Something Different for me

Good morning Y'all!!!!      I hope wherever y'all are today, that you are having a most lovely day so far.      The birds are serenading me this morning and I do love that.      It sure doesn't take long to start enjoying all the sounds of Spring and the main sound is the birds singing and chirping.    As I sit and type this, I hear another familiar sound of Spring here in my neck of the woods.   What, you may ask?     Well the sound I speak of is the sound of my sweet husband sneezing.   Yup, bet you wasn't thinking that at all.    hahahaha      It's that time of year, when if one of us is not sneezing, the other one is.      We have lots of pollen with everything coming to life and putting out leaves, the pollen comes with it.    It makes me itch so bad!!!     And sneeze!!!!       Another familiar sound is the sound of lawn mowers.    Somedays, I hear as many as 5 or 6 in varying distances from the house.     It's kind of a calming sound.     I don't know how or why, but it is.     If it's really close, like a next door neighbor, it gets under my skin a bit, but fortunately it doesn't last long.     A lot of people have been doing yard work, trimming shrubbery and the like and there are a lot of limbs pulled out close to the road for the brush truck to pick up.   It will really look good when all of it is picked up and hauled off.    As a matter of fact, my husband got our back lot cleaned up and all the small trees cut down and pulled up.   He actually has reclaimed about 20 to 30 feet of our back yard that had grown up over the years because he didn't have time to look after it.    But he has done an awesome job and it looks fantastic back there.     I'm so proud of him and all that he has accomplished back there.

While he has been working on that this year, I have been working on a small project myself.    I have been a seamstress most of my life.    For many years after my husband and I got married, I sewed more than 90% of the clothes I wore.     I loved nice clothes, but I couldn't afford the store prices, so I made my clothes.    There's hardly a sewing machine that I can't master.    Not bragging about that at all, just stating the fact.    I have always loved sewing machines and worked in a sewing factory for 14 years.     I wouldn't recommend that work to anyone, but it was a great learning experience for me in a lot of ways.     While I knew how to sew very well, I learned ways to speed the process without compromising the overall outcome of the garment.     So, I used some of the techniques I learned at the sewing factory at home and it speeded up the process of home sewing. 

If you know anything about sewing garments home, you know that most seams are 5/8 of an inch.   I have that mastered!!!!    I can sew that without even looking at the marks.     But, what I have tried to take up this year is piecing quilts.     If you know anything about that, then you know most piecing is done with a scant 1/4 inch seam allowance.     There is actually a big difference between the two widths,  3/8 of inch, and that IS a big deal when piecing quilts.     So, imagine trying to go from 5/8 seam allowance to 1/4  seam allowance and get it correct.    It's not easy.   In piecing quilts, if you don't get your seams just right, you will end up sewing out the tips of your corners and you want all your corners to be sharp and pointed and all of your seam intersections to match perfectly.   Some can do it.    Others, like me, get kinda close, and I have been told that "kinda close" isn't close enough.    hahaha

So, one of my problems has been that all my sewing machines are HEAVY.     That is a good thing, but if we are wanting to take a machine somewhere to sew, then, they are too heavy for me to pack, so sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas we to Joann's and back in the Husqvarna sewing center, they had some singer machines on sale.   The one I went for was light, about 7 or 8 pounds.   It was on sale.    My husband got online right there in the store, and it was 20 dollars cheaper on line and he showed to the woman at the desk in sewing center and that's what we got the machine for.   Ended up paying just a couple dollars over $60 for the machine.   It's called Singer Start.   It has preset stitches and you can't adjust them.   It has 3 different stitch lengths, 3 different zigzag widths and a preset decorative stitch, plus a buttonhole stitch that does a nice satin stitch.   It's perfect for piecing.    So, I also got a 1/4 inch piecing foot and an even feed foot for this little machine.    I love it.     It's lightweight and easy to carry.     It doesn't hurt my wrist and that was important.    If it hurt my wrist to carry, it wasn't what  I needed.

Anyway, even before I got the sewing machine, I had a friend that I had not seen in several years call and invite me to go to piecing class with her.   Not really a class, just friends getting together, and I went.  I really enjoyed it and seen what everyone was doing and seen that the two ladies was really helping the rest of us learn to piece with proper techniques.    That was important to me.   If I learn to do some with proper techniques, then I can build on that skill and that was what I wanted to do.    I played at home and practiced on stuff I could pull out and try to get my scant 1/4 inch seams down pat.

At any rate, I made the suggestion that we do a "block a month" to build our skills at proper seaming, proper ironing/pressing and proper matching of seams to come out with the correct block, no matter how many seams are in the quilt.    That is what we have been doing.    In the process of that, I have dubbed myself the "quilting rebel without a clue"!!!!   Yup, that's me!!!    And they all agree.     Most people want fabrics that go together.    I say if I put them together they go together.     hahahaha     I have learned my unconventional approach from my paper bead making.    Colors that I was trained that don't go together was exactly what I wanted to try and love, so that is what I have done in blocks.     I don't do anything the usual way.    I want everything I do to look like something I done.  hahaha      Anyway, over the weeks, I have gotten 5 blocks made and I can tell with each one that I have gotten better.    As I look at my 1st block, I want to go back and redo it and I may take the stitches out of some of it and see if I can get thema little more accurate.   It is a tad smaller than it should be.     I haven't been making my blocks on my machine though.    I have been making them at my friends house, on her machine.     After talking about the trouble I was having we done an experiment and I got it worked out to where I can pretty much make the scant 1/4 inch seam pretty good now and my blocks come out the size they should be now and that is why I may go back and redo the first couple blocks.     Anyway, having said all that, here is the blocks that I have made so far.     No laughing!!!   hahahaha

The first one is called Double X.   I am sure there is another name for it, but that is what the book the patterns come from call it.   All the blocks are supposed to be 12 1/2 inches so when they are sewn together, they will be 12 inch blocks.   This one is just shy of 12 1/2 inches.

 This one called Double Pinwheel.     I done a little better with this one than I did with the first one.   But it is still just a smidge shy of 12 1/2 inches.

This one is also called a Double Pinwheel.     This one measures correctly and I can tell with each one, my work gets progressively better.   Yay!!!

This one is called King's Crown and I was so proud of myself with this one.     I did have to pick out a seam on this, not because of bad stitching, I got in a hurry and layed one of my strips upside down.   I would have noticed before I got very far with the block, but the seasoned eyes around me caught if before I sewed my next strip together, thankfully!!! 

This is my favorite one so far!!!   It's called Contrary Housewife, and one of the other ladies picked it out in honor of me!!!!   hahahaha    That's NOT why I love it though.   hahahaha    I love all the crazy colors in it!!!     Plus, this block is my best one so far.     It measured a perfect 12 1/2 inches.    In fact this one and the one above it both measured perfectly.   So the bottom 3 are as good as anyone could do and I'm happy with those.

It's not impossible for a seamstress to learn to piece with scant 1/4 inch seams, it just seems impossible.    hahaha      But I shall keep plugging forward and see what happens.     I have also strip pieced a Jelly Roll quilt.   It is ready to be quilted, but I haven't tackled it yet.    I can't get up the raw guts to just do it.    It will be beautiful though.     It is jades and purples!!!     With a lot of glitter sprinkled in!!!!    You KNOW I'm in my happy place with that!!!     Purple and glitter, my happy place!!!!

Anyway, that's about it today y'all.     Just know you are loved.     The Creator created you and He loves you.     While I can say that He does not love our sin, He does love us.     He sent His Son Jesus Christ to take care of our sin issues.     It is up to us to believe that Christ is the perfect sacrifice for our sin and that is the only thing that God will ever recognize as removing our guilt from sin.    The only way to the Father is thru the Son.     So, our Father is just waiting to have a relationship with us thru the shed blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.     So, if you have not accepted Christ as Lord and Savior of your life, consider today to be the day of Salvation.     We live in a very troubled time all across the planet.     I can tell you that from this day forward, it will not get better.     There is much evil in the land and that evil is growing and sweeping across the planet like a plague.     Twisted minds and evil hearts are rising to positions of power all across the world.     I am here to tell you that we must have a relationship with Christ to maintain our sanity thru it all.     And if we are not trusting in Christ, we will fall for for the tactics of the enemy!!    Everything that God has told us is sin, is now being exploited as the norm!!!!     Scripture has told us this would happen.     It is happening before our very eyes even as I type and you read.     It's not going to get better.     Our only hope is in Christ Jesus!!!     So let me encourage you to dig deep and see what scripture says about the days in which we live.     Let me also encourage you to look at yourself within and find out the place that God has in your life.     If He is not number one, then why not?      Today is the day that eternity starts for some one, will your eternity be in heaven or hell?     Make no mistake, our destiny is all up to us.    God has made the way, but He will not force anyone to choose Him.     He gave us free will for a reason.     He wants us to love Him because we made the "choice" to love Him.     So, at this point, all I can say is that I hope and pray that you choose life and eternity in the presence of Christ  Jesus!!!

Be blessed and have a wonderful rest of the day.  Tell someone that Jesus loves them.   Tell someone about the crazy quilt blocks you seen here today.   hahaha    Stay tuned, I hope to have more.    Spread the love of Jesus with every breath you take and meet me back here sometime soon.   If you feel so inclined, I would love to hear from you.    Remember that God loves you and so do I!!!!    hugs, patty