Hey friends! I have done nothing crafty this week because I’m working on my final projects for summer quarter. (That’s also why there wasn’t a Happy Homemaker Monday post earlier in the week. I tried, I really did!)
Sometimes life is like that. It helps me more fully appreciate the weeks where I have time to create.
Hopefully I’ll have something to share with you next week? We’ll see how well I power through these last few assignments…
Have a lovely weekend! Enjoy these last precious weeks of summer!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s the fourth of August and I’m only just now posting this. It’s the end of my summer quarter and everything is piling up on me, so things are a bit crazy at the moment. At least I’m posting within the first week of the month, right?
I’m going to combine this month’s #craftygoals wishlist with the Friday update of what I’ve accomplished in the craft room in the past week. We’ll all survive the uncertainty, I’m sure.
Debrief: July 2023 #craftygoals:
Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt:Done and blogged. Finished much, much later than planned, but technically done.
Farm to Table Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: Just started cutting it. Did I want it to be done by the end of July? Yes, yes I did. Sigh.
Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt: Nope.
Scrappy Thursdays:
Brickhouse: Finished the blocks!
Clementine: I think I’m going to put this one back into hibernation
Mixed Berries Quilt: Started cutting the fabrics for the 12-inch blocks
Leaders & Ender HSTs: Nope. Thinking about abandoning this one as well.
Smitten EPP Quilt: I don’t know where I was exactly at the beginning of July on this, but I’ve made a lot of progress in joining the small hexagons into large hexagon blocks.
August 2023 #craftygoals:
TIME-SENSITIVE THINGS THAT NEED WORKING ON ASAP:
Farm to Table Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: I’m doing better with this one, in that the baby hasn’t been born yet, so I’m better prepared with this particular quilt. I am going to need to sew like the wind on this, though.
Renaissance’s Birthday Party: I am really excited for this, even though I have no idea where to start or how big I want to go on this party. There is a (very cute) theme and we’re starting to gel our brainstormed ideas into something cohesive. I’m sure there will be a lot of work I’ll need to do to make this into something special. It’s her last “kid” birthday party, and we’re leaning into that really hard.
THINGS TO WORK ON AFTER THE ASAP PROJECTS:
I’m torn between working on:
Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt: It’s basted and just needs to be quilted and bound, OR
Nature Trails Quilt: Because when August is over, it will be September, which is autumn and this quilt is an autumn quilt. The top is done, but it’s not basted yet. I wonder if I even have a backing for it?
Maybe I can just be amazing and get both done. Ha ha ha.
Scrappy Thursdays: I’m going to simplify and get rid of my rotation. Furthest completed projects will be prioritized. I’ll work on the Brickhouse Quilt until it’s done, and then move on to the Mixed Berries Quilt.
HAND STITCHING:
English Paper Piecing: Music lesson time will still be spent on the Smitten EPP quilt. I think I’m assembling one combined large hexagon per week, so hopefully I get four more put together over the course of August.
Knitting/Embroidery: I didn’t plan for it last month, but then I realized I wanted to include some mandatory knitting time into each day. As a result, Eeyore the Unicorn was born.
I was going to move onto another knitting project after finishing Eeyore, but then I happened to see an embroidery kit that Michael bought me for Christmas and I wanted to do that instead. It’s not a big project and I’ll probably finish it by the end of the month.
However, I don’t like the idea of rushing my embroidery projects because I just enjoy the work so much, so I hesitate to force this into the confines of a goal. I give myself the gift of thirty minutes each day to work on this; it’s a small project that I expect will be finished by the end of the month and I will absolutely not be frustrated if it’s not completed because it will be what it will be with the time I have for it. I don’t even want to make a plan for what I’ll do after it’s done because I don’t want to burden myself with the excitement of another project that could dampen my enthusiasm in any way for this embroidery project.
(I do have a lot of knitting projects I’d like to get going on though…)
Not the most productive week, crafty-wise, but I did get some stuff done.
Last week’s goals were:
Finish the Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt and get it in the mail!
Possibly start on the Farm to Table Baby Quilt.
Scrappy Thursday: Either keep working on the Mixed Berries quilt or start a scrappy Christmas gift. (I’m pretty sure the Leaders & Enders quilt is not going to be happening right now.)
Use music lesson time for EPP and not phone scrolling. (I can’t really make a more specific goal for this quilt each week because it’s so dependent on so many different people’s schedules lining up.)
Possibly finish Nilla the Unicorn.
Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: Not finished, STILL. Everything except the label is done, and the label is even created, just not attached to the quilt. Sooo close, but…summer evenings just don’t induce me to do a lot of sewing.
Farm to Table Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: Not officially started, but I did pull out the fabrics at some point this week to take a picture of them for some reason.
Scrappy Thursdays: I decided to keep going on the Mixed Berries Quilt because I’ve been waiting to work on this one for FOREVER and I’m not feeling any of the other quilts right now. I cut and sorted all the blue fabrics for the large blueberry blocks, got one block’s worth of purple fabrics cut, and started on red. It turns out that I don’t have a lot of purple scraps, which is weird because I know I’ve bought a ton of purple fabric over the years because it’s Rachel’s favorite color…hmmm, methinks I need to go dig out the box of fabrics that Rachel curated for the quilt she was working on during the pandemic. I’m thinking there might be some purples hiding in that box.
Smitten Quilt: I was so good and used all 2.5 hours of music lesson time to stitch away on my EPP and I finished up another combo block of small hexies.
Nilla the Unicorn (Knitting): She’s done! Time to write up a blog post about her!
Alright, let’s talk next week’s #craftygoals:
Get the Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt out of my house
Start sewing like a mad woman on the Farm to Table quilt
Keep plugging away on the Mixed Berries quilt.
Find the Rachel box and see if she’s hoarding purple fabrics.
Keep using music lesson time for EPP. It’d be good to get another combo block done.
Knitting: I have no idea! I was going to order yarn to make a Little Cotton Rabbits pattern, but then the yarn was going to be $85 and that just gave me pause. I could knit from my stash…ugh, so boring. Or I could start moving forward with some Halloween decorations I have on my mind, OR I could start moving forward with designing and knitting a hat I have on my mind. We’ll see…
Well, that’s it for the #craftygoals July 2023! Still getting my feet planted beneath me for a solid crafty foundation, but I have high hopes for a more productive August! See you next week with a new month’s list of projects!
Hello again, my crafty lovelies! I missed a couple beats on the crafty check-ins, but I’m trying to get back into it again. I do this every year: I think that summer vacation will mean lots of downtime and I’ll use that downtime to sew and knit and embroider and paint and all the happy creative things that make my heart sing, when in reality summer vacation is doing a lot of stuff with the Brookelets and trying to get the house cleaned up and ready for the next school year. Not an actual lot of time for crafting. AND THEN I think, “OK, well, just wait until autumn and when the kids go back to school because then you’ll have time for crafting.” But nope! That’s when pep band, drama practice and everything else starts. The teenager years are busy, busy, busy!
The Big Declutter 2023 Project is still going big in our house, so that’s cutting into crafty time tremendously. Also, the kids have become obsessed with spending time together as a family in the evening, and I had scheduled the bulk of my sewing time for the evenings because they normally do not want to spend time together after dinner…so…yeah…even less crafty time happening because I’m choosing to spend time with my kids when they ask for it. It’s weird and I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ll show up for every minute until it ends.
Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: I officially started and finished quilting it today, so major progress finally happening on this project! I ran into a lot of problems getting my new machine set up, and the craft room was a disaster that needed some decluttering, and then blah, blah, blah…took a while to get going on the quilting. After I’m done writing this post I’m planning to head back into the craft room and trim it and hopefully get the binding done today. I’d really like to get this into the mail on Monday.
Scrappy Thursdays: I started working on my Farm Girl Vintage “Mixed Berries” quilt this week! I have background squares and stem squares cut for all sixteen 12-inch berry blocks.
Going forward, I think I need to boot the Clementine Quilt out of the Scrappy Thursday line-up because I simply don’t show up to work on it when it’s its turn. I am not gelling with this quilt right now, and I think it needs to be back into hibernation so I can get some actual work done on anything else. Clementine’s time will come, eventually.
Next week I’m supposed to work on the Leaders & Enders quilt, but that might change because I have no plan whatsoever for it and I’m eyeing Christmas on the horizon and I’d really like to start on some Christmas gifts. We’ll see…
Smitten EPP Quilt: I pieced my first of many of the small hexagons into a large hexagon filler block, and started working on the second one. I need to cut some diamonds for the filler blocks. I work on this while I’m sitting in the car at my kids’ music lessons, so it limps along in the summer due to last-minute cancellations and the like. It’ll pick up steam in the autumn when lesson schedules are consistent again.
Nilla the Unicorn (Knitting): I’ve made it a goal to knit for thirty minutes after lunch most days. Renaissance bought a cross stitch kit on one of our excursions in recent weeks, and so she joins me outside each day as well and we stitch in the sunshine together. It’s one of the best parts of my day!
Since my obsession with the Little Cotton Rabbits has not died down, I decided to do a test run with knitted animals and dug out a knit unicorn kit that I bought four or five years ago for Rachel at the Madrona Fiber Festival that she never got around to knitting up and I’ve been working on that. My family has named it Eeyore and insists that it’s a donkey because it turned out that I had no yellow worsted-weight yarn scraps to make its horn and I’m waiting for my KnitPicks order to arrive so I can do that.
So that’s it for the last two weeks. #craftygoals for the upcoming week are:
Finish the Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt and get it in the mail!
Possibly start on the Farm to Table Baby Quilt.
Scrappy Thursday: Either keep working on the Mixed Berries quilt or start a scrappy Christmas gift. (I’m pretty sure the Leaders & Enders quilt is not going to be happening right now.)
Use music lesson time for EPP and not phone scrolling. (I can’t really make a more specific goal for this quilt each week because it’s so dependent on so many different people’s schedules lining up.)
Hello Lovelies! How were your Fourth of July celebrations, my American friends? And how were your Canada Day celebrations, my Canadian friends? Those are the only ones that come to mind at the moment, so I apologize if I missed anyone’s big international things. I can only keep track of so much!
We did basically nothing beyond grilling some sausages and hot dogs and then driving around to look at fireworks and get bit by mosquitoes. It threw off my sleep schedule mighty bad and I’m reminded of why I choose not to be a night owl. CARA DOESN’T DO STAYING UP LATE.
Just thought I’d pop in and figure out where I am with the crafting so I can have my head wrapped around where I’m going with things in the next week. Here we go:
Patriotic Mini Chiffon Baby Quilt: The top is complete, I’ve got the backing and batting cut, and all that’s left is basting, quilting, and binding! I’ve hit a bit of a snag with quilting that I’m trying to figure out, but it’ll be fine. My friend actually had her baby on July 4th, which is just so ridiculously on-brand for their family’s patriotism, so I’m sewing like the wind to get this made up quickly and out the door. Nothing bad will happen if it takes longer, but you know how it starts to feel with baby quilts for babies that have already debuted. Apparently I haven’t taken any photos since I finished the blocks though, so no photos for you this week.
Scrappy Thursdays: I finished the blocks for the Brickhouse quilt! Now on to picking out fabrics for sashing and borders and then assembling all that. I won’t come back to this until the first week of August, but it feels great knowing that all the blocks are pieced!
Smitten EPP Quilt: I finished the last full block and laid it out in the living room to figure out placement and what colors I’ll make all the extra little bits. There’s still a lot of work to be done on this quilt, but I’m really enjoying the process.
New Rabbit Hole: As I was working on the Patriotic Baby Quilt this week, I got to thinking how I’d like to add some more handmade items to the total gift and thought about the idea of knitting up a little stuffed animal to include. I dived headfirst into that rabbit hole, decided I’d quickly knit up a free pattern that I found, and then the next morning looked at it all again and decided that this was not the time to make this happen and that a quilt is plenty enough gift.
HOWEVER, during my mad dive into stuffed animal knitting territory, I discovered the most cutest knit designer who keeps a blog and it is just so beautiful and inspiring and it makes me want to reclaim those glory days of blogging so very much: Little Cotton Rabbits. Oh my gosh, do I love reading her blog and, once things calm down and I can indeed include little stuffed animals with baby quilts, I am going to knit up every single one of those little patterns (Ravelry link) until my fingers bleed because they are beyond cute and I’m weirdly obsessed with how quintessentially British they are. My whole family is sick of hearing me talk about them, but I’m not going to stop talking about them anytime soon.
Alright, happy crafting to you all in the upcoming week! Find time for the things that make you happy!
I feel like the Tinman squeaking out, “Oilcan, oilcan!” as I recommence with old bloggy habits. It’s the beginning of a new month, so let’s discuss some crafty goals, shall we?
My last #craftygoals post was way back in February 2022, and the goals from back then were:
A clothing item: Nope
Finish the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt: I got pretty far on this; it’s basted and ready to be quilted.
Continue/maybe finish the Far Far Away quilt: I worked on this a lot during last year’s summer quarter of classes and it’s up to the point where the rows are pieced together, but just the rows, not the entire quilt top.
Complete the Brick House blocks #5-8: I just checked the bin for this project and I have completed twelve blocks and have the strips finished for blocks #13-16. No recollection of when I did that, but I have physical evidence that it happened!
Complete the Clementine Quilt Along blocks from Months 3 & 4: Looks like I finished Month #3.
Start the Berry quilt: Nope. I’m eager to get this one started, as I’ve had this quilt idea in my mind since I first received my Farm Girl Vintage book forever ago.
Start the HST Leaders & Enders quilt: Doesn’t look like I did. I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do with these HSTs, but I’ve got a million of them. Maybe just a totally scrappy thing? We’ll see.
Find a new hand-stitching project: I dug out my Smitten quilt, which I never mentioned on the blog before this, and have put a lot of work into it over the past year. I’m almost done with creating all the blocks and can start putting the top together soon.
So now that we’re all caught up on all of that, let’s set some goals for this next month:
Time-Sensitive Things that need Working on ASAP:
Patriotic Mini Chiffon Baby Quilt: A friend is having a bae-beeeee! I spent a little bit of time in the last week cutting fabric and beginning to piece this quilt. I had hoped to have the blocks completely done by today, but I’ve got all of next week to assemble the top and it should be fine.
Farm to Table Mini Chiffon Baby Quilt: Another friend is having a bae-beeeee! She’s not due until August, though, so I have a little more time to get this one done.
Things to Work on after the ASAP Projects:
Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt: I’m still warming up to full-steam-ahead sewing speeds, so I’ll be extremely happy if I manage to get both of those done before the end of the month. IF I find myself with extra time on my hands, I’ll unearth the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt and start quilting it.
Scrappy Thursdays: I’d like to resurrect Scrappy Thursdays and start making a dent in the scrap bins. Rotation will be:
As far as hand stitching projects, I’m working on the Smitten EPP quilt during the kids’ music lessons and I’m quite near the end. It’s feasible that I might get all the individual blocks completed by the end of the month. Then I have to start connecting them. Whoo boy, that’s going to take a lot of time. I’ll work on that in the car until it gets too big to be a car project, and then it will have to become a craft room project.
I wrote a few days ago about how I’ve been hit by the February ennui that tackles me every year, and how I’d decided to just give in to every new project that flitted across my radar in an attempt to give myself some happy chemical boosts and weather out the rest of this gray month. I published my post, went off to continue working on the new Linen Stitch scarf, and as I was knitting away the day, my mind wandered and I remembered something I read about in the The Twelve Week Year called the “Emotional Cycle of Change,” which comes with a handy little visual in the book:
I recalled the first time I worked The Twelve Week Year system, way back in the summer of 2020, and how much impact that little image had on me because I absolutely identified with it. When I was putting in the work on that cycle’s goals, I hit that nasty wall of despair right around Week Five and it stuck with me for a good two or three weeks where all I wanted to do was give up, give up, give up. But, thankfully, I was aware of it, I had people to talk to about it who encouraged me to keep going, and yep, I kept at it and eventually pulled up and out of that funk because I didn’t give up and I didn’t shift my focus onto something else. I got to experience the high of sticking with that project until the end, even though I really wanted to just die for a few weeks whenever I thought about another stupid day of doing this.
And I think that’s what’s going on right now. I started the new year with the idea of doing good on crafty goals, and I’ve been going forward with all the energy and zeal of an optimistic goal-getter, and it’s now hitting really hard that progress isn’t an overnight thing and I am smack dab in the Boring Middle of it all. The answer isn’t to quit or switch focus, because when I get to the end of this twelve week cycle (in the last week of March), I don’t want to look back and regret that I stopped working on these goals. Honestly, it’s a bit of a weird goal cycle because I don’t have anything huge going on because I just couldn’t come up with anything except “take a break from striving all the time,” because I’ve been striving hard for eighteen months straight and just felt like I needed a break. So I’m only doing some low-key stuff to help prep me to do bigger things come April, but it is important to me to tie up a lot of these loose crafty ends, if only to “close the circuit” on these open/unfinished projects.
So the answer right now is that I’m having a normal reaction to change. I’ve been really good at showing up to work on these crafty goals; it’s become my routine and it’s no longer a new, exciting thing, and I’m jonesing for the high of a new project…but that’s what gets me into this mess of having eighty-seven UFOs cluttering up my craft room and driving me crazy all the time. The answer is to just keep showing up and doing the work, even if I need to grit my teeth somedays, and remind myself of how good it’s going to feel to get that pile of quilt tops completed. In a few weeks’ time I’ll start seeing the results of that consistency and I’ll start getting excited about the dash to the finish line, and the high of finishing a big goal is way bigger than the high of starting a new project. Lasts longer, too.
Another thing I might to watch out for is the impulse to indulge in retail therapy–it might be one of the first signs that I’m approaching Stage 2 or Stage 3 of this cycle. That being said, there is a still an ungodly amount of yarn currently making its way to me in the mail because…well, I didn’t figure this out until after I’d already ordered it. Guess I’ll be making a lot of socks and fingerless mittens for the foreseeable future, even though I know I’m only capable of about seven pairs a year, given my “comfortable knitting” calculations I just figured out.
How many skeins of sock yarn did I order? Nine. *sigh*
Y’all hanging in there? January’s a hard month to survive, I think. Good job making it to February! Alas, I think February often gives January a run for its miserable money most years, which makes me feel like…
But we’re just going to keep our heads down and go to work on those awesome crafty goals, and we’ll pass this gray, cold month with color in our hands and beautiful stitches to chase away the days. Sounds like an excellent plan! Go forth!
I had a plan for February, but as I went about to start prepping for it, I asked the person I was going to make a thing for if they wanted the thing I was planning to make for them and THEY SAID NO. So…I need some new plans. (It was a dress for Rachel. She’s so thrilled with her new Halloween skirt that she said she didn’t need anything new at the moment, and anyways, that particular dress was something she was “only into for, like, last summer.” 😒 This is why, more and more, I’m against surprise crafting. It often ends poorly. Just ask people what they want and then tell them it’s going to take forever to make. Everyone ends up happy. Even if it takes ten years to finish the thing. Trust me, I have A LOT ofexperience with this.)
I didn’t mention it in my January #craftygoals post, but I want to try to sew up an article of clothing each month this year. (I didn’t mention it because it would have hinted that “Rachel’s Birthday Gift” was a piece of clothing. Which ended up not mattering because I had to spoil the secret anyway. Gah.) I like the idea of making well-fitting clothes, but it’s a very new skill for me and I avoid it because it’s still kind of difficult to do well. It’s way more gratifying to crank out quilts because I’m already good at them. Clothes, though…eek. Practice, practice, practice.
1. So, with Rachel’s dress off the table, I need to come up with another clothing item to make, and I need a little time to figure that out because reasons.
The other #craftygoals for February are:
2. Finish the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt. I don’t think I’ve ever posted about this quilt, but I started it in December 2019 as a kick-off for the coming year being devoted to sewing up my scraps, and almost got the top completed, actually. And then my first shipment of Blank Quilting fabric arrived and the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt went into hibernation very quickly. The Convoluted Formula™ dictates that it be the next thing I work on. I’m pleased it’ll be completed soon. It’s cute.
5. Clementine Quilt Along Month 3 & 4. I didn’t quite finish the Month 3 blocks last month because of my back, but they’re close. Hopefully I can railroad through the fourth month’s blocks, too.
6. Berry Blocks. Not even started, annoyingly.
7. HST Leaders & Enders. Also not started, extra annoyingly. But we’re not going to worry because Scrappy Thursday is for working with scraps at the pace that I can work. There are no deadlines in the Land of Scrappy Thursdays, just a love of scraps. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN, DARN IT.
Hand Stitching-wise, I’m still knitting away on Michael’s Building Blocks sock, and really should be able to finish those up by the end of the month.
I have NO idea what I’ll work on after that. I think I need a portable project for taking to work, and an “at-home” project that is more involved or larger or whatever. Maybe a pair of vanilla socks for work, and resume working on the Stalagmite socks that I started three years ago? Or the Better Days Sweater? I don’t know, but it’s gotta be something yarny. My fingers are so cold in the winter that I have a hard time with hand sewing.
January’s #craftygoals went really good. I finished the Cat Lady quilt, Rachel’s Halloween skirt (pictures coming), the Mini Charm Chiffon Baby quilt (pictures waiting on delivery), and was able to start working on the Far Far Away quilt.
Scrappy Thursday-wise, I got the Brick House blocks for the month done and almost finished the Clementine blocks. As previously stated, I did not get to the Berry Blocks or HST Leaders & Enders. Not much I can do about that. Hopefully everything cooperates in the universe and I’m able to work on them this month.
…to let you know that I am still here and I haven’t abandoned blogging. My back went out last week, and then there was another thing that I don’t want to talk about on the internet, and then I went to the doctor yesterday to talk about the thing I don’t want to talk about, and he was like, “Hey, you didn’t get your flu shot this year, would you like to do that now?”
And I was like, “Yeah, sure, that’s probably wise.”
And then he said, “Do you need a COVID booster, too?”
And I was all wide-eyed with disbelief and said, “You have those?! I haven’t been able to schedule one online.”
“Yeah, we’ve got them, you want one?”
“Um, YES.”
So now, on the day that I thought I’d finally get back to doing some sewing or knitting after way too many days of not sewing or knitting, I’m nursing a very sore left deltoid and feeling slightly sick and feverish as my body figures out how to deal with the injected germs. Which is the absolutely best way to spend today, but it infringes on my crafty goals and I feel a little panicked that I’m totally going to miss the mark on a few of them, but then I remind myself that they’re just benchmarks in the air that I thought would be nice to achieve and nothing bad will actually happen if I don’t finish them on time, and geez, calm down.
I might try knitting a little today, just to try to work some of the soreness out of my shoulder, but I might not because it’s boring knitting that I’m really bored of and geez, I need a new knitting project. So many people are making awesome sweaters right now and I want to be like them. But noooooo, I’ve decided to be responsible and stuff and finish UFOs and dumb stuff like that. (It is so hard to keep that commitment when you feel like crap and decide to do a little online window shopping because you’re too worn out to really do anything else.)
(I may or may not have fallen down a retail therapy rabbit hole at a certain online fabric store…the anticipation of receiving a package in the mail is pretty much the only thing that has brought joy into my life this past week. #selfcare)
Alright, head on off to your lives. I’ll just be here, doing that greasy sick sweating thing and stalking people’s crafting-in-progress photos on Instagram. Leave a comment if you’ve got some good in-progress photos for me to look at. Tell me how to find them. I beg you.
That Crafty Cara 