Random Projects

We have been on random the past couple of weeks. 

Jeff and I went to Prineville last week and brought home the last of our stuff so that saga is over, for now. Many of the reasons we wanted to move out of Portland are still present, but that decision has been put on the back burner, at least until after the pandemic.

I finished the complicated part of the border on my harvest quilt.

I goofed up when I chose the green for the border and forgot to account for how many total yards I would need, and probably don't have enough for the second border. I may change colors, but I haven't decided yet.

Jeff and I decided to play with learning some French during this new coronavirus lockdown so we've been spending at least an hour a day working on lessons in Duolingo. We don't expect to get fluent in it, but it probably does our old brains some good trying to learn something new.

I've also been working on downsizing again. We sold the couches from Prineville and a lateral file cabinet from the basement. I still have a bed and a futon I'd like to sell, but we need to get them set up and take photos before I can list them on craigslist. 

I'm trying to clear furniture out of the basement that we don't plan to keep long-term because I'm hoping we'll work on the basement next year. It would really be nice to replace the ceiling in the family room area because we had to run new pipes and ducting through the sheetrock during our big remodel in 2011/12 and we've never repaired it. I would also like to install some better lighting. Right now it feels too much like a cave.

Harvest Quilt Progress

This is how I spent my election day. Although I am stressed about the result, I don't figure me sitting around worrying about it will help anyone, so I have been spending most of my time working on this project.

I don't have any large space to lay it all out, so I've had to build it like a log cabin block, one edge at a time. I'm not 100% happy with the overall color layout, but I'll live with it, obviously. 

I haven't finished it yet, I have one more row all the way around and then three borders. The first two borders are a little more complicated than usual because the blocks extend into the border.

After four full days of sewing, I got a little tired and so today I took a break to work on another project. I'll probably finish it by the weekend.

Halloween Sewing

Happy Halloween everyone. I hope you all found something fun to do. I miss pre-pandemic Halloweens. It's our favorite holiday and we enjoy having parties, when possible. Oh well. We can only hope next year will be better. Instead, we watched Hunt for Red October in honor of Sean Connery's passing.

After I finished making the backing for the train lap quilt in the morning, I thought about making a quick Halloween lap quilt, but then I shifted into finally working on my Harvest Gathering Quilt from my WOOFA list.

My feet are tired from spending half the day cutting out most of the pieces. If I am motivated to work on it again tomorrow, I should be able to finish cutting everything out in another hour or two.

It would be nice to finish another big project before the end of November.

Quick Train Lap Quilt

Today I finished up the Autumn Steam quilt flimsy for my father. The design isn't quite as nice as the original design offered by eQuilter, but that quilt is twin size and way too large for a lap quilt, which is the size I was shooting for.

I spent several days planning and psyching myself up to butcher down the panels so much, but I think it still turned out pretty decent. I'll piece the backing tomorrow. I'm going to use up the rest of the train track fabric along with a black train print, also from the Autumn Steam line of fabric.

Update on Saturday: Finished the backing. I used up the remaining train track fabric.

Sold Prineville House

We decided to sell our house in Prineville to the renters, so yesterday Jeff and I ventured to Prineville to move a load of our stuff from the workshop. We got almost everything in one trip. The house closes later this month, but we have until January to get all our stuff out. We're planning to return in the next few weeks, before the snow starts, to move the last load. 

Mason Bee Harvest

 Our friend Liesl came by this evening and helped us harvest our mason bee tubes. It was fascinating to see the process of unwrapping the tubes. There were quite a few pests that had invaded the tubes, but we still had a good number of cocoons for next year. We think we started with 75 cocoons this past spring and we ended up with 182 good ones for next year.

I'm hoping to make at least one more bee house for the front yard by next spring. We have so much scrap wood, we should be able to make at least one more.

Jeff installed the new shed step this weekend.

I finally finished sifting all our hardware and fasteners and the bins have moved out to the garage wall, at least temporarily until we build a better storage rack.

And we got nearly all the bulbs planted. There's just 10 more left. I'll likely get those done tomorrow.

Oct Friday Night Sew In

For this month's FNSI, I had planned to finish the overnight bag I started in August. I still need to finish sewing the lining.

But instead, I ended up spending most of the evening cleaning my sewing room. A couple months ago I started sifting the boxes that were stashed in my bedroom closet. I had boxes that moved here from California ten years ago and I'd never unpacked them. I finally did. I found quite a lot of stuff that belonged in my sewing room.

I've spent several hours this week trying to unearth my sewing room tables again. I thought I'd get the room cleaned by this evening, but there was still a pretty big pile of fabric stacked up and I spent probably three hours ironing and folding everything so I could put them up in my fabric stacks. My table is finally clean and I can work again.

It took so long, I barely got any sewing done. All I managed to finish was a new collar and leash set for Bailey. 

I also got everything ready to start a new project. This is actually not a UFO as I just bought the fabric to make a new train quilt for my father. This is a design offered by eQuilter and I know my father will really like it. Since these are mostly printed panels, it should go pretty quickly.

But I won't be starting tomorrow as I finally got my first box of 160 flower bulbs and I need to get started at planting them tomorrow. I hope it won't be raining all day.