Works In Progress

Yesterday was a very busy day.

  It was like I drank a gallon of coffee. 

(I did not).

I loaded and quilted a 2nd donation quilt top; the one with the red binding in the picture.  I did a randomly spaced wavy line all the way across, took it off, reloaded and did it again in the opposite direction. 

I've been wanting to try this and think it looks nice. The quilt on the left is the 1st donation quilt-it was the one I did to see how the new poles and track system on HQ work

(Annie wanted in the picture since Otis keeps hogging the header photo.) 

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I also put the borders on this little spring table runner.  

(22 x 46)

I put the main part together during guild's newbie class, which was all about using pre-cuts.
I used an older April Cornell charm pack I had just sitting around waiting for just such a project.
 I found the yellow (inner border) in the stash but had to buy the outer border.
I have the binding made from the same blue border fabric.

I also made great progress on the OB-Wonder #3

I always am amazed at how a project that hogs the entire design wall shrinks so much as the rows are sewn together.  I have a tremendous desire to move all those un-sew rows on the right closer to the sewn together rows on the left.  It's goofy... and I won't do it.... waste of time... 

but I really want to.

Have you seen the t-shirt that says

yep I get that.

Oh and you might remember my Snow Bound quilt and how I wasn't happy with the quilting.  

Well, I got it out and the quilting is fine. Apparently, it just needed to sit in a dark closet for 6 months.  

I put it up yesterday and just kept looking at it and shaking my head as to why I was so bummed about it originally.

Oh and when I was getting Snow Bound out 

this quilt came out too. 

Remember My Apple Orchard?

 GUESS WHAT???   

The binding isn't sewn down!!!  

I think I must have put this away around vacation time and forgot about it!!! 

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Oh and I gave both the dogs baths!  

They are very sad to be smellin' all nice and clean....

 but that is the price they must pay to live in the house with us people.

Getting things done

Snow Bound is bound and labeled-it's my UFO for February.
 I really liked making this quilt, I've been sorry almost from the beginning on my fabric choices. I kept thinking "it's good to get out of my comfort zone" and many have told me how they "love" this quilt.

All well and good.  But it's been another reminder. I don't quilt to make others happy. 

Also, when I loaded this I dithered around deciding on an over-all or custom.  Instead of going with my gut and doing an over-all and finishing it. I started doing a loopy design in the chain blocks--to give me time to decide what to do in the appl. blocks.  I do like the chain blocks, you can't probably tell from the photo but I didn't quilt in the dark red chain so it puffs up and I like that effect.

So this quilt has taught (re-taught) me a few things.

*every quilt this year is NOT going to be a learning experience in improving my quilting (custom-type) in the way I think it will be-(my main goal for this year)

--if it calls for an over-all: answer the call!

*if the fabrics aren't making me happy- Change them.

*Comfort zone, shmumfort zone

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A little quilt just for me!

17"x18"



Design Wall Monday (2/14/11)

I'll be doing a lot of blanket stitching this week.  I have to finish the words "sleep and "repeat" on the Baby Life quilt and the 2 blocks to the right are the first two months for Henrietta Whiskers, Anne Sutton from Bunny Hill Designs 2011 BOM.

I'm loving it already. 

And my Flying geese and leftover pinwheels are still growing as my leader/ender.

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I got the first Baby Life quilt quilted and bound this weekend.

  And was finally successful in re-installing my printer drivers and all that happy horse do-do.

**happy dance didn't have to get a new computer**

which I just probably jinxed-dang!

 So I am able to make labels in EQ6 and print them out on fabric. I have to put a label on the Baby life quilt, my crumb quilt and Snow Bound (yep finished quilting that this weekend too), still binding it tho' and may re-do the quilting I did in some of the applique blocks, (sigh) not sure I like it will post about that later.

Check out other walls atPatchwork Times

Snowbound and other stuff

Snowbound is a flimsy.  After cleaning the house, I spent some time machine blanket-stitching the stars on the borders.  I had the 2 side borders sewn on and then watched the Pens game w/Meg. Then I went back down and finished the last 2 sides.



Meg came down to see it. Both her and her Dad really like this quilt.  They've actually come in and commented on it a couple of times in the last few days.  (so weird)

Yep, that's Meghan!  I think this picture shows the relief/joy (not in my getting the top done silly), but the fact that she's passed her first rotation/semester of Nursing School and only has one last final on Friday.  She's done so well that she could fail the final and still pass.  Not that she would ever think that way-  she's still going over stuff and studying. She wants an A.  But now that the pressure is off, for a few weeks anyway, I get my crazy, funny daughter back.

OK back to quilting stuff.

I pieced the backing for Snowbound last night and it's ready to go.  I took on 7 table runners a couple weeks ago, only one had a request of  before Christmas but I gave no guarantees. (this was right in the midst of my brother-in-law, Karl being hospitalized, and subsequently diagnosed with stomach cancer;  sewing/quilting priorities flew right out the window). 

Three of them were exactly the same, including the one with a deadline. So I got them all done over the weekend.  Quilting a small fill design is hard work-I always forget that. I did my Swirly Feather-flowers, small.

She picked up the 3 last night and was really happy with them (yea). 

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 I put up the 12 inch Christmas Bl-a-day blocks up on the wall last night, just in a random sort of way and I think I'm going to like it. 

Christmas Block-a-Days

I bought a light green Christmas fabric that has a little gold metallic in it. 

I'll have to audition it and think about sashing and borders perhaps-fun fun. 

This is another thing I learned with the Block-a-Days. I'm really enjoying the process of putting the blocks together.  It's a bit different than just reading the directions from a pattern.

Oh and one more non-quilting item.

Paul bought a snow blower!

We've always shoveled. I LIKE being out there shoveling, always have. And having 2 strapping sons willing to work for food helped a lot too. (yep, they've both moved out and I'm sure it had nothing to do with slave-labor chore issues.)

 However, after last years blizzard

you remember.... Paul was stuck at Pitt and I had to shovel out. Well after it was over I said why don't you get a snowblower...for your birthday...  

I know I'm like the best wife ever!!  :)

Well, apparently there were a lot of other really nice wives out there and all the snowblowers in the tri-state area were gone. 

I was quite amazed that when the snow started to fly last week, Paul actually remembered my offer from last year...

what could I do? I don't want to lose my nicest wife ever status. So he got one, sigh, another sign of our middle- agedness.  And the 'wors-er' sign is we're both pretty excited about it.

I, however, have not gone and stood in the garage looking at it.  I mean geeze, it's cold in there and the machine is ORANGE--yuck!

Did you hear me go "WOO-HOO"?

About an hour ago I finished my final Block-a-Days blocks!!!

Block a Days

Block a day's

I spent the entire day cutting and piecing! The second picture is of all the blocks I made today-yup 13 of them.
I'm really happy to have them done.

I also took a picture of Snowbound.  I started to sew the rows together after finishing the last bl-a-day block and then just ran out of steam.

a Flimsy

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I prepped the fusible for the final Snow Bound block. The 11th block is fused but I have to do the machine blanket stitching on it. 

Quiltathon update 5:30

Here's what I got done this afternoon.

The 3 SnowBound blocks on the right are blanket-stitched.  The one with the tree has 2 more blocks underneath that still need done and above that is the print out for the 8th blocks-- I printed it out today.  It must have just been put on the Bunny Hill site.  I thought I checked it a day or 2 ago and it wasn't up yet.  So now I have another one to prepare as well!

On the very left side of the picture you can just see 3 stacks of 2.5" squares. I cut them out after deciding on a checkerboard 2nd border for Morris WS top.  I cut 322 squares.  I'm going to do 2 rows on the top and bottom (4-patch) and 3 rows (9-patch) on the sides, that should give me an 80 x 90 finished top-after I add the final 6" border. 

So for lunch I had coffee and 2 brownies!!  I'm starved so time for din-din.  Paul won't be home from work until late tonight and Meg is working.  The dogs are sleeping by the AC vents-it's so hot out they won't go out.  So I have all evening to sew.