Dreambird progress

Most of my weekend was spent on this project, and it's probably the reason I have no idea what day it is.  I've done flooring before, but I must have been younger then :)  I ache everywhere now.  But my son no longer has carpet in his room, and hopefully will get some relief from his allergy situation.

As you can see in this photo, we cleared out most of his room, and then shuffled all the furniture to one side.  When that part of the floor was laid, we moved everything over, and started on the second half.  Just a bit more trim to finish now, and he can move back in.

I did manage to get a lot of knitting done, in between rounds with the flooring.  I found that I needed a break now and then, and sitting down with knitting was just about the right speed.  I just started on feather #9. I don't know how many feathers there are going to be, so no idea how much knitting is left (maybe I should look at one of the project pictures and count them).  I'm just watching the balls get smaller as I knit 70 rows, repeat....

Linking up on Judy's progress report today.

All Abord(er)

The borders are now complete on the pink linked squares quilt.  The colours in this photo are odd -the outer background is actually the white part.  I'm not sure why the centers of some of those squares look so bright & white.  I used scrappy white/beige for the centers of the squares, and white tone-on-tone for the rest of the background fabrics.  I'm quite happy with the end result - and I'll get a better picture of it later, when I have someone around to hold it up for the photo.

Because this finish gave me some breathing room and some space in my sewing room, I decided to make a couple of blocks for the block lotto this month.  Wonky checkerboards - takes me back to the wonky tic-tac-toe blocks I just finished quilting.  These are really quick and easy blocks, so there may be a few more appearing on my design wall sometime this month.

And just because she's so darn cute :) This is Blossom, serving as a remote control/cell phone holder courtesy of son #1.  She looks downright embarrassed by the whole thing.

Now it's time to head back to the sewing room.  I can either clean it up for visitors coming next weekend, or get some work in on that dragon of mine.  Decisions, decisions.

Over the Rainbow

Blocks are all made.  Now that I look at the layout, I may regret this.  Notice the 6x8" blocks.  Notice how they are staggered?  Yes, that means y-seams.  On every block, in every row.  This is going to be interesting.  Quilt will be about 36x54" finished (no borders on this one).

These are the binding strips. I'll make a scrappy binding from all the bits that are leftover from the jelly roll.  This means no pink/red in the binding, since I used every last bit of those 2 colours in the main body of the quilt, but I don't think that will be an issue.

Spring Garden

It has been a beautiful day here, to kick off the Victoria Day long weekend.  Traditionally, this is the weekend to start gardening, and Mother Nature is certainly cooperating this year.  It rained all week, but today is bright and sunny and warm.  I did some weeding (weeds pull out really easily, when the ground has been saturated by a week of rain), and inspected all my trees and bushes.


I am so happy!  I planted a Japanese Lilac 4 summers ago, and it has never bloomed for me.  It always looks healthy, with lots of green leaves, but it has never flowered.  I read last year that they are sensitive and thought maybe the planting had been hard on it.  But it's in a sheltered yard, and when it didn't bloom last year I was losing hope.  But it has buds this year!  I can't wait to see it in full bloom.

I have a couple of other lilacs around the house.  They are one of my favourite plans, so this year when I wanted something to camouflage my new rain barrel, I planted this lilac.  It is supposed to bloom twice a year.  Hopefully it lives up to expectations.

I do believe it really is spring finally.  In fact, we are moving quickly into summer.  All of my daffodils are done, tulips are ending, and my irises are blooming today.  See the tulip leaning over to get its head in the picture?  :)

All Caught Up

I had the day off work today, and I spent  it enjoying time for myself.  That meant quilting, shopping, and later I'll go out dancing.  Weekday holidays are the best!

First, I spent this morning catching up on Judy's quilt for an hour.   All caught up now to the end of Day #7, and the quilt is starting to come together.  I put up some of the partial blocks on my wall in addition to the completed blocks and corners, so that I could see the overall effect.  I see now I got two pieces backwards.  Good thing they are in the unfinished sections.

I'm really liking this design from Judy.  I thought I'd try a smaller size, even though the instructions weren't provided for that.   Seemed easy enough - just drop some of the blocks and shrink the borders to fit.  So I guesstimated the new fabric requirements.  Incorrectly it turns out.  Despite almost running out of my colours (just barely squeezed out the final 2 pieces), and now getting pretty low on background fabric (about 3" left) I will persevere.   Apparently we are done cutting from the colours, and the background looks like we're almost done too.  So, I shall keep my fingers crossed and continue on.

After catching up on quilting, I headed out shopping.  I actually had a non-quilting goal in mind - my computer crashed on Monday, so it is off to the repair shop for some TLC.  After I dropped it off, I realized I was half-way to the quilt shop.  So, onward ho!   I pondered several options, and finally left with fabric for a new quilt, and a couple more colours to go with some fabric I bought earlier.  The more I thought about that one as a 2-colour quilt, the less I liked it.  And lucky me, the store had the fabric I already bought, so finding 2 colours to add to the set was easy (or as easy as picking colours ever is for me).

On my way out of the parking lot, I performed a random act of kindness.  I noticed a car with the spare tire lying on the ground, and the driver looked like she was pondering instructions.  So I stopped to give her a hand.  Changed a tire for a fellow quilter, and we were both on our way in about 10 minutes.  That brings my lifetime total tires changed up to 3 - all in the last 3.5 years of my 25 year driving career.  And now I'm home, and planning some more quilting time before I head out dancing tonight.   I guess at some point I should consider making dinner for 2 hungry teenagers, too.

More Fabric Choices

This past week I haven't had much time in my sewing room.  Work  has been keeping me really busy, and my son wanted help with his hallowe'en costume.  So the little bit of time I had for sewing was spent making a shirt for a Mime costume.  Shirt's done, and received approval from the Mime himself.  So this weekend is mine.  Back to quilting :)

I'm still hunting for fabric for my next quilt.  I was hoping for 100% stash for this one, but apparently gold is not a colour I have in my stash.  I think this blue is better than the last, but the center still isn't right.

And the next one is too yellow.  Also, notice that I still haven't found a replace for the pink or orange.  Each colour is fine, but I think I'd like a bit more definition between the two of them.

Guess I'll have to hit a fabric store and see if I can pick up a couple of fat quarters that work in this quilt. 

Looks like the Quilt-for-an-Hour starts on Monday, so I'd better get shopping.

Design Wall Monday - Oct 5

What's on my design wall this week probably looks really familiar to a lot of you.  I tweaked it a couple more times over the past 2 days.  I'm still not satisfied though.  It feels more like mountains than waterfalls now.

More interesting than what is on my design wall, is what is under it.  That table is the beginning of my machine quilting frame.  I'm so excited!  Space is tight, and I don't look forward to making room next time someone wants to come stay with me.  But I'm already loving this table.  With my sewing table in front of it, I have a nice deep table to catch the quilt I'm currently working on.  Wow!  What a difference.  Maybe I don't need the whole frame after all, and I should just go with the extended table.

Nah.  Who am I kidding?  I can't wait to try out the new frame, but I have to wait for my rollers to arrive first.

If you look on the left of the sewing machine, you can see just a corner of the queen size quilt I'm working on.  I'd name it, and show a photo, but it's a gift (and maybe even a surprise) so no peeking just yet.  Quilting on that project is coming along however, and I hope to have it in the mail before too long.

Last but not least, and not really on my design wall but I want to add it anyway, is my newest pair of socks.  I'm hoping the light green/yellow will prevent my son from stealing this pair.  If that fails, the next pair is definitely pink!  :)

I'm experimenting this time - knitting 2 socks together on 4 needles.  So far so good.  But I know that decreasing is going to be challenging.

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls this week.

The Quilting Blues

Do you ever go through periods of working almost exclusively in a single colour?  4 of my most recent finishing projects are in Blue!  OK, all but one of them was started 4 years ago, and the colour of the 4th was picked for me.  But I'm starting to think that I was in a really "blue" period when I started quilting. And now that I'm finishing projects, I've hit a number of the blues in a row

This quilt is the one which was not started several years ago. And in fact the colour was not chosen by me, so I'm sure I haven't slipped back into a blue period.  The quilt pattern was a mystery quilt from a shop hop held by the local quilt shops.  At each stop on the hop, a clue, including fabric, was available.  At the end of the hop, the final layout was provided.  The fabric in this quilt is all from Northcott's "Quest for a Cure" fabric line (Cambridge blue).

This quilt is now all boxed up and ready to send off to theQuilt.com for next year's auction.   I think this is the first time I've had the quilt done early, and haven't been scrambling to finish it in time for the January deadline.  Whatever is happening to me?  LOL

Tumbling Down

And the blocks all came tumbling down.  But in this case, that's a good thing.   The top for my tumbling block quilt is now complete.

This took some doing.  2 straight days of sewing, to finish putting it all together.  I chose to piece the falling blocks, rather than applique, because my last applique quilt is still waiting to be finished, 4 years later.  Next time, I think paper piecing would be a better choice.  Keeping the quilt flat and square, while adding randomly shapes bits of background fabric to the falling blocks was, to put it mildly, a challenge.

However, it was worth it.  The quilt came out just as I had pictured it.  Finishing will wait a while, because  I miscalculated, and the 1 yard of black fabric that I bought barely completed the top and borders.  Need to go buy binding (I hope they still have the fabric) and something for backing. But can't do that until next weekend.

So, this quilt made a good dent in my stash overall (all the blocks are stash).   And used up one of my recent purchases.  Let's see where we stand this week:


Used:
2 yards - backing & binding for star challenge quilt
1 yard - background for tumbling blocks

New:
1/4 yard - fat quarter from a stashbusting challenge

Used YTD: 24 yards
Added YTD: 15.25 yards
Net: 8.75 yards out this year

See Judy's blog for an update from other quilters this week.

Finishing Friday - Aug 28

Even with my sewing room out of commission, I was able to make some progress on my projects this week. I setup my machine in my bedroom, and did a lot of piecing (with 3 boys in the house, retreating to my bedroom on occasion was a dream.) One quilt done, one completely pieced, and great progress on another. And my favourite finish of the week - my Lone Star is done, and on my bed. Finished turning the binding this week.

Maybe I should have visitors and give up my sewing room more often. Or not. I can't wait to have my room back, so I can start quilting the 4 tops that are sitting on my self.

I have: (the * indicates I made progress this week, but it's not done yet)
DONE - A quilty for the children's hospital
- the shop hop quilt (ready for quilting now)
DONE - queen-size lone star
- A challenge quilt from my local quilt shop - 3 years ago (needs quilting)
- a picture quilt from my 2005 trip to Mexico (needs quilting)
- a queen size quilt (need to quilt it)
- a set of 3 wall quilts (to be hung)
- a stained glass dragon (still piecing)
- a Hawaiian wall-quilt that's been on my frame for 4 years now (finish quilting)
* - mystery quilt (ready for quilting)
* - tumbling blocks
- reversible quilt

Want to share your finishes for this week? Add your link below, or post a comment.

160 ?!?

I just calculated the size of the tumbling block quilt I started this month. It began as an experiment and a way to use up some of my scraps. I picked the block size pretty much randomly, and figured I'd let the blocks define the size of the quilt. Well, now that I have a few more blocks done, I laid a few out and did a quick calculation. Approximately 160 blocks to make a 30" x 40" quilt. Less a few, since one corner will be 'fractured'. But still. Sure am glad I didn't pick 1 or 1.5 inches for the diamonds.


160 - that's way more little blocks than I was expecting to make. This may require a bit more patience than I expected. I have 43 blocks complete. Another 15-20 cut out and ready to piece. That doesn't even get me half-way, and I've pretty much exhausted all the obvious colour triples in my stash. I guess I'll have to dig a little deeper next week.

To get a break from diamonds and Y-seams, I started planning my next quilt :) In my own defense, it will be (mostly) a stash quilt. In fact, it will be one that I started planning about 4 years ago - I'll finally cut into the fabric I bought for a kaleidoscope quilt.

Too white, or not too white?

I spent most of yesterday far away from my sewing room. Took my kids and my nephew to an amusement park. It was a fun day, and I managed to get my annual roller coaster fix while we were there. I love roller coasters. I wish someone would build one closer to home, however. Overall a fun day, but six hours of driving makes for a very long one.

Slept in this morning, and got up refreshed and ready to go. I put the final borders on the mystery quilt I was working on. All done now, and ready for quilting.

The white border is giving me some trouble though. I wish I'd had enough of the green fabric to do a wide border with it, but all I had was enough for the narrow border. It might grow on me - looking at the quilt in negative I realy like it, so I think (hope) picking the star colour for the border was a reasonable choice.

What do you think? Keep the white, or try to find a complimentary dark green and re-do the border?

Design Wall Monday - Aug 24

My design wall is completely empty today, because I had to clear it out of the sewing room before my nephew arrived. However, I did take a picture of my current quilt, before I took it down. So this is what part of my design wall held last Friday. The tumbling blocks and reversible quilt are still there, too.

I'm almost done the star quilt - this is half of the quilt on the design wall. The basic quilt block is a 24" section with 5 stars. I decided I didn't want a square quilt, and wanted something slightly larger (but not as large as a twin necessarily - besides, I don't have enough fabric for that). So I designed a sashing strip one star wide to go between the blocks. I'll have to re-work that a bit I think, to make 3 stars across rather than 2. Otherwise I'm going to have an odd empty space in the center of the quilt.

Check out what other quilter's have on their design wall this week. over at Judy's blog.

Surprises

It's amazing what surprises you find when cleaning up unfinished projects. The start of my "finishing kick" was finding 5 quilts in a drawer in the living room, where I had put them. I brought them downstairs some time ago so that I could do the handwork (binding, etc.) while watching TV.

When I found them earlier this month, I thought they had been there for a few months - maybe 6 at the outside. However, I pulled the last one out last night to start the binding. As it unfolded, out fell the label I had made when I finished quilting it. March 2008. Yes, 2008. These quilts have been sitting in my drawer for 18 months, not 6. I guess I need to make a new label - because I no longer belong to the quilt guild that it was going to be donated through, either.

On the bright side - I am now finished another quilt, and all 5 of the UFOs hiding in my drawer are now complete. I'll hang 3 of them this week, give the latest to the children's hospital, and the other is already in use by the kitties.

It doesn't show up well in this picture, but this is more of the cat fabric from my last quilt. I'm not very good at matching colours, and used the grey in a attempt to match some of the kittens. I wish I'd been more adventurous, and picked a colour that complemented the fabric, rather than tried to match it. For example, the background fabric (navy blue with gold stars) would, I think, have been a much more interesting choice for front of the quilt. Live and learn, and maybe gain some colour-sense as I go along.

There is one problem with working on unfinished quilts all week. Not a single stitch of stash fabric was used. Nothing was bought either, so at least it's a break-even week on that front. Check out Judy's blog for more stash reports from other quilters this week.

Design Wall Monday - Aug 17

Here's what's on my design wall today. On the left is a tumbling block quilt. I initially thought I'd do it on a dark background, but having auditioned some of the blocks against it, that obviously doesn't work. It will probably end up on white instead.

The lower right is going to be a reversible "quilt as you go" baby quilt. I'm using the squares to test out some quilting patterns before tackling them in large scale. Seems to be working - I definitely figured out what NOT to do on my Lone Star quilt.

Upper right is a mystery quilt I just started on Saturday. Didn't last too long with "not starting any new projects" did I? I stumbled across the mystery accidentally on Saturday, and when I discovered it was happening that day - and that I had enough fabric in my stash to do it - I couldn't resist. Not sure what's going to done with those 2 blocks - I'm a bit behind, only on clue #3, but I'm resisiting peeking at the end. And I'm not sure where this quilt is going in the end. I originally thought my son might like it (we just painted his room green), but now that I've cut some blocks, I see that the fabric has too much pink in it for him.

Check out what's on everyone else's design wall over at Judy's blog.

UFO Update

One UFO is now officially off the list. I finished the binding on my cat quilt. This was a challenge quilt from my local quilt shop in 2007. Given very general instructions each month, the variety in the end products was amazing. Instructions like "applique something", or "make some flying geese". The individual steps were generally simple to do. The challenge came in taking all the bits, and figuring out how to use them all in the finished product.

I had purchased the cat fabric earlier, simply because I loved the piles of kittens. That of course meant that my applique was going to be cat related.

The quilting is a variety of different styles. I was trying my hand at a few different patterns from "Quilt as Desired". Most came out ok, but there are a couple in there that I shall never do again.

As you can see, it did not take long for the quilt to be claimed by its rightful owner.

Finishing Friday

When I started quilting, I told myself that no new project would be started until I finished the previous one. Well, that was a silly idea. I soon found out that a quilter can't do 1 project at a time. There are the block of the month blocks, waiting for the next installment. A challenge quilt going on. A quilt being pieced. And of course one being quilted. And the last one you quilted waiting for binding. Right now, I have quilts in every stage of the process, from design through to complete & waiting to be hung.

I've been watching the fun over on Patchwork Times as quilters try to reduce their accumulated stash by finishing projects, creating stash quilts, and in some cases giving away fabric. It has inspired me to clean out my closet. Not so much a stash reduction (although I will have to tackle that soon, too). But a finishing festival. I will take all those UFOs (Unfinished Objects), and complete them.

I have:
- A challenge quilt from my local quilt shop - 2 years ago (needs binding)
- A quilty for the children's hospital (needs binding)
- the shop hop quilt mentioned a couple days ago (still piecing)
- queen-size lone star (needs quilting)
- A challenge quilt from my local quilt shop - 3 years ago (needs quilting)
- a picture quilt from my 2005 trip to Mexico (needs quilting)
- a queen size quilt (need to buy backing and quilt it)
- a set of 3 wall quilts (to be hung - finally labeled this week)
- a stained glass dragon (still piecing)
- a Hawaiian wall-quilt that's been on my frame for 4 years now (finish quilting)

I wonder how many I can finish, without adding more to the list? Probably not very many :)

Check back for updates on how my UFOs are coming along. Or better yet, post a link to your unfinished project list and we can work on them together, on "Finishing Fridays". If you don't have a website or blog to link, you can post your UFOs in the comments.

Irish Chain

This was my first bed-size (twin) quilt. I wanted to do an Irish Chain - it seemed like a fun, not too difficult, pattern to do. But I didn't want the chain to extend out to the border, as in a typical quilt. I wanted to "finish" the chain and make it a floating design. The idea was that the full chain would lay on top of the bed, and the border would drop down the sides. Seemed logical enough, so I drafted a pattern to do that. I carefully counted rows and inches, measured the bed twice, recalculated the number of rows, and set out to make the quilt.

It went together really quickly. Strip piecing is great, and I was able to put together the blocks in just a few days. A bit of care was needed to make sure all the edge blocks were constructed correctly, but even that was not too difficult. In retrospect, the pattern should have started & ended with the wider chain sections - that would have filled out towards the corners more and I think would have been a more pleasing balance overall.

Once the center was done, the border stumped me for a while. I wanted something that would blend nicely with the chain. I considered a 9-patch pattern for some time, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Coincidentally, around the same time, my quilt guild had a seminar on seminole piecing. As soon as I saw it, I knew that this would be the border for this quilt. By turning the chain 45 degrees, the border obtained the same jagged-edge look as the rest of the chain.

Once again I measured and cut and re-measured to get the border just right, with perfect transitions in the corners. There was a lot of faith and I think a bit of luck in getting the size to work out so that every square is a full piece, and no cheating was necessary to fit.

The final step of course was quilting. Still being new at this, I stuck to straight line quilting for the main part, outlining the chain. Then, I quilted 5-pointed stars joined by some meandering around the outside of the chain, and a single star in each square.

What's on my design wall?

This is one of my "in progress" projects. In July some of the local quilt shops hosted a shop hop. As part of that, they each sold a kit for 1 part of a mystery quilt. The shop hop was a "Quest for a Cure" shop hop, and the mystery quilt was made from fabric from Northcott's Quest for a Cure "Cambridge Square - Blue" fabric line.

Following a 3 year tradition, I decided to participate in the mystery, and donate the resulting quilt to thequilt.com - a charity that holds an annual quilt auction and donates the proceeds to cancer support groups. I have donated a quilt every year for the past 3, and I try to use at least some fabric from Northcott's current "Quest for a Cure" collection in the quilt I donate. So, this was a perfect starting point for my next donation, and I picked up all the kits on my tour.

Unfortunately, the first 2 parts of the mystery which I attempted were both short on fabric. A rather disappointing start. I debated my options: give it up as a lost cause; purchase an additional fat quarter of each of the 6 fabrics I was (so far) short on; or try to make something from what I had. I chose option 3. I gave up on the "mystery" aspect, and pulled out all the fabric and directions for the quilt. With a bit of creativity, I rearranged the colour scheme into something that was mostly achievable with the provided fabric. I picked up one extra matching fat quarter, and continued on my way.

I now have the 4 main blocks done, seen here on my design wall. All that remains to do is the sashing and border. Nine 3-inch star blocks are part of the sashing - I guess I'm doing some more work in miniature in the near future.

Head over to Judy's blog, to see what other quilters have on their design walls.