That last charge was the most serious, and I'm afraid I was an accomplice in this crime against my creative energy.  

Two things initially appealed to me about the Scrappy Celebrations quilt when I first saw it: The quilt "breaks the rules" about combining 4-patch and 9-patch blocks in the same quilt, but it works because only squares and rectangles are used in all the blocks.  I still find that interesting, but as I've been making the blocks I've been thinking ahead and dreading what a pain in the tush it will be to sew them together with all these seam allowances going different directions.  So I had already been toying with the idea of adding scrappy sashing strips between my blocks, but sashing increases the size of a quilt so I'd have fewer blocks (and less variety in my quilt) if I did that:

54 x 64.5 Tilda Celebration With Scrappy Sashing

In the EQ8 rendering above, I've arranged the 21 9" blocks that I've already sewn along with 9 more block mockups and "painted" my sashing randomly with prints from the Tilda Sunday Brunch collection to get an idea of what that would look like.  Meh.  I don't hate it, but I wish I hadn't made so many blocks using the same fabrics!  

New Fabric and New Glasses Have Arrived!

Kona Solids Arrived for Lars's Graduation Quilt!

Look what came in the mail yesterday!  I just noticed that I have the two lightest blue shades reversed in that photo, but that's pretty much how they will be laid out in the quilt.  The background fabric is definitely purple, even thought it looked nearly black in the computer-generated design rendering.  All of the colors look brighter in this photo because of sunlight streaming in though the kitchen window, but we are NOT complaining about sunlight in the Carolinas when so many of you are bundled up against snow and sub-zero temperatures!  Although, I can't resist gloating that it got above EIGHTY degrees in Charlotte today, and I ventured out in sandals for the first time this year.  I knew that the sun would come back if I got a pedicure!  It's like saying "I believe in fairies!"  and then Tinkerbell comes back to life!

Here's my EQ8 design for these fabrics, in case you missed it from an earlier post:

My EQ8 Design for Lars's Grad Quilt

It is really nice to know for certain what these fabrics will look like together before I start cutting or piecing anything.  I'm glad I decided to order different fabrics.

I took my Jingle quilt top to the guild meeting for Show and Tell last night, which was fun.  It felt good to show my work to other quilters who understood what went into the making of it.  I haven't gotten any more quilting done, though, but I did get caught up with some work I needed to do for my interior design clients and I'm continuing to acclimate to the new iMac computer.  Oh, and I got new glasses today -- not just readers, but progressive lenses that I can wear all the time that are supposed to help me with night driving and midrange computer and music reading.  I've never worn glasses full-time before and I feel kind of silly, like I'm wearing a costume, but I hadn't realized the slight deterioration in my distance vision until I popped these glasses on today and suddenly things in the distance were sharper and clearer again!  

New Glasses.  Do I Look Like Velma Now?

Even Without Glasses, I Was ALWAYS a Velma...

Tomorrow morning I've got to put some orders in and wrap up some paperwork for the client I met with today, and then I've got to take my Bernina 750QE in to get a board swapped out.  My dealer ordered the part for me and is having me bring the machine in to get it done while I wait so I won't have to go a single day without my Main Squeeze sewing machine -- how awesome is that?  And while I'm there, I'm going to check out THIS new machine that has been intriguing me on the Bernina web site:

New Bernina Model B475 QE

This might just be my next studio addition, and if it is, we're not going to call it "another new sewing machine."  We're going to call it a "Bernina Travel Accessory."  I need to leverage the power of Social Sewing if I'm going to get that graduation quilt done on time, and that means I need a sewing machine that is easier to schlep around to bee meetings and sit-and-sew without a fork lift.  Yes, I do have two little Singer Featherweights, but I miss some of the modern Bernina bells and whistles with those vintage beauties and I'd like to be able to swap back and forth between machines.  I really like the smaller size and weight of the B475, the 5.5 mm feed dogs, the jumbo bobbins (same hook system as the 7 Series Berninas so the BOBBINS are interchangeable!), and the fact that I can use so many feet with it that I already own.  There's the bright LED light, the piecing straight stitch that I love (although it has a different stitch number on this model), the FHS knee lift, and I could even use my BSR foot on this machine if I wanted to.  My walking foot would fit this machine, if I wanted to work on attaching binding somewhere besides my studio, and because it's not just a straight stitch, I could use it for machine appliqué as well...  Best of all, MSRP is below $2,500 for this machine.  I believe it's sized between the 3 Series and 5 Series models, kind of like a Goldilocks "just right" sized machine, and I have high hopes!  We'll see how it sews tomorrow.  No rush.  I have plenty of cutting to do before I start piecing that quilt. 

Have a lovely evening and happy sewing!

I'm linking up with Esther's WIPs on Wednesday linky party because I'm SO EXCITED that this Geese In Circles grad quilt is finally a WIP instead of just an idea in my mind!

What Do You Mean, My Kid Can't See?!

Glasses for Lars!

So I got this email last Friday from the school, telling me that Lars passed a routine hearing test but FAILED his vision screening because he can't see ANYTHING at a distance out of his right eye -- he can't even read the giant E on the very top of the eye chart.  They asked him whether he was able to read the notes on the board in the classroom, and he replied that he could read the teachers' handwriting on the white board, but when they put up typed PowerPoint presentations all the typed information was blurry.  He never mentioned it because he thought it was normal.

All of Lars's hearing and vision screenings when he was little were always normal, so it's quite a shocker to discover a significant visual impairment at the end of 7th grade.  Obviously this has affected his depth perception as well, which might explain why Lars has never been able to catch a ball no matter how patiently my husband has tried to coach him.  Poor kiddo!

Bernie whisked Lars off to the eye doctor first thing Monday morning, and the eye doctor confirmed that Lars needs to be wearing glasses full time and also said that, since Lars's left eye has been compensating for so long, he may even need some kind of vision therapy to "retrain" the left eye.  I helped Lars pick out his frames Monday afternoon and even though they told me it would take 1-2 weeks for the glasses to come in, we were delighted when the eye doctor alerted us that the glasses were ready to be picked up yesterday after school.

And what does Lars think of all this?  He says "WOW!!  There are SQUARES on roofs!"  Apparently he could never make out individual shingles before.  I can't believe it took so long for us to realize he had a vision problem, but better late than never!