January 2015 – Kelly's Kwilts

Design Wall Monday – January 26, 2015

First up is my design wall/floor. I finished all the 16 patch blocks for Good Night Irene and cut the 44 4.5″ blocks I need to finish the pieced border. I just need to sit and sew the triangles on one corner of 40 of the newly cut blocks and then I can start putting it all together. Glad to see this finally coming together, it was a sew along from last year that just didn’t happen.

So Saturday when I was sewing and Alex had gotten up from “quiet time” he said he wanted to sew like me. Made my heart melt that he was interested in something I was doing! I told him we could make a blanket for his Glomer (glow-worm) that he takes EVERYWHERE! So yesterday he picked out 6 4.5″ squares and we sewed them together. I just put the backing on the top and sewed around it, flipped it inside out and then sewed around it to close the hole up. He helped with almost all of it, started to get bored by the time we got to sewing the last go around. But he’s proud of it and has been carrying it around with Glomer since we finished it.

So I meant to actually post this yesterday, and link to Kathy’s Slow Stitching Sunday post, but never got around to actually opening my laptop and doing a post. Just went to the page and it’s still open for posts! Yesterday was spent working on Hexie Insanity while we watched the Cavs beat Oklahoma City Thunder. I really am loving the peace that comes over me when I work on hexies. There’s no rush, no deadline, just time to work and relax. Not a lot of time for relaxing with 2 kids under 5, but we make do! Hopefully I’ll have some more progress to show with this quilt soon. Today I cut some white 2.5″ squares down to 2″ and some scrap white from the Good Night Irene project so I could start prepping some white hexies. I also signed up for white on white fat quarters in our guild exchange so I will have some nice variety coming all going to this project.

Linking up to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times, check and see what others are up to!

2015 Challenge

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m a bookworm. There I said it. I have been a reading machine all my life. Today I was listening to Very Lazy Daisy’s latest podcast and she mentioned a reading challenge that she was going to do from a list on The Dusty Bookshelves blog. I looked at it and thought, that shouldn’t be too hard for me. But then I got on GoodReads because they have a 2015 Reading Challenge too (Daisy mentioned this too). You decide how many books you want to read in the year. Most people are doing 1 a month, 2 a month, some are doing 50 for the year. Me? I’m insane or something because I choose to put 100 books for this year! Now I’ve already read like 6 books this year, but since I can’t remember exactly which ones were actually started and finished this month, I’m going to start with the one I finished this morning – Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich. I have a widget in the side bar that will be updated when I update GoodReads – and I just added their app to my phone so I can update whenever I have time. Lucky for me, this book meets both challenges!! Eventually I will put up a chart for the Dusty Bookshelves Challenge, it just won’t be today!

On a Roll!

Oh my am I on a roll this week!! I have the center of Alex’s quilt completed, I just need to add a thin black border and then a piano key border after that. Unfortunately I need more fabric for that so it will have to wait until hubby’s payday. I put it on his bed the other night so I could decide whether the borders were needed or not, and I just want to put the piano key border on the sides and bottom, it’s not needed on the top at all.

I’ve been using my Good Night Irene blocks as leader enders while working on Alex’s quilt, and I’m flying on getting them done! I have 8 more of the 16 patch blocks to do and then start working on the pieced blocks that make up the first border. I need to cut out the white squares before I can put those together though. Maybe by the end of the weekend I can have it all put together and figure out something for the final border from the stash.

Plan on working on some hexies later today, going to take my car for a major wash inside and out, so I’ll be working on them while I wait.

Design Wall Monday – January 19, 2015

Well I’m FINALLY working on Alex’s quilt again! I got all the blocks put together last week and ironed on Friday. After my sister cleaned on Saturday I laid everything out on the floor in the living room – this thing is a lot bigger than I thought! I like the way it looks with all the different colored strips on the blocks, hopefully he likes it too! I have the top half of the quilt webbed together so I don’t lose any blocks or turn them the wrong way. I’m using my Good Night Irene quilt blocks as leader/enders so that I can get some work done on that one too. I’m glad to finally be sewing again, I need it these days for stress relief! Hope to have these blocks put together by the end of the day – depends on if the kids nap this afternoon. I think I’ll be doing a thin black border and then I was thinking of doing a piano key border with the 4 solid colors from the blocks, but I might need to get some more!

Linking up with Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday.

Design Wall Monday – January 19, 2015

Linking up with Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday.

Hexie Insanity Update

I’m happy to add another 8 diamonds and 1 flower to my hexie insanity quilt. The count is now 32 of 158 diamonds completed and 18 of 64 flowers completed for a total of 4% done! LOL Last week I cut up one of the jelly rolls that I got for Mother’s Day last year, today I finished cutting up the other one. Between the 2 jelly rolls I have 1600 squares ready to be turned into hexies. I still have 3 charm packs and 4 quarter yard cuts that need to be cut up too, but I’ll do those once I get some of these other squares used up. I also bought a yard of white for the paths between the diamonds and I also decided to cut some of my white 2.5″ square smaller so there’s a variety in the white. I won’t cut any of that for a while though I want to get all the diamonds and flowers finished first. I keep trading off between this project and my knitting at night, depending on how tired I am. It’s a lot easier to fix hexies than the knitting – I hate taking stitches out of the knitting!! Hopefully be back tomorrow with a knitting update!

Alex’s Quilt

So I FINALLY started a quilt for Alex – who is now 4 years old! I have been collecting some fabrics for awhile and at our guild quilt show I let him pick out a fat quarter pack for his quilt. Last week I cut out the 80 pieces out of the prints and now I just need to cut out all the side strips for each print. I cut out a few and sewed them together this afternoon just so I could see some progress! The pattern is one that was a class at our guild that I put into EQ in all the different sizes. I think this will go together quickly, as long as I can get everything cut out and ready to sew when I have time. Alex has now stated that he’s not going to nap in the afternoon anymore, but I’ve told him he has to play quietly in his room if he’s not going to nap. Cassie naps, but not very well, I usually have to nurse her back to sleep. But I think I can do this, I miss it!!

In the last week or so I managed to get a few more diamonds completed for my Hexie Insanity quilt. I’m now 3.2% completed! 🙂 My numbers changed a little bit because I added in more borders after seeing some finished quilts. Once this is finished it will have over 10,000 hexagons in it!

Guild meeting tonight, and a board meeting, that I now need to attend since I am the “media person” – I took over the newsletter last fall and I do the blog and FaceBook. *sigh* One of these days I’ll learn to say no! 🙂 Oh and did I mention that I’m doing a BOM this year for the guild? LOL, I have some ideas but need to spend some time working on it! First 2 blocks need to be ready for next month!

Hopefully I’ll be back soon with more blocks finished on Alex’s quilt – or a finished top! I need to put borders on my Hexagon Diamonds quilt so I can get it basted and quilted too – it needs to be on the bed in the trailer this year!

On the Needles – January 2, 2015

OMG it’s January! Last week I mentioned that I took apart a crochet blanket I was making for my sister and started it over as a knitting project instead. I’ve got the border and first repeat completed and I’ve just started the second repeat (26 rows) tonight. This is going to take awhile to complete, I’m a very slow knitter! Since no one bought me the Addi Click Interchangeable needles for Christmas, I’m going to save up my teaching money and buy them for myself. I’m already halfway there, so it’ll only take another month I think. I have a Craftsy class for socks that I want to start when I have time, but I’ll need needles for it. I’m really comfortable with needles on cables, so hopefully I can do socks that way!

Linking up with Patchwork Times.