Last "Get it Done" for 2013

At the beginning of the month, I posted these goals

Swoon

1. quilt & bind swoon
2. quilt & bind Urban Candy
3. extend "challenge" top from retreat
4. quilt & bind christmas wall hanging

Urban Candy

With the added challenge that the first 3 of them were due for Dec 14. I am very happy to report that all three of those quilts were completed on time!  And as for item #4, well, it fell victim to my efforts to embark on a career in long arm quilting.  4 people asked (pretty please) if I could finish a quilt (or multiple) for them in time for Christmas.  The first one came in on the 12th, and the last one went out on the 23rd.  Goals met for all my customers! But the poor little Christmas wall hanging is still sitting in my sewing room waiting for a backing. Maybe I can get it done for next Christmas.

Drop by Judy's blog to see how everyone else did on their goals for the month.

Retreat Challenge (from 1.5 jelly rolls)

2013 recap

I saw another blog that did this, and thought it was a great idea.  A quick recap of all my finished projects for 2013.  First, the completely finished items.

And some charity quilts.

And my unfinished tops, completed this year but not quilted. I'm surprised there are so few of these :)

It's been a very quilty year :)  I'm pretty sure there are a few missing, but that is the majority of the quilts.  And with the New Year's Eve mystery starting today, I should have one more finished top to close out the year.

Here's hoping 2014 provides as much quilting fun as 2013 did.  Priority #1 - get stuff on the longarm!

Design Wall Monday - Dec 30

The last design wall of 2013!  I've been busily trying to finish up / catch up some things before New Year's.  First, I caught up on my Toes in the Sand blocks. I think we were on month 3. One was done, so here are the two blocks from each of month 2 & 3.

Then, I've been busily working on my Diamond Star. I love this book, and I definitely plan to make more quilts from it, but first I have to finish the square version of my turquoise star so I can figure out fabric requirements for a class.  Just the borders left to do now, and I hope to finish them today so I can pick up some backing at the sale on Thursday. The book is Diamond Chain by Barbara H. Cline.




And, piled in a box is my prep work for the New Year's Eve mystery that I'm signed up for.  Can't wait to start this one.

Drop by Judy's blog to see what every else is working on to close out the year.

Back to Square One Mystery Done!

One final top finished for the year. I have my Back to Square One Medallion Mystery top completed.  I love the colours. I did briefly bemoan the fact that the borders are brown, rather than teal. But after previewing the teal fabrics in various combinations, I realized that Judy knew exactly what she was doing, and this quilt did indeed need the brown as a border. Good thing too, because in reality I did not have enough of either of the teal fabrics to use in the border :)

So, this quilt makes a lovely finish to my stash reporting for 2013.   
13 1/2 yards - Back to Square One Mystery

Total for the year: 267 1/2  yards.  Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports today.

Onward and upward (or downward, in remaining stash).  A new year, a new plan, and a bit more accountability as I go back to reporting stash in and out.  Now, if only I could figure out how to make the year start on Jan 3, so I could go to the LQS sale with no guilt :)

Post-Christmas quilting

I'm on my own today, so I've been taking full advantage of the opportunity to spend some quality time with my sewing machine.  Here's what I've been working on yesterday and today.

Another diamond star, this time set on point and turned into a square quilt, rather than a hexagon.  I had planned a second round (square, that is) of diamond chain, after a 2" spacer of the background fabric, but now I'm wondering if I should simply complete the quilt with a 4" plain border and leave the main hexagon as the focal point without another border around it.  I'll have to ponder this, while I'm driving this weekend.  Opinions welcome.

Design Wall Monday

Once again my design wall is on my ironing board.  Not a lot going on yet, but I did manage to get clue #4 of Bonnie's Celtic Solstice finished. Step2 is still in progress, but it should be done soon.

Next up - finish Back to Square One, and prepare for the New Year's Eve mysteries.  And maybe think about all other other BOMs I'm suppsed to do.  And Yay!  I just figured out that the 2 New Year's Eve mysteries I wanted to do are actually one New Year's Eve, and one New Year's Day.  No problem doing both, right?

Linking up with Judy's design wall Monday, and Bonnie's Celtic Solstice today.

Stash Report - Dec 22

I missed last week's stash report, with being sick.  And I haven't done much since then so I was thinking there was nothing to report this week.  But looking back, it seems I did get some stuff done since the last report on the 8th.

Binding swoon - 3/4 yards
Scrap quilt - 3 yards
binding Urban Candy - 1/2 yard
retreat challenge top - 4 1/4 yards

Total used last 2 weeks: 9 1/2 yards

Total for the year: 254 yards.  Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports today.

There's one more stash report this year, but I don't expect to be finishing anything in the next week (well, maybe one quilt, if I get the Back to Square One Mystery caught up).  250+ yards for the year is great usage - but we're not talking about what came in this year :)  I think next year I'll go back to full accounting.  My stash isn't making me happy these days and I need to get back to buying what I need when I need it instead.  So, use up what I have and try to limit my purchases to necessary yardage.

Christmas Baking

I'm almost all caught on my Christmas quilting commitments.  I have one more customer quilt to complete before Christmas - that's on the schedule for tomorrow.  Today, I decided it was time to (finally) start my Christmas "baking".  Baking in quotes because the one and only treat my kids really care about doesn't actually go anywhere near the oven :)  Nanimo bars are in progress.

And while each layer chills, I'm catching up on Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice mystery.  Steps 2 and 4 in the works today. It seems green is today's colour.

Note to Self ...

Always check the tension, after putting a new bobbin in the long arm.  Even if it's exactly the same thread you were just sewing with.  Sigh.  I am now in the process of removing 50% of the stitching on a (fortunately small) quilt.

Back to quilting

Felt good enough today to do some quilting.  It's a good thing - if I don't get moving I'll never deliver on all those rash promises I made about finishing quilts before Christmas.  One down, one to go, and two new ones arriving tomorrow.

This quilt's not mine to show, but hopefully a little snippet is OK. I just couldn't resist quilting this Charlie Brown quilt with strings of Christmas lights.

Design Wall Monday - Dec 16

Thanks to a nasty bout of food poisoning or some sort of stomach virus, I didn't get nearly as much quilting done this weekend as I had hoped.  Which means - I haven't seen the inside of my sewing room since Saturday morning.  I am finally able to look at a computer without my head exploding, so there's hope that I will be back to stitching tomorrow after work.  Which is good - I promised to quilt a couple of items this week.

In the meantime, I did at least manage some progress on Bonnie's Celtic Solstice mystery on Friday.  Finished step 1 & 3 (the final part of step 3 is still attached to the sewing machine, but the pinwheels are made).  Step 2 is next - maybe even to be done before step 4 comes out on Friday.

Linking up with Bonnie and Judy today, because this is as close as I got to a design wall this week.

"Get it Done" check in

challenge top

Someone commented on my "get it done" post that I was ambitious to try to get 3/4 of it done by the 14th. But I had a goal and a plan. And I did it!

1. quilt & bind swoon - Done
2. quilt & bind Urban Candy - Done
3. extend "challenge" top from retreat- Done
4. quilt & bind christmas wall hanging - not done yet, but still on the list for December - lots of time left for this one.

And in addition - I finished my charity top from block party.  Even fixed the block that was backwards, and made the backing. I am ready for Saturday.

Urban Candy

And now, I'd best get myself down to the long arm.  In the past week I've had 3 people ask if I can quilt something for them, for Christmas.  Gotta meet those goals too!  The first quilt is in my hands, and the plan is to quilt it on Friday.  Then, the longarm will be free to start the 3 tops that should arrive on Sat.

It's pretty hard to get a good photo of a black quilt on a dark background, at 10pm.  Maybe I'll try again in the morning.  I tried a different position, and the first thing the *white* cat did was climb on top of the black quilt.

And this is YAF (Yet Another Finish :) ) linking up at Such a Sew and Sew.  I'm having a really productive December, and  I love it.  Deadlines do seem to drive productivity around here.

How did that happen?

I put the border on my latest quilt last night. Then I hung it back up on the design wall to admire it check that everything looked good. I wanted to make sure I had the corner blocks going in the right direction.  Yep, all good.

I was letting my eyes follow the lines, and they came to a screeching halt, right here.

Rats.  One block turned sideways.  How did I miss that?  I guess the seam ripper will be coming out tonight.

Design Wall Monday - Dec 9

Great progress happened on my design wall this weekend. I'd pulled out this quilt earlier in the week and discovered I had enough blocks for 3 rows, but it really needed to be 7 rows long.  I had partial blocks for another 2.5 rows, but that was a lot of blocks to make in a week.  Then, at block party on Saturday, a few of the ladies dropped of some additional blocks for my charity quilt.  That was perfect - they added up to the missing blocks, so now I was almost all set.  I stitched together all my block segments, but some sashing strips, and assembled the quilt on Sunday.

Now I just need to figure out borders. I think I'm leaning towards the red in the upper left of this photo.  It's a red with some black specs, and I think that will pick up the black in the sashing nicely.

The reason I was able to get so far on this quilt - Swoon is DONE!  Put the last stitch in the binding Saturday night, and now it's all ready for show and tell.

I love this quilt! The blocks were from my block party month, plus an additional 4 I made. The border took me two retreats and several weeks to put together.  And the quilting is a new pantograph on my long arm, which I think turned out great.

Drop by Judy's blog to see what everyone else is up to today.

And drop by Such a Sew and Sew for more December finishes!

Stash Report - Dec 8

Two bindings done this week. Well, one and a half, anyway.

My Bird of Paradise is complete - at first I couldn't find the fabric I wanted to use for binding, but I stumbled across it a few days ago and put it in a safe place so I wouldn't lose it again.

This was a class at a retreat I went to last spring. I finished the top at the retreat, and it's been waiting since then to be quilted and bound.  Now it's ready for show and tell on Saturday.

The swoon quilt is about 1/2 done binding.  I had a helper with that today, so I didn't get very far :)

And, I loaded and finished my Urban Candy top, so I get to count backing for that.

3/4 yard - swoon binding
1/4 yard - Paradise binding
3 1/2 yards - backing


Total for the year: 244 1/2 yards.  Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports today.

I'm also linking up for the December finishes party, over at Such a Sew and Sew.

Preparing for Mysteries

I've been playing with colour choices the last couple of days.  There are two mystery quilts coming up that I want to participate in, so I went digging in my stash for some fabric for them.  The challenge is they both need fairly large pieces of fabric - 3-4 yards of certain colours - and my stash tends to be more in the 1-2 yard range.  So I pulled out the largest yardages to start with.  Basically, that boiled down to a multi-colour batik, a light green batik, a bright pink batik again, and a burgundy & cream which were originally bought for a spring mystery that I never did.

Quilt 1 is Judy's "Tell it to the Stars" - a block of the month mystery starting on Jan 1.  It needs about 3yards of 2 different fabrics, and 4 yards of background, plus some others (6 fabrics in all). This will be a challenge to pull from stash, but here are a few of my thoughts. I started with the pink, and the multicolour batiks. Found a set of 3 purples to go with - not bad, but I'm not in love with it.  I tried subbing the pink with green - eh.  So I'm still not sure about either of these groupings, and they both need a light background fabric to go with them.

There may be a shopping trip in my future - especially since the LQS whispered something about a January sale.  My last Patchwork Times mystery fabric was bought at the last Jan sale, and it worked out really well, so that may be a plan.

The other is from QTMysteryQuilts and it is a New Year's Eve mystery.  I think that means that we are going to go through the entire quilt in a single day.  Cutting directions are already out, so it's all sewing, all day on the 31st.  Only one fabric with large requirements for this one, but still a challenge to find 4 fabrics, given minimal direction.

I started with the green this time, and added a dark and light green to go with it.  Then I needed an accent colour.  I tried this blue/purple multicolour, but it didn't really sit right for me.  Thought it might be a bit better with  this orange/red print but maybe not. 

Then I noticed the burgundy set aside for the spring mystery, and pulled it into play. Much better I think, so this will likely become a quilt, although I may rethink the yellow.  It's a small yardage, so I can switch that out easily. 


I finally washed an ironed the fabric for Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice mystery.  Clue 1 is out - and clue 2 comes on Friday.  So I should get moving on this one, but I have other projects to finish first. I may start out a bit behind on this mystery, but I should be able to catch up after the 15th.

And while I was hunting down fabric for 3! new projects, I did at least finish one.  This bird of paradise was a class at the spring retreat I attended. Finally quilted it and put the binding on this week.

Design Wall Monday - Dec 2

Not much on my design wall today.  I did get my final block party block completed, so it's all set for Saturday.  I'm actually starting to like Lemoyne stars - this one worked out great - it lays flat, points are in the right place, and everything.

Other than that, I've been working on finishing stuff.  Put the last stitches in my Kaffe Fassett quilt last night, so it's all ready for show and tell.

Drop by Judy's blog to see what everyone else is up to this week.

I'm linking this finish up at Such a Sew and So, for the December finishes party.

Stash Report - Dec 1

Wow, December already.  Time to get the tree up, but I spent most of my week quilting instead, so I have bit of progress to report today.  Swoon is off the long arm, and just needs binding. There's hope it might be done by the 14th, especially if I get the binding washed today.

7.5 yards backing for swoon quilt
.5 yard binding for Kaffe quilt
Total used - 8 yards this week.

Total for the year: 240 yards.  Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports today.

December's Get it Done!

Last month I set these goals for myself.  And I made quite good progress, if I do say so myself

1. finish binding labyrinth - Done
2. quilt and bind Living in Harmony - Done
3. bind bear paw - not done
4. catch up on BOM - Downtwon, Toes in the Sand, and Block party. - Done

Poor old bear paw has been on the list two or three months in a row now, and I keep ignoring it.  Maybe next month.  But, in addition to all those lovely finishes, I started and finished my diamond star quilt, pieced my labyrinth quilt (hmm, just noticed the name conflict with my "other" labyrinth - I guess I'll be renaming this one.  Maybe "A-maze-ing Effects"), and made a Christmas wall hanging.

For December, I'd like to continue my finishing streak.

Urban Candy

1. quilt & bind swoon
2. quilt & bind Urban Candy
3. extend "challenge" top from retreat
4. quilt & bind christmas wall hanging

The first 3 of those are "due" December 14.  That might be a stretch, but hopefully the quilting can be done on two of them, and the piecing on #3.

That's not to say I won't be working on the Bonnie Hunter mystery, and the Border Creek Station mystery, and another diamond star quilt.  Just not making any promises about those :)

Drop by Judy's blog to see what everyone else is up to in December.

Friday Update

After my non-starter day earlier this week, my swoon quilt is on the long arm.  I couldn't find any king-size white batting the LQS, so I decided to go ahead and piece it.  I have my queen batting all loaded up, and when I reach the bottom I'll figure out how to handle the shortfall.

I'm hoping to get this quilted and bound before the 14th, for a show and tell.  It's a big quilt, but so far things are going fairly smoothly with the quilting.  Hopefully I didn't speak too soon :)

It could be a busy weekend. Tomorrow is "Get it Done" link up day.  Bonnie's Celtic Solstice started today.  Back to Square One mystery should end on Sunday.  And then it will be time to think about catching up with all my block of the month projects.

The best laid plans

I was all set tonight to start quilting my swoon quilt.  It is enormous - about 106" square, but I have a wide backing for it, and have figured out my quilting plan.  So I headed downstairs, quilt and backing in hand and loaded up the long arm.  Then I turned to the closet to pull out the white batting I knew I had in there - and it's only a queen size!  93x106" - not nearly big enough :(  I debated piecing some batting, but decided I didn't want this particular quilt to have pieced batting if I could avoid it. So, my longarm is now loaded with a backing I can't do anything with, until after I get to the shop later this week.  I sure hope they have some king size white batting in stock.

So, instead of quilting swoon tonight, I headed back upstairs to see if I could get started on my next quilt.  Printed out the plan from EQ, and started counting fabric. I knew I had enough for the original, but I have decided to extend this one a bit.  And, naturally, I'm short on one of the fabrics for the new plan.  I couldn't find anything in the stash that would work, either as a replacement or an extension, so that's off the list for tonight too.

So, moving on, I dug out some sashing fabric for a charity quilt I'm working on - and now can't find the blocks I'm sure I made.  These are the blocks I have, but I was sure I had made about 10 more.  If I did, they've found themselves an excellent hiding place.  Time to give up for tonight I think.

Design Wall Monday - Nov 25

UPDATE January 2018:
The pattern for this quilt is now available on Etsy from this link.

My design wall isn't big enough to hold today's project. So here it is on my design floor. All done except for the borders - I have to check how much of the dark I have left, to figure out how wide the borders can be.

I'm thrilled with how this came out.  And even more thrilled that I had enough fabric - there is a 30"x5" strip left of the light purple.  I wish I could remember exactly  how much fabric I bought for this project.

I think this picture looks even more 3-dimensional than the other.  The quilt is actually square, but the dark pieces on 2 corners are blending into my floor so well that it looks like they aren't there.

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