Easy Street part 7

I have been very neglectful of my Block of the Month and other on-going projects over the past two weeks.  And today I just noticed that Bonnie's Easy Street mystery is close the end.  There's a clue tomorrow (New Year's Day), so I thought I'd better get caught up before that comes out.  So, I sat down today, turned on Pride and Prejudice, and sewed the last 3 clues together.  From those results, this is what's on my wall now. 

I'm making the (probably wrong) assumption that part 6 was the assembly of a number of setting triangles for a quilt on point.  Tomorrow, maybe I'll see whether I guessed right.  There are still a number of units in my box which were made and have not been touched, so it will be interesting to see what Bonnie has in mind.

No Easy Street link up today, but Judy's over at Patchwork Times and I'm going to drop by to see what everyone else has been working on.

Happy Holidays

I've been quiet for a while, because I haven't been home for the past week.  But now I'm back, and preparing for Christmas with my kids, in the morning.  One day I'll dig out my sewing room and get back in there - hopefully this week while I'm on vacation. But for now, I thought I'd post some of the recent quilts I've been keeping quiet.  They were Christmas gifts and are now in the hands of the recipients, so it's safe to post.

My mother's quilt.  She loves green, and I think likes more traditional quilt designs (although I could be wrong about that).  The blocks are all the same star, but the different colour choices gives some of the them a completely different look than others. 

I quilted each of the stars individually, and did a looping pattern in the border on my long arm. Then, because my long arm skills weren't up to it, I took it to my regular machine to stitch in the ditch along each of the sashing pieces.  And with every row I remembered exactly why I bought a long arm.  I never want to do that again, so I have ordered an extension table and will be doing some straight-line practicing over the next few months.

My sister's quilt.  I'm not sure why purple for her, except that it just felt right when I was picking the fabrics. This one was quilted with vertical flames in each of the strips, and the squares in the border were outlined.  My long arm is perfectly happy to stitch straight lines horizontally and vertically.  Just not in any other direction (yet).

I pieced the backing for this one.  I was just a smidgen short (like, 4 inches) of fabric to do a solid black back, but since I had a few strips left over anyway, I decided to do a "mini-quilt" on the back.  It even ended up reasonably well-centered, and my sister loved the fact that she got 2 quilts :)  Since she has a black cat, the dark fabric was a good choice for her quilt.

And my last quilt, for my father & step mother.  It was interesting trying to get the background on this one to flow smoothly.  The fabric had more variation than I thought at first, so I  tried to keep the blocks arranged so that there aren't any sudden jumps from a light area to a dark, across the seams.

I did a pantograph on this one.  I thought they might use this quilt at their cabin, so I designed a pantograph with pine trees and quilted it in a medium-blue thread.  If I was doing it again, I might use a lighter thread, but then the quilting would stand out more in the borders, so I'm not sure I'd like that better.

Lost mittens

Poor little kittens, they lost their mittens.

I have 3 cats, and for some reason they love mittens.  If I leave them anywhere the cats can reach, one of the kitties will wander off with a mitten.  I needed to go out to snowblow the driveway today, and mittens are a requirement for that.  The apocalypse may have passed us by, but apparently "snow-pocalyse" is here.  When I went to put on my mitts (the one pair I have both of), I discovered that once again the kitties have struck and taken a mitten to parts unknown. 

It's way too cold to go out without them, so I figured, no problem, it's not a fashion show.  I'll just put on a mitt from 2 different pairs to keep warm - no one will see me anyway.  So I rounded up the 2 odd mitts from last year's kitty-denuded pairs.  And I found this:

Apparently my cats have a particular affinity for left-handed mittens.

For some reason, I am having a really hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year.  And I have no motivation to do anything in my sewing room, which you might have figured out from the complete silence on my blog over the past week and a half.  I don't know what it is.  The Christmas tree is up, other decorations are up, presents are bought, wrapped and packed, ticket is booked.  Assuming the world doesn't end tomorrow, and that we are not completely snowed under from the storm that's headed this way, I'm ready, but I'm not feeling Christmas-y for some reason.

But enough of that.  Maybe a quilt-y post will help get me out of this funk! Guild last week was the last meeting of the year.  In  addition to our pot-luck, we had an ugly fabric exchange.  Everyone brought 1 yard of fabric.  We passsed it around, tore the fabric piece in half, kept half and then passed the next chunk around and continued.  So everyone got varying sized pieces of about 8 different ugly fabrics.  The challenge - make a quilt using all of these fabrics (plus any additional fabrics we want to add).  Here are my uglies.

And a close up.  Now to figure out what to do with them.  We have until June, so I'll let these stew for a while. I have a few thoughts, but they need time to gel.

Design Wall Monday/Easy Street - Dec 10

Easy Street (or bits of it) is on my design wall today.  I do have more pieces complete than this, but I didn't try to put them all up on the wall. There's nothing else here because, of the 4 on-going projects I'm working on, it's the only one that got any attention at all this week.  And that only happened because it's a weekly mystery and I don't want to get too far behind before the holidays (when I will definitely get behind).  Hopefully later this week I'll get to pull out some of the other projects and catch up.

Check out Judy's blog for more design walls.  And drop by Quiltville to see how every is doing on Easy Street.

Stash Report - Dec 9

10 1/2 yards used this week.  That's a quilt + backing, and 1.5 yards for the Easy Street Mystery.

Total usage for this year: 212 1/4 yards

The quilt is shown almost done here.  Apparently I didn't take a picture after I put the borders on it, and now it's loaded on the long arm.  So a final picture will have to wait.

Here are this week's bits from Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street Mystery.  28 shaded 4-patches, in keeping with my "make about half the units" policy.  Unfortunately, I cut twice as many of the blue triangles as I needed.  What are chances we'll need more of those?

This year I've been trying to track usage as I cut it.  And I am *really* glad I'm not counting fabric in these days, because there's been much enhancement the last few weeks.  But I need to figure out how I'm going to track usage/enhancement next year.  Recording it as it is cut is certainly the most accurate option. But what about those quilts that get cut out then put on a shelf?  (fortunately I only have 1 of those right now).  Since most of my quilts end up in EQ6, I could use the fabric yardage from that, and count once the quilt is assembled. But I suspect the EQ over-estimates usage, and I know for some of my quilts it's completely wrong.

Well, I guess I still have 3 weeks to make a decision.

Drop by Judy's blog to see what everyone else has been up to.

Design Wall Monday - Dec 3

As if I didn't have enough projects underway, I have a new quilt on my design wall today.  This is another one out of Batik Gems.  I have to say I'm not that impressed with the quilts pictured in that book.  The fabric choices all blend together too much for my liking.  But with a different fabric selection and better definition between the fabrics, the patterns are lovely.

This one however, is going to take some close care when assembling.  The first picture is not how the quilt is supposed to look.  Didn't see that until I took the photo.  Rotated 2 blocks, and things are looking much better now.

I think this quilt will be fun. Much easier than all those triangles in the bear paws (which are still not completed).

Hop over to Judy's blog to see more design walls today.

Easy Street

Recycling this post for Dec 3 link up on Bonnie's blog.

I've been working on Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery this week.  I got a bit behind, missing part 1 completely, but I'm almost all caught up now.  Last year I did Orca Bay, and I diligently made every part she called for (hundreds of little quarter square triangles and scrappy triangles).  Then, at the end I bailed on it and made the quilt much smaller than her design.

So this year, I'm going to be smart about it.  I'm taking her advice and making half of the units she calls for. Then, I can add a few more at the end if I need to, but I should have a reasonably sized quilt that doesn't overwhelm me.

I'm also doing this one non-scrappy. I hope it works, because I know Bonnie is all about scrappy. But I just don't have enough variety in any of the 3 colours in my scrap bin.  So rather than trying to make it look scrappy (rather than just wrong) with only a few different fabrics, I've decided to go with a single fabric in each colour (and cross my fingers).

Diligent work over the past few days has me almost all caught up.  80 4-patches in black/white and grey.  And 48 purple flying geese, with just trimming left to do.

Stash usage this week, from my Bonnie Hunter pile of fabric - 1.5 yards.
Total for the year: 201 3/4 yards out.

Now it's time to have a look at the 3 block of the month quilt parts I picked up yesterday, and see if any of them can be completed before Christmas. Drop by Judy's blog to see what everyone else has been up to.

November colour palette

The November colour palette was an interesting one.  The inspiration was sweet peppers - red/green/yellow. Given the time of year, I was really tempted to make a Christmas design.  But I was talked out of my first instinct.  I had designed a quilt, and chosen blue/green in EQ, just because.  I was going to switch it for red/green/yellow, but when I showed it to someone, she loved the original colours, so I decided to leave that one alone.

I found my colour set, and packed up all my fabrics (plus a background) to take to a quilting retreat in hopes that inspiration would strike during all the fun.  I also packed up a new ruler I had just purchased - a "Cut-a-round" circle ruler. As I was packing it, I had a brilliant idea - a circle quilt for the challenge this month. Two challenges in one :)

When I got to retreat, I quickly sketched out a design - just a random placement of circles with a few overlapping for interest.  Then, I cut a bunch of circles of varying sizes, in 10" frames.  Cut 2 giant circles, and played with some placement on the floor (since design walls were no where to be found). 

I had to stare at it for a while to figure out how to create the overlapping circles, but one I understood that I could just a piece of the existing circle as the "frame", it all came together.  And it did - in about 4 hours I had this quilt.


I know exactly how I want to quilt it and had hoped to get that done this month. But other projects interfered so it is still waiting.

Check out Judy's blog to see what others have done for the challenge this month.

November UFO

I have not done very well with the UFO challenge this year.  I think that's because I had to stretch things to find 12 UFOs - so maybe that's a good thing.  However, I appear to be ending the year with more UFOs than I started.  I have 6 quilts ready for quilting - Grant's quilt, Colin's quilt, 2 versions of my indigo star, Building Blocks, a batik quilt, and one other colour challenge.  Then I have a number of smaller quilts to tackle - 3 projects from the recent quilting retreat (mitres, circles, twisted log cabin).  I have 4 ready for binding - batik gems, bulging checkerboard, Christmas wreath, and a jelly roll race from retreat.  And  more in progress projects than ever - Dancing with the Stars, Gardener's Alphabet, Sherri's mystery, Bonnie Hunter mystery, one batik quilt cut out and one just started, and 2 giant 9-patch baby quilts cut out.


The good news is, only 2 of those projects are more than a year old.  So by some accounting they haven't reached UFO status yet, and are simply works in progress :)  Judy say the UFO challenge is changing next year. I can't wait to see what she has in store for us.  I love the incentive I get from her challenges, to take on something new, or finish something old. 

This month, I did in fact finish something.  Like this quilt.  My Fibonacci spiral has been waiting for binding for close to 2 years I think.  It is finally done!

I also had some blocks left over from Grant's quilt (the one not yet quilted, from the list above).  I put those together, found some extra fabric, and made a small quiltie from them.  This has already been finished and donated at guild last month.

Check out Judy's blog for more UFO progress.  And come back at the end of the year to see if I finish December's UFO :)

Stash Report - Nov 25

Two new quilts cut out this week, means a lot of fabric used.

3 3/4 yards for quilt #1
5 3/4 yards for quilt #2

That's 9 1/2 yards out this week.  And the total for the year is ... drum roll ...
200 1/4 yards out. 
That is *way* more fabric than I ever expected to use in a year.  Last year my total was about 100 yards

Now I just have to sew them all together.  A ton of little bits are piled around my sewing machine tonight - I almost have all the small components made for the blocks and will be able to start assembling blocks for quilt #2 shortly.

In addition, it's week #1 for Bonnie Hunter's new mystery.  So today I'm going to cut a pile of strips to make 4-patches for that quilt.

Drop by Judy's blog to see how everyone else is doing.

Quilts, Plans, and Blogathons

Here's what I have done, on my final quilt from my retreat last week.  Progress has been made, but there is much more to go.  I discovered, while on the retreat, the reason I don't generally do traditional quilts with multiple versions of the same block.  I get bored easily.  Small quilts are much more interesting - they are done before I'm bored.  Large quilts tend to hit a wall.  If I plan well, I have enough alternate blocks and I can hop back and forth between them, and keep my interest up that way.

Or, failing that, I start a new project.  Which is what happened this weekend.  Actually, I wasn't that bored yet, although I could feel the wall approaching.  But I decided there is another quilt I want to make, on a deadline, and so I hopped over to that one.  All the pieces are cut out - and now I realize that it has many blocks all the same too.  Maybe if I work the 2 quilts together, they'll both get done (and hopefully won't end up with pieces of each other integrated into them) :)


And remember the nice tidy cutting table I should you a week ago?  Well, it is no longer.  I pulled fabric for this new quilt off the shelf, and of course everything else fell down.  I have 3 quilts in progress and thus bits and pieces of all 3 clutter the table again. 

And what I never admitted in the last post - the couch in my sewing room is not accessible at all.  I never did clean this up, in my last blitz although I did pull all the UFOs off it and put them in a box with their backigns.  Now, it is once again covered with clutter - mostly my "unpacking" from retreat.

Once these current quilts are done, I will set some time aside to clean (again) and see if I can actually find this couch.  If I can do that, I may actually be able to move it out of my sewing room and gain some space for quilting.

If you've dropped by from the Canadian Blogathon, welcome!  And if you have no idea what that is, check out the details on Sew-Sister's blog and hop around to see more Canadian bloggers.

Design Wall Monday - Nov 19

After  a weekend at retreat, I have lots to show for it.  But for today, I put up the project I was working on the last day there, in order to have something on my design wall today.  These are 4 bear's paw blocks for a quilt Judy showed us, which she named "New Beginnings".  I have 4 more blocks in progress, then I'll make a few of the alternate blocks and see how big this quilt wants to be.

I have a few more projects from retreat, which I'll show you once I get them unpacked.  I got lots done, learned some new stuff, and had a great time meeting new people at the retreat.  I'm so happy that Michele at The Running Stitch hosted this retreat - and that she's going to do it again!

Drop by Judy's blog today for more design walls.

Stash Report / Retreat Day 2

 The retreat this weekend is in a lovely location, right on the river.  The rooms look out on the river, as does the sewing room.  And the food is fabulous.

Everyone worked hard today.  This morning I started on my second retreat quilt.  This one is the colour challenge for November, and I decided to try out my new circle ruler today.  This went together amazingly quickly, and the ruler made perfect circles and frames which were easy to stitch together.

We had a class, learning miter techniques and prarie points.  The mitering is done, and turned into a quiltie (rather than the table runner the design called for).  The prarie points will have to wait until I'm ready to do the binding on this one.

Stash report for tis week (all used at the retreat):

2 yards - twisted log cabin
1 yard - pink quilt
3 yards - circle quilt
1 1/2 yards - bear paws

Total out at retreat 7 1/2 yards
For the year, 190 3/4 yards out.  Drop by Judy's blog to see how everyone else is doing.

Retreat Day 1

Day 1 at the retreat was really productive.  I finished 23 out of 25 blocks for my twisted log cabin quilt.  I should be able to finish it in the morning - if I ever turn off this computer and go to bed :)

I have 2 more projects that I brought with me, 2 classes I want to attend, and a goody bag from the retreat which contains yet another project.  I think I have enough here to keep me busy for a month, not just 3 days.

Ready for retreat

What happens when a quilter packs all her quilting projects and tools, in preparation for a retreat - 2 days early? With no quilting possible (because pulling out tools runs the risk of forgetting them on departure day), other activities tend to happen.

Shelves get built.
Fabric gets folded.
Tables get cleared
And the sewing room goes from something like this...
to this.  All my in-progress projects are on the shelf, beside the videos.  3 BOM, 1 mystery quilt, the next quilt to cut into, and bindings for some of the 6 quilts waiting for their turn on the long arm.

My missing seam ripper turned up.  But still no sign of the backup rotary cutter.

In the pile ready for retreat, are 3 new projects to be started, plus materials for 2 classes (and thus 2 more projects) and one extra bundle of fabric which still needs a project.  I'm hoping to come home with at least one, if not 2, projects finished from retreat. Hopefully I won't come home with 5 half-started projects.

Design Wall Monday

This is what's on my design wall today.  I spent lots of time on the weekend working on Dancing with the Stars, and I finished 4 of these blocks. I also made the mug blocks I showed yesterday.  Mostly, however, I spent the weekend sewing bindings on 5 quilties and a Christmas quilt.

This week, I'm collecting (but trying not to start) projects to take to retreat with me.

Stash Report - Nov 11

Somehow I seemed to get a lot done yesterday.  Could have something to do with being up at 7am on a Saturday (ick) but I bound 3 quilts, made 5 blocks for the block lotto, finished 2.5 blocks from Dancing with the Stars BOM, stopped at the fabric store to pick up some supplies for my next project and get some opinions on a pattern, hung doors on a cabinet with my son's help, and even managed to make a roast for dinner and spend some time talking to my son before he took my car and headed out to a party.  And I did it all without rushing around (see yesterday's post Enjoying the Journey). Phew.  Just typing all that made me tired :)

Here's a quick look at the Block Lotto blocks from today.  We're making quilter's choice mugs this month.


The stash usage for this week:
2.5 yards - bindings
1.5 yards - backings
.5 yard - mug blocks
Total 4.5 yards used this week.


For the year, 183 1/4 yards out.  Drop by Judy's blog to see how everyone else is doing.

Enjoying the Journey

I was standing in the grocery store the other day, waiting for the debit terminal to decide it was ready to accept my card, and I started chatting with the clerk about how impatient most of us are these days.  These are new terminals, and while the old ones were noticeably slow, these are even slower.  It seems to take forever from the cashier entering the payment type, to the terminal actually asking for your card.  It's probably a grand total of 7 to 10 seconds, in actuality, but as I stood there chatting about it, I realized that I comment on this every week.  And it made me start to think about how impatient we are these days.  How we rush from place to place, errand to errand, home to job to kids' events and back again.

Computers and technology were supposed to make our lives easier.  But in fact I think what they have done is make us expect everything to move faster, take less time, so we can do more. And more. And end up rushing from place to place, complaining about waiting 5 seconds for a transaction to process.

Several months ago, I changed jobs, and shed a pile of stress in the process.  More recently, I have made a conscious decision to slow down in other areas of my life.  No more rushing out the door in the morning to get to work 5 minutes earlier.  No speeding down the highway in a mad rush to get somewhere on time.  If I have to leave a bit earlier and that means that I don't have time to wash the dishes first, or I don't get a chance to sew that last seam, that's OK. Everything does not have to be done today.  I can do what I have time for, leave myself enough time to get places without rushing, and what I don't get to today will keep until tomorrow.

As a result, I find myself enjoying the journey more.  Both literally and figuratively.  I can enjoy the brilliant sunshine as I drive, because I'm not checking my watch and fretting about being late.  I can stay and chat with a cashier or a friend, and not worry that I'm going to be late for something else.  I can sit a watch my cats sleep.  And I can enjoy each day as it comes, without wishing it away in a mad rush to get to the next stop.

On (and off) the needles

I have been working away on my 4th quarter challenge for the Loopy Ewe, and I finally finished it!  Managed to work it out so that I used just about every scrap of yarn I had (there is less than enough for 1 repeat left).  This is lovely and soft.  It's knit with 2 strands of yarn (cashmere/silk combination) and I love it!  I'll definitely use this yarn again.

In the meantime I did get tired of knitting scarves, so I started yet another pair of socks. This one on smaller needles, as someone suggested that the tighter gauge might make the socks more comfortable (and wear longer).  The smaller needles mean these are going to take a long time to knit, however. 

So, in parallel I'm also working on finishing my other scarf.  I'm still not happy with how narrow it is, but it's too far gone to unknit now :)  I'm sure I'll find a use, or an owner, for it when it's done.

Drop by Judy's blog to see what everyone else has on their needles today.

Retreat Preparation

Only 1.5 weeks to retreat day!  So I've started thinking about what projects to take with me for the 3 days.  So far, I have 2 plans.  A twisted log cabin.  I saw a tutorial for making this without paper piecing, and I couldn't resist trying it out.  Now that I've done it, I'll do it a bit differently but I think this will work nicely. The blocks are small - 4.25" finished. But that's just about right for a quiltie.  I have to decide if I want to do this in the colour palette for this month, or in something different.

The second project I'm contemplating is Judy's New Beginnings.  I haven't done a Bear's Paw before, so it satisfies my "something new" need. I was first thinking about shrinking it down, to make a quiltie, but 1" half-square triangles seemed like too much work.  So I think I'll just pull a bunch of colour pairs and plan to make something bigger this time.  I'll some with me and see if I can get a few blocks made at the retreat.

I don't know if that will be enough, but since it's really only 2 days (and there are 3 classes) it might keep me busy for the weekend. Knowing me, however, I'll come up with a bunch more projects to take along before next Friday.

Design Wall Monday - Nov 5

My design wall is blank today.  I am determined to finish quilting a few pieces, before I cut into something new.  On this are 5 quilties, which always go quickly, plus at least one full size quilt, preferably 2 since I'm still about 8 quilts behind.  Plus I need to bind a bunch.  So I want to get some of that done before I cut into something new.

But I do need inspiration to keep me going, so I pulled out fabrics for the colour challenge this month.

Not bad.   I see now that the darkest red is a bit too dark, and the dark orange a bit too brown, so I'll see if they can be swapped out. And I'll keep these fabrics around to inspire me to finish up some projects so that I can get going on this month's challenge.

Drop by Judy's blog for more design walls.

Stash Report - Nov 4

As I said yesterday, it's been a busy week, with progress on a couple of quilts.  In addition to the piecing I accomplished, I finished quilting my checkerboard last night.  Now I just have to bind it - this is a big quilt - 95" square - so binding will take a while.

I quilted in two colours - dark in the dark square and cream in the light squares.  I like the end results - and as far as I can tell I managed to do this (2 passes on the long arm) without creating a pleat in the backing.

Used this week:
2 yards - borders for current quilt
3.5 yards - backing
1/2 yard - finishing UFO

Hop over to Judy's blog for more stash reports today.

Catching up

I've been a busy little beaver the last few days - but quiet on the blog.  I found out 3 days ago that I was basically out of storage for photos on my blog, so I went looking around and realized how big the files are that I have been uploading.  I decided that my best (cheapest :) ) option was to resize all the images to reclaim space - that should at least gain me a couple years of blogging before I have to come up with a new plan.

While doing that I realized that none of my photos are watermarked - so I located a tool which will both watermark and resize in one step - and now I am in the process of replacing every image on my blog with a new one.  That means editting every single post I've ever written, so it's a slow process. Fortunately smaller photos upload faster, so it's not taking too long to add the new photos.  If you notice photos not loading, that is probably the cause - I should have it all fixed up within a week.

In the meantime, here is some of the actual quilting activity I've been working on this week.  I finished the center for my batik quilt, and auditioned some borders for it.

The red is definitely out, and I'm not sure yet about the purple. I was looking for something darker, but I'm not having much luck finding anything I like.

This quilt is leftovers from a quilt I made for my son.  Actually, "am making" is a better description.  The top was completed in 2010, but it still is not quilted.  Soon (I hope).  Pieces of the piano key border on this quilt were left over from cutting the piano keys for his quilt.  And the 4-patch blocks were extras - not sure how that happened.  I had tucked some fabric away with the blocks, fortunately, and I added to the borders to make it 24", I'll do 2 inner borders, then the 4-patch blocks.  This will be another donation quiltie for the hospital.

October colour challenge

Last month's colour challenge used this palette.  I wasn't keen on it at first, but when I looked closer I realized that it was almost a rainbow of colours.  I started hunting around in my fabric stash, and I found a few options for this.

One thing I discovered was a fat quarter bundle I bought at a quilt show in the summer. It was a set of rainbow-coloured fabrics - and they all matched various colours in this palette (except the purple - that one doesn't appear in this palette).

So, I kept looking, and found a few more bundles from that same quilt show, and pulled a mix of fabrics to match the palette.  I decided to put together a quilt block from one of my books - I took a block, enlarged it to 24", and made a quiltie for donation at my guild.  I did run into one issue - I was short on one colour when I started putting it together.  So I pulled an additional quarter from the stack.  It was purple, which is not in the palettel, but hopefully I can be forgiven for that :)

After making this quilt, and especially after pulling in purple, I still had rainbows on the brain.  So, I took my rainbow fat quarter bundle, designed a bargello rainbow, and made a second quiltie.  When it was done, it needed a bit more, so I added some clouds and a blue bird flying over the rainbow.

And now it's Nov 1, and Judy has posted the next colour palette.  Off I go to see what I have on hand for the pretty colours in the palette this month.