Author Archives: Bernie

Year in Review – 2021

It is the “Best of” season in the quilting community. Cheryl hosts this party each year and while I haven’t participated the last year or two, I thought it would be fun to do so this year. When I started to sketch this post out in my mind, I thought it would be a tough one. It felt like I had done very little sewing. But guess what? That isn’t exactly true! After going through my posts, I actually got quite a bit of sewing time in! Let’s take a look at the crazy year of 2021.

POST WITH THE MOST COMMENTS:

On May 31st I posted about closing my shop. This post easily had the most comments and all of you were so encouraging. It showed me, once again, how great the quilting community is, virtual or in person! Closing the shop was the right decision for me and so many of you were very helpful in buying out the last of the inventory. There are a few bolts left but not much at all and I think I can just use it as backings and can also donate a bit. This was a win!

FINISHED QUILTS:

I think this is why I thought I didn’t sew very much – I finished seven quilts this year. Three baby quilts, one wall quilt, and three lap quilts. I also quilted and bound two quilt tops for community service for our local guild but didn’t include those since I didn’t make the quilt top. I like all of them and had fun participating in the Just One Charm Pack hop for Cheryl and pattern testing Masala Box for Preeti. Both patterns were great to make!

SEWING PROJECTS:

Projects – so many projects happened in 2021! Some were quilted, such as the 9 placemats, the HST mini quilt, two scrappy hot pads and the vintage fabric doll quilt for my grand daughters first birthday. Others were clothing, like the four pair of shorts (I only showed two in the collage), a pair of grey knit pants, and a dark pink t-shirt. I also made a little outfit for A and a pair of shorts for H. Going on from there I made four little hearts which I left to be found out and around our community hospital. I made silly pillow cases for my sister and her husband with fabrics from their universities and a wall hanging for Julia’s dorm room. More gift sewing included a play tent for my grand daughters and a string backpack for H.

NOT PICTURED HERE:

I didn’t include photos of the blocks I made. For the Positivity QAL hosted by Preeti, I made the blocks and have a quilt top finished but that is as far I got with it. I made most of my diamond blocks for RSC2021 but haven’t yet assembled them into a top. These will hopefully get finished up in 2022. Also, I attempted to make underwear which was not successful but I plan to try again. I practiced some visible mending on a pair of jeans that had that not-so-cool-on-a-61-year-old ripped out knees. They look much cuter with the mending!

TRAVEL:

In between all of this, my husband, Julia and I did a fair amount of travel. There were trips to Washington to see my kids and grand daughters in March, May, July, and October. There was a trip to San Diego for a family wedding which was just wonderful. Then in September Ray and I helped Julia move to San Luis Obispo to go back to real-life, not on-line, college! Yep – it has been a busy year when I look at is as a whole!

This blog serves as a great journal which is one of the reasons I keep it going. I noticed this year I only posted 49 times (including this post). In past years I was posting more but such is life. It gets busy and I set it aside now and then. But I am grateful to those of you who have continued blogging and reading posts. The community is smaller but we are mighty!! Hahaha.

Happy New Year to everyone. Many changes coming my way in 2022 as we plan to relocate but after that, I hope to settle in, set up a new sewing space and sew, sew, sew!

Linking up with Meadow Mist Designs today. Hop over and enjoy reading about everyone’s year in review!

Snowpocalypse 2021

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Climate change is definitely effecting the seasons. We have gone from drought to crazy rain to snow. Records are being set in Northern California, highways are closed and tens of thousands of people are without power. The ski resorts up in Lake Tahoe have gotten about 200″ in the month of December which is great. However the highways leading to Tahoe have so much damage with downed trees and power lines and are closed so skiers cannot get there!

We haven’t had this much snow since 2013. It seems like we used to get one good snowstorm each winter but for the last 8 years or so we have hardly seen a flake.

The first snowfall we had was a couple of days ago and we got about three or four inches. The neighbors just a bit farther out, got substantially more. The snow was very wet and heavy and was complicated by some winds. This caused a lot of damage in our town. Our area has a large number of oak trees which were already compromised by the drought and then saturated with recent rains. Oak trees do not like to be soggy! Many, many trees were uprooted and came down on Sunday night.

My neighbor’s house sustained terrible damage.

This is my neighbor’s house – A huge tree fell on the garage, crushing the roof. It is hard to see but his truck is parked parallel to the garage and is under the tree. Their other car is in the garage but he can’t get to it to see what sort of damaged happened to it. A number of other enormous trees fell on his property. It is a disaster. Our subdivision was hit very hard so there are quite a few homes with this sort of damage. So much so that a Sacramento news team came out and did a story on it.

The power went out Sunday night and the generators started up Monday morning. We are on wells in this area so we need to have electricity to have water. Those with all electric houses are really feeling it as are homes without generators. We have a gas stove so we can cook and the generator keeps the water going. My Mom and Dad are still without power – we got lucky and ours came back on last night. Actually it is more than luck, our power line is shared with the line that powers a stoplight on the highway a mile from our house. If the traffic light goes out, it is at the top of the list for repairing so usually we are not without power for too long.

This is just down the road from us – several power lines in our neighborhood were knocked down. This happened on so many streets – it is going to be a long project to get all of the lines restored.

Standing next to a fallen tree for size reference.

This is the rootball of a tree that fell on the corner of our road. It is enormous!

Yesterday, before our power was restored, we took a walk through our neighborhood and a PG& E truck (our power company) drove into our little street. Julia and I got so excited!! These poor guys are working long days and nights to get the town going again.

Yesterday the snow got slushy so Ray and Julia shoveled a bit. Of course this morning we woke up to a fresh three inches on the ground! Murphy’s Law I suppose!

I was their cheerleader as they shoveled. So darn unfortunate that we only have two snow shovels……

Now that we have some power, I am going to work on quilting my Meadow quilt. Back soon with a progress update on it. Hope you are all safe and warm, enjoying the wonders of electricity!!

A Quiet Christmas

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Happy Holidays everyone! For those who celebrate Christmas, I hope the day was lovely. I think this is probably the smallest gathering we have had for Christmas but you know what? It was great. Julia, Ray and I were together and we enjoyed it very much.

Knowing it was supposed to snow on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we invited my parents over for cookies and coffee on the 23rd. Mom and Dad live at a higher elevation than us and thus get quite a bit of snow. Once it snows, their part of the highway is often impassable. They know to plan ahead and ‘hunker down’ when it is snowy. Our afternoon together was very nice though.

Because it was going to be just three people for Christmas dinner, we decided to make something less traditional than the prime rib my husband normally makes. Julia found a recipe for Bao (Chinese Steamed Buns) as well as a recipe for a Chinese Beef Noodle soup. Both were fun to make and really delicious.

This is the bao after we steamed them. Making these was a fun family project. Julia made the dough and I made the pork filling. We all worked to assemble them. Yummy!

I had some time to do a little bit of sewing on my Meadow quilt (which, per my usual, I started long ago). The flowers are all glued down with heat and bond. I did some free motion quilting to hold them before I basted the top and backing. Now that it is basted, I have been doing more free motion on the flowers. Once that is done, I will work on the background. It is a fun project and I love how it is looking thus far.

Just before the holidays, I found these cute cups at one of the local thrift stores. I bought five of them. They are so sweet and I have visions of grand children drinking hot chocolate from them at Grammy’s house. A grandma can dream, right?

Closing with a cute picture of my girls. They are becoming good friends as A gets older and H develops patience. I love seeing them snuggled up together watching cartoons on this little iPad. Check out the curls A has!

That’s it for now. We are in the midst of a power outage so I can only write while the generator runs and it is time to turn it off! More soon.

Take care everyone.

Community Service Quilt Finish

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As I mentioned the other day, I came across a quilt top from my guild’s Community Service team. Nothing like an impending move to get me going on this top. It took no time at all to get it basted and stippled.

This scrappy quilt is one crazy flurry of color. Most of the prints are from the 1980’s and 1990’s as far as I can tell. Lots and lots of novelty fabrics were used. The person who pieced it alternated rows of seven inch squares with rows of 3 1/2″ squares and rectangles. It is much like an I-Spy quilt and will be fun for someone to look at and enjoy the variety of prints.

Celebrating Valentine’s Day and then St. Patrick’s Day.

So many holidays are represented in this crazy quilt. Christmas and Easter, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day fabrics are all over the place. For as many novelty fabrics as are included, it was interesting to note she didn’t include any Halloween fabrics.

Kokopelli right next to Easter Bunnies and Hens. 🙂

Kokopelli (the flute playing, dancing characters on blue) are symbols of fertility and rain. Interesting placement next to rabbits and hens, both of whom are quite prolific at reproducing. Hahaha. Coincidental placement, I am sure.

I backed the quilt with black and white polka dots and used the same for the binding. In the interest of efficiency, I machine bound it front and back. I need to practice this – my machine binding is less than precise.

Just after Thanksgiving, Julia, my mom and I made some cinnamon applesauce ornaments. These are very easy to make though the dough is very sticky. There are tons of links to make these ornaments. We used the cheapest cinnamon and applesauce we could find.

Once the ornaments were dried, we used puff paints and decorated them. It was a lot of fun to do and the ornaments smell so yummy. Note – these are not edible! They would taste horrible and even when rolling them out, it seemed strange not to taste the dough. If you make these, enjoy the fragrance but make sure not to taste them! Some of ours will go on the tree and others will be given to a few of our neighbors.

Julia and I plan to go to town this afternoon and wander our local shops. We have such a cute downtown area and I am looking forward to this. Also, tomorrow a local nursery is hosting a group of teenage crafters and holding a holiday event. We are both looking forward to browsing their crafts and supporting their entrepreneurial spirit.

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

Linking with my usual parties. Check them out at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

It is Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

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It snowed this week!! Years ago, it seemed like we got a snowfall every year. The kids would get the day off of school and it was a treat for all of us. With climate change, we rarely see snow. But this week we got about two inches and it was wonderful. Prior to this we got rain, a lot of rain. Living with drought and fires like we do, nothing is better than rain. Anyway, we are enjoying this wintry weather up here in Northern California.

Taken after the snow started to melt off, this is a peek at the pond from our gazebo.

Most of my time has been spent packing and great progress has been made. However I have found a few minutes here and there to sneak in a little bit of sewing. When I was sorting scraps last week, the pull of the solids bin was great. I did a little improv and ended up with two cute minis.

I put Insul Bright and regular batting scraps in these so they can be used as pot holders or trivets on the table. They are a little be stiff since I quilted them densely.

This was the first one I made. The wavy piecing was fun but I do have to say, I am not hugely satisfied with the jittery look of my wavy quilting.

This was number two. It is made mainly with shot cotton which doesn’t have a ton of body. (Hmmm, I should have starched the pieces.) So it pulled with the quilting. No worries though – still fun to just sew!

Both of these little projects are backed with Kaffe Fassett stripes.

A Community Service Project for our guild

This is what I have on my machine this week. As I packed, I found a quilt top that belongs to our Guild’s Community Service team. Guild members can drop by and pick up completed tops and finish them or quilts that need to be bound. I have had this on the shelf for months! (Sorry team!) So I basted it and am giving it a meander this week. I have the binding strips cut and ready to go. It should be finished in a day or two.

Finally, aren’t these holiday stockings gorgeous? My sister sent these to me, Ray and Julia. She is incredibly talented with her knitting needles and made these for us. I really, really love them. Her work is just amazing. I can’t wait for Santa to fill our stockings this year!

That is it for now. Since it is Tuesday, I think I will head over to Linda’s for To Do Tuesday. You can click here to check out what everyone is working on this week. Also linking up with Pat at Stitch, Sew & Show.

Mostly Packing with Some Sewing

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Like it says above – I have spent most of my time packing and clearing out things in preparation for our 2022 move. Lots has been done, but still quite a ways to go!

On Instagram, I offered up some of my scraps. There is sooooo much fabric and while I did want to keep some scraps, I knew I had way too much.

After sorting and giving away a lot of scraps, I bagged up the remainder by color. Once I am setting up a new sewing room, I can decide if I want them back in the original tubs. Storing them in this one tub seems to save on space but I am unsure how long they would stay in the bags. I could see it becoming just a jumbled mess in this tub.

Much easier to move these than the tower of over stuffed bins!

Last post I mentioned an old WIP I was finishing up. When I cleaned out the sewing room, I found a small quilt top and decided to finish it up.

Some years ago, four or five maybe, I picked up these Norman Rockwell scenes. They had been cut from a panel and were in a bag of holiday fabric I bought at a very tiny local quilt show. From what I could determine the panel was from the 1970’s or 80’s. I love Norman Rockwell and knew it would be fun to make something with them. So I sashed them and put the project away. This is such a common story with me!

I outlined the main graphic and ditch stitched the sashing first. Then filled in with tiny stippling. Look at this happy scene. The girl and her dog, the musical mice – all are so sweet.

I love the pajamas worn by the brother and sister. I bet their mama made them.

It is hard to see in the photo but I did some stitching around the chair and along the wings of it which makes it puff quite a bit. Then the tiny stippling.

It was a fun finish and is already hanging on the wall. Another WIP finished and many more remain. Today we are going to get a tree and decorate for Christmas. Next week Julia has finals and then is home for three weeks. Supposedly we are due for a rainy day or two this week. All good things in my book! Hoping the same for you!

Linking to a few favorites this week. Check them out at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

November is a Wrap

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On this last day of November, I am thinking about how quickly the month buzzed by and how busy it was. Lots of work on the house was accomplished and just a bit of sewing. Such is life.

My photographer has rudely decided to go off to college, leaving me to take pictures in a mirror. Haha.

Earlier I made this pair of pants. They are really, really comfortable and I am quite happy with them. I used Simplicity 2369 to make these stretch knit, wide legged pants.

After making the pants, I was browsing in a shop downtown. I saw similar pants but they had rounded pockets on each side. They were stitched without finishing the edges (which works because knit fabrics don’t really ravel). I thought this was a fun addition so I went home and did the same with these pants. I wouldn’t have thought to leave the edges of the pockets unfinished but it worked out well. I suspect if I tried to turn under a curved pocket, it would not look great and would give the pants a very homemade vibe.

The pocket after washing a couple of times.

This was a fun project and I will make at least one more pair. Next time, I will make the pockets bigger. I drew the pocket size myself and it is a bit too small in relation to the width of the pant leg.

For Thanksgiving we were really fortunate to have all four of my kids, two of the spouses, both grand daughters and my parents for dinner. It was a bit chaotic but really great to be together. My DIL (mom to grand daughters) is a physician and she works one major holiday per year. She had Thanksgiving this year so she was unable to come. We really missed her presence. I love the picture above even with the one blurry leg!

When my kids were little (long time ago!) we always made fudge for Thanksgiving. Licking the pot was part of the process. The boys are still in their pajamas and licking warm fudge here.

Julia was making Muddy Buddies (another family favorite) and everyone joined in licking the chocolate/peanut butter from the bowl. H was thrilled to do this with her dad and Grandpa. It was so much fun. Just in case you aren’t familiar, Muddy Buddies are Chex cereal coated with melted chocolate and peanut butter, then they are shook in a bag with powdered sugar. My kids love them.

Julia was making the cranberry sauce and H was her sous chef. We make this recipe every year. I posted about it here if you want to check the recipe out. It is delish and not difficult to make at all.

This girl was adorable as always. I pulled out the tub of dress up jewels (a thrift store find when Julia was very young). Being a toddler with style, she decided to just wear as many as possible. Hahaha – she felt so fancy. She is talking quite a bit now and spends her days mimicking her big sister.

Being a Grammy is just the best. My neighbor boards horses and she was so kind to let the girls come over and feed her animals a carrot now and then. We walked across the pasture between our houses with the little ones and enjoyed hanging out with the horses and my neighbor’s dogs. Both girls are very fond of animals and being able to feed and pet them was thrilling.

OK – that’s it for now. I am working on a very old WIP and will share it once I get the binding completed. So, coming soon – a finish – albeit a small one. But a finish is a finish, right??

Linking to a few fun sites. Check them out at the top of the page.

Masala Box is a Finish

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I have finished very few quilts this year so I am excited to share this with everyone. It is a cheerful quilt and a fun pattern to make. As you likely remember, I tested this pattern for Sew Preeti Quilts. Preeti writes delightful patterns and has several listed in her Etsy Shop.

I did make an internal compromise with this project. I really wanted to spend some time and quilt the center of each block with a picture of sorts. I had them all planned out. However, life is so crazy right now and I decided the free motion quilting would have to wait for another project. Instead I did a version of a zig zag/serpentine stitch going both vertically and horizontally which was a very quick way to finish this little quilt.

Difficult to photograph the white stitching on white!

The zig zag adds some fun texture and will probably be enhanced even more after being washed.

I have quite a large piece of this polka dot fabric which made the backing choice a simple one. Binding was done with the same red fabric as used on the front.

Our fall colors were extraordinary this year – most of the trees have dropped their leaves at this point.

Moving on to non-quilting topics, I have exciting news! Ray and I have decided to move from California up to Washington. I am sure you can guess the main reason. Yes, you got it. There are two sweet girls up there we are wanting to see more often. Between the pull of being near the grand children and the drawbacks to California life (mainly very hot summers and the dangerous fire seasons), we decided to go for it.

We have talked to a realtor and made a list of projects to do in order to have the house ready to list in early Spring. To that end, we both have been very busy. Ray bears the brunt of the really hard work but I have a fairly long list as well.

Here is one project – you’ll surely relate to. I moved my sewing supplies downstair to the family room in order to create a guest room.

In the twelve years we have lived in this house, this room has never been so clean. After the holidays I will have all the carpets cleaned and the guest room will be staged for showing. For now, I am just reveling in its tidy state.

Julia’s room was in need of sprucing up as well. When she was about 10 years old, she asked if she could have a blue and lavender room. Time took its toll on this room so Ray and I painted it a very pale gray.

As with the guest room, I cannot believe how tidy Julia’s room is. This room will also be rearranged for showing but the hard part is done.

I can’t show you the new sewing space just yet – mainly because I haven’t taken a photo for you. (Let’s be honest, it is a hot mess!)

Finally, here is another project I am working on. I am a huge fan of photographs and have so many albums. But they do take up space. Rather than move them all, I decided to pull pictures out and organize them by year in photo boxes. One might think this is a quick and easy task, and it should be. But with each album I get pulled into the nostalgia and memories they contain. So while this is really enjoyable, it is not quick!! Evenings have been spent poring over the books and sharing pictures with my kids via text. It will get done all in good time. I have emptied about eight albums and they fit into two boxes which saves a lot of space.

That is enough for today. I need to get going to the grocery store for a few things. Julia comes home tomorrow for the whole Thanksgiving week. I am so excited! I haven’t seen her for eight weeks which is the longest ever! Have a wonderful day everyone.

Linking up to my favorites since I miraculously have a finish!! You can find them at the top of the page under Link Ups.

A Very Old WIP & and Squirrel

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Since my shop closed, I have been working hard to take all of my sewing supplies out of the guest room and downstairs to the shop area. I want to have a ‘real’ guest room and since we have family coming for Thanksgiving, now is the time to finish this project. As it goes, I found lots of forgotten projects while cleaning out the guest/sewing room. One was a scrappy rag rug I knit back in 2016. I loved this little project but didn’t know what to do about the knots where I joined the strips when I was knitting it.

It felt strange to leave the knots exposed. I was concerned they would unravel somehow. Thinking about it, I decided to cut some fabric and hand sew a backing on to it. I made sure all knots were pulled to the back and then tightened them. Then I pressed edges of the backing fabric under to make it the same size as the top. Because the top is so loosely knit, it flexes and changes shape easily. This made it really difficult to make it match the backing so I used tons of pins and started to sew.

After stitching back to front, I tied some yarn ties to further attach front to back. It looks pretty sad from the back but I kid you not, the back was the same size as the front – it was like herding cats to sew these together. At any rate, I feel like it is now a bit sturdier. When I made this, I used the tutorial by Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts. (Oh how I miss her blog!!) It seems like she doesn’t worry too much about the knots joining the fabric strips. I just hope this all holds together well.

OK – on to the squirrel that took me down another path. On Instagram I noticed some little hearts that quilters and sewists have been leaving for others to find and enjoy. It was started quite a while back by a woman over at Ifoundaquiltedheart.com. After reading her website, I decided to join in and make a few. The idea is to leave these pretty hearts wherever you please in the hope they will brighten someone’s day. I started to follow the hashtag #IFAQH and #ifoundaquiltedheart and saw how much these mean to some of the recipients. The process of making something and anonymously leaving it for others, with no expectation of any recognition is very satisfying. If you are interested in participating it is simple, nearly free (since we all have scraps, right?) and very easy.

I spent some time yesterday running errands. While I was out, I drove over to our community hospital and left these hearts in various places. I thought about people who might need some cheer and surely there are plenty who are using the hospital who fall into that category. I dropped mine at the bus stop, the cancer care center, the lab/mammogram building and lastly, right at the front entrance. All were left tucked a bit out of the way but I am hoping they catch someone’s eye and make them smile.

Do you see that little purple heart, just behind the ‘n’?

I loved placing this heart behind ‘kindness’, displayed on the way to the main entrance. Seems appropriate, yes?

During this month of Thanksgiving, it is often a time to focus on our blessings and to help others or extend our blessings to them where possible. This is one small way to do this. If making these little hearts appeals to you, I encourage you to give it a go. If nothing else, check out the hashtags on either FB or IG – it will warm your heart.

Masala Box – The Quilt Top

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Last week I mentioned I had been asked by Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts to test a pattern of hers. She recently released her newest design, Masala Box. The pattern is really adorable. Here is Preeti’s version.

This is the sort of pattern that is right up my alley. I love patchwork and also simplicity. Fussy patterns are not my favorite. This pattern is set up for strip piecing (which is quick and efficient) or if you have a box of 2 1/2″ squares, you could make a scrappy version and use those bits up!

Hoping to finish this quickly so I could share Preeti’s new pattern, I made a baby quilt. It finishes at 36″ square which is the perfect size for Jack’s Basket. I love donating to them and will send this off when it is finished. Looking through my stash, I wanted to put together some bold colors. When I saw the red polka dots on turquoise I decided I would build off that piece. Luckily, I had plenty of red and aqua in the stash and I added a bright polka dot on off-white to break things up a bit.

The pattern features a large rectangle within each set of 2 1/2″ squares. Preeti did a wonderful job writing this pattern up. Her instructions and illustrations are clear and very easy to follow. There are so many ways the rectangle within each block could be used. How about placing appliqué on that center, or featuring a large scale fabric, maybe notes or signatures could be written here in permanent fabric markers – I think it is a creative space with a lot of potential.

I plan to back my quilt with the red and aqua polka dot fabric. As for a quilting plan, I don’t have one just yet. I want to do something special with those white rectangles and am waiting to figure that part out.

If you would like to see another version of the Masala quilt, hop over to The Academic Quilter. Mari made her quilt in tones of blue, green and yellow with an earthy background. It is so pretty and totally different from my version. Isn’t it fun to see the same pattern made with different fabrics?

Congrats to Preeti for the release of this fun pattern. Be sure to go to her shop and add a copy to your quilt pattern collection!

Linking up to my usual favorites – check them out at the top of the page, under Link Ups.