Well, I did half of a thing. lol. Still! I’m super impressed with myself! This represents 1/2 of the final king size quilt, or 1962 7/8 inch hexagons. All thread basted and hand sewn. Plus, I have almost all of the hexies basted! All of them are cut out, but I ran out of papers so I have about 150 more to baste.
I’m setting this aside for a while to work on some other projects, but I am so glad that I did a big push on it this month! Now I’m going to reward myself and have some quality time with my windchime quilt. Then who knows? 🙂
Warning: disjointed stream of consciousness ahead.
Anyone else feel like this is a bad dream that they’re ready to wake up from? I feel like the world has gone crazy in the past week. But as I’m encouraging Kate to focus on the positives, I thought I would try to force myself to list some of the positives as well. So in no particular order:
We have a back yard! And it’s nice outside! Seriously, this is huge. My kids are spending hours outside every day and I love it. Note to self: might need to put some sunscreen on Xander…
We are all safe and at home together. So glad that we have each other. So glad that RaptorDad has the ability to work from home. So glad that the kids have each other.
Siblings. This one is so huge that I have to make it its own line. I struggled so much with the worry that Kate would be an only child while we were dealing with infertility. I am so incredibly thankful that they have each other.
Cloth wipes. I so much don’t want to go there, but if we run out of toilet paper we do have cloth wipes from when we were cloth diapering the kiddos. At least we won’t be reduced to using leaves. lol.
English Paper Piecing. It’s so slow going that I’ve got plenty to work on for a loooooong time. lol. And I’m making some serious progress on my hexies! I’m hoping to have fully half of it assembled by the end of the week.
Video chats. I’ so glad that Kate can talk with her friends so she doesn’t feel too socially isolated. And I can talk to my family! My mom, sister, grandmother, and I all had virtual happy hour last night!
Bluebonnets are popping up! And we can take bluebonnet pics while continuing to practice social distancing! We won’t get a cousin pic, but I can still take pics of my niece and nephew by themselves.
Home schooling. We’re still technically on spring break this week, but I’m expecting Kate’s teacher will be sending home work for her to do next week. I’m not cut out for homeschooling permanently, but it’s been eye opening to just be able to spend some time with my kids. Usually our days are taken up by drop off and pick up at 3 different schools, therapy, after school sports and activities… I do really miss those things, but this forced slow down has actually been kind of nice.
I’ve had Montessori trays on my to do list for months, but I’m actually making some now. lol. Maybe I’ll start posting some of them on my blog. This week the littles are doing some St. Patrick’s Day themed activities.
I keep seeing people recommend keeping a journal because this is such an unprecedented event. Not sure if I’ll do that online or not. Maybe?
For now, I’m just trying to focus on the positives. I’m also trying to relax and just go with the flow. Those of you who know me personally know that’s not my natural state. lol. For example, I generally have a pretty strict “no screens during the week” rule and I’ve thrown that out the window. But I am trying to set some limits so that Kate doesn’t just stare at a screen all day. Current policy is that she can video chat with her friends before 9 or after 2:30. It seems to be working? The kids are outside running around and they’ve created some kind of elaborate game. I’m going to consider that PE. lol.
How is it already March?!? February just flew by. Since I didn’t manage to blog at all last month, I’ll try to make this a juicier recap with some pics. 🙂
February Goals:
Butterflies and Caterpillars. I did pretty good on this one! I now have all of the red, orange, and yellow blocks done, plus I finished all of the 9 patches! Here’s a pic showing the caterpillars all laid out on my grandmother’s bed. I was going to do the butterflies as well, but Mia’s school nurse called so we had to cut sewing day short so I could go pick her up. I’m feeling decently well about my progress, I just need to make some decisions about the green and blue fruit. Why are decisions always the hardest part?!?
2. EPP Workshop. You guys! I was so nervous about this and it ended up being amazing! RaptorDad helped me to make a powerpoint (read: RaptorDad made me a powerpoint as I quietly panicked the night before the presentation. lol)
3. August Project Life. Well, I managed to do one week so that’s something? I need to commit some serious time to this.
4. Scrap 10 current pages. Nope. But I think this week I’m going to have a mixed media playdate with Kate and then I’ll have some backgrounds to work with.
5. Montessori Trays. Sensing a theme? Although I did find some Leap Day printables that were fun so that’s something at least. I went ahead and printed off some St Patrick’s Day printables while I was there.
6. Girl Scouts. Finally a success! (of sorts. lol.) This probably needs to be it’s own blog post, but let’s just say that all of the paperwork is finished. And we all really enjoyed our unscheduled trip to the beach. lol.
7. Hexies. I’ve actually gotten some stuff done with these! I’m actually almost done with my last super hexie; I should be able to finish it this week. Of course, I ran out of papers and I can’t cut anymore since I’ve switched computers, but I have enough to finish the main block and I’ll just baste the extra 3 of each hexie as I take the other papers out. Feels good to be making some progress!
8. Blog. hahahahahahaha.
9. Date nights. None. Whomp whomp. BUT! I have a plan! My friend and I are going to start swapping babysitting so that we each get one date night a month. And RaptorDad surprised me with an at home murder mystery kit and I’m super excited about it! I think we’re going to do it this week! <3
10. 10 k steps a day. This was a pretty epic fail. In fact, I’m not even going to look up the data.
To be honest, February kind of kicked my butt. I had 2 huge girl scout events (horseback riding and NASA), which were super fun, but involved a ton of paperwork and organization. I had to deal with not only Kate’s cookies, but the troop cookies as well (although I have the most awesome cookie mom ever! Without her, I would be in a loony bin.) Mia and Kate both got sick. And I had to plan for the EPP workshop. But that’s all in the past! It’s March now and I have a feeling that it’s going to be awesome. 🙂
So let’s set some March goals!
Butterflies and Caterpillars. I need to decide on the embroidery (why am I having such a hard time committing?!?) and actually start doing it. Now that all of the 9 patches are done, I can start assembly of the rows that are finished once the embroidery is finished. I also need to make some decisions about the green and teal fruit. If I could figure that out, I could prep it and take it to camp this month when I go with my girl scouts.
Scrapbooking. I want to get some more white cardstock and do a big batch of mixed media backgrounds. Then hopefully I can get some pages done.
Project Life. ::sigh:: I love this project so much, but I just can’t seem to get any momentum! Maybe I should try to order a bunch of prints. Editing the pics is always what slows me down… So yes, I think my March goal will be to order prints for August through the end of 2019. Spoiler alert: there’s no way I’m getting this done. lol.
Road Trip Prep. We decided to go to Houston for a few days over spring break and Kate is requesting a road trip activity book. Ask and you shall receive! What kind of theme… Maybe I should look up a badge she can earn? Decisions, decisions.
Hexies. Finish the 12th super hexie! And sort the prebasted hexies for the last 3 blocks of the second set.
Pixelated Heart Quilt. I found the perfect backing fabric! I’d love to go ahead and making this into a quilt sandwich and start quilting it!
Bluebonnet Pics! Y’all! The bluebonnets are starting to come up! Time to find some sundresses and plop my kids down in the weeds!
Tomatoes. Speaking of plants, I bought 2 tomato plants. I’m sure they’ll be dead soon, but for now they look ok! Probably because they’re sitting on the windowsill in my kitchen so RaptorDad has been watering them. lol.
Blog. Maybe I’ll do better this month? lol.
Move more. I didn’t start until today, but I’d like to move my body for 30 minutes a day. This can be as simple as going for a walk. (Which I did this morning with Xander!)
June Project Life. Done! And July is also done! I loved getting back into this project.
4 New Montessori Trays. Whomp whomp. I did not get this done. I’m going to try to work on it tomorrow.
Girl Scouts. Kate’s cookies are done! And the troop is wrapping up this week. We’ve also planned February and the first half of March! Yay!
Blog. You guys! I got my 6 blog posts done!
Butterflies/ Caterpillars. I’m done with all of the red ones! (Except for the embroidery. lol.) And I would be done with the orange except that I decided that I needed to redo the orange caterpillar. Maybe I’ll put up a blog post this week showing my progress. 🙂
5 Bags of Trash. I didn’t do so good on this one.
Plan with Kate. We actually sat down and did our planners for 2 of the 4 weeks. It was quite fun! We sat down and worked on February this weekend. I think Kate enjoyed setting goals and scheduling her month. She is a child that *always* wants to know what’s coming up so it makes me quite happy to see her taking ownership over it.
10k Steps a Day. Well, I started off strong. lol. I need to recommit to this.
What shall we plan for Feb…
Butterflies and Caterpillars. I really need to put in some serious time on this. I need to make 9 more butterflies, design and make 9 more pieces of fruit, finish the orange caterpillar, and make 20 more nine patches. (I’m cheating a little because I finished 6 nine patches today, but it’s already February so I want to be able to count those towards my total!)
EPP Workshop. I am leading my Quilt Guild through an English Paper Piecing Workshop this month. EEEPPPP!!! I’m so nervous. Now that Kate is done with cookies I plan to devote some time to preparing for this.
August Project Life. Self Explanatory.
Scrap 10 current pages. I’m so far behind that I might never catch up. I need to do something current!
4 Montessori Trays. No excuses! I have a ton of cute Valentine’s Day stuff that I just need to put out.
Girl Scouts. I need to do a bit of paperwork and organizing for our upcoming trips to NASA and Camp.
Hexies. I want to spend at least 2 nights on my hexies. I spent an evening recently cutting out some fussy cuts so hopefully that will motivate me!
Blog! Shall we say 6 again in February? It’s weird to be posting on Tuesday/ Thursday, but 6 seems pretty manageable.
Date Nights! I think I’m going to poke around on Pinterest and find some ideas for at home date nights.
10K Steps a Day. What can I say, I’m optimistic! (Even though I’m writing this on the night of the 3rd and I haven’t managed to do it yet this month.)
That’s it for today! Next post will have some pretty pictures. 🙂
Despite it being nowhere on my goals for the month, I decided to work on my windchime quilt. Lol. What can I say, I’m a rebel. I just love it so much!
I’m really pleased with my progress on this quilt! I have a long way to go, but I am starting to see how it will look which is really exciting. 🙂 The final quilt will have 25 windchime blocks. (Unless I go with the idea I literally just had of doing 16 windchime blocks and adding a border of hexagons… Something to ponder!)
Here’s all 4 together! There’s a smaller flower that goes in the center; maybe I’ll figure that out this week. 🙂 I think it’s meant to be glue basted like a regular EPP piece, but I’m going to use freezer paper and do prepared edge applique instead.
Thus far, every piece of fabric is unique aside from the center circles. I’m trying to decide if I should wait to acquire more fabric so that I can keep each piece unique, or if I should just go ahead and start reusing fabric. Thoughts?
It’s done! Oh my gosh, I don’t know that I’ve ever finished this early! I absolutely love this smaller format. 🙂 I couldn’t resist adding a few half pages, but overall I kept it very simple this year and I’m thrilled with the results.
You guys! I think I’m finally making friends with my sewing machine. At the very least we are no longer enemies. lol. I was playing around on instagram the day after Christmas and I came across some pixelated heart quilts. Oh my goodness, y’all! They were gorgeous in all their rainbow fabulousness. I figured, how hard could it be? lol. So I ignored my massive to do list and printed off some graph paper.
I’ve been wanting to play around with a low volume background and this seemed like the perfect project! I grided it into 4 patches just so I could stay organized and came up with a plan for ironing the seams.
Then I started making a bunch of low volume 4 patches! I made myself do all of the backgrounds before I started in on the 4 patches with the hearts. I had a bit of a hard time keeping the 4 patches that made up the heart organized, but in the end I labeled them all with a frixion pen and it worked.
The sewing machine tried to give me some flack when I had to refill the bobbin, but I persevered and came out on top.
My biggest stumbling block came when I laid them all out on the floor only to realize that there was no way I could leave them out like that. lol. I was definitely seeing the appeal of a design wall! My design floor works great when my twins are asleep, but I was feeling the pressure to get this together so I could clean it up before I went to bed.
I ended up getting most of it sewn together into 16 patches before I went to bed and was able to finish it up the next night- New Year’s Eve! Do I know how to party or what. lol.
In the end, I love it! I wish I had had more variety of low volume prints, but I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out. Now I just need to figure out how I want to quilt it!
Remember my secret sewing back during NaNoCraftMo? I finished it!
Well, I mostly finished it. lol. I wanted to make it as a surprise for my grandmother and I nearly succeeded. I got all of the hexagons EPP’d and appliqued onto the background. I even managed to baste it and hand quilt it! But then I was stuck when it came to the binding. In my defense, I just haven’t learned how to do it properly! So I wrapped up the (nearly finished) quilt along with the fabric for the binding and gave it to my grandmother like that. You guys, she was so excited! I meant for us to bind it together, but she was so excited that the next time I saw her she’d already finished. lol. It finished at about 15 inches square and I’m really pleased at how it turned out. 🙂
It seems silly to be setting more goals after just writing a short novel about my 2020 goals, but y’all know I love my monthly goals posts! So I’ll keep this short and sweet. First, looking back at December.
December Daily. Well, I didn’t finish it, but I did get 13 days of it done so that’s something. I’m putting this one first on the list for January.
Secret Sewing. Mostly done! I made a wall hanging for my grandmother and I got it all epp’d, appliqued, even hand quilted! But I just couldn’t figure out the binding. lol. So in the end, I wrapped it up with the fabric for the binding and we’re going to finish it together. 🙂 I’m planning to write a whole blog post about it once it’s finished.
Bluebonnets. I wanted to finish appliquing all 6 of my bluebonnets, and I’m happy to report that I got 3 more done bringing my grand total to 5! I also made some progress on the bookshelf block. 🙂
Advent Activities. I actually struggled with this and I don’t know why. But in the end, we had a great advent.
Buy all the things. Check.
Wrap all the things. Check.
Decorate. Check. And for bonus points, we got it all packed away yesterday!
9 Patches. I actually got 18 9 patches done! I’m seriously happy with my progress.
Montessori Trays. Ugh. I got nothing done.
Windchime. Also got nothing done. lol. But I did piece a whole quilt top in less than a week! Maybe I’ll write a blog post about that too. lol.
Which brings us to January. Hmm….
Write thank you notes. This needs to happen today or tomorrow.
December Daily. I’d like to finish this this month so that I can really start on some of my scrapbooking catch up goals.
Project Life. I’d like to do June 2019.
4 new Montessori trays. Should I revisit the snow theme from last January, or pull out our Valentine’s Day stuff early… decisions decisions.
Girl Scouts. I need to map out our spring semester, and I need to plan our meetings for January. I also need to deal with cookies.
Blog! I’d love to write, hmmm… 6 blog posts?
Butterfly/ Caterpillars. I need to make some serious progress on the applique, and I need to finalize the design for the embroidery so I can get started on that.
5 bags of trash gone. January always makes me want to get rid of all of the things!
Plan with Kate. Kate wanted to get a planner! Naturally I was all over this. We sat down on Monday and set them up together and it was so fun! I’m hoping this is a good tool for Kate and I’d love it to be a habit for her before she starts middle school next year. So my plan is for us to sit down every Sunday and set up the next week.
10k steps a day. I know better than to set a goal for working out 3 times a week, but I’m hoping I can ease myself into better habits by starting with walking every day. Fingers crossed!
And goodness, that’s 2 posts in a row that are just a wall of text with no pics! I’ll try to make the next post a little bit more interesting! lol.
