March goals/April plans

In March I had planned these goals:

1. I'll quilt 2 of my tops (specific quilts to be determined).  
2. Sticking with my goal to make quilties every month, I'll make 2 quilties for guild (I have 2 tops, so I'll get them quilted and bound by mid-month).  
3. And finally, I want to finish the Hunter's Star quilt that I just started.  Maybe actually get it done before it adds to my pile of UFOs waiting for time on the long arm.
4. 2 more Gardener's Alphabet blocks - finish H, plus 2 more - no cheating next month :)

So, how did I do?

1. Quilted and bound - Dancing with the Stars.  Quilted and half the binding done - green geese. So not quite complete, but almost.
2. three quilties delivered to guild - goal complete (over achieved, even)
3. Hunter star top pieced (but not quilted)
4. Gardener's Alphabet H, I, J complete and E started - goal complete!

Not too bad.  I got almost all of my goals done, and it's feeling really good.  I'm glad Judy setup this challenge - no way I'd be as far on the Gardener's Alphabet or my monthly finishes, without this push every month.  I just hate to see a goal sit unfinished :)

For April, my goals continue to trend along the same lines.

1. make 2 quilties for guild
2. Quilt one more top (to be chosen)
3. Finish binding 3 quilts (checkerboard, ugly fabric challenge, and green geese)
4. Gardener's Alphabet - complete 3 more blocks - this month's blocks (K, L) plus E

Drop by Judy's blog to see how everyone else did with their goals this month.

Stash Report - March 31

Apparently it was a busy week here.  I'm glad I wrote this information down as I did it, because I would have forgotten that I did these quilts this week.  I made 3 baby quilts & paired them up with backing for quilting (one is even quilted). 

3.5 yards - 3 baby quilts
3 yards - backing for 3 baby quilts


That's 6 1/2 yards used this week.


Total stash usage this year: 83 yards out

Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports. 

Pooling sock yarn

Judy loves sock yarn that pools in random patterns when she knits.  I'm more of a regular stripe type (I think it's the engineer in me).  But I thought I would jump on board with Judy's latest challenge.  Knit a pair of socks with yarn that pools.  Best socks will win a gift certificate for The Loopy Ewe.  How could I pass it up?

So, I checked my few skeins of yarn for the one I thought would pool best, and pulled it out.  First, a calendar shot - no pulling out a pair of socks already knit, so here's proof they weren't started yet (that calendar says March 2013, if you enlarge the photo).  The yarn is Wollmeise Pure, in colour Zenzi.

And here it is before I wound it - I'm hoping that those darker segments will be ripples between the pools of light yarn.

And finally, all wound up and ready to go.  Now to figure out how to fit in a full pair socks in the next 3 months, in between all my quilting projects.  I think those are the needles I'm going to use, but I still need to swatch the yarn to check. If they are too small, I need to finish my current pair of socks before I can start these.

I'm linking up my photo over at Judy's Pooling Yarn post.

March Finish

My UFO for March is officially complete! I guess this quilt wasn't really a UFO, since the block of the month just ended in February.  But, without some goal to get it done this month I'm sure it would have ended up as a UFO - and it is just too pretty to do that. 

Feathers quilted in the outer border (and one disaster, caused by careless unsewing, repaired).  Diamonds in the yellow border. And the rest of the blocks are done with stitch in the ditch, because I didn't want to mask the stars themselves. 

I'm linking up at Sew Bitter Sweet March finishing party.

Design Wall Monday - March 25

Here's a quick peak at what's on my design wall this morning. The wall actually went through several variations over the weekend, some of which I forgot to take a picture of. On the left side of this photo is a block for a new quilt I'm thinking about.  It didn't work out too well - lots of tucks - so I'll try again and see if I can figure out what went wrong, other than the fact that it's a circle.

I worked on my Border Creek Station mystery on Saturday, and finally finished up the March clue.  Just in time for next month.  I pulled out my guild mystery yesterday, determined to fix my mistake from the month before.  Apparently reading is a challenge and rather than making 12 blocks (leaving me with the bits to make 9 alternate blocks last month), I made 21 all the same.  So I had to unstitch and redo 9 blocks before I could get started on this month's clue.  That is all done, but unfortunately I folded it all up and put it away before thinking to get the camera out.  So photos will have to wait until next month.


Then, I pulled some fabric that's been sitting around, and put together some baby quilts.  First, a design from Batik Gems.  Done in oriental fabrics instead of batiks, and it's a little baby one.  I can't quite call it a miniature, but it's about 1/6 size of the original design.  Now that I know what I'm doing, I have fabric for a larger version in batiks.

Then I took 4 blocks from one of my BOM projects, and decided to turn them into a quiltie.  It's a bit odd, but hopefully someone will like the cheerful colours.

And the final pieces of my charm pack that I made 2 quilties from last month.  I have now put together this nickel brick quilt, thus satisfying 3 goals in one project - finish the charm pack, make a quiltie for next month's guild meeting, and make a nickel brick quilt.

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

Stash Report - March 24

After I got Dancing With the Stars off the long arm, I loaded up my next quilt.  So that means another backing this week, for 5 yards. And 3/4 yards used for binding on Dancing with the Stars.  Finishing UFOs is really good for my stash numbers :)

This is the next one I'm going to quilt.  Not sure exactly what the plan is, other than I want to highlight the geese in some way.

Total stash usage this year: 76 1/2 yards out

Drop by Judy's blog for more stash reports.

Fixed!

And finished. Well, almost - just the binding left to go.

Dancing with the Stars has a repaired border, has been back on the long arm, and is now off.  All quilting complete!  I'm pretty happy with the fix.  I thought about mending the hole - received several suggestions on ways to do that - but decided I would always see it.  And because the feathers are so open, I was afraid that the mend would be in one of the big open spaces - leaving it subject to fraying down the road.

I decided my best option was to un-sew a bit more, and cut out a rectangular section of border.  I replaced about a 1 1/2" wide section with a new border section, stitched the borders back together, and quilted it.  If you look closely, the piece is visible, but I think if you aren't looking for it, it's not obvious.  And I'm confident that this section will stand up to use just as well as the rest of the quilt.


Now, on to binding!