I Can’t Help It

Every year we have a November and in that November we have Thanksgiving! I love Thanksgiving and the traditions that go along with them! I love thinking and planning the food, what I need to get at the grocery store and when to start what. It’s a process!

When my hubs and I lived in Anchorage, AK (where I was born and grew up), we had Thanksgiving with our church family. We women would plan who would bring what. Some members had families they would spend the day with, but almost all would stop in at some point and join for fellowship and food.

After a couple of years, there were some standards that everyone picked and brought. Mine was half a 22 or 23-pound turkey with stuffing, spinach continental times 2 9x13 pans, Cottage Cheese Salad, and Cherry Cheese Pie in a 9x13 pan. (I’ll work on setting up these recipes on my website and I’ll let you know where they’re available.) P.S. who doesn’t need new recipes to try out?

When we lived in Hawaii, the church family there also got together with others that didn’t have other families to be with. I didn’t fix nearly as much food, but our circumstances were very different. The hardest part was being far away from our Daughter and Grandson. Some years we could afford to bring them to visit. Some years we couldn’t. It wasn’t the fun it had been in the past.

Well, now we live in Alaska again, but we still aren’t close to the kids. They live about 3 hours away from us and the road is difficult in the winter, to say the least. It’s a beautiful drive through the pass and if it hasn’t snowed in a little while, then the roads are clear. Just hope it doesn’t snow while driving. Then it’s a whole different story of stress! So, it’s entirely possible Hubs and I will have Thanksgiving alone this year.

Let’s hope not! I’m going to start making phone calls and sending texts to see who wants to come to dinner!

It’s not Thanksgiving, yet!

I have another client quilt in progress.

Let’s see…we have an island (above), puffin birds, a dog, a lobster…

And a Flag

As you can see, I’ve been busy prepping applique and paper piecing designs for this quilt. This first part is rather boring.

For applique, I like to have the bits and pieces all printed and ready for transferring onto a stabilizer. I use Flexifuse for stabilizing onto fabric. This is great stuff! It sticks SO well and yet it’s light and easy to sew through.

Along with the bits and pieces, I like to have a full-size picture of what I’m doing. That requires more than one piece of paper and obviously…tape. I like to cut along the fine dotted lines along the edge and tape the sections together. This gives me a great view of what I’m to do. I also tend to transfer significant letters or numbers for matching purposes.

The next step is transferring all those little bits and pieces to the stabilizer. I have a nifty light board from CutterPillar. I’m not sure how I ever lived without this light board. But I did and here I am using it again. It’s had A LOT of use lately. Thankfully, it’s rechargeable, so there are no batteries, no cord connected to an outlet, and no lamps to replace!

Again, this is a tedious process. Necessary, though. One little tip I’d like to express at this point…

When tracing the bits and pieces, use a light hand. The underside of the stabilizer is bumpy and it can cause a lot of weird wobbly lines. I’m the one that has to stop and erase constantly in order to have straight lines. Not sure why, OCD in play again, I guess.

Once all the bits and pieces have been transferred, they can then be set onto the fabric. Always, always, always, remember to fuse to the back of the fabric.

I like to trim tight around the pieces. Not to the precise line. Always leave some space. Too much excess will create wasted fabric. You can’t get the stabilizer off and that section ends up in the garbage. I’m not big on wasting fabric.

Well, this is what I’ve accomplished so far this week. Today, I’ll be cutting out all the bits and pieces and getting them lined up for pressing onto the background.

I’ll tell you about that more later.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s process into this new client quilt.

Please, share and take a look at my social media. And don’t forget to leave a comment below!

Much love,

Carolyn