Monthly Archives: January 2016

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As usual, it's a "little of this, little of that" kind of week. The biggest news is that instructions for the last step of the Midnight Mystery Quilt came out last Thursday and I finished my quilt top!

I'm so excited about this project and glad to have the quilt top done. I have the backing ready to piece and some fun variegated thread. I'm planning all over free motion quilting, but I haven't decided on a design. I'm open to ideas.

I also came out of Patchwork City hibernation to get one block done for the massive BOM project. This is Mixed Use. It's 8 1/2" square.

I picked a nice easy block with only squares and rectangles which was fast to put together, and it reminded me how much I love this project. I have some other more pressing sewing in the short term, but I look forward to getting back into this project. I also chose to use this block for my mini mini swap with Mary. Here's my (less than awesome) photo of the mini mini quilt top. Mary, I promise that it's actually a square. ;-)

This is a 4 1/2" square half size version of the block above. I enjoyed the fussy cutting (one of the reasons I love Patchwork City so much) and had fun squeezing seven different fabrics into this tiny project. I'm also totally digging how that green to green seam in the upper left accidentally came together. I'm unsure how I'll quilt it. You can visit Mary's blog to check out the beautiful line of fabric she has decided to use for the mini mini she's making me.

Here's my "secret sewing" project. I showed you my rainbow fabric for my Rainbow Mini Swap Hexie Tiles project last week. At this point, all of the paper piecing is done and I'm working on getting the units all pieced together. I've made a bunch of hexagons.

I think I'm at the point where I have to start sewing y-seams. So naturally, I set this aside to work on something else. The y-seams will have to wait. ;-)

This project is for round two of the Rainbow Mini Swap. I'm done showing peeks on Instagram in the interest of keeping it a surprise for my partner, but I'm super excited with how it's coming together so far. I look forward to sharing the finish with you in March after she's received it.

Lastly, I switched gears to a different (secret surprise) project last night and used my new Triangle Square Up Ruler for the first time. Love it! Talk about cutting my trimming time in half! You use this to trim the HST before pressing it open. A big thank you to Christa for sharing about it on a recent Periscope broadcast.

Thanks for visiting. I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

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Last quarter I finished 13 of the 36 projects on my Q4 WIP list and made progress on many others. I axed a couple projects and added eight (I think, I may have lost track) new quilts to the list. It really helps me to have a list that I can look at. I like having it all written out here, even though I recognize that this is an overwhelming list. The beginning of the quilt list (until about #11) is in priority order. I'm going to try to finish one old quilt per month. 2004 baseball quilt, I'm looking at you. (Maybe that one and the other eleven projects that have been on this list for over a year).

Quilts

  1. My safari animal baby quilt. I've started graffiti quilting on it.
  2. Very Hungry Caterpillar twin quilt. Quilt top is complete, backing fabric is washed. Somehow I missed a picture of this one. Just look at #16 and think "twin sized."
  3. Midnight Mystery Quilt. Blocks are just about done. Today we get the directions for the final assembly.
  4. Wizard of Oz baby quilt. I have some fabric orders headed my way and a general idea in my head. My sister is expecting a baby in March. Nothin' like a deadline. ;-)
  5. Rainbow Mini Swap (Round 2). I have a plan. It involves lots of paper piecing. I showed off the fabrics I'm using in yesterday's post.
  6. Rainbow Mini Swap mug rug. Using the same paper piecing pattern as above.
  7. Patchwork City Mini Mini for Mary. Here's my initial fabric pull (minus my feature fabric that I'd like to keep hidden for now).
  8. 2004 Baseball Quilt. Quilt top is just about done for the initial plan... but I think I'll have to do something to make it larger than I was originally planning.
  9. Color Strata Quilt. Class on January 26th.
  10. Cotton & Steel (and low volume) Quilt (I have a HST plan... with these 5" squares) 
  11. Patchwork City Metro Area Quilt. I love these blocks, but they do take some time. This project has been on the back burner far too long. Here are a couple of my six "finished" blocks. I really need to get the sashing on them.
  12. Little Letters in Blues/Greens Quilt. These look so close to being done, right? Except that the sashing has little corner stones so there is a fair amount of piecing still necessary before I have a finished quilt top.
  13. Little Letters in Brights Quilt.
  14. Very Hungry Caterpillar doll/mini quilt. Quilt top finished.
  15. Very Hungry Caterpillar baby quilt. Quilt top finished.
  16. Very Hungry Caterpillar small lap quilt. Quilt top finished.
  17. Ocean quilt for my daughter. I still need to make a final plan for how I'm adding the appliqué animals to her quilt. She's 3 1/2 and the poor girl doesn't have a quilt of her own yet. She has, however, called dibs on the Safari quilt in #1.
  18. Batik SCVQA philanthropy quilt. I just need to quilt it.
  19. Roman Stripez with butterfly backing. Some blocks done. (see #20)
  20. Roman Stripez with turtle backing.
  21. Memory House Vol. 1 Quilt (2 houses complete
  22. Leah Day's Building Blocks Quilt Along (first 3 sets of blocks done)
  23. Monster Quilt (first applique block in progress)
  24. Swoon Quilt (finished my first block, next two are in progress) 
  25. Primary mini quilt. Same pattern as my Cotton & Steel mini swap. Hoping to get better at adding those bias edge triangles to finish it. 
  26. Rainbow Simply Woven lap quilt with bee blocks from Stash Bee. I need to decide how big I want this to be and how many additional blocks I'll be making for myself.
  27. Rainbow Chain. My bee quilt for this month's Bee Hive, swarm Tisha. Here are my two sample blocks. The pattern is Autumn Chain.
  28. My Floating Squares improv project. (from The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters by Sherri Lynn Wood.)
  29. Angel mini quilt. Pattern and fabric selected. Certainly not the lowest priority. :-)

 

Other Sewing

  1. Frog shirt for my son. Bowling Shirt (pattern by Scientific Seamstress). 
  2. Winnie the Pooh Skirt/Shorts for my daughter.

 

Stats: You can see that I got a bunch of projects moved forward from the fabric pull step, most were turned into completed tops or completed quilts. Right now I have a bunch of quilt tops. I've started quilting R's Pattern. Then I'd like to get my son's Very Hungry Caterpillar bed quilt and my Midnight Mystery quilts quilted soon.

  • Planning Stages (pre-fabric pull): 2 (Q3), 1 (Q4), 4 (Q1)
  • Fabric Pulled: 10 (Q3), 7 (Q4), 1 (Q1)
  • Fabric Cut: 6 (Q3), 3 (Q4), 1 (Q1)
  • Piecing in Progress: 14 (Q3), 19 (Q4), 15 (Q1)
  • Quilt Top Completed: 3 (Q3), 5 (Q4), 7 (Q1)
  • Quilted: 0 (Q3), 1 (Q4), 0 (Q1)

Bucket List: Because I need more projects, right?

  1. Triangle Squared quilt.
  2. Equilateral triangle quilt, perhaps Chopsticks pattern.
  3. Raspberry Kiss lap quilt.
  4. Technicolor Galaxy.
  5. Polaroid quilt.
  6. Chopsticks quilt.
  7. Pirate Quilt. (I have fabric, but no firm plan on design yet.)
  8. Leah Day's Dancing Butterflies to develop my free motion quilting. (I joined at the start of the year, but never... um... started.)
  9. More Mini Mini Quilt Swaps on IG.

I'm linking up to the Q1 Finish-A-Long. Thank you to all the co-hosts for this year! I'm very thankful for Finish-A-Long helping me stay organized and motivated.

Thank you for visiting!

2016 Finish-A-Long

Things I Make

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What's going on this week is mostly a lot of thinking and planning and getting organized. Happy New Year! I'm working on my Midnight Mystery blocks, which I'll show you soon, but I'm also thinking about a couple upcoming projects.

One is a Wizard of Oz themed baby quilt. I'm waiting on some fabrics to arrive, so I can see if I can make my vision come to life. It's a gift for my sister who is expecting a baby in March. Probably no peeks until I give it to her.

The second project I'm trying to get a handle on is my Rainbow Mini Swap quilt for round 2. We ship at the beginning of March, so I have a lot of time, but I've decided to paper piece a million little triangles.

Okay, not a million, but a bunch. I've prepped a bunch of fabric for the project. I'm using five Modern Background Paper prints in white for the background, and a rainbow of fabrics for the feature design.

The paper piecing itself shouldn't be tough. I think these units lend themselves to chain piecing. Yay! But I'm a little intimidated by the upcoming y-seams when I attach them all together. The pattern is Hexie Tiles by Julie at 627handworks.

Another new project this month will be a Color Strata quilt. I'm taking my first quilting class, with Rob Appell when he's in town to speak at SCVQA at the end of the month. His free tutorial is available online. I decided to use Christa Watson's designer palette of Kona for this project. I'll also have a pop color to contrast with these reds, oranges, yellows and greens.

Tomorrow I'll show you the lengthy WIP list these projects have been added to. ;-)

Thanks for visiting. I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.