Tag: Summer 2023

#craftygoals Check-in: August, Week 2(ish)

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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!

#craftygoals: August 2023

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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:

  1. Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt: Done and blogged. Finished much, much later than planned, but technically done.
  2. 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.
  3. Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt: Nope.
  4. 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.
  5. 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…)

#craftygoals Check-In: July 2023 #3

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Not the most productive week, crafty-wise, but I did get some stuff done.

Last week’s goals were:

  1. Finish the Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt and get it in the mail!
  2. Possibly start on the Farm to Table Baby Quilt.
  3. 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.)
  4. 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.)
  5. 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!

#craftygoals Check-In: July 2023 #2

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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:

  1. Finish the Patriotic Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt and get it in the mail!
  2. Possibly start on the Farm to Table Baby Quilt.
  3. 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.)
  4. 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.)
  5. Possibly finish Nilla the Unicorn.

#craftygoals Check-In: July 2023 #1

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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!