Sew I See!

For a long, long time, I've admired the sound of the hammered dulcimer.  I don't even know for certain when I first heard the instrument or learned what it was, but I used to associate it with the Appalachian Mountains.  (More on that later...)  Maybe they were playing a CD in one of the souvenir shops we visited... Or maybe I just made that up. 😉 In any case, I liked the way it sounded, but I don't believe I've ever seen one being played in person.  It's not a particularly common instrument, around here— not like a guitar or marching band instrument or even something slightly more niche, like a banjo or Dobro.   Fast-forward to now:  Donald very sweetly built me a hammered dulcimer as a surprise for Christmas 2022!  He used a plan from the same place where he bought the kit for the harp he built a few years back— a place called " MusicMakers ".   He also bought the dulcimer's hardware from them, but he sourced his own wood for this project.  (With th

As mentioned in the last entry, the fourth UFO project of the year is underway.   I have no idea how long this one has been stashed away, but I'm sure it's been several years.   This project started with a layer cake Mom gave me.  The colors and prints are in the "shabby chic" style, I guess you could say.  Pinks, aqua, sea green, grey, baby blue, and white, with a couple of rose florals and other sweet, feminine prints.   ...I just spent a couple of minutes searching and found it:  Connecting Threads "Cottage Chic" from 2015.   I think I searched for patterns using layer cakes and found one on Jen Eskridge's old blog.  I'd link to it now, but though I can find photos doing a photo search, the page they link to is no longer available.  Essentially, it's an "exploded" (oversized, enlarged) disappearing four-patch.  Each disappearing 4-patch uses four 10-inch x 10-inch squares.  (In my case, I used two pieces from the layer cake, then two

 Yeah!  The third UFO project of the year has achieved "quilt top" status!   I suspected this one would go pretty quickly, and it did.  In the last blog entry, I had started sewing the string blocks into half-square triangles with a plain white background.  There were quite a few on the design wall, even at that point.   A lot more of that, and I ended up with a full design wall: There were too many to fit on the wall, so I arranged some on the tables, instead.  Putting them in order on cutting mats worked out well, because I was able to stack the mats and keep them all in the desired layout, but stacked up to leave room for joining and pressing.   I joined them in groups of nine, where possible.  This was a manageable size for using the webbing technique of joining.  Once I finished a row's worth of these "nine-patches", I joined that row, pressed it, and set it aside.  With all rows finished, I then sewed those together.  (I'm probably over-complicating th

My third UFO project "reactivation" of the new year is underway!   I did take a little time to clean under the needle plate of the Juki, but it really didn't look that bad, so it wasn't strictly necessary.  It's probably a good habit to get into, though, cleaning it out every project or two (or three, depending on the size of the project).   Once that was done, I pulled out the string blocks I treadle-pieced a while back.  I made them with the intention of eventually making HSTs out of them, modeled after a quilt I saw online.  The original used more pastel colors, but I worked with whatever was in my "everything" string bag, supplemented with a little of this and that from the single-hue bags. The main "rule" I set for myself was to try to use a relatively wide string for the center of each block, since they'd eventually be cut down the middle, diagonally.  (You don't want seam allowances in your way when you get around to turning the