Friday 31 May 2013

Get it done! May/June

I can't believe it is June tomorrow.  Time to check in with Judy on her "Get it Done" challenge.  Last month, I set these goals

  1. finish 3 quilties for guild
  2. quilt a commission quilt
  3. bind ugly fabric challenge in time for guild
  4. quilt the guild mystery before guild meeting
And I can happily say I finished them ALL!

So, let's look ahead to June.  Visitors in town until mid-month, so I'm going to keep my goals modest. 
  1. Quilt bear paw
  2. Quilt hunter's star
  3. Finish borders on Swoon
  4. Bind the quilties that I stacked in a corner when my company arrived (not sure how many there are)
Let's see how that goes, after the 15th of the month.
 

Monday 27 May 2013

Design Wall Monday - May 27

My design wall today is the floor at quilt retreat.  I am almost done the pieces for the border on my swoon quilt, and now I need to pick the colour a narrow border to run on both sides of that.  Here are some of the options I'm considering.

First, here's the whole quilt - a rainbow of swoon blocks.

Then the border options - light purple, rainbow (which matches the center of each square), or dark blue.  I could also use either of the greens.

What do you think?



Sunday 26 May 2013

Stash Report - May 26

I posted my photos last night, and here is the yardage used for the 2 quilts completed this weekend.

4 1/4 yards - teal quilt
5 3/4 yards - urban candy
used this week - 10 yards

Total stash usage this year: 107 1/4 yards out

Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports.

Saturday 25 May 2013

Quilting Mojo is Back!

I've been a busy quilter this weekend.  I finished 2 quilt tops, and made good progress on the borders for my swoon quilt.  I hope to get them finished tomorrow.  Apparently I wasn't smart enough to take pictures of the finished quilts, but here they are in partial stages. The black and white curves are from the last retreat I went on, and it is now complete.  It won't have borders, so I'll add it to the pile of "to be quilted" - and hope to get some time in on my long arm over the next few weeks.

This quilt I started yesterday.  The blocks went together really quickly, despite a minor "d'oh" moment.  I was planning to strip piece some parts of this, but when I started cutting I just cut, and cut, and cut every piece.  So, no strip piecing happened after all.  I've put this together, with sashing in the light colour.  Now I have to decide if I want any borders on it - and if I do, then do I have enough fabric to do that.


Monday 20 May 2013

Design Wall Monday - May 20

Maybe, just maybe, my quilting mojo is back.  I spent yesterday working on my swoon quilt. The blocks were made as part of a block party - I provided the fabric to the 11 other members and they each made a block for me.  I made the extra 5 to bring the quilt up to a queen size.

Yesterday I had 2 blocks to finish - and after I put them together I noticed that I had mixed up the pieces and the colours were in the wrong place.  So, I disassembled half of each block, swapped sections, and put them back together again.  Then I spent the rest of the day attaching sashings to the blocks.  And only twice did I put the strips in the wrong place.  Perhaps it was not my best day after all :)

However, the center of the quilt top is now complete.  On to borders!

I'm linking up with Judy's Design Wall Monday today.

Sunday 19 May 2013

Stash Report May 19

I had to go a long way back, to find my last stash report.  Let's see what I can dig up from the last month's work.

Ugly Fabric Challenge
Guild mystery quilt - 5 yards
Backing for the guild mystery -3 yards
I bound a pile of quilts - 7 quilties, one ugly fabric challenge, and the guild mystery.  That's 2.5 yards of fabric used for bindings.
Finished bird of paradise at the retreat - 1.5 yards
Finished a table runner - 1.5 yards

So, over the past month I have managed to use 13.5 yards of fabric.



Guild Mystery
Total stash usage this year: 97 1/4 yards out

Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports.

Saturday 18 May 2013

What's up, Doc?

Unfortunately, not much.  Cleaning my sewing room is the priority these days, so sewing has taken a back seat.  However, I have gathered photos of my projects from the quilting retreat from a couple of weeks ago.

We did 60 degree table runners.  Made from a border print, then end result is a lovely design.  And the same print makes very different effects, depending on where you choose your repeat.
These were run, and very quick to make.  I'm planning some placemats next.

This is a bird-of -paradise, done in a new applique technique I learned at the retreat.  It was a combination of regular piecing, applique, and paper piecing techniques, all rolled into one.


And this last quilt is 1/2 of the final project from the retreat.  I believe the pattern was called Urban Candy.  I have 6 rows done, and 4 more to go.  I saw the sample quilt, and decided that I wanted to do mine in black & white instead.

More photos from this great retreat are on the shop's Facebook page.

I'm off to another retreat this weekend, where I will hopefully fniish Urban Candy, and make some 60 degree placemats.

Sunday 12 May 2013

I'm still here!

One of my faithful readers (hi Mom! :) ) pointed out that I've been pretty lax about my blogging lately, and I still haven't posted photos from the retreat. Bad, Krista. I can't fix the lack of retreat pics tonight (I'll get the photos eventually, promise). But I have actually gotten back at my quilting this week. I've been a bit unmotivated the last couple of weeks. I think it was a combination of the quilt overload at the retreat, followed immediately by another busy weekend. And the fact that I really need to clean up my sewing room after burying it while packing for retreat. So I was avoiding the whole thing.

But I owed someone a quilt, so this week I managed to get it loaded on the long arm, and even finished in time to deliver on Saturday. And then when I came home, I cleaned up part of my sewing room (I can see the cutting table again) and today I put bindings on 7 baby quilties.

 I still have to stitch all those bindings down, but it is progress. Of course, while cleaning up my table I found a bunch of projects. I wouldn't classify them as UFOs - more in the line of orphan blocks. I'll have to get my act together a turn a few of them into quilts next month.