Bee, Myself & I in September

What happened to September?!! August seemed to last f-o-r-e-v-e-r. September has come and gone in a blink, or so it seems to me. Oh well, best to keep moving or October will also be gone before I know it. 😉

Bee, Myself & I is a forum for some selfish stitching. Something we want to do or make just to please ourselves. When I wasn't working on either of the two baby quilts I have underway I was doing some embroidery. I purchased these pre-stamped towels from Mary Corbet, through her website, a couple of months ago.

I also bought the ebook for guidance. I'm glad I did too. It saved me from having to make decisions when my brain wasn't equal to the task. I made my own color choices however. Some DMC, some of Nancy's hand dyed flosses.

I chose to begin with the smallest design, which kind of gets lost in a lower corner of the large white towel. I may have to trace the design off again on the opposite corner, and maybe come up with some kind of connecting border. That's if I get really ambitious!

I was familiar with most of the stitches used in executing the design. I did take the opportunity to learn how to begin threads without a knot though. I suspect I'll still have to think hard to pull it off in other situations.

I put Colonial knots in the centers of the daisies, and used a DMC variegated thread for the petals. The large flower petals are done with fishbone stitch. The center is filled with satin stitch and two rows of buttonhole, alternating direction. I used fly stitch to fill the leaves.

This little project was so satisfying it's got my mind working on ideas for other embroidery projects. Or I may just begin one of the other towels, with more stitching to do on them!

Spacing Out

I've got the borders on the baby quilt I'm calling Space Cadets.

I decided to frame the assembled blocks with a two inch inner border to give some breathing room to the large planet print stripe. That made the overall quilt top just that much bigger. I'd purchased the wide planet stripe print according to the intended length of the quilt but had to add compensating strips to each end.

I was pleased to be able to include a touch of the orange in the planet stripe.

The narrow stripes on the outer edge of the quilt top will disappear beneath the binding, although I may be able to keep the orange showing there too. Keeping to the theme, I have a white on navy galaxy print to back this quilt top. It's not as soft as I'd like for a baby quilt but since this is likely to be a play quilt as much as anything else it'll do.

There's been progress on the pinwheel baby quilt too. I only had a few blocks made when I introduced the project in this post. Since then I've made all the rest of the pinwheels and only need to get them sewn together now.

One of the "white" blocks I'd made had to be removed to achieve a more comfortable balance between the light and dark pinwheels. I'm planning to frame this with a narrow border of the gray.

I've been spaced out since I ventured into our local Hobby Lobby yesterday. I thought the store's air quality was acceptable at the outset but the longer I was in there the more I felt the effects of the toxins in the environment. It was worst at the checkout stand. The sweet young lady on duty was wearing something that was particularly bad for me. I don't know what it was and didn't bother to enquire. How do you do that delicately anyway? "I'm sorry, what deodorant/perfume/hair products are you wearing? Do you use those wickedly scented laundry products (I could name names but won't) to clean your clothes?" I did make some comment about how quickly I was losing ground and she very politely stepped back away from me as well as she could. The mask I wear helps to convey the seriousness of my affliction I think.

In any event, it was a treat to browse their shelves of art and craft supplies. I got what I went in for and more besides. 😉 I have a new jigsaw puzzle to put together and a new companion to travel with me in my Chevy Bolt EV.

I had a skeleton Beanie Baby as a traveling companion in my previous car. This little guy, hanging in the back seat passenger window, has the added advantage of helping us to identify our vehicle in a parking lot full of SUV's. Any more the only colors you see around town are white, black, various shades of gray, and red. Both my son and I have gone to the wrong red SUV after coming out of stores since we acquired the Bolt!

Stitching Along in September (Again)

When I received the reminder email about our upcoming Stitch Along check-in I realized the only stitching I'd done since the last time was on my secret project. I could probably share it here but I don't want to take a chance. So then I mulled over what I'd stitched that I could share. As it turned out, since my return to quilt making there hadn't been any.

I decided to pick up the Sublime Stitching pillow cover to get a little more done on it. After all, this SAL is meant to help us get our projects finished and that one has been stalled for some time. Guess what? I couldn't find it. Anywhere. I'll bet you can relate. I put it away so neatly and safely it completely disappeared from the studio. Or at least that's how it appeared. I did eventually locate it, right where I looked the first time. I just hadn't remembered putting it in the cute little bag it was in!

I believe the last time you saw this project it looked like this:

Now it looks like this!

Those scallops below the foxes kept saying "buttonhole stitches" to me so I gave in to the prompting.

With French knot centers. I tacked down most of the cross stitches with a tiny horizontal stitch. Officially that turns them into some other kind of stitch but I'm too lazy to look it up.

I added some detail to the acorn caps with a few plies and straight stitches too.

A person could really get carried away adding details to this piece. Probably won't be me, but it's a possibility. 😉

We check in every three weeks in this SAL. Here's the list of the others who are participating. We all work on our own projects so there's a variety of needlework to be seen. If you'd like some motivation to get your projects moving along just leave Avis a comment. Enjoy!

Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, 
Helen, Linda, Heidi ,Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Clare, 
Mary Margaret, Renee, Jenny, Carmela, Jocelyn, Sharon, Susan, Anne

Baby Steps

While I've been waiting for new prints to arrive for more pinwheels for Baby Quilt #2 I've sewn together the blocks and sashing for Baby Quilt #1.

At this point it measures about 48" across and 60" high. I want it wider but not necessarily longer. To that end I picked up this wide border stripe at my local quilt shop.

I'm not sure yet how wide I'll cut those stripes but I doubt all that orange will show. More like this probably:

I was delighted to find all the colors of the blocks and sashing in this stripe. 😊

I've also made a back for the plaid Wrenches quilt top. Had to piece together two different prints totaling five yards.

And I've sewn some of the scraps from that project into 6" blocks. It may become a doll or teddy bear quilt.

There's still a fair amount of one or two of those plaids. Perhaps one of them could become the back for such a small quilt. We shall see!

Scrap Happy in September

Regular readers will be aware that I have supported Covered in Love in the past with contributions to block drives and even a quilt or two. I meant to contribute to the summer block drive of stars but it didn't happen. Thus it makes me very happy to have made four blocks for the current drive, a split 9 Patch design that utilizes scrap patches.

I made these in two sets of two on separate days. I have to tell you, it doesn't do me any good to try to sew after about 5 p.m. most days. I must have made the final block two times over one evening because I kept turning the half-square triangle patch the wrong way or sewed the wrong patch in the wrong place. It looks like such a simple block but there are SO many ways to screw it up! Still, it was a fun way (most of the time) to put my scraps to good use. Because that's what Scrap Happy Day is all about you know. 😉

I finally put the bindings on two very scrappy quilts I built earlier in the year too. I called this first one Syncopated Strings. It was inspired by Sarah's scrap busting efforts over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

75.5" high x 58.5" wide

Just random strips of varying widths but all 8.5" long to make the columns. I didn't buy the border or binding fabric for this one, they were already in my stash, but I did purchase yardage for the back.

Confetti used up old yardage from my stash for the back as well as the front. It began as a Disappearing 9 Patch made entirely out of scrap patches. I had fun fussy cutting old prints to feature in the corners of the original 9 patch blocks.

Here's the end product:

70" high x 57" wide

And here's a portion of the back:

That white corner is a patch I add with the binding for labelling the quilt.

Scrap Happy Day is hosted by Kate and Gun on the 15th of each month. To see what they've been working on and what others have done just click on the links below. 😋

Kate, Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Nanette, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Debbierose, Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan,
Moira, Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean,
Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen, Connie, Bekki, Pauline and Sue L.