Finishes!

I mentioned earlier in the month that I had 2 finishes, I just didn’t have any pictures! So finish #1, last year I picked up a baggie of HST from the free table at guild. I started putting them together slowly as the leader/ender as I was working on other projects. Eventually it took center stage and became a finished top. Then came the part I just don’t like – basting! It was small so I was able to spray baste it before I started quilting it. I decided to step outside my comfort zone and do something different, so I put on the ruler foot and used a straight edge ruler to help me stitch stars in each 9 patch area. Still not sure where it’s going, might just let Cassie have it for a doll blanket 🙂

In 2013 we had a block swap at guild. 6 women participated and each made 2 blocks. I wanted it to be a little bigger so I added the blocks in the corners. I finished the top right away in 2013, but it sat here for a long time because I just don’t like to baste! This year I just had to complete something, so this was basted in January and was just sitting here waiting for me to quilt. Since I had started working with rulers I decided let’s get moving and work more with them. It was so much fun! I did ribbon candy in the sashing, which I’ve never done before. Once I got the hang of the moving the quilt the right directions it wasn’t bad. The picture doesn’t show any of the details of the quilting, it was taken at guild and I don’t feel like pulling it out to get another picture 🙂

So, 2 more finishes for the year, I have another quilt that I basted a couple of weeks ago at guild that I’m just waiting to start quilting. Working on a huge order right now and hopefully I can get to it in the next day or so. I’d love to have 1 or 2 more finishes for the year.

October Already?

How on earth is it already October? The last week has been busy in cleaning! My office has been a royal mess for quite some time and there’s a closet outside my office that has things just thrown in it and not put where they belong. So, the closet is now cleaned and organized, some things going to the basement and some getting tossed. Items from my office that don’t need to be up here are also going to the basement.

While I was working on cleaning off the mess of my sewing table I found 2 cigar boxes that a friend found at a garage sale that had fabric already cut out. Each box had various cardboard shapes for cutting out the shapes. I spent some time this afternoon trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do with these pieces, and looking at the EPP pieces that I have here that I could possibly use.

What I believe I have is 3 different quilts that will be made: Pentagons, bow ties and diamonds. The bow tie quilt will probably be the last one I work on, I don’t have any EPP pieces that will work for that right now, and there’s no cutting template for them either.

The pentagons I’m going to put together in rings with an octagon in the center – EPP papers are on order from paperpieces.com right now. I found 1 pack of papers here so I started glue basting some this afternoon/tonight just so I have a head start on them. Once I have the rings put together they will be appliqued to a background and the blocks then put together. It looks like there are 27 pentagon sets so I’ll have to play around with a setting – might have to make a couple extras in order to have an even setting. I’ll have to wait and see when I get these all together.

The second box had pieces that I think might have been going toward a wedding ring quilt, but there’s no way I’m going hand piece one of those! So I had to figure out something else I could do with all that fabric. 1″ diamonds fit nicely on the fabrics and I’m going to do them like tumbling blocks. I even basted and sewed one block together – this is going to take a LONG time since they finish so small. I had a small package of diamonds I ordered years ago, so I ordered a much bigger package with the rest of the EPP pieces. Not in any rush on any of these projects, because I have so many hand projects under way already!

I have a few finishes to share, I’ll get pictures taken and get a post up in a few days. I also have a roll of batting on it’s way so I can baste another quilt and start working on the quilting, especially since I now have a fairly clean sewing table!

Updates in September

First Day of School

Wow, 5 months without a post! It’s been a whirlwind last 5 months and I just haven’t done a lot of stitching. We finished the school year at home with mommy as the teacher, Cassie did great and Alex just didn’t want to work on anything. Home just isn’t the right place for my kids and school. They just started back this week and we’ve had an eventful first week! Yesterday the phone rang and my heart always drops when it says it’s the school. Yep, Alex threw up at recess and had to come home from school. So I had to run up to school and get him. Let’s hope it’s the only time this year!

It was a busy spring and summer with orders, including one to Germany that took forever to get there! Everyone was shopping online for the end of the school year gifts and it definitely helped me! It’s been a slow start to fall, but that’s ok it will pick up in the next month or so for Xmas. Because I was so busy with orders the sewing machine sat idle for a long time. Plus we were doing a lot of camping and visiting with family in other states. We stayed in the whole time but had so much fun!

Now that I am starting to have some time to myself I’ve been working on Harry Potter SAL blocks. Just finished another one today, I only have 9 more blocks and I can get the top put together. Since our quilt show for 2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19 I have time to get this and maybe a couple more quilts completed before our show in September 2021.

I have a lot of projects to work on when I’m sitting in my chair at night, cross stitch, all the various EPP projects, a new knitting project and I picked up a QAYG Hexagon template at a guild meeting a few months ago and have been hand stitching those and will be machine stitching them together when they are all ready. Hope to be back soon with a new update, hopefully it won’t be 5 months from now!

Mystery Quilt

Wow! I can’t believe that I managed to make 100 blocks in 13 days! Laundry Basket Quilts is doing a mystery quilt that started on March 20th, but I didn’t find out about it until the 23rd when I started working on blocks. This was a wonderful stress reliever since the kids started online learning last week. We spent the mornings doing school work and then the kids had the afternoons to play or do whatever they wanted to do. Some of the colors in the pictures aren’t correct, I used all pinks and blues, similar to the pattern. I did change the first one to purples, just because I had those colors already cut in that size.

In the process of working on all of these blocks, I managed to complete 3 bow tie blocks, 2 blocks for a mini quilt I’m working on and 3 blocks for the hexie temperature quilt! If I can applique the last 2 blocks tonight I can finish them and put together the next 2 rows of the hexie temperature quilt. Hoping to work on the Harry Potter quilt this week too, we’ll see what I can get done this week!

Finish #1 for 2020

Yeah I know I already posted a finish in February, but I actually finished this one the end of January/beginning of February and took it for Show and Tell at Guild in February. Back in 2013, I posted that someone from guild came over and taught me how to hand quilt. Well I started working on a practice piece and it got put away in a basket and forgotten about, you know how these things happen! So I was looking for something else and found the practice quilt with all the 1/4″ tape all falling off of it. So I took it out of the hoop (to be returned to Sue finally!), pulled all the 1/4″ tape off and just started working on it. Took a few nights and a few poked fingers, but I got it done and found some already made rainbow/scrap binding that I could use on it. It’s not perfect, nothing I ever make is, but it’s done and I hand quilted it all by myself! Now the first hexagon quilt I made is basted and once I get a hexie project finished I will start hand quilting it. Besides I need to figure out how I want to quilt it still!

Hexie Temperature Quilt Update

Wow! I spent the afternoon, minus time for a family walk outside on the bike path, working on pulling fabrics for the hexie temperature quilt. Unfortunately for me, I had to do some cutting into fat quarters for a lot of it because I just didn’t have the colors in my 2.5″ square bin. But that’s ok with me, at least I now have ALL the squares for the hexies I need and I can work on basting and doing the flowers whenever I want. I will most likely start working on them tonight, there are 4 weeks already basted and they just need put together into a flower. Then I’ll have a stack ready for applique and borders.

I’m starting to feel good about progress made so far this year on quilts. I have 2 basted and ready for quilting, 2 have been finished and knocked off the UFO Challenge list and I’m making progress on multiple in progress quilts. Hubby just left to pick up our dinner and I’m going to work on ironing the scrap basket fabrics so they can be cut down and put in the correct tubs when I have time. I need to get this office cleaned up and that’s just phase 1!

Lots of Updates!

Amazingly I haven’t had a lot of things that required me to leave the house the last few days. So I decided that it was time to spend some time sewing! Well I did take a nice long walk the other day it was so nice!

So first item up on my list was to get the border put on the Pokemon quilt. This top has been done for almost 2 years and I don’t know what I was waiting for! Not the best picture, kids had things out and I couldn’t get a better one. But the border is now on this and it’s in the to be quilted pile!

Since the top is now done I decided all the solids leftover from this could go into the Harry Potter quilt, since I need more to make it bigger than the original SAL. I think the SAL was for a twin bed size/throw and I’m making it large enough to fit our king size bed and hang over the sides properly – which I can never do for some reason. 🙂 So everything shown in the basket at the top is from the Pokemon quilt. In fact I used some of it already to make my next Harry Potter block! 9 3/4 is finished and I have 12 more blocks to go!

So with that done I decided to pull out my 2017 Hexie temperature quilt (picture from post in 2018) and see where I was with that. Boy did I leave that project in a mess! Back in 2018 I put the first 2 rows together and then put together the blocks and appliqued all the hexie flowers that were completed. It looks like I have 4 flowers that still need to be put together and I can possibly put the next 2 rows together. However, it looks like I never updated my spreadsheet/trello with what was completed AND it looks like I never got the high temp for the day from August 28th to the end of the year! So it looks like I’ll spend a little time today gathering the rest of my data and maybe even pulling fabrics for more hexies. Since we are going on a mini vacation for Spring Break I’ll need a project (or 2) to take with me!

Cassie wants to do some sewing today, we’ll see if she really makes anything!

February Finishes

I did manage to finish the 2 tasks I wanted to finish this month, I got the doll quilt completely finished AND I completed a block for my Harry Potter quilt. Cassie is thrilled with her new doll quilt, she immediately took it and put it on one of her doll beds. I just did simple loopy quilting in the triangles, I still need to work on my speed with curves, there’s some eyelashing on the back, but Cassie’s doll won’t care!

I picked an easy block from my Harry Potter quilt to do, the Deathly Hallows. With this block done I now only have 13 left to do! I might see if I can get another one done today, we’ll see since we have some rearranging to do in Cassie’s room today.

I was hoping to get my first hexagon quilt basted earlier in the month, and I wasn’t able to do that then, however I was able to start working on it today! i should be able to get it finished tonight while I watch some basketball. This will be hand quilted this year!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts.

February Goals

I’m trying to figure out what I want to work on for my goals this month. I have a lot of tasks I have to do for Valentine’s Day for the kids school, but I certainly don’t want to list those as goals., those are MUST DO’s. 🙂 I think what I really would like to do is put together at least 1 Harry Potter block (not sure which one yet) and quilt the baby doll quilt that I basted last month. I ordered thread for the guild block exchange quilt but I know that won’t get done this month. Maybe if I have time I can get another quilt basted, but I certainly don’t think that will happen!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilt OMG.

January Finishes

January goal: Baste 2 quilts. Shouldn’t be too hard right? Well it wasn’t! Granted one of them was quite small, I still got it done! The small one is going to be a baby doll blanket for Cassie. Just need to figure out how I want to quilt it. Then I picked out a large quilt to baste. Found just the right color backing and basted my 2013 quilt guild challenge quilt! I need to get some Aurifil thread in the right aqua/blue color before I can quilt it, but I’m not sure how I want to quilt it yet anyway. The board basting was easier than I thought it would be, it took me an afternoon when Alex was sick to get it basted. Can’t wait to start quilting it!

Like I said Alex was sick for 3 days last week, then of course this week I get it! So I haven’t had time – or felt like even working – on quilting anything yet. I do have another quilt that is on my UFO list to get a binding on, that will be another post when it’s finished. 🙂 I did pull out another top to baste, but since I was sick it didn’t get anywhere. I want to start hand quilting my first hexagon quilt, just need to pick out a backing first!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts and will have to start thinking about next months goal!