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Well cheers.

We’ve kicked 2020 and a few other things down the road. I’m hopeful we are conjuring up a brighter new future.

This is where we focus on those small & big wins for our mental health.

Small win #1: It’s taken me weeks to write this post, but by the second of January the Christmas decorations were hidden in the basement for a proper pack up on a rainy day…of which Seattle’s forecast hasn’t been lacking and more on that later. The timing of taking down the seasonal wood print coincided with a practical need, so it’s been repurposed.

Small win #2: We’ve had an issue of the Boss Dog and the Roomba thinking the fireplace was an extension of the living room. So actually creating, not just dreaming of a decorative screen for our non-working fireplace was a win, especially since it’s a project that’s been on the list for years. We have plans of warming ourselves next to a modern free standing stove.

It’s all too easy to look around and see everything that needs to be done, so I try to keep in mind what it looked like when we moved in. It’s a good reminder that progress has been made.

I could not have cut it any closer with the amount of IKEA fabric I had for this project. Some plant curating will happen after Boss loses interest in attacking them.

King size win number 3: I’ve finished up my magic number based king size Christmas quilt and plan on sleeping under it all winter regardless of it’s theme.

With a puppy around couch time for hand sewing is regulated into smaller increments, and the studio is out of bounds entirely. So my daily small win was to get through one long strand of thread for sewing down binding. Perfect for my short attention span.

Small win #4: If you live in Seattle or close by I’ve listed two machines and a industrial snap press on Craigslist.

My Elgin by Brother. It works great and is so pretty. I always had dreams of displaying and using it somehow, but there just isn’t room. If you are a collector of machines your heart will throb for this beauty.

My Kam industrial snap press. If you’re into making bags or diaper covers this is your jam.

I’m letting go of my Featherweight. It has a new custom box, was serviced but not really used, so will need some oiling.

Small Win #5: So much cooking I could easily turn this into a food blog. Boss has made being in the studio a little more challenging, but the kitchen is full of the possibility that a treat might get dropped and regardless we gotta eat.

Winter = comfort food and I’m finding it hard to get off my Lucinda Scala Quinn kick. Her recipes speak to my Midwesterner comfort food/ Irish/German roots.

The kick started with pot pies from her Mad Hungry Feeding Men &
Boys cookbook (affiliate link). I’ve made both the chicken and the spinach feta with a cream cheese crust with amazing success. I sure Ford would be proud with me stocking the freezer in an industrial mass production manner.

The tamale pie, sesame chicken, mac and cheese from her Mad Hungry Cravings, and the shepard’s pie from Mad Hungry Family are in the full menu rotation now as well.

My other new obsession is a cauliflower recipe I came across in the New York Times. Bonus is I generally have the pancetta, olives and parmesan stocked. I wasn’t completely in love with it until I topped it with an egg and sautéed chard = perfection.

I’ve mentioned Casella’s book, A World of Baking before when sharing the sour cream lemon pie from it. Twenty some years ago in Mexico, before heading out on our weekly shopping trip to the nearest large mercado in Zihuatanejo I would look through this lone book for inspiration. The pound cake was a simple pick for its accessible ingredients and compatibility with the local mangoes and a pile of whip cream. I still make it to this day and eat it straight up or with some seasonal fruit.

I’m not sure what’s up with the individual food servings I’ve been into, perhaps dreams of entertaining with a cocktail party, but there sure are a lot of good recipes packaged this way. I’m looking forward to trying the cheddar tapenade rolls in The Messy Baker (affiliate link), but I started with these delicious chicken, corn and cilantro empanadas. They didn’t last through to the next day.

Let’s end with Big Win #6: Female Vice President=Boss Lady.

Well done America, now go celebrate your wins.

https://www.sewkatiedid.com/2021/01/21/17164/

Well the daily dose of sparkly bright exposure I like for photos is getting a little harder to come by. The days are getting shorter and those shadows longer, so snapping the right ones takes a little more planning. I find looking through photos an uplifting visual reminder that there is progress, I’m doing stuff daily, even if it doesn’t feel like much, and that I’m still curious about new things. I’ve got this.

So now, I’m going to photo bomb you;)

The theme of what I’m up to has remained constant though I have somewhat turned my back on the garden.

I basted my Star Player quilt with one pin to spare while watching the hawks game a few weeks ago and am still working out some sample quilts for a pattern.

Adaptability to our new world continues. Remember my little Livudio? ‘Livudio’ was my family’s portmanteau for the living room/studio shared space in our little old house. Jefe’s in the studio/office full time, so I decided to try out the dinudio (dining room/studio). I’ll not be missing the dusting involved in the aftermath of quilting this.

I sewed up some masks for my favorite cashiers and a birthday girl.

I plan to get outside somehow to celebrate with the full blue moon. I’ve been reading and visualizing what Halloween will be like this year, but regardless, as I showed you in the last post the house is ready.

Since I have no excuse I’ve been walking almost daily. Mostly alone, but I’ve got Jefe and a few friends in the weekly rotation. We mask up, catch up and explore West Seattle. I love looking at what people do with their houses and gardens, especially the Halloween decor, which seems to be full throttle this year.

Saturday was a celebratory day. We took a long walk up to Highpoint so that we could drop our ballots.

I love the creativity of the signs we’ve been seeing and limited myself to just one.

We’ve got garage doors at the front, back and side of our garage that we can open up, so we moved the lawn furniture in for Sunday’s games to get out of the pouring rain. Who ever thought a Snuggly was a bad idea might be reconsidering.

I got myself a couple little heaters too.

Quilts are great, but nothing beats a Pendleton in cold weather, though there was talk of a sleeping bags 😉

It’s a mutual relationship, I fuss over my houseplants and they return the love to me with an abundance of blooms. I’m not sure about the mushroom and succulent sharing a pot, but it might be the best example of coexisting regardless of your differences that I’ve seen in 2020.

A week of democracy and apple pie, or maybe rhubarb and sweet potato sausage hand pies because that’s what you have in the freezer. 9pm didn’t make for good photos of the banana cream pie.

I’ve finally got a couple of things up on craigslist. My featherweight needs a local home, listing here. I bought it for retreats and always end up taking my huge Juki. It’s been serviced and rarely used, but will need to be oiled. It has a brand new locking case that looks like an original.

The antique sewing case was a hand me down that takes up space in the basement. It also needs a home. SOLD. I’ll be listing an industrial snap press and vintage powder coated turquoise machine too.

Looking like the rain should clear here for the weekend, so I’m going to try to psyche myself up for some gardening. Sounds like a good opportunity for some photos!

I’ve got this, you’ve got this, we’ve got this 😉

xoxo Katie

I’m officially burned-out on gardening, the kitchen was torn apart limiting the cooking (thank god), and I couldn’t face cleaning the basement. Just like the week before, I found myself spending most of last week in the studio. The summer light, windows open, and every wall full of inspiration has been good for my mood and spirit. All of us need a padded room, especially now.

So that my students have space I usually limit myself to one of the studio’s design walls, but being that I’m solo I’m taking over. An opportunity to focus on piecing the ridiculous amount of long forgotten quilt tops (and maybe start a few new ones;).

Since we weren’t going to be road tripping anytime soon I saw no need in getting to the binding for a hand-quilting project. I was stopping at the piecing or basting phase. Of course this also gives me time to overthink the quilting design;)

But I came to realize we’ve been spending a great deal of time in our back yard socially physically distancing with a few friends and family so my thought process shifted back to hand binding as another opportunity to get some work in on these visits and keep my hands busy.

So I thought I’d show you the stack.

Two contenders for quilting and binding are quilts I finished at a 2019 retreat with my Camp Run Amuck group. My first ‘world turned upside down’ finish was their triplet sister quilt here. All made with the same improvisational strip-piecing technique.

I love both of these way more than the first in the series. Their quilting will be an easy straight line grid of some sort.

After quilting my king size Hearts Value Quilt, I said I’d never do it again, but I’ve talked myself into quilting my Magic Numbers Star quilt myself. That one will get vertical lines.

Then there’s this problem child, I’m sick of trying to figure out what I need to change, so I’m just going to quilt it. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the perfect picnic quilt, the kind you feel are smiling at you when you pull them from the car:)

What else?… awful timing with the warm weather, but I seem to have mastered Hot and Sour Soup. To get some practice Roan drives me around in circles in parking lots, to which we joke is an analogy for our current lives. All but one of my indoor plants have new soil, the kitchen has a new subfloor and walls again, I’ve gotten back into an exercise routine and 100% remote learning was announced…

I’m trying real hard to fight Anna Kendrick’s sentiment, “I guess I’ll never be able to lie to myself again about all the shit I would do if I just had the time,” but also trying to be grateful that for once all I have is time, there’s no hurry.

I hope to show you some progress next week on the stack. Take care Peeps.

xoxo Katie