Design Wall Monday - Mar 29

It's Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times.  I finally figured out how the star blocks went together, and have a couple of those on my design wall.  Apparently my brain went on vacation during the calculations for this quilt, because I was completely out to lunch on the size and number of blocks that would result from my fabric roll.  Oh well, more designing on-the-fly.

The rest of my design wall is still taken up by March's block lotto.  The tic-tac-toe quilt is now off my wall and waiting for basting.

Stash Report - Mar 28

I've been using up scraps this week. 1/4 yard for some block lotto blocks (can't show them, because they're for next month's block).  1/4 yard for some more blocks from the March lotto.  Plus some stash yardage busted - 1.5 yard for the tic-tac-toe quilt I have on my design wall from a couple days back.   So 2 yards out sounds pretty good.

However, the shop hop is still going on, and I went out to a few more stores on the list this weekend.   2 yards of backing fabric came home, for Grant's quilt (that won't stay around long, fortunately).  Plus 3 1/4 yards for something - not sure yet what, but it's gonna be bright!

So that's 2 yards out, 5.25 yards in this week.

Total in this year - 49.25 yards
Total out this year - 51.5 yards

Net this year: 2.25 yards out

Still net positive!  And my scrap bins are much lighter than they were, after the past couple weeks.   Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have been up to.

New Look

I played around a bit with the blog layout today.  Blogger's put up a bunch of new options for us.  Not sure if this will "stick" - have to see how I like it after a couple of days.

tic tac toe

Tic-tac-toe squares floating in space.  I think this will make a cute quilt for a little boy.   This was inspired by Kristin's post on the block lotto blog.   I agree with those who liked the white, too - but I have a set of squares and a plan for a white setting, and I wanted to do something different here.

Design Wall Monday - Mar 22

This is what's on my design wall today. Some more wonky tic-tac-toe blocks.  This time in more muted colours.  Not sure how I'll set these - other than, that it will be different than the last set.  My goal is a different setting for each quilt.

For now, they are stuck on the wall at all angles, as I contemplate a simple wonky setting in white.  But I think not, as I have another set that I've already planned this for.


Also on my wall are my 5 pairs of blocks for the March block lotto.  I guess they'll be up there another week, until the winner is drawn for this month.

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

Stash Report - Mar 21

I busted stash for 2 quilts this week.
1.5 yards to finish the blue celtic quilt, and 1.5 yards for the top on "Rainbow Dreams".  I'm now debating borders on this, but I think I'm leaning towards no borders and bind it in a light cream.

As mentioned yesterday, I have 1 fabric purchase this week.   The bundle of 2.5" strips comes to about 2 yards of fabric.  I have an idea for this fabric, but it involves a quilt I saw about 3 years ago, and I'm having a heck of a time figuring out what the proportions of the blocks were.  It was a lovely blue quilt (scrappy) with yellow star accents made by replacing 1 of 6 strips in each (?) block with a yellow strip.  The question mark is because there might have been fewer stars than 1 for every block.

I think the blocks looked something like this, but the strips all being the same size seems wrong.  I think they were graduated lengths, but I can't figure out proportions that make sense.   Anyone ever seen a quilt like this, or have suggestions for the strip lengths?


My stash report for this week:

3 yards out
2 yards in

Total in this year - 44 yards
Total out this year - 49 1/2 yards

Net this year: 5 1/2 yards out



Check out Judy's blog for more stash reports.

National Quilting Day

I'm told that today is National Quilting Day - in the US, anyway.  Not sure about here in Canada, but I'll celebrate with my American neighbors anytime.  How did I spend this quilting day?  Not quilting - instead I went on a shop-hop with a friend.  Six shops visited, several goodies purchased, and a pretty good poker hand, too.

I picked up some bobbins and a bobbin holder, and some extra basting pins.   I got got a blue chalk marker - I have one in white which I love, but it doesn't show up (of course) on the light fabrics, so this should solve that problem.  They fabric is a "moda scrap strips" bundle 2.5" strips of 30 different fabrics.  Now all I need is a project.

I also have a quilt in this week's "Weekly Themed Quilt Contest over at Quilting Gallery (quiltinggallery.com).  Pop over and have a look, and vote here (preferably for my quilt, "Green Daze"  :)

Rainbow Dreams

After all your wonderful comments on the start of my purple quilt, I decided I wanted a least a few more colour options in there.  So, I tried adding red and blue to the mix.  Not bad, but really not my colour scheme.  I like things a bit brighter than this.

So, I went ahead with some more colourful blocks, heading for Rainbow Dreams.  Thsi is way oustide my comfort zone.  Scrappy, multi-coloured, no "focus" fabric.  But, it doesn't make me want to run screaming in the other direction.


I've tweaked the block placement a bit since this picture, but I'm leaning towards this quilt being the final answer.

Donation Time!

Last week I said I wanted to finish a number of quilties, to take to my guild meeting this week.  I wasn't sure how realistic my list was, but I was going to give it my best shot.   Apparently I had more time to quilt than I thought, because I finished all but one of my projects.

yellow celtic hearts - Done
red celtic hearts - Done
blue celtic hearts - Done
tic-tac-toe - Done
sleight of hand - not done

I chose not to try to quilt Sleight of Hand this week, because I wanted some more time to admire it :) and to decide how I was going to quilt it.

So, in the pile above are my 4 finishes from this week, plus 2 earlier ones (that poor little Hawaiian quilt that waited so long, and a quiltie from last year, made from some surplus blocks from my sister's quilt).   All of these will go to guild with me tonight, to be donated to the children's hospital.

And just because I haven't shown it yet, here's the blue celtic square, all complete and ready to go.


Check out Baris's blog for this week's Accountability reports.

Design Wall Monday - Mar 15

It's Design Wall Monday again already.  I have no idea where this weekend went, and I don't think that's just because of the "spring ahead" on the clocks Sunday morning.

I'm not too sure about my design wall this week.  I started a small quilt based on Judy's "Peaches and Dreams".   But I'm having second thoughts.  Now that I see them on the wall, my purples are divided into 2 distinct colour families - some are very blue, others are very red.  And I don't think they are playing nicely together.

If I split them up, the individual blocks are better, but I don't think I can put the two of them into the same quilt.

So, do I 1) give up, 2) make 2 quilts, or 3) soldier on and hope it goes to a colour-blind child?  (Just kidding on that last one.)   Or maybe I throw some more colours into the mix and see what Rainbow Dreams look like.


What do you think?

2 More Finishes

I've been busy today.   Got to go out for lunch and some quilt-shop browsing with a friend.   I managed to leave without buying anything new (except for some new needles), so nothing added to my stash this week.

But around the outing, I managed to get a lot of quilting done.   Two quilties finished, ready to send to the children's hospital at the guild meeting on Wednesday.

Hearts and Nines is the first one.   My red celtic square, surround by hearts and nine-patches.  The quilting on this one is a meander with hearts interleaved.   In the middle, I echo-quilted around the celtic knot.

The second one is my tic-tac-toe quilt, made from blocks I won in the block lotto.  I posted about the set of blocks here - there are 48 in total, and I pulled 9 of them for this quilt.  The rest will make a few more quilts over the next few months.

These are really fun, bright blocks, so I wanted a fun setting for them.  I think this will make a nice quilt for a child.


For this quilt, I echo-quilted in each of the small blocks, following the lines of the bright tic-tac-toe.  The photo on the right shows the back of one of the blocks (click on the photos to enlarage).

The blocks in this quilt came from 8 different quilters, so I included each of their first names and locations on the label.

Both of these quilts will be donated to the local children's hospital.


And since it's Sunday, here's my stash report for this week.  Nothing in, and nothing out (all the bindings for the above quilts were already counted).

Total in this year - 42 yards
Total out this year - 46 1/2 yards

Net this year: 4 1/2 yards out

Check out Judy's blog for other stash reports today.

One Down ...

Several to go.  But, the first of my quilties is finished.  My goal is to get as many of these done before my guild meeting Wednesday night as a I can.   This one - my yellow celtic square - still needs a name and a label, but other than that it is complete.  I'll label it tomorrow.

Here's a close up of some of the quilting. Outline stitching around the celtic knot, and then a meander over the rest of the quilt.


I've also finished the quilting on one other quilt, so I'll start the binding on that tomorrow, and hopefully start quilting the red celtic heart.

Goals

I've been unhappy lately because I haven't been able to get into my sewing room as much as I would like.  A full time job, which has been requiring 2 evenings of my time every week in addition to the regular 40 hours, has taken a big chunk out of both my time and energy.  This isn't likely to change anytime soon, so I hope to adjust my expectations and goals to match reality.  Then I should be less annoyed when I don't get time in the sewing room during the week.

So, weekends will be my sewing time - some portion of them, anyway.  Have to allocate time to spend with the kiddos, too.  It won't be much longer before they don't want anything to do with Mom and have their own plans for the whole weekend.  This means that Wednesday accountability reports won't fit nicely into my schedule - I don't get a chance to crunch on Monday/Tuesday to make sure I have something to report :)

This past week was a good example. No sewing at all until the weekend. And then, as I posted earlier, I "unexpectedly started a new project".  Some might wonder how that can happen, but I suspect most quilters can understand.  That quilt is now ready for quilting - but that means there wasn't a whole lot of progress on the rest of my UFOs this week.

Next week is my guild meeting.  I have a number of quilties in progress, and I'd love to have them ready to take with me, so they can be donated this month.  So, I will see how many of those I can finish up this weekend.   Let's see if I can focus on quilting, rather than piecing, for a week.  My goals:

yellow celtic hearts (just needs binding)
red celtic hearts (needs quilting)
blue celtic hearts (a stretch - this top isn't done yet, so it's the bottom of the priority list)
tic-tac-toe (needs quilting)
sleight of hand (needs quilting)

Hop over to Bari's blog to see how other quilters are doing with their challenges.

Design Wall Monday - Mar 8

I did not have a lot of time to sew last week, but I tried to make up for it yesterday.  On the left of the wall is my finished "sleight of hand" flimsy.   The card trick blocks were simple and very quick to make.  The setting blocks however, were much more detailed and seemed to take me forever.   However, it is complete, and made entirely from stash.

Beside that are 3 pairs of blocks for this month's block lotto.  They were fun to make, but more work than I expected.  And I certainly made a mess of my sewing room creating them, as I had most of my blue, green and purple scraps strewn across my cutting table before I was done.

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

Since I missed Stash Report Sunday, I'll include that here too.

I used 3.25 yards this week, for the 2 projects above, and nothing came in.  Not a bad week for the stash.

Total in this year - 42 yards
Total out this year - 46 1/2 yards

Net this year: 4 1/2 yards OUT

Design Wall Monday - Mar 1

My design wall is busy today.  Unexpectedly, I started a new project on the weekend.  I was inspired to make some "card trick" blocks (a non-triangle version - I posted about those here).  Having done that, of course I had to figure out how I was going to set them, so the card tricks and setting blocks are on the upper right of my design wall.

For some reason, I made 8 card tricks.  That was a silly number, because what size quilt can you make from 8 blocks?  Too long and skinny if it's 2x4.  So, I need to make 1 more block to round out this baby quilt.  Then I'll make the setting triangles.

Top left is my block lotto for February.  I'll be packing that up today and sending it off to the lucky winner.  And on the lower left is a bit more progress on my celtic hearts quilt.  Just the final border to add and the top is done.

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

Sleight of Hand

Judy was making card tricks, and posted about how easy they are.   All those half- and quarter-square triangles - she has a different definition of easy than I do :)   But her post reminded me that I had seen a card trick block made entirely from squares years ago, and I'd always wanted to try it.

So, I sat down and whipped up 8 blocks, during the second period of the Canada-US hockey game today.  If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see the individual pieces of each block.  Not a single triangle in the bunch.

Since they look like card tricks, but are made differently, perhaps I should call these "sleight of hand" blocks instead :)

A Tic-Tac-Toe Stash Report

Last month, I won the Block Lotto, and now I have 48 lovely tic-tac-toe blocks that I need to do something creative with :)

I decided that I wanted to do a number of small quilts, rather than one large one.  When they're done I'll donate them to the local children's hospital.   So I divided up the blocks and picked a set of 9 to start with.

Since the blocks are all wacky grids, I thought I'd set them in a similar fashion to carry the theme forward.  This layout on my wall seemed a bit crowded, so I bordered the blocks in white to provide a bit more space. The top is now complete, and waiting to be quilted.   The good news for my stash report is that this quilt took 4 yards of fabric, including the backing and binding.

The bad news for my stash report is that I bought some fabric.  20 fat quarters for $25 from Sew Sisters.  So this week I have

4 yards out
5 yards in

Total in this year - 42 yards
Total out this year - 43 1/4 yards

Net this year: 1 1/4 yards OUT 

Still sitting in the black this week :)  Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have been up to with their stashes.

Where have I been

As mentioned on Sunday, I've been away from my sewing machine for several days.  This is sad, and I've certainly missed spending time in my sewing room.  But where I was more than makes up for it.

 Can you tell where I was?  I spent the last week and a half in Vancouver at the Olympics!  I got to see some great events, joined the throngs of people downtown, and generally had a great time.  Vancouver has an odd idea of "winter" I have to admit (14 degress Celcius and sunny almost every day).  But I could get used to that :)

Short track speed skating was great fun to watch.  There aren't usually quite this many skaters on the ice, but a couple of disqualifications and advancements led to 8 skaters (rather than 4) in the women's 1500m final.

And watching Canada achieve gold in women's snowboard cross and women's ski cross was fabulous.  The picture below is from the snowboard cross flower ceremony.

I've been plotting my next quilt since I got there.   Definitely need something with an Olympic theme, to commemorate my trip.  And some of the Olympic designs will lend themselves nicely to quilting, being made up of square and triangles.

Design Wall Monday - Feb 22

This is my plan for bordering the blue celtic square.  Pinwheels in a variety of blues, which will be separated by a dark blue sashing strip.

Hopefully, when I sew all these bits together, the seam allowances will take up enough to allow some sashing.  I calcuated it, but my track record these days is not so great with those calculations.  Looking at the picture, I may have a problem.  But at least pinwheels are something I can cut down if they come out oversized.

You can still see the edges of some of my tic-tac-toe blocks peaking out on the right.  Still waiting for a  few more to arrive, so they're hanging out waiting for inspiration.

Check out Judy's blog for more design walls.

Stash Report - Feb 21

Nothing in, nothing out.  Not a great stash report this week, but at least I didn't add to it.   And I have a really good excuse, which I'll fill you all in on, later this week.

Check out Judy's blog to see more productive quilters' stash reports.

Total in this year - 37 yards
Total out this year - 39 1/4 yards

Net this year: 2 1/4 yards OUT

Hearts and Nines

My celtic hearts quilt is coming along.  The 2 sides are done and attached to the center.   I just need to cut the sashing for the top & bottom and set those blocks.  Then I'm planning a narrow border in red around the outside and bind it in red.

This quilt has been good for my stash.  All the hearts and 9-patches were made from some 5" squares that I gathered from swaps this past year.  I had no idea what I was going to do with them, so when this occurred to me I was very happy.

The 9 patch settings are not quite what I had intended.  They came out a bit smaller than the heart blocks.  I had planned to make the setting triangles a bit oversized, so I could cut them to match the hearts - but I got distracted and set them too small.  So, they got an extra red border to bring them up to size.

Tic-Tac-Toe

My design wall today has a number of tic-tac-toe blocks hanging out on it.  Four new sets of blocks have arrived so far, so I put them all up on the wall hoping for inspiration.

Not sure yet what I'll do, other than the fact that they will probably turn into a few baby quilts, rather than 1 large one.   Now to decide if I colour-group them or go for variety, and how to set them.  I have one idea in mind, and I'm sure a few more will come to me over the next couple of weeks.

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

February Quiltathon Day 2

I did get some work done on my Celtic square yesterday.  Most importantly (to me) - I finished appliqueing the hearts.  And yes, I do still dislike applique.  Must remember that.

I also made a few 9-patch blocks to go with the hearts.  Because I did decide that I was NOT doing 16 applique blocks for this quilt.

This is where I'm going with this one. Some red sashing between the border blocks, and I think it'll be a cute little quilty for the children's hospital.

That's about all I did, 'cause there was way too much other stuff to do - like watching the Olympics :)

It's stash report day at Patchwork Times, so here's where I stand:  1 1/2 yards out  and nothing in this week.
Total in this year - 37 yards
Total out this year - 39 1/4 yards

Net this year: 2 1/4 yards OUT

Celtic Hearts

I have a plan.   Well, part of one anyway.   Remember my red celtic square?  I've decided I'm going to surround it with some hearts.  I think this will reflect the heart shape that is formed by the 2 loops at the top and bottom. Or maybe not, but that's my theory  :)

Pretty good choice to work on, for Valentine's weekend, don't you think?

However, those 2 hearts at the top are appliqued.  Do you remember how much I dislike applique?  I think I mentioned it here. And the plan for this quilt requires 16 hearts.  I thought it was 12.  But then I put these 2 up and realized that I forgot to count the corners. Oops.  So, 16 appliqued hearts.  That might be a bit much, so maybe this plan needs re-thinking.

This weekend is another Quiltathon, courtesy of Judy over at Patchwork Times.  I want to join in - but I have so much to do this weekend.  So, I may get a little done, but probably not nearly so much as last month.   I don't really want to set goals for this weekend since I'll have so little time, but I'll see what I can get done on the red - and the blue- celtic quilts.

Accountability challenge

My goals for last week were: aim to finish quilting the current baby quilt, and add the borders to Grant's quilt.  I managed to achieve both of them, but not much else.  But that's OK.   Baby steps :)  It's another busy week here, so I might not get much quilting done.  But I have some thoughts for those celtic squares so maybe I'll manage to make a start there.

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)


Check out Bari's Accountability Report to see some quilters who made a lot more progress than me :)

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!

An Empty Frame

Look at this!!   The hoop is empty.  That means that I made progress on the Hawaiian quilt, and was finally able to take  it off the frame.  The waves of guilt it was sending out, coupled with a request by my son to join him in watching a movie, finally combined to get the quilting finished on this wall hanging.

Cari isn't quite sure what to make of this, however.  She and the other kitties loved jumping up on top of the quilt.

In addition to that, I have a finish for this week, as posted yesterday.  Morning Splash is now complete.

I'm definitely making progress on my quilt list - this accountability challenge is a big help.  Without the pressure of knowing I had to post something today, I probably would have continued to ignore that Hawaiian quilt.


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)

Pop over to Bari's blog to see what other quilters have been up to this week.

Morning Splash

Morning Splash is Done!  I put the final stitches in to the binding last night, and attached a label.  I really like this quilt that Judy designed.  The quilting doesn't show in this picture (I'm going to have to learn how to take better quilt pictures, I guess).  I used a variegated thread in purple, and a green backing to match the background/accent colours in the quilt.

The quilt's about 50x70, and the perfect size for cuddling under while watching TV.

Making progress

I worked on my son's quilt this weekend.  I made quite a bit of progress, and the quilt is really starting to come together.  I brought my son in to see the quilt as it stood at noon, as shown at left, because I wanted to make sure he was going to like the colours.   He liked the colours, but was a little concerned that the quilt was going to end up this funny shape :)   I reassured him that it would not, and went back to work on the outer rows.

The pattern called for full blocks in these outer rows, which would then be trimmed by 1/2 to make the quilt.  But that seemed like  a lot of waste to me.  So I made a series of partial blocks, to minimize the waste (and to minimize the number of those annoying split-triangle pieces that I would have to make).

Now his quilt has all of these funny edges around it.

This is my what's on my design wall for this week.  By next week it should have all the rows sewn together and the edges squared up.  Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their walls this week.