WIP Tastic!

I finally have yet another WIP finish for Devoted Quilter's 100-day WIP challenge!

I'm not sure why this one took so long to finish once I got it quilted, other than work has been very busy, November weather has been extremely mild (meaning I can get some work done on the yard when I'm not working), and we've been saddled with medical checkups because I guess it's just that magical time of year for annuals and biannuals.

Now it's finally finished, and I think I now have three quilts finished for future grands, nieces, nephews, new neighborhood kids, whatever child quilt needs pop up unexpectedly. It's always fun to design a quilt for a specific child, but it's also nice to have a few ready for those last-minute gifts.

This quilt is entirely scrappy and wasn't on my official WIP list because I didn't have a child in mind to receive it and because I have plenty of other WIPs that really need the attention more than this one did. I think I've been procrastinating a bit on two particular WIPs, and this project gave me a break in list boredom that apparently had set in pretty dramatically.

Every time I got a few minutes I could have sat down to sew or quilt the last few months, I deliberately picked up something else to do, either to stay busy or because I dreaded having only a few minutes to work on a project that would take hours and possibly days to finish. The starting and stopping... I guess I needed something easy to finish. Something I could actually complete in just a few minutes.

Blocks in the quilt came from leftovers of ocean-themed quilts I've finished for grandkids, nieces, nephews and neighbors. Sashing came from Jelly Shelly leftovers. The binding was cut from one of the few stash ocean fabrics big enough to support an entire quilt binding.

I tried drawing edge-to-edge freehand fishies and water bubbles mostly to practice my pebble motion on the longarm. I am not entirely happy with most of the fishies, but I'm glad I practiced. I'm very thankful I didn't fall to the temptation to do wavy lines. Those are very easy for me on the domestic machine and the longarm and would have been finished much faster. I'm satisfied I challenged myself to do something outside my comfort zone. I'm hoping I can keep pushing myself and develop my skills so that I'm not afraid to try something new.

I also pulled out my mending pile and used scraps from my stash to patch four batik tears in my second favorite pair of homemade scrappy shorts (crafted from favorite scraps back in 2018). Now that the temperature is too cool to wear them until perhaps March or April...

Now these batik babies are good for another year or three.

Last winter I got this wild idea that the WIP hexie project that's been on my official WIP list for many years might be the perfect way to patch my breezy jeans so they would be warm enough to wear in cooler weather. I thought I'd be able to use my coordinating blue crochet thread to stitch patchwork patches into place sashiko-style. I had no idea whatsoever how difficult that was going to be. I never finished the first patch. Until now.

And now I'm rethinking the plan. I'd still like to patch up all the unwanted air-conditioning in both of my favorite jeans, and I'd still like to use that hexie booboo project that didn't really have a plan other than using up the gorgeous blue, green and purple batik fabric that had been one of my favorite dresses. I'd fallen through the weathered and unmaintained porch steps of our fixer upper home when we first bought it, and the dress was ripped beyond repair.

I still loved the undamaged portions of the dress, so I began stitching them into hexies whenever I could carry along a quilting project. I worked on them last year while Lizard was in the hospital and I unexpectedly was able to stay with him to minimize staff/patient contact during the height of the pandemic (although they are saying we may have more cases now in my state than we had last winter).

When the weather turned cold last year and my jeans couldn't keep my legs safe from the chill (and I was still working from home, so able to wear jeans every single day), I thought this would be the perfect use for those hexies. Using a big needle in order to pull the crochet thread through two layers of denim, batting (for softness right where I need it and extra padding for future hard wear) and the hexies was more of a bear than I can bear! I finally ended up zigzagging all the way around the knee hexie flower patch with my domestic sewing machine (which also was too much of a skunky stinker, thanks to denim bulk), so I don't think I want to repeat that process either.

I don't know yet how I will finish this, and I'm tempted to take out the leg seams so I can more easily finish the project by machine, but I am determined to wear these jeans again this winter. I will find a way!

Last but most definitely not least, I updated my snowflake pattern directory again, a necessary task that had escaped me since May 9, 2020, which probably was close to the time we realized Lizard was going to need another surgery. I understood why it had been so long, but I was spellbound by the number of flake patterns I published in the 18 months that followed, particularly the number of new patterns I created during that time, which required a total of five hours and two mugs of peppermint hot cocoa to finish. My directory now contains 666 snowflake pattern links.

I have written 762 snowflake patterns so far, published 690 of them (some are only in the eight charity fund-raising PDF booklets I've used to benefit the Colorado Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and/or the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Davis Phinney Foundation), and I still have a pile of about 30 snowflakes on my desk and in my book case that need patterns written. The directory is 70 Microsoft Word pages of html coding in 10-point arial font I have written on my own. (I think this last catch-up session added 13 of those pages... How's that for a lucky number?) And right this moment, my snowflake directory truly is the Number of the Beast! This was a beast of a project on which to catch up! I hope it counts as a WIP finish! Although I guess it's never truly finished as long as I keep designing more snowflakes. I am anxious to add next week's pattern to get rid of that ominous 666!

Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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