Sew, Sew, Sew Much!

 My evenings the past couple of days have been packed with sewing! That's my only excuse :( Perhaps I will have to try shift to the morning, like Elaine....but I am NOT a morning person! Hmmm!

Anyway....

In conversation with friends the other day, we discussed maintaining our sewing machines. As a youngster, I remember my mother having to oil her Bernina. I also know that my sewing machine has oil because I've felt it on the shaft of the needle housing. The discussion became how often to oil your machine. I began to wonder how often I should be oiling my new machine. And...did I get any oil when I bought it??? I decided to check my owner's manual as I did not remember reading anything about it in the machine maintenance section.

The manual said NOTHING about oiling the machine. Okay...next step. Google to find out "How often do I need to oil my Janome Memory Craft 6700P machine?" Turns out it only needs to be oiled once a year. So...since I take my machine in once a year for servicing, I should be good. Yay! :)

I also had a "Geese In The Cabin" class with Kelly DuMaresq (offered through Thimbles & Things). This is her sample block. I love the choice of colours. Really makes an impact!

Since I had another Zoom class (Tula Pink's Butterfly) to look forward to that same evening, I decided to take a break from the sewing room, and got into reading some of my RTO Renaissance magazine. The focus for this quarter was "Your Balanced Life". Like many magazines, the beginning contained letters from readers regarding the previous magazine's topics. There was an article about elder abuse and apparently several readers requested resource numbers. Did you know that Ontario has a Seniors Safety Line??? I did not! It's like the Kid's Help Line...but for seniors. They are available 7 days a week and have a toll-free number: 1-866-299-1011.

One of the articles was "How To Say No To Negative People", which resonated with me as a friend of mine recently lost some sleep due to conversations with a negative person. I remember throughout my career working with people who were quite negative. I found myself becoming more negative the more I spent time with them. I DID NOT like that self. You can't always avoid these people, especially if you needed to collaborate with them on projects, but I made more of an effort to avoid spending unnecessary time with them....even if it meant eating lunch in my classroom....and was much the happier for it. Negative people can be VERY draining. But sometimes it is very difficult to say NO to a negative person. What if they are a close family member? I think in that instance it's very important to set boundaries. I am willing to listen and, to the best of my ability, advise but I will not be party to enabling a rant. Call me when you can talk reasonably! Harsh maybe...but I need to protect my psyche as well.

Wow! Enough of that! That was pretty heavy! But...if it even helps one person out there to see things differently, it's worth it :)

I love ALL of my classes with Elaine. Tula's Butterfly is one of them. This month's homework had me thinking OMG at first. Let me explain. This month, we need to make 136 half-square triangles that will go all the way around the perimeter of the butterfly.

Now, although that is quite a few half-square triangles, that was not the thing that had me thing OMG! If you look closely at the photo above, I have used a tiny snip of post-it note to label the blocks we have already completed, and I have attached the same label to the sewn blocks so that I would know where to place them once I assemble them into the actual quilt. I've done this so that my colour flow (not exactly the same as the designer's pattern) move from the dark purple/coral at the top to the dark blue/purple at the bottom. I've eliminated the yellow/green in the centre. My first thought was "How the heck am I going to label the diagram AND all those half-square triangles (HSTs) so that I will know where they go when I put the quilt together???

After class, I took my book upstairs to come up with a plan....and falling down that rabbit hole, missed blogging Friday night. Anyway, I decided to mark the coloured image with bold black lines for each of the sections as they would be assembled when constructing the quilt. Each section does not have TOO many HSTs. So, if I make a ziplock for each of the sections and put the already-made blocks and HSTs for that section into its bag, I should be able to figure out where the HSTs go....without all that labelling! Phew!!!

Yesterday was the first of two days of Elaine's monthly Quilting Zoom Retreat....where anyone who wants to hops onto Zoom and sews "together" (in our own space), visiting and chatting with each other. I was so determined to get the sashing done for my 100 Modern Quilt Blocks quilt because it was one of my UFO Club tasks....which was due this morning if I didn't want to forfeit $10 of my deposit to be in the club. And so...I missed blogging again last night! It's not that $10 is a lot to forfeit. It's more that I would feel a personal let-down if I don't achieve what I've committed to achieve. Anyway, by 10:30ish I had the sashing for between the rows done. It would have been nice to have had all of them sewn in as well, but that would NOT have been realistic.

As this post is getting rather long, I'll share April's UFO tomorrow. But before I go, This is what I woke up to this morning :P

I really think Winter needs to pack his bags and head off now!!!

And on that note, I wish you all a very good night!

TTFN