2015 Recap

This post is photo-heavy. I kept them small, so hopefully the loading time wont be too bad for readers.

It's time for me to look back over the past year, review what happened and think about what's next (that last piece is tomorrow's post).  I had been feeling like I didn't get a lot of my own quilting done this year, but apparently I was quite mistaken in that thought.  In actual fact, I finished more quilts and more tops this year than I did last year.  More than 2 a month in fact, which I find really hard to believe but the numbers don't lie.

Finished quilts - 26 of them
The good news is that 13 of them came out of my "to be quilted" pile from the beginning of the year.  So there was some significant reduction there. At least there was before I added all the new ones shown below :) 

Tops quilted this year, from the UFO closet:


Quilts made, start to finish, this year:


Finished tops, ready for quilting - 13 new tops, added to my "to be quilted" pile. The house quilt is currently being quilted, but I'm leaving it in this list anyway, since it won't be finished before the new year.

I see no problem adding more tops to the "to be quilted" pile this year - 5 already in the plans for January, with all the mysteries I'm jumping into.  And 2 new pattern designs I have in mind that I want to make. The challenge is going to be getting my own quilts onto the longarm machine, between customer projects and charity quilting for Victoria's Quilts.



To Be Bound


MIA - possibly donated to Roger's House.  I don't recall quilting this one, but I don't seem to have it here in the to be quilted pile, so I'm hoping it did indeed get finished and I just neglected to photograph the end result.



Quilties - three of these were made this year, the rest are ones I finally finished up and donated.

Monday Link-up

My design wall just has Bonnie Hunter's mystery today.  What else is there to quilting life, between Thanksgiving and New Year's?  :)

I've finished clue 5, except for final pressing of 40 units, and am all ready for the next step.  Past history says that Bonnie might do the final reveal on New Year's Day. But I think there are still 2-3 block parts to make before we get that far.  So if she reveals on New Year's, we are going to be BUSY!   I'm kind of hoping for a simple clue instead, so that I can concentrate on all my other mysteries that day.

Here are all my units for Allietare - they still (almost) fit in my little bin, which leaves me thinking there are a lot of bits still missing.

 Modern Guild meeting is tonight, so I finally put the finishing touches on my steam engine block for our charity quilt.  All set to hand off, along with a few other bits & pieces I've collected from people. I can't wait to get this quilt back for quilting, and see how it all goes together.

In the meantime, I've been pondering my 2016 plans.  I did an inventory of what's in flight, or in the quilting closet, and the numbers are just as scary as last year.  I'll post those details later this week, and share my 2016 plans with you.

I'm linking up with Bonnie and Judy today, for more design inspiration.

Sunday projects

While I was assembling a list of my quilty achievements this year, I realized that I neglected to photograph a couple of my projects. These 2 quilts are from a pattern in "Modern Neutrals".  The one on the right was the original, following the directions for placement of the light & dark neutrals. But as I assembled it, I decided I didn't like the arrangement - the illusion that was supposed to come through in the pattern was not working for me. So I decided to cut the second have of my strips in the reverse colour placement, with the light fabrics in the large squares.  I think that (the one on the left) shows the pattern more clearly, for the fabric I chose.

In the meantime, I have been busily working away on Bonnie's latest clue, and have about 1/2 the units assembled for this step.  And, as a bonus today, Merry Mayhem sent a sneak peak for the New Year's Day mystery, so I can get started on that in the next day or so, too.  She says it means we can sleep in on New Year's Day - but in my case it just means I'll have time to get started on my other NYD mysteries first thing :)

And I'm working away on my longarm, quilting houses. This is a quilt made from blocks & fabric I won at a retreat in November. The top was assembled at the retreat, and I hope to have the quilting done before the next guild meeting.  Each house is getting one of 4 slightly different quilting treatments.

Mystery overload

I sewed diligently all weekend, and finished up clue #4 on Bonnie Hunter's Allietare mystery.  Whew, that one was a lot of work. But as always, you know the end result is going to be spectacular.  I'm really happy, given the instructions for this clue, that I decided to use constant fabrics for all my colours - that's going to make for much simpler assembly when we get to the end of this, since I don't have to worry about keeping the right 4 pieces together each time.

In other news, I may have completely lost my mind.  This is my mystery quilt staging area (aka my ironing board). All of these are bundles already prepared or ready to cut, for the various New Year's Eve and New Year's Day mysteries that I think I'm going to participate in this year. I say think, because reality is likely to smack me right upside the head somewhere around mid-day on NYE :) But I'm planning to try, and what doesn't get done on the day of, will be finished at some point.

For those interested in joining my craziness, or some small part of it,  here's what I have going on, from left to right.

In the first bag, cut pieces for a yahoo group mystery quilt on NYE.
Then we have Merry Mayhem's NYD mystery, also cut and ready to go.
Then a pile of fat quarters (the greens) for a mystery from Quiltbug.com. I'm waiting for some clarification on those fabric requirements, however.
Fourth, a pile of fabric awaiting cutting instructions, for the quilting.about.com mystery
And finally, a bunch of 2.5" strips for a second attempt at the yahoo group mystery. My first set is very dark - almost black & white. So I thought I'd try switching it up with some brights for an alternate look.

With all this cutting an prep work, there isn't much on my design wall today.  But I'm linking up with Judy & Bonnie today.

Saturday Sewing

Another day of mystery sewing.  Bonnie released clue 4 yesterday, and it is a BEAR!  480 2" black squares cut.  240 headless geese made. And (so far) 28 butterflies (or centerless bow ties as Bonnie called them) completed.  I should be able to finish up tomorrow, if I don't run out of steam first.

I'm not usually one for trying to predict the mystery results before we reach the reveal, but given the instructions regarding matched sets, I'm thinking we may end up with something like this in there.  But I'm probably completely wrong :)

As a bit of a break from all that, I did some sewing on my giant scrappy swoon quilt - the last round needs to be put together.  I picked it up simply because I had some black thread in the bobbin and figured I might as well use it up before moving on to the next step which needed cream.  Of course, as soon as I ran out of thread I remembered the other project that needed just a small bit of black sewing for some applique. Ooops. Guess I'll be reloading that black bobbin sooner than I thought.

WIP Wednesday

I guess I'm a bit late for design wall Monday this week. Heck, I just realized it's not even Tuesday anymore. But, I have been working in my sewing room this week. Finished a bunch of blocks for a new quilt. This started as a leader/ender some time ago, but I got tired of trying to keep track of all the bits, so I made it my main project recently. 

Originally this fabric was for a kit, but although I love the fabrics, I didn't like the quilt design. So I decided to go my own way with it.  The fabric (charm squares) made 42 blocks - just enough for a decent layout.  I considered several options, but decided on the second one here, partly becuase it makes the quilt bigger, but also I like it more.  I'm going to add sashing with squares in the center of the stars, and on-point squares in the centre of the on-point boxes.  Hopefully I have enough fabric for that plus some borders.

I also jumped into another mystery quilt. Looks like I'm going to repeat last year.  Merry Mayhem put out her fabric requirements this week, so I pulled some bits from my (nicely cut) scrap bins and found enough to make the scrappy version. I'll figure out borders later.  Lights, mediums, and darks. However that red may have to go, or else it needs some more friends and fewer brown/blacks.

I'm linking up at the Needle and Thread Network today.

Mystery progress

I finished my clue #3 for Bonnie Hunter's mystery today. Made the extra 60 4-patches I needed, so now I'm all caught up.  Ok, I might be one 4-patch short - I had one fabric which was under 40" wide, so one of my 4-patches had to be tossed out.  I'm going to wait and see if there is an off-cut I can use to finish that up as we go through the rest of the steps, rather than cut another 2 inch strip right now.

Here are a few of each of the units from steps 1-3.

In other news - not much is happening. I did some more sewing on my Jacob's ladder(ish) blocks, so there might actually be a top to show off soon.  Other than that, I need to get organized and figure out what exactly I'm working on. My sewing room is a disaster (again) and I'm sure I'm going to lose bits of various projects if I don't get a handle on it soon.

I picked up some Christmas fabric this week, to finish off some wall hangings (two of the several UFOs cluttering my tables).  3 yards in, and nothing to count as out since I have not finished anything this week.

Stash totals for the year:
104 3/4 yards in
217 1/4 yards out
Total: 112 1/2 yards out