Yep, it’s been over a month of almost total self-isolation (with a couple of weeks of quarantine thrown in there to boot). Finally, my energy level and my mental bandwidth were at the point this weekend that I could get into my sewing room for a couple of hours at a stretch!
One of my daughter’s two cats, Copernicus, made herself right at home immediately. The other cat, Nikola, is hanging out on the top step of the basement stairs hissing and growling. Since he’s a black cat and the lights are off in the basement, there’s a bit of a Halloween atmosphere in that area of the house.
My daughter came home last night to bunk in with us for the forseeable future. We talked back and forth for a couple of weeks about the risks but it came down to the fact that, if any of us is going to get sick, she’d rather be here with us than a three hour drive away. It’s nice having both my kids under my roof during these uncertain times. Plus they both know how to cook now.
With my husband still being sick, and my son spending most of his time in his room gaming with his buddies, it’s nice for me to have someone to talk to in the house again. And she was suitably excited for me about the AccuQuilt.
Once I get my delivery of 1/4” elastic and some interfacing, she and I will be making face masks for the immediate family. I thought about making some for donation but until we know we’re a virus-free house, I don’t think that’s a great idea. I know I can wash them, but there are so many steps between getting them washed and having them wrapped for delivery in a sterilized environment (especially with four furries now in the house), I just think it’s too risky.
Anyway, back to the sewing report!
You may recall awhile back that I’d cut a bunch of fabric for a baby quilt for my newest little baby niece. At the time she hadn’t been born yet, but she’s with us now! She was born the same weekend we all went into lock-down so we haven’t been able to give her hugs or kisses yet—just a wave from 10’ away when I dropped off some diapers in their driveway, and a bunch of photos. Not knowing exactly when I’ll be able to get this to her, I decided this weekend to at least get the top pieced. Today I got the blocks made. Each block took me—literally—5 minutes to piece together. So stinkin’ easy. I didn’t even bother with pins.
When I first started laying the pieces up on my design wall I was all sorts of sweating the randomization and the directionality of most of the prints until I remembered, “Sashing! There’s sashing!” So that takes a lot of the pressure off fabric placement, although I managed to avoid having two next to each other anyway.
As for the directionality? I decided to lean into it and intentionally put the prints going every which way. There’s no “top” or “bottom” to this quilt.
The photo shows the completed blocks laid out and the sashing strips just laid into the rows (not sewn yet). When I squared up the blocks I lost a little bit so I had to trim up the sashing strips to match. Once I get those sewn in I’ll take new measurements for the horizontal strips because there are cornerstones which will also likely need to get trimmed down.
I’m hoping to get the top fully pieced tomorrow, and then work on finishing up next weekend. Felt really good to dig into some serious sewing time!