Whew!

I was happily sewing along yesterday, as I will show you in a moment, when I reached over my glass of water and accidentally tipped it over. I didn't lose the whole glass of water but enough of it to create a small lake that spread under my sewing machine. That was annoying but I kept my calm and went for a towel. When I'd finished drying the table I noticed the display screen on my sewing machine was not displaying anything. The light over the presser foot was still on but nothing else responded to commands. I trust you can imagine how my heart fell to the floor.

I turned off the sewing machine and checked underneath. There was still a little bit of water there so I quickly dried it up and turned the machine back on. Again, light but no other response. Panic began to set in.

It's not like we don't have other sewing machines in this house. A few of them are vintage, a couple are newer than my Pfaff Tiptronic 2040. I still like my Tiptronic the best. I would trade in my newer, larger Pfaff for another 2040 in a heartbeat. In order to finish the step that got interrupted I swapped my 2040 for James' Pfaff Ambition and let my machine dry out overnight. Oh the joy and relief when I turned it on this morning and everything seemed to be working just fine! Of course, now I have no excuse not to pick up where I left off last evening. 😉

In my previous post I showed you what I was thinking of doing with some orphan basket blocks from my Parts Department. Kate's comment caused me to take everything down and start over. Not that what I had wouldn't have worked, but I felt Kate's suggestion deserved a fair trial. Instead of having the four 'odd' basket blocks facing this way...

I turned them in the opposite direction.

It didn't really do anything for me. But it did inspire me to try yet another layout with just the assorted basket blocks.

This time I decided to fill in the gaps with a few of my scrappy 6" Hole in the Barn Door (Churn Dash) blocks. I framed them up with more of the white background to make them the same size as the 8" baskets. That gave me four rows of 8" blocks and the middle row of 10" baskets. Next was to figure out what to do for sashing. I rummaged through my stash but didn't turn up anything I thought would work. Then I shopped online and still didn't find anything I felt confident of. Dug back into the stash one more time and came up with some yardage I must have missed the first time. I remember buying it on clearance, not knowing how or when I would use it. Apparently now is the time!

It was in the middle of sewing the sashes between the blocks of the last row when I tipped over the glass of water. I'll need to add compensating strips to either end of the middle row of baskets and then commit to a height for the horizontal sashing strips.

Once that has been done I'll make a determination about borders. There should be enough of the blue and yellow print to go all the way around, I'm just not sure how wide they might be at this point.

On another front, Joy over at Days Filled With Joy has instigated a mystery quilt project that utilizes scraps. I usually avoid mystery projects but this one just happened to suit my needs at the moment and doesn't sound overwhelming. The first step has been good for sewing between seams as I work on the basket quilt too.  😊