I’ve been making more rope bowls in these past few days. Once I set up the machine for that work, I tend to not stop with one bowl. These bowls will be gifts, of course.
Thanks to Rick Sanchez whose video on YouTube has helped me so much. I finally tried the little rosettes to end a bowl–also thanks to the help he gave our modern group’s November Sit and Sew meeting.
I use 1/4 inch thick rope, and Rick uses a slightly lighter version. My machine is not happy with sewing a line across the rosettes to hold them in place with my thicker rope–and I don’t want to use a glue gun and glue to install those rosettes. What I learned is that if I put in a bigger needle (16 inch) and go very slowly, that works, though there are complaints. If I use a zig zag stitch, you don’t even notice where the installation sewing line is. Aren’t they cute? I think they are cute.
I am getting much better at this whole rope bowl process, though I have not yet tried a rectangular shape. Hold on to your hats–I’ve got some Rit dye and will try dyeing rope in early 2025–with likely the help of my sweet neighbor. I want to do it all outside as that dye stains everything except stainless steel. Cold water from the hose can set the finished rope–and my neighbor has a plan for how to discard the spent dye water so neither of us ever has the dye in the house. (I can boil water inside to take outside.) There are no laundry sinks here. I’m going to use two colors–one on each end of the rope hank. This plan got hatched after, again, Rick Sanchez did some beautiful rope dying.
The blocks for the THIRD quilt in my half-rectangle series are done and on the design wall. This one uses the “hourglass” half-rectangle triangle block we recently used in Tara Faughnan’s online Block 2 class. I’m sure I’ll move around these blocks for some time while I work on other projects. Seeing this picture helps a lot. But how fun is this one??? It makes diagonal lines of smaller triangles and there are secondary patterns all over the place–some just hints that your eyes try to make happen. (I have its backing and binding ready to go when needed.)
On the other side of the design wall, the FOURTH quilt in this series is trying to happen. This one will probably end the series. The next diamond (graded down in size) will be this light blue–with perhaps a busier low-volume fabric. I’m not crazy about how plain the light blue fabric is, but I’m on a mission to use up stash with this project, so…
That orange fabric below the line of scrappy log cabins will likely be the next color–but who knows. I don’t.
I have to stop and get the crosses quilt on the longarm because I have no hand sewing for nightime sewing in front of the tv. So I’ve just been pulling from the random small fabrics in my little bin of scraps and making the long cabins and other blocks at night–hand-stitching and hand-cutting the pieces together. I have NO IDEA where this is going…but my hands are happily busy at night. I do square these blocks up when I think they are “done.”
Our little kiosk is up and is slowly gathering books. (That big roof is on the mail kiosk–and does not overhang the library box–it’s a camera illusion.). But isn’t the kiosk adorable?
I went down the other day to check for a mailed package–and found the mail person with the whole kiosk open–and I thoght that was pretty interesting. When we get a package that won’t fit into our narrow “box,” it goes into ONE of the bigger bins below–and we get a key to open that box in our mailbox. Once in the bigger box and the door is open, the key cannot be extracted. The mail person said that for packages that don’t fit, she has to drop them off at our houses. (Can I just say that sometimes that takes several days to happen!!!!)
There is a storm system swirling around, but so far, we’ve gotten only very light rain off and on from it. Maybe tomorrow. I wrapped my outside faucets against the freezing weather (and now it is warmer again), so I watered the two camellias that are blooming or about to bloom with the big watering can–after removing the tarps and grocery bags I put on them to protect them from our recent freezing nights.
Kalenchoe is inside and covered with blooms. When my neighbor gifted me these plants (three of them in the container) last March, they had huge single heads made up of tiny flowers all massed together. There must have been a process to make that happen. Here, these plants are just “doing their own thing.”
Have a great week everyone. Maybe dial back any Christmas stress and just enjoy the season. That’s my wish for you anyway.
Louisa Enright's Blog 