Thursday, June 30, 2022

June Wrap-Up

 

I have a finish! 

My One Monthly Goal was to quilt this runner. This is also one of my PHD in 2022 finishes.

The Country Lanes Table Runner is a project from Quilter's Academy Freshman Year that I started in December 2010. This one taught me about creating the angled border and then binding angles that are not a perfect 45 degrees. I still have some work to do on that. Once I decided to do an allover meander in the body of the runner, the quilting went quickly.  There are feathers in the border.

This thing is huge. Photo for scale - I'm almost 5'6". Once I added borders it became more huge. It drapes nicely over each side of our table, and I predict it will still drape nicely even when the table is fully extended. It could also serve as a nice bed runner.  Batting is frankenbattinged from offcuts of other projects and the backing came out of my stash and was chosen by virtue of being long enough that I didn't have to piece it.

New Starts

I finished the blocks for the Summer Blooms Mystery Table Runner. Layouts were revealed today and they don't thrill me. However, I love the layout for the lap quilt - so I'm currently cutting fabric to move from 8 to 25 blocks. No pictures until next week when the mystery is finished.


I also started and nearly finished a cute little table runner with some improvisational piecing.

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One Monthly Goal - June Finishes

PHD in 2022 June Report




Saturday, June 18, 2022

Summer Blooms Mystery

 

Annette Ornelas is hosting a mystery! Summer Blooms started on June 7 and is set to run through June 28. After a very slow start for me - much of it involving not being able to choose fabric from my stash, I finally set out to work on it.  The first four clues have been revealed.


I decided on the Table Runner versus committing myself to another lap quilt. Especially as I have the Penguin Parade in progress. First step was to cut/subcut the strips for each clue.


Last night, with the fourth clue in hand, I pressed the folded strips and triangles while on a zoom call with family. This will hopefully mean that I can fly through and finish the piecing for the first four clues with ease today!

I also need to clear Molly's table so that I can start quilting a few of the sandwiched projects and check them off my list.


Nothing blue today - but I am set to enjoy sewing after a morning spent defying puppies. Abby the Blue Heeler decided to find a new way to get from the yard to the screen porch (so perhaps a nod to blue). Eventually this will be allowable - but as she has proven - 20-30 year old screen is weak - so we need to rescreen before letting her have the run of the porch.


This dog is a perpetual motion machine - so a rare period of lap time when she was actually still for a few moments.


Savvy is hopefully entered in three Rally trials this summer while I'm in Florida. Sera is staying home with Mike, so she gets a break and will start trialing again in September/October. Savvy, at 6.5 months, is still growing! He is about 30 pounds now and finally looks like he is catching up with his feet. He is about as long as Abby and can more than hold his own when they wrestle.

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Saturday, June 11, 2022

Jumping through June

 

I opened the month with my penguin blocks for Penguins on Parade by Annette Ornelas. I'm still having lots of fun putting these together. I now have six of the nine small ones done. I'm to a point where I need to decide on the colors for the three big penguins.

I like doing these two at a time, and pulling saturated colors with good contrast with the midnight blue background.  


I made blue blocks for the 100 modern quilt blocks last year, so I probably won't do a full six this month. Four of the chapters have 15 blocks, two have 20. I will likely pull a few from the 2 twenty block chapters as my current plan has 15 sets of six (one from each chapter) and then there will be 10 left over to fill in at some point - or I could now start doing 7 blocks/month.

Corgi Update


Yesterday Mike and I took Sera and Savvy to the Winston Salem Dog Training Club to participate in Rally Trials sponsored by the Tarheel Golden Retriever Club. As you can see, Savvy is completely relaxed. I took this after his class while we waited for Sera's second run. Both dogs were total rockstars.

Serendipity is now CH Triple H A Perfect Jewell RA - she completed her Rally Advanced title in style with a score of 96. I am finally getting out of her way and helping her earn the types of scores she is capable of earning. Her second run was late in the day and she was bored by then and likely irritated by the puppy. I didn't communicate as well with her so she scored a 91 in the bonus leg as we stayed in Rally Advanced rather than moving up to Excellent. We are still working on refining Stand and Stay. As an aside, I appear to have broken my show dog - in conformation most handlers do not want the dog to sit - Miss Sera now offers sit and down before standing. We will spend the summer refining some of the signs/commands and tightening up her heeling.

Savvy was a little rockstar. In his first trial at 6 months and 6 days he scored 99 points out of 100, earning his first Rally Novice leg. I lost a point for keeping a tight lead on the Down - Walk Around (dog stays in a down while the handler walks around the dog). Up until Wednesday, Savvy interpreted this sign as Down Follow Mom Around - which would have been a 10 point deduction.  There were 2 dogs who scored 100, so we placed third in the class. I checked times (the tie breaker) and we still would have been 3rd based on time. I have been taking things slowly and stopping to reinforce good stays when both Corgis have done so. In time, we should be able to cut a few seconds off our times.

I'm very proud of both Corgis.

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Tuesday, June 7, 2022

June's Goals

 Summer is upon us. As Gus is no longer in school, it doesn't have quite the ring it used to.  Now we have more flexibility to travel - though we do have to work around Mike's teaching schedule.

Quilty Goals

My One Monthly Goal for June is to quilt the Country Lanes Table Runner. This is one of the pieces that I applied borders to in May. I found a length of fabric long enough that I didn't have to sew anything together to make a backing - though I did have to frankenbatting the batting. This is a long runner, made longer by the triangular ends which I added a bit of the border fabric to in order to avoid chopping up the horse blocks.  It is sandwiched and ready to go - I just need to decide on a quilting plan.  If I can get the momentum going, Sandy Breeze and Coastal Pearls are also sandwiched and ready to quilt!

Corgi Goals


Earlier this month, Savvy and I went to his first conformation show in Concord. I entered him in the 4 to Under 6 months class to give the two of us ring experience with no pressure. He did all that I could ask of him and was completely chill, even splooting next to the ring while we waited our turn.

Later this week, we have a Rally trial where Sera and I are hoping to finish her RA (Rally Advanced) title and Savvy will enter his first RN (Rally Novice) trial. Then we will spend the rest of the summer perfecting so tasks so that Sera can move on to Rally Excellent and later Rally Masters. I joke that I broke my show dog - she prefers not to STAND. Actually she doesn't see much use in changing position - Sit to Stand to Sit to Down to Stand...  Courses that are primarily heeling are much more fun for her.

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