Flowers finito!

I have done it! Here are the last 7 flowers, plus a showcase of all 64 + 8 half flowers (plus one with my helper as I was trying to lay things out). I ended up taking all of the flowers with me on my trip to help build momentum - it was fun to have two finished almost right away. One of the orange flowers has that little iron-on patch I mentioned last time - I think it turned out to be very innocuous! 

I actually finished sewing on Sunday morning, so have been luxuriating in the last two days of not having to sew things. On the other hand, I am going over for arts & crafts tie with mom today, so it was funny having to find a new thing to work on!

It's so fun to see all the flowers together. There are definitely some that don't really fit in to their category (the final "yellow" one is almost white, and there are some "light blue" that are really grey), and some that really fit better into another category - some of the "orange" and "pink" are sorted with the reds in that picture above and fit right in. So I'll have to think carefully about the overall layout. 

Now the plan is to take a real break and make a totally different quilt, so I can test out the long-arm quilting people/process. I got some fun (and easy to execute) quilt designs while picking up zippers at a lovely new (to me) sewing store, and a fabulous quilt book from Margie while visiting (thank you!!), so I need to look at my fabric hoard and see what would work well. I also, in the spirit of this blog, need to return to my projects in process and make a plan to finish things up. A good project for tomorrow, to decide my 2025 aspirations. :)

Full flowers: 64/64!! 

- Catherine

Lucky 7

More flowers! I am so close. I changed my last flight from Thursday to Wednesday so I could sleep in my own bed a day earlier, and it meant that I had a lot of extra time in the airport, so things are cooking along!

I forgot that I actually finished the green flower before my last post (so there are only three newly finished ones in the first image below), but I decided not to retake the photo because it's fun that they ended up in the same orientation as the last one! Clearly that is The Right Order.

You can see in the second photo that I'm making good progress on the next set as well. I will definitely plan to leave the orange one at home when I leave again tomorrow, since there's only one seam left, and I will definitely plan to take the red one (3 seams left), but I'm on the fence about the yellow one. 

I also fixed one hexagon that had a big cut in it (see last image), by ironing on a little patch. It will make the sewing a bit harder going, and I thought a bit about sewing it up instead, but I think the patch will be nicely invisible. That cut had relegated the whole flower to the end of the envelope pile, but now that there are only 4 (!!!!) envelopes left, there's nowhere to hide. 

Excited to see how far I can get in the next 13 days (until I'm again back at home)!

Full flowers: 57/64 (3 started)

- Catherine

A new help

I am officially traveling now - I've got two full days at home next weekend but otherwise will be on the move for the next 20 days. It's a lot, but all good stuff! And then I'll have a quiet weekend/week to crash afterwards. Whee!

Thanks to time on the plane and a very friendly lap cat (my new helper, see?), I have finished a new flower and am one seam away from finishing the blue one I had started last week. Plus two others in progress. I also only have 7 envelopes of hexagons left!! I really can't believe it.

I am enjoying the new rhythm of threading my many needles with one long thread, using those to close up the big seams between hexagon strips, and then using the short remnants to create new strips. This strategy will also be helpful to make sure I'm finishing flowers rather than just starting new ones over and over, since the short seams are unsurprisingly easier, but then I have more and more bits to carry around. Hopefully I can finish these three and leave them at home when I stop by!

Full flowers: 54/64 (3 started)

- Catherine

And then there were eleven

Kablammo! I have sewed and sewed this week, and I have eight new flowers to show for it. See? The one in the bottom right is newly started - I needed a way to use up the short thread left over from my long seams, so that was a perfect pairing. 

I still have to do 2.5 per week if I'm going to get through them in December, but it's feeling a bit more possible. I have travel coming up that will be conducive for sewing, and then a few quiet days in between & after in case I have to buckle down... we'll see! 

In the meantime, I'm going to try a fun thing today, which is making chocolate chip cookies using sourdough discard. We've been making flatbread with it for the last few years, and it's time to mix it up (pun not intended). Also, it's always good to have cookies. :)

Full flowers: 53/64 (1 started)

- Catherine

When grumpiness pays off

What a bummer about your sweater! I like the wide neck, though - very dancer-ish. :)

That circle quilt is so cool! It would be good practice for curved seams, which I am always intimidated by. And sorry about Jeff's thumb!! That sounds terrible. Quite the roller coaster over there. :(

I was in a grumpy mood on Monday and so took the day off to read and sew and otherwise goof off. I always encourage my team to consider mental health days as part of their sick day count, so I figured I could follow my own advice. I also had good sewing time with mom and during some webinars, so I am excited to report an unprecedented *3* flowers done since our crazy weekend trip! You can see the most helpful kitty came to help me take a photo of my progress. Fortunately there was only one pin/needle pair in all of the fabric, so easy to avoid him stepping on those. Unfortunately, the sister-in-law who will be receiving this quilt is allergic to cats; I may have to think about washing the quilt top once it's done before I send it off.

I'm thrilled to be under 20 left. I had put each set of pieces into a different little envelope back in the beginning, and those packets are really starting to dwindle! If I aspire to finish before the end of the year, I'll have to complete ~3.5 per week for the next 5.5 weeks. Seems... unlikely, but you never know! 

Full flowers: 45/64 (4 started)

- Catherine

Déjà vu all over again!

 Nice title on the last post.  

I have been working on a new sweater for Smallest and somehow have misunderstood the pattern in a way that led me to put increases and decreases in the wrong places.  I have looked and looked at the pattern and tried to figure out how I have messed up, but alas, it is a mystery.  So I undid several inches of sweater and am reknitting it.  Very frustrating.

  This is before I put in the bad decreases/increases and I pulled it 

back almost this far.  I lost about 50 rows?

I'm about to take a break on the sweater to make many mittens for Sarah and Javi.  They want a mitten they can hold hands in.  I've found several patterns on the web, but none in the weight I made their matching hats in, so I'll use a book I have that gives instructions in any weight yarn and see how it goes!  I think they need other mittens to go with the double, so it will be mitten-fest.  I think they'll go quickly.  They're sock like, but not as big as socks.

I am excited because this is a nothing weekend!  We are going to the dance concert at HSPVA, and then there is nothing going on this weekend.  Hooray!  I've been getting up early early to help Jeff get ready for work, so I'm more tired than usual.  Jeff had an accident with his miter saw which necessitated some surgery on his thumb, so he's unable to do some things for a bit.

We had Lauren in town last weekend and had fun with her.  We happened upon Heritage Day at the George Ranch, just outside of Houston.  It was very fun and we saw this very cute quilt in one of the houses.

That's about it for me today.  I need to get back to preparing a grant proposal budget.  Joy!

I get to see Smallest in her professional debut a week from tomorrow, and I get to see you in two weeks!  Yay!  I hope Thanksgiving will be fun.

Margie

Grand plans and grasslands

Well, I had the best of intentions to sew a lot on our brief camping trip this weekend, but between the early darkness, trying to follow roads that turned out to be giant ruts of mud or had gates closed, and admiring the scenery of northwestern Oklahoma (no really! Black Mesa is beautiful), I didn't even open my sewing bag. Actually, my one point of contact with my sewing was when I was reaching into my larger bag to get something else and stabbed myself with some of the pins. Rude.

Anyway, here's a photo from Thursday - you can see that I have finished yet another flower and I'm only one seam away from finishing the red (top middle). I was catching up on a few webinars. :) The nice thing about making the shorter strips and priming the longer seams (where you can see the "V" of the two strips together) is that when I do convince myself to pick up one of those, I tend to mindlessly follow along until the seam is done. And it's only 4 of those big seams for each flower, so I don't need that many kicks-in-the-pants.

The coming two weekends are blissfully empty of too many plans, so hopefully I'll keep momentum going. 

Full flowers: 42/64 (5 started)

- Catherine