Design Wall Monday - Feb 8

My design wall doesn't have a lot going on this week.   Top left is a block for this month's Block Lotto.  Liberated quilting is the theme for the year, and this month was liberated endearments.   Just one block from me this time, but it's on my wall so that I don't lose it before the winner is drawn.

Under that are the celtic quilts you saw last week - still waiting for a plan, although I do have a thought for the blue one.  And on the right are my block lotto blocks from January.  I was one of the 6 winners!  So my blocks are hanging out, waiting for friends and inspiration.

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls this week.

Stash Report - Feb 7

This is my 100th post.  Wow!  It's hard to believe I've had that much to say about my quilting.

It's been a slow week, as I knew it would be.  A busy week at work, including a course all day on Saturday, didn't leave a lot of time for quilting this week.  But I did manage to get the borders on my son's quilt.  And I finished quilting and prepared the binding for the baby quilt I was working on. 

The picture isn't the greatest, with the sunlight behind it.  I had this all done, and then had to take the borders off because I had mis-measured.  Actually, what I did is calculate the borders based on the size the quilt should be.  But my 1/4 inch seams are never perfect, and the quilt was about 1/2 inch narrower and 3/4 inch shorter than expected - so my borders were too long.  Foolishly, I thought I could ease them to fit - but because the quilt is entirely on the bias, the quilt stretched and when I hung it up the borders waved.

So, after much debate about whether I could stretch the whole thing while quilting, I finally took off the borders and recalculated.  There's now a narrow gold border tucked in before the dark brown one.  I like the effect, and it wasn't that difficult once I buckled down to do it.

With all of that, I did manage to use a small bit of stash this week.

1/2 yard out
zero in

Total in this year - 37 yards
Total out this year - 37 3/4 yards

Net this year: 3/4 yard OUT

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have been up to.

Accountability challenge

It's DONE!! OK, those who read my blog regularly already know, but I finished the Hawaiian quilt this week.  Yippee!  In addition to that, I did a lot of work on my son's quilt (it just needs one more border row), and started quilting on one of the baby quilts that I have waiting for attention.

I also pulled out a few orphan blocks that I will be working on.   I didn't consider them UFO's when I made the list below, because I didn't have a plan for them.   They were just a bunch of single blocks.  That's my story, anway.  They had a plan once upon a time, but I quickly reazlied that it wasn't going to work and put them away.  Now they have a plan again, so I've added them to the list below.    Do you think maybe I subconciously did that just so that I don't have to face the dragon next?

This week isn't looking good for progress.  I have a dance lesson Thursday, a course on Saturday,  and meetings Mon/Tues night.  So I'll keep my goals simple and aim to finish quilting the current baby quilt, and add the borders to Grant's quilt (which has also been added to the list below).


Here's the UFO list:
- a Hawaiian wall-quilt that's been on my frame since 2005 (Just needs binding now)
- a picture quilt from my 2005 trip to Mexico
- a set of 3 wall quilts (need final embroidery and to be hung) (started in 2008)
- a stained glass dragon (started in 2009)
- tumbling blocks (started in 2009)
- reversible quilt (started in 2009)
- kaleidoscope quilt (started in 2009)
- bargello quilt (Sept 2009)
- Star mystery quilt (needs quilting binding) (Sept 2009)
- Morning Splash (needs quilting binding) (Nov 2009)
- yellow celtic square (needs quilting)
- red celtic square
- blue celtic square
- Grant's quilt (Jan 2010)

Pop over to Bari's blog to see how accountable other quilters have been this week.

Design Wall Monday - Feb 1

My design wall doesn't reflect all the work I did this week. That's because my son's quilt is almost done, and hence no longer hanging on the wall.  The strip you see on the right side of the picture is one strip of the piano key border for his quilt.  And here's the quilt, before it was trimmed for the borders.  The picture is sideways - sorry about that.

The other two blocks on the design wall are from a few years ago.  I was cleaning up my scraps buckets (3 bins into which I randomly toss all pieces of fabric, from yardage down to tiny strips).   As I cleaned up up, I came across these.  I took a celtic quilting class way back - that's the blue square.  At the time, I had a grand plan - to make a number of these blocks and turn them into a large quilt.  I made the blue & red pictured here, plus a yellow one.  And then I ran out of steam when I realized that they would never go together into a quilt like I was imagining, with the colour choices I had made.  

So, they are all going to become quilties for the children's hospital.   Yellow is ready for quilting (and thus not on the wall when this picture was taken).   Now I just have to figure out a setting for these 2.

As for the cleaning - I made good progress.   Tossed a bunch of too-tiny-to-use bits, folded all my yardage, and sorted most of the rest.  Now instead of 3 bins of stuff I can't find, I have 2 almost-neat bins and 1 pile of stufff I haven't sorted yet.  Here's one of them (purple/blue/red).  The green/yellow/brown piles are in the second bin.

Update: by "toss", I mean that I put all the unusable bits into a cat pillow, as described in my post a couple of days ago

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls this week.

Stash Report - Jan 31

Wow, the last day of January.  Where did this month go?  I know where this last week went - it was spent sewing.  I got lots done, and made great dents in my stash.

First, I made some pillow cases for KonKerr Cancer.  Quick and easy, and a great way to use of some of the kiddie prints that I have.  They are just too bold for using in quilts (except maybe as backings), but they made wonderful bright pillow cases when paired up with some of my bright tone-on-tone fabrics.

They were a lot of fun, and quick to make, so I made some more.

I also worked hard on my son's quilt this week.  I just have the final border to finish to complete that top.  No pictures yet, though.

Totals for this week:
Out:
8 yards - pillow cases
.75 yard - lotto blocks
1 3/4 yard - baby quilt
2 1/4 yard - Grant's quilt
1/2 yard - cat pillow
Total out this week:  13 1/4 yards

In this week - nothing.  Once again I've managed to stay out of quilt shops this week.

Total in this year - 37 yards
Total out this year - 37 1/4 yards

Net this year: 1/4 yard OUT
Yay!! I've made it into the black this week.  And I've only cut the fabric for one of the 2 quilts I bought for earlier this month.

Check out Judy's blog to see how other quilter's have done this week.

Bits and pieces

I read on another blog recently, how the author made cat pillows from the scraps created at her cutting table.  It sounded like a great idea, so I tried it myself.  I cut a piece of fabric about 15" x 40", and stitched 2 sides closed.  Then I tossed in all the scraps from my cutting table.

The pillow filled up pretty quickly, and it made me feel a lot less guilty about throwing out those little pieces that I'm sure someone could make into a cute little quilt.  I, however, am not a miniature quilter, so when I save them they just make me feel bad for not using them.  And they clutter up my scrap boxes so that I can't get to anything.  Here's the first pillow - already in use.

Of course, this is the cat who will sleep just about anywhere ... including inside a backpack filled with books.  So it's hard to say if that means much.

Happy Dance!

It's done!!!  I'm doing a happy dance, because I am so glad to have this quilt finished.  5 years is way too long - especially for a UFO that's out in plain sight, and not hiding quietly in a box somewhere. 

This poor little quilt sat out for so long, the colour in the background faded from off-white to white.  I was going to do a skinny binding with the same fabric as the background, but the colour difference in the quilt and the leftover fabric was really noticeable.   Oddly, the dark blue hardly faded at all, and fortunately I had some leftover.

I decided, as I hunted for a suitable binding, that I had looked at this quilt long enough, and rather than being a wall hanging, it is going to be donated to the local children's hospital.   They want quilts about 24" square, so I added a wide binding to bring this one up to size.  That was an adventure in itself.  I've only ever done 1/4" bindings in the past.   Now I understand better the logic and math behind the mitred corners on continuous binding.  And I only had to rip it out once to get it right.

It's done.  I am happy with the outcome.  But I do wish it hadn't taken me so long to finish that I was sick of seeing it around.  Maybe I'll try another one - and endeavor to finish it in a reasonable length of time.

I've entered this quilt in the Weekly Themed quilt contest (two colour quilts, this week) at quiltinggallery.com.  On Friday voting will open for this week - please drop by to check out the quilts.   And vote for me :)

Edited to add link.  Go here to vote, between now and Sunday Jan 31!