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.