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.