Category Archives: 6″ LeMoyne Star

A Few Little Blocks

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The final few klosjes are done.  I think my total is somewhere around 120 of them finished.  Once I get a chance to lay them out and figure out the arrangement, it won’t take long to get the little teddy bear quilt put together.

Wednesday night I really couldn’t seem to focus on just one thing so, along with making the final few klosjes, I put together these LeMoyne Stars.  I have a total of 11 of them done, with the pieces for 19 more printed and ready to stitch.  Another baby quilt in the making — this one clearly for a girl as all the stars will be a pink of some sort or another.

The political ads are beginning — although no election has been called yet, it seems it may not be that far off.  I have a feeling we’ll be renting a lot of videos or watching things we’ve recorded so we can fast forward through the ads.   My tolerance for the self-serving or attack ads is zero.  I don’t usually say anything about politics on my blog, but the ad I saw Wednesday night made my skin crawl.  If this is what we have to look forward to, I’d rather ignore the whole thing altogether.

It was very cold on Wednesday and promises to be even colder today.  We are definitely back in the deep freeze for a few days.  Great timing to spend lots of time stitching.  Smudge found a spot to curl up.

While Lester decided to guard the toy basket.

Pink and Cream Stars

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All the hand piecing is done and everything is ready to put this top together.  As I’m planning on doing that by machine, I have some hope that it will be a finished top by the time the weekend is over.  As I so rarely use my sewing machine, the sewing table ends up as a collection spot for fabrics I’ve been auditioning for blocks, stacks of blocks for yet unfinished tops, notes that haven’t quite made it into my ideas book and who knows what else is lurking there.  It’s going to be a small treasure hunt organizing and putting everything away.

Every time I need to use the sewing machine I seem to go through this.  Maybe this time I’ll learn my lesson and keep the table clear so that it’s not such a production getting to the point of being able to sew by machine.

Thursday Smudge showed a little interest in food, but nowhere near what he was showing earlier in the week so the syringe feeding continued.  I’m starting to wonder if he has lost his sense of smell which would affect his appetite.  We’re off to the vet with him this afternoon.

Lester has definitely been enjoying all the various foods we’ve had on offer trying to get Smudge to eat.  I know he has put weight on, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for a kitty with a heart condition.  So that’s another thing we’ll be asking the vet about.  Somehow we’ve got to balance the two issues.

Pink and Cream Stars

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The pink and cream quilt will be the next top finished this year.  All that’s left to do is the setting squares and triangles of the large blocks.  The cornerstone blocks and sashing are ready, so it should be relatively quick to put together.

The piecing of the baby quilt was completed last night and the final pressing will be done today.  I’m hoping to start quilting it this weekend.   That will depend on whether our neighbour whose floor I use to baste is around.  While I’m at it, I’m going to baste a couple of other small quilts that have been waiting too long to be finished.

I’ve decided to approach the work situation from the perspective that it’s giving me lots of time to play with quilt designs and finish up a couple of pieces.  I’m going to fall back on the therapeutic benefits of quilting to keep me centred through this.

We had a bit of snow on Thursday.  The cats decided it was a good time for a snooze.  Smudge found a soft toy to curl up with.

Lester headed for the kitty bed.

Little Stars

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While we’re continuing to deal with a kitty who’s not well, I have been doing a bit of stitching in between syringe feeding and the like (if you’re looking for an update on Smudge, scroll down a bit).  Putting the LeMoyne Star blocks together has been a lovely distraction when I’ve had a few minutes to stitch.

Even pressing the blocks feels like fun at the moment.  I think getting them pressed just perfectly gives me a feeling that I’ve got some control over something.

As the sun was going down one day this week, and I can’t even remember which day at this point, it cast a wonderful pink light on the office towers in the area. The one that’s on the other side of the roof garden looked, I think, quite pretty — although I’d rather it was summer and the leaves were out on the trees and I wouldn’t be able to see it.

A couple of the buildings across the street also were turning quite pink.

And here’s Smudge, resting in a kitty bed in between feedings.

Thank you to everyone for your wishes and thoughts for Smudge’s recovery.  We’re by no means out of the woods yet and his appetite is — well, beyond finicky.   He’s finicky at the best of times, let alone when not well.  The cupboard shelf with kitty food has so many different varieties and flavours that we’ve bought in the hopes of finding one that he’ll actually eat on his own that I think we could open a small shop!  He’s on an appetite stimulant and, while he is eating a little bit on his own, I really don’t think it has had the effect the vet was hoping for.  I know there are other appetite stimulants for cats and will bring that up in today’s conversation with the vet.

In the meantime, our goal is to get 250 calories per day into him.  I had never noticed it before, but cat food labels do not show the calorie count.  Thankfully, our vet had the calorie count for some foods and a non-blogging friend found and forwarded to me a chart with all sorts of cat foods and their calorie counts listed.  In order to get enough calories into him, we’re making a slurry out of a tin of food and syringe feeding him in 1 to 1.5 ounce increments throughout the day.

An ounce or ounce and a half may not sound like a lot, but it takes some time.  I am extremely grateful Smudge has the typical Maine Coon temperament.  He lets me give him  his pills, syringe feed him and generally be a pest (which must be what I appear to be from his point of view) without protest or struggle.  I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult this could be with many cats!

He has us waiting on him hand and foot.  He likes baked chicken, but only when it’s just out of the oven warm.  Not warmed up the next day after it’s cooked, mind you. Only out of the oven warm.  So chicken is cooking here at various odd hours of the day and night.

Lester has been enjoying the variety of foods that are suddenly appearing.  He seems to know that Smudge isn’t well and has been periodically going over to wherever Smudge is to check on him.

I’m still basically taking a brief blog break, but thought that I’d pop in with a post — mostly to say thank you to you all.  Although I haven’t responded to comments, I can’t begin to say how much I’ve appreciated each and every one.  Hopefully, I’ll be back with a report sometime next week that Smudge is improving and can then start to visit and comment on blogs too but, for the time being, Smudge’s needs absolutely have to come first.

And Then There Were Three

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Blocks stitched and shapes printed for three projects on Wednesday, that is.  Project one, the big pink and cream stars.  One more finished so there are now three completed.  Tuesday night I started thinking about different settings for the big pink stars and have decided on one that will include 6 of the large stars and some other elements.  Three more big stars to go and then the setting and it will be done.

The pieces printed and cut out for the remaining three big pink and cream stars.

Project two, two of the Pickled Ladies done.

Lots of clamshells printed and cut out for project two.

Lots of the shapes needed for the arcs also printed and ready to cut.

Project three, the Harpsichord Quilt.  One new block pieced and pressed.  Smudge was determined to be part of this photo — you can see his shadow.

Lots and lots of black and gold octagons and the little coloured squares printed for project three.

While my printer wasn’t going quite as quickly as in the video I showed yesterday, it was humming along for about half an hour last night.  I like working on projects in groups of three.  Getting the freezer paper sorted out made it all so easy.  In next to no time I had the fabric pressed to freezer paper and printed for all three of  this Wednesday’s projects.  Perhaps if I keep doing this for the next couple of weeks I can have all the pieces printed and ready to stitch for another 3 or 6 projects.  What other ones?  The Summer Picnic Dish, also known as pickle dish.  The Rouenneries Drunkard’s Path — I have another 3 sets of charms to print for that one.  The Storm at Sea is definitely on the list for next week.

For the most part, the cats had no interest in what was going on.  Lester had a nap.

Smudge was looking a bit bored, I think.

The Making of Big Pink Stars

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Two of the nine pink and cream stars are made and I’ve sorted out a stitching sequence that makes them very quick to construct.  The first part is to make the centre 8-pointed star.

Once that’s done then I stitch all the pieces that need to be stitched into pairs or triplets together.  It’s then just a matter of adding rounds to the centre — a great opportunity for lots of continuous stitching which makes the star go together quite quickly.

This picture shows the centre after I added the first round of cream pairs and started adding the next round of pink diamonds.  Everything is ready now to just keep stitching until the star is done.  I’ve found that pressing after I get the third round of pink diamonds added is the most efficient.  All that’s left after that is to add the final star points made up of the 2 cream and 1 pink diamonds, a final press and the star is finished.  This will actually be a quick quilt to make as the setting is planned and won’t require a lot more work.  As of now, I plan to use the sewing machine to join the blocks and sashing.

Monday night some time was spent sorting the stack of freezer paper sheets that were lying about that I use to print shapes on my fabric.  As I use the custom sizes suggested in the various Inklingo collections, I have quite the variety of sizes of freezer paper cut  ranging from 3.25″ x 5″ all the way up to 8.5″ x 14″ and, as freezer paper can be reused many times, I keep it.  Over the past few months the stack of freezer paper sheets on my printer was becoming unruly, to say the least.  So a few hours of organization, and I can now see at a glance if I have the size I need and find it easily.  What started me organizing it was sorting out what I need to print for a couple of the projects I’m working on. After a few frustrating minutes of trying to figure out if I had the right sizes of freezer paper already cut, I realized it was time to just sit down and organize it all. Now the trick will be to keep it organized and file the sheets away after I’ve used them.

The gardeners have been and have taken out the flowers and cut down the hosta on the roof garden.  The trees have lost most of their leaves now and it looks very stark.  At least we haven’t yet had snow although there apparently was some snow to the north of us on the weekend.  The cats are finding cozy spots to curl up and nap.  First Lester.

Smudge:

One Purple Pickled Lady

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This will probably be the darkest of the Pickled Ladies.  The purple is quite rich but I couldn’t resist the flowers in this print.  I’m going to try to fussy cut another couple of flowers from that print to scatter throughout the top.  I’m leaning more and more towards making this a bed-sized quilt, partially because I just love making them.

The back:

In half an hour last night I had all my diamonds printed and cut out for another few of the big pink star blocks.  The setting for the blocks is already figured out as well as the border I want to use, so I’m hoping to finish it this year.

Lester had the last of the antibiotics last night so now we’re waiting to see if there will be a reappearance of the symptoms.

Smudge was draped over my legs as I was sorting the diamonds into groups for the big pink star blocks.

Big Pink Star Quilt

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An inelegant name for this quilt but so far that’s the best I can come up with.  This block measures 18″ tip to tip.  At the moment, I’m thinking about using only this pink fabric and the cream and making a total of 9 of these stars.  That would give me a 54″ square centre and then I think I’d do something with a border that included some smaller stars.  That’s a very preliminary plan.  Putting the star together was fun as there were tons and tons of opportunities for continuous stitching.

Pressing it was quick and easy to do, as I pressed after each round of diamonds was added to the centre star.  The back:

I was notified yesterday that Chintz Circles had won the contest — so thank you to everyone who voted for it!  I’m thrilled it won and can’t wait to call my aunt today to tell her that her quilt won in an online quilt contest.  I think she’ll get a kick out of it.

The trip to the vet’s office with Lester didn’t start well.  He really did not want to go in the carrier and we were both afraid he’d have a heart attack as he was getting very stressed.  We were literally at the point of giving up and just calling the vet to describe his symptoms when we were able to finally get him in the carrier without causing him more stress.  He has an upper respiratory infection which is apparently not uncommon in kitties who have HCM.  So he’s back on antibiotics, but a different one this time.  The difference within a few hours of his first dose was incredible.  He spent a lot of time curled up resting on the pink couch, and we’re all feeling much better now having seen the huge improvement.

Smudge seems to be watching him too.

Beginning of a New Project

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Last week’s list of priority projects clearly went out the window this weekend with this new project! The above is the beginning of a block that I can’t resist. It’s fairly quick to stitch, so I have some hope that I may have this first block done sometime tonight. I was going to use a muslin as the neutral but then remembered I had some Kona Bay cream, which is my favourite solid to use.  I still haven’t decided on a name for this one.

The back:

These blocks will grow quickly as they’re made using the 6-inch LeMoyne Star Inklingo collection.  Once I got the idea, I had  six pink and the cream fabrics printed within minutes with the diamonds needed.  A little while later, they were all cut out:

What is it about making these stars I find so irresistible?  No matter what else I’ve got going on, it seems I always need a star project of some sort on which to work. I have the centres of three more of the stars ready and waiting as well.

When I wrote the post on Friday about the making of Chintz Circles, it made me realize that it’s rather fun to have a post like that about a quilt.  Which, of course, meant I had to figure out a way to store my photos a bit differently.  So I am, as of now, starting to store photos about each specific project in their own folder as I think I’d like to do recap posts like the one on Chintz Circles every time I finish a project.  Although at the rate I’ve been starting and not finishing, the next one may be far off!

We’re definitely into fall weather.  Lots of leaves have fallen and, as it was a bit breezy on the weekend, they’ve been drifting past the window.  This is Smudge’s favourite time for watching out the window.  We got this shot of him on the weekend.

Lester seemed to be trying to make sure we didn’t change the channel when we had the baseball games on — notice the paw firmly planted on the remote control!