February 21, 2023: Thread; Baskets; LC blocks; and Earthly Delights

Greetings dear readers! Although my thread has been fairly well organized all along, I was able to further improve things this past week as I worked on cleaning out the sewing room. I am much more of a “fabriholic” than a “thread-aholic”😊. Nevertheless, over 30 years, I managed to accumulate a fair amount. I added a third stack of drawers and this is where most of my thread for quilting resides, sorted by colors:

The only drawer not arranged by color has my collection of 30 weight Gutterman silk, my favorite thread for hand quilting. These drawers all contain 50, 60, and 80 weight threads and I mostly use them for hand and machine appliqué and hand piecing. I also have a box full of spools of 100 wt. silk thread for appliqué and a drawer full of all kinds of embroidery thread for embellishments. Finally, I have one of these wall units for larger spools of thread:

I used to match my machine piecing thread to the color of fabric I was using, but over the past several years I have almost totally transitioned to using neutrals. For my bobbin thread, I almost exclusively use Superior’s “The Bottom Line.” It is a thin 60 wt polyester and I keep 6 colors in stock: light, medium, and dark gray and brown:

These 6 work for almost any fabrics I’m using and each bobbin holds a lot so I don’t run out so often. For the top thread, my machine, a Bernini 440 QE, likes 50 wt. Aurifil or Mettler and I also use mostly neutrals there too. How do you organize and manage your thread use?

In the somewhat gloomy depths of winter, I needed a little more color in my life so I made a few more baskets for Ursula’s quilt. These colors definitely brightened my mood!😊:

That brings me to 80 baskets – 18 to go!!

Of course I continued to make some more log cabin blocks as well – up to 84 of those, 36 to go.

I don’t think I mentioned that my “fabric pull” for this quilt is about 400 different fabrics! I’m probably using about 250 of them – the ones I like the best🙂, of course – several times and the others maybe one or twice overall. I am loving mixing up these fabrics and one of the enjoyments of this quilt throughout its lifetime is going to be studying all the fabrics in it. Here’s a closer look at 4 blocks. The first one has pieces of a vintage indigo fabric I bought at the Tokyo International Quilt Festival in 2010:

In the next one, the pink fabric with the circles is a piece of kimono fabric I bought in Kyoto. The reddish brown fabric is a special type of woven Japanese fabric called (I think!) “tsumugi” – I bought a roll of several different colors from “Quilters Express to Japan” years ago.

This one has authentic indigo fabric and the darker green is a piece of Oakshott cotton that fits in:

Another indigo in this one, plus some lovely taupes, especially the dark brown on the edge:

I’m almost finished with the next block in Sweet Journeys!

I’ve also added more lines in the center medallion. It doesn’t look great yet, because there’s a lot still to be quilted in there, but it’s good to see progress!

Often when cleaning and purging one finds some hidden treasures. Look what I found:

I EPP’d these several years ago for a demonstration I did on English Paper Piecing and had them packed away – out of sight, out of mind. I really do like them a lot and I might want to make some more of these! They use Tula Pink fabrics and I have some more of those lying around, waiting for me…..😊. I think, however, I should wait till I finish my other hexagon star project!

Yesterday was 55 degrees out and whatever snow was on the ground had all melted. I decided to walk to the bog since the path can be treacherous when snow covered.

The moss was lovely and several shades of green:

The moisture in the bog was still ice:

This morning it snowed and things are white again! Such is the way with winter! Just think – spring is only one month away 🙂. Hope you are all enjoying some relaxing stitching.

Be kind, be grateful, and cherish each day, Gladi