Time for the biannual stash toss.  The whole stash gets reorganized and the lists in the boxes that have them are rewritten.

Starting with the fabric scraps today.  Organizing the scraps by color, square and strip sizes (1 1/2 in to 6 1/2 in, in half inch increments) needs a freshen up.

They're all in mesh zippered bags now, according to color.  Current WIPs have their own pouch, as well as a couple of future WIPs (just patterns of soon to be new starts).

 

The blues.

These bags of strips have been sitting in  yardage boxes, accordingto color.  They all range from 1 1/2 inch to 3 1/2 inch wide strips.  It was only when I saw that there wasn't a pink bag, that I realized it was my original scrap stash.  I used to feed the bags with leftovers until there was enough variety to make a quilt.  The quilt in the guest bedroom was made that way....in all greens!

Just out of curiosity, I weighed it....9.3lb!!!  You could put that in two reusable shopping bags and use it for weight lifting.  Lol

The bags have a temporary home in the rather large plastic bag from a Sam's delivery today.  After the stash toss is finished, they'll make a nice dent in strips for a log cabin.

Still chipping away at the WIP pile.  The carrots are finished, as well as the binding for Always Bee Kind, which is next on my WIP list to finish.  

A bare wreath will just not do!  After the carrots were cut out and the pieces sewn and turned, I had the idea that filling the wreath with carrots (green pointing outwards) would look super cute and they were fun and take no time to make.  After joining the pieces, that idea was canned, as it was very fiddly.  Instead, there'll be a bow at the top, one carrot on the bunny's lap and the others on either side of her.

I've stitched a small patriotic project every year since I moved to the US.  Since this will be my first 4th July since I became a citizen, I wanted to make something special.  To make it matchy, matchy with the others, I'll tea dye some white 14 count aida.  Last night I converted all the floss for Summer Jubilee by Blackbird Designs from Weeks Dye Works to DMC and made a list of the floss I need to get.  What I didn't think about was the fact that I'm changing the fabric to be much lighter.  That list has been tossed, so I'll start anew.  It's always fun to pick out floss.

The neighbor's ducks (there's four) and chicken have taken up part time residence in our yard.  Seems that the grass IS greener on the other side!  It's rained so much lately that it's a quagmire down in the bottom and they go back and forth during the day.

I've yet to decide what to tackle next in the stash toss.  I'm thinking I may "eat the frog first" and go through the fabric boxes.  I'll see how I feel about that tomorrow!

Live Life Simply by Hands On Designs joins Hello Spring, a freebie by Lizzie Kate.  

What is it about the left boot?  That's the one which had to be restitched because it was five stitches wider than the other.

I hadn't noticed the three quilts from the Blackbird Designs book with different fabric in my last post were the same design until today when I was looking through the book again.  My powers of observation are legendary...not!

Ready for binding.  I like hand stitching the back of bindings, but the machine sewing  always feels like a chore.  So....

I'm going to give Kim Delhi's chubby binding a go.  Which meant I needed to get a new toy  tool.  These are in millimeters, which always seems a bit weird ti see metric measurements when it's not the "normal" way of measuring in the US.  It's a bit like telling us lefties to "just reverse it".  lol

I can empathize with anyone who finds it a bit....or a lot confusing, coming from a country that changed to metric in 1969.  I still have to convert the temperature back to Celsius if I want to make sense of how hot or cold it is.  Yesterday was 81f, which is 27c, which makes more sense to me!  lol

The appliqué pieces for Always Bee Kind are ready to cut out.  I iron these on a silicone baking sheet to stop getting a mess on the ironing board cover.

Hand quilting is underway.

  

The ever growing pile of glue basted hexies.  There's about the same number needing to be basted before any more need to be cut out. 

This is my oldest WIP.  It's been on the go since I moved to the US....seven years in June.  There's just one more light colored round until it'll be ready to attach to a background.  Then, there'll be some hexie flowers, leaves and vines appliquéd onto it.

It lives in this sewing box.  The box is a WIP.  I spray painted it purple.  Found a piece of cord in the finishing box, which will do for now as handles.   The color isn't quite right, but it just has to keep the lid on, as I'm just using what I have for now.  

The lid will be finished with Keep Calm and Stitch On in cross stitch.  There are two little ledges on the inside of the box.  I'll cut out and cover some magnetic strips with scrapbook paper and glue them on as needle keeps.

A Christmas cookie tin with my hand piecing supplies lives in there, too.

This is a pic of the sewing basket I found online.  I had a bit of a search online and found others like this on ebay from the Princess Basket Company in Algonquin, Illinois.  Mine came from the basement. 😉

Back to crocheting flower centers.

Dishcloths are getting a bit low, so it's a good opportunity to get in a bit more crochet practice.  They're becoming less trapezoid shaped and more squarish.

I've had my first Covid shot.  Now I'm just waiting for the nanites to kick in and give me a figure like 7 of 9 from Star Trek!  

 

This little pile of projects is sitting next to my sewing machine, as the WIP tub is bursting!  It's not as dire as it sounds, as it's not a big tub.  There's a few more in there, which I'm ignoring for now and just sewing what I fancy. 

The first project from the pile is an orphan block from Fat Cat Designs.  It's now a tote to hold knitting projects that need finishing (sewing pieces together etc)  The black fabric is duck cloth that mysteriously found it's way into my stash.  It currently holds all the pieces of the oversized squishy jumper and a few finished pieces of the grey cardigan.

Making it the size I wanted meant that there wasn't quite enough inner fabric, so a bit of the chicken wire fabric was added to the inside.  

The fingerless mitts with the afterthought thumb have been finished and washed.  They've been tucked away for later in the year.   

I'll be going back to a thumb gusset, as I prefer the way those look. 

There was a major oops! with this sock.  I was knitting it on 2mm/US0 dpns.  It's rather stiff and I'm not even going to try to get it over my foot.  It's going for a swim in the frog pond before it's cast on again.  

This is my 2nd go at using bamboo sock yarn.  The first time I tried knitting a pair toe up, which got frogged.  This time, I'm making a pair of shorties for the warm weather.  I'll make one, wear it for a day, then decide whether to keep knitting or frog it.

Played in the dye pot on Sunday night.  The purple ribbons show the colors better than the floss in the photos.  The bittersweet floss is tonal in some spots.  That happens quite a bit when I'm using yellow.

I'll be dyeing more bittersweet, as I have a project in mind for it.

The stitching on Live Life Simply by Hands On Designs is finished.   I kept going between a cube finish and a pillow.  I think it will be a cute pillow.

Now there's a finished spring stitch, it's back to WIPs.  It took until both boots were finished on La-D-Da's Smell My Feet before realizing the left boot was 5 stitches wider than the right!  It was sent to Coventry for quite a while before the left boot frogged and sent back again.  

A lovely find on Abe Books.  I had a quick flick through it yesterday when it arrived and have been making plans already.

These vases of flowers....

....and these will keep me busy with making mini quilts for hand piecing for quite a while.

This is one of the cross stitch patterns from the book, which is now on my "to stitch" list with some color changes.   One of the purples I dyed will be the color of the flowers.   Home and patriotic are my summer stitchy themes, so this one will fit in perfectly.

 

 

 

The raw edge appliqué is finished on this mini.  It has been sandwiched, thread basted within an inch of it's life and is ready for hand quilting.  The hanging sleeve has been sewn.  (That never happens first.) The purple strips for the binding have been pressed.  

Started tracing the pieces for this one.  It's part of the same set of patterns as the flowers in the pot. (Daisies For Love)

This says it all!  

Found bags of strips that had been cut up ready to make into this quilt.  

Basted some hexies.  Tacked them together into sets of four.

Started making carrots.

Bailey's jumper is finished.  

He's probably thinking "where's my supper?"  lol

While doing a knitalogical dig through the knitting WIP basket, I found a pair of fingerless gloves that started as socks.  They both needed a redo on the thumbs.  They're almost finished.  There's another pair on the needles with a thumb gusset, rather than an afterthought thumb.

The squishy jumper is ready for the million ends to be woven in.  I've lost 8 pounds since I started knitting it, so it should be perfect as an over sized jumper.