In Studio

Hey everyone!

I’ve had a slow start since our move. If it wasn’t problems with getting set up it was getting sick. Hubs and I had a bit of a stomach bug over the last week. Ugh! Nothing like that to put one down for a few days.

Now that we’re up and moving again I wanted to share a bit of what’s been going on in my studio and around the house.

Moving Brain

I have moving brain! It’s terrible!

I consider myself a rather organized person. Often I’m pretty OCD about it. But, you see, our move didn’t actually start as a move. We had packed up about half of our house because we were having new flooring installed.

Then, as life would have it, the owner of our house wanted to sell the house. The owner being my brother only posed the questions of why and where.

This started the little (BIG) thing that had been bugging us for some years. We didn’t want to live in Hawaii any longer. We wanted to be closer to our children and grandkids. We wanted to be home (Alaska). These issues along with my hubs cancer diagnosis, we were certain that an actual move was the direction we were going to go also. So, what was packed for flooring installation stayed packed and the rest went into boxes to be put into a container.

For whatever reason this caused my brain to forget where everything was. You know how it is with outta sight outta mind.

I’m sure I’ve bored you to death with that info so let’s move on.

The Latest Quilt

I’ve begun on my client quilts that weren’t started when we left Hawaii. I’ve been very fortunate to have clients that have been very happy with waiting for me to get where I could start on their quilts.

This one is a memory quilt. I don’t have super fun working with pieces of clothing, but the end result is always satisfying.

The white spaces are going to be the clothing. The rest I designed to go with the person the quilt is meant to commorate.

As you can see I’ve unpacked the clothing and sorted the pieces.

The first thing I like to do is check out each piece to decide on the best possible arrangement for the quilt design that has been agreed upon.

Next, I draw out the cut size of the block(s) to make sure favorite or focused areas of the clothing are going to work in the quilt design. At this point, I can cut generously around the block size and get the piece stabilized.

I’m sure you can see on the floor here that there are different types of stabilizers. I’ve used the Pellon 911FF nearly exclusively for years. I can’t say I’ve been terribly dissatisfied. It always felt a bit heavy to me, but it’s always worked well for solving the stretch problem in clothing. I keep the white and black on hand for just these types of quilts.

I recently discovered Quilt-Tee Fusible by The Gypsy Quilter. I do believe I’ve found my new exclusive stabilizer for memory quilts. This woven cotton fuses well to the clothing pieces and stabilizes perfectly WITHOUT adding weight to the pieces. I’m truly loving it!

Okay, I’m done with ranting about my new favorite quilty item!

After all the clothing pieces are cut out, I start cutting the other blocks for this quilt. This quilt was designed with both clothing and quilting cotton. This adds a bit of relief from the clothing fabric and freedom to just sew pieces of fabric together. I’ve cut all the additional pieces for the classic blocks along with the sashing and cornerstones. I even began putting together the star points for the Lone Star blocks.

Sashings, cornerstones and blocks for the ‘m’

Star block centers, pieces for the points and corners

The Star Points are flying geese and they go together pretty quickly.

I didn’t get quite finished with them before writing this post, so there will be more on them later!

Around the House

I’m not sure who, as a quilter, truly loves stopping for housework, but there it is. It has to get done. Saturdays are my day to do all the nasty around the house. This past week I had to give in to a temptation that’s been bugging me. PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES! I’ve been craving these for so long!

My ambition for cooking or baking was next to nothing while living in Hawaii. It’s just too hot all the time to turn on the oven for anything. Now that I’m back home the bug has hit me again! I’ve been looking for all those long-lost recipes that I used to make when my kids were little. This one has always been a great snack!

Since I lost many of my recipes when moving to Hawaii, I was in major internet search mode. I used this Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe this time. It’s a great recipe! But next time I’m considering this Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Then we had visitors again! I just love company!

We know better than to try and pet these guys, but they are fun to watch. It’s the time of year that moose are everywhere. They lumber along and lay down in the snow without a care in the world.

Well, that probably isn’t exactly true. They do have cares. It is winter after all.

With the weather the way it’s been with rain and then freezing and then snow on top or more melting, these poor guys are on the prowl for tree munching wherever they can get it. They are often on the roadsides and then they dodge into traffic and down goes a moose and the vehicle that cannot compete.

It’s something to always be watchful for. I much prefer when the moose come to our yard for their snacks. Less dangerous for everyone.

There it is, everyone! We, at the Albright home, have had a great few weeks (aside from the being sick part)! Thanks for reading and checking in! We’ll follow up more with this quilt next time and whatever else is going on around here!

Much Love,

Carolyn