Quilting and Stuff by Knitnoid

Category Archives: Otr

Must Have Lost My Mind

I started off the year with a bang, but here we are a bit over 10 weeks into the new year and I have 3 quilts completely cut out — 2 with the borders!  This is cannot be good for the UFO count.  To further illustrate that I’ve lost my mind, I’m planning on taking all 3 of them with me this weekend to a sew-in.

The bag on the left is Bonnie Hunter’s Fun With Bricks.  This started innocently enough as a leader/ender project in January.  The bag on the right is the Dragonfly quilt.  The middle is a red, white & blue scrappy twin size version of the Mystery Quilt I wrote for the April retreat.

Add to this that my husband has just convinced me that I need to quilt and bind six quilts before the end of June and now I know I have lost my mind. This does not include anything which is on my UFO list or any other project I want to finish sooner than later.  At least four of the quilts are completed tops.

Here they are:

Pattern - BQ2

Quilt #1 – 54 x 70.  I have enough fabric to make a second identical quilt and bind them both in the purple.  I may use the fabric to make the backing.  No idea on the thread color or quilting motif.

Pattern Old Tobacco Road

Quilt # 2 – 70 x 100  When I started the quilt in Purple, Green & Yellow, I was thinking “Mardi Gras” and purchased either 1/2 yard or yard of Mardi Gras frogs.  I may look for some more Mardi Gras fabric for the back.  The purple binding is made and tucked in with the quilt and frogs.

 

Pattern Victoria's Rose

Quilt # 3 – 68 x 86.  I have a  piece of the border fabric left in the stash.  The floral, pink and green fabrics, along with a stripe and a small floral print were part of a bundle.  I found more of the floral on-line, but don’t think I there is enough for the backing.  My spreadsheet says I have ‘binding fabric’.

Oh, my.  I just thought of something.  I really want pillow cases to go with each of these quilts.  Have I mentioned I’ve lost my mind?

 

Pattern - The Chain Event

Quilt #4 – 74 x 88.   I thought I had backing fabric for this quilt top, but when I inventoried my quilts tops and UFOs last year, I discovered I only had binding fabric.

 

Pattern - Disappearing 9-patch Variation

Quilt # 5 – 60 x 76. It’s a variation because I’m not making 9-patches and I’ve changed the size of the pieces.  It just worked better for the size quilt I wanted to make.  Fortunately I have the backing fabric – a great dragonfly print I found on-line and the binding has been cut, just not made.  So, if I finish piecing the top this weekend, this will be the first quilt I get done.

 

Pattern - Crossword Puzzle

Quilt # 6 – size unknown.  The size is unknown because this is still a work in progress.  I have about 1/2 of the letters made.  This one is going to the April quilt retreat.

I think my husband wanted to suggest a 7th quilt, but quickly left the room before I could throw something at him. Good thing I put the following qualifier in my UFO Challenge rules:

There will be occasions when a quilt will need to get moved to the top of the line regardless of the # pulled for the month. In those instances, I’ll either swap the #s if they are on this list, or if the quilt doesn’t have an assigned #, but is on either tab as of January 1, 2011, I’ll substitute it for the current # drawn. After all the goal is to get quilts off the UFO list.

Retreat Flimsy Three

It seems it doesn’t matter how careful I am when I’m packing for a trip, I will always leave something at home. This retreat was no exception.

A week before I left, I pressed and folded all of my border fabrics and quilt tops I was planning on working on. Everything had to fit in my tote bag as there were 3 of us hauling sewing machines, stuff to work on, clothes and bedding to the retreat and it had to fit in my Escape.

Saturday morning I pulled out the Old Tobacco Road and realized I had left the pieced cornerstones at home, but I did have 6 extra flying geese with me. What to do?

Well, I could cut some pinwheels from the extra geese, but that would only give me enough for 2 cornerstones. I ran around bumming yellow fabric, but when I realized how many little pieces went into the cornerstones, I opted to use a single yellow, cutting into the 1/2 yard I purchased on my way to the retreat. Yellow solved. That left the green and purple.

Purple was easy. I had not cut off the ends of the bricks to square the quilt up, so all the pinwheels came from the end bricks. I just had to borrow a ruler. — no I didn’t take my ruler since I was just putting borders on the quilts.

The green turned out to be easy enough as well. I had two choices. I had two different greens with me for the inner border. I could use one of them, or I could go scrappy by pulling apart some of the 2-patches I was sewing into 4-patches as leader/enders. I opted for the 2nd choice.

With the exception of the borders and the aforementioned yellow, this quilt was from my stash. I try not to buy fabric for mystery quilts, so when picking the fabric I had to come up with a color palette from my stash. I picked green, yellow and purple, thinking Mardi Gras, but the quilt doesn’t say that to me. In fact, after I had half of it finished I was wondering about my choices, but as I added each section to the quilt, I decided I liked it better. All I have to do now is pick a name.

I’m thinking something about spring plowing. The purple/lavender reminds me of the blue/purple plant that tends to grow in the fields before they are planted around here.

Stash Report Week #14


No dent in my stash this week, although I did get my geese sewn together and one more row sewn together on the music quilt.

On the other hand, I did bring fabric into the house. Last Sunday, when Sandra, the list mom from Stashbusters, was in town, we got together for a visit. She gave me a couple of potholders she made (and I’ve enjoyed using this week) and a yard of pretty green fabric.

Friday morning I picked up the yardage for the borders to OTR. Saturday another 1 1/2 yards for a bag I’m making for a gift. But it was Saturday afternoon which really caused my stash to grow.

A friend of a friend had fabric from her mother’s or grandmother’s estate. The boxes contained a little of everything, about 1/2 of it cotton. Of the cotton I brought home 13 pieces. I just finished measuring it. There’s 48 1/4 yards there — but it’s all 36″ wide. I did some fancy math to figure out what the works out to in 42″ wide fabric on the theory that if a pattern today calls for 1 yard of fabric, 1 yard of this vintage fabric won’t be enough — I’ll need about 42″.

Fabric Added this Week: 47.75 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 98 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 22.08 yards

Net Stash: +75.92 yards

QCC – Quality Control Cat

Cats and quilting go together at my house. I’ve owned, or been owned by three cats since I started quilting. Fluffy and Grey were the original QCCs. Seven wasn’t interested in quilting — or for that matter living with two other cats. But after Fluffy and Grey crossed the rainbow bridge, Seven realized she had to fulfill the role of QCC.

I don’t know what it is about cats and quilts. One time I brought several quilt tops into the living room to show my mom. Seven was sound asleep in the bedroom. I’m not certain all the air got out from under the quilt top when I shook it out and laid it out on the floor, before she was there laying on top of it.

Another time I had a top on the floor, blocking access to the kitchen and sewing room. Seven walks in and comes to a screeching halt, stopping BEFORE she touched the quilt top. I have to assume she didn’t like it. My DH picked her up and told her she had hurt my feelings, so when she came back through the room, she gingerly stepped on the top and briefly sat on it before walking off. Somehow.

Tonight when I came home, Seven was sitting on the couch with DH. I pull out my Old Tobacco Road quilt and lay it on the floor. Seven doesn’t move.

I pull out the inner green border I just bought, and lay it next to the quilt. Seven remains on the couch.

The flying geese are stretched out next to the green border. No response from Seven.

Finally, I lay the purple outer border next to it all.

Seven leaps off the couch and jumps on the quilt and fabric and starts ‘massaging’ the purple fabric, before reclining on the quilt.

I have to assume she likes it.

So here is some Haiku DH and I wrote about a year ago for Quality Control Cats

Mom is a quilter
Her quilt needs my approval
I must lay on it

And for Seven specifically:

Seven is QC
Approving quilts is her task
Hair removal mine

A Gaggle of Geese

Purple geese in yellow skies for my Old Tobacco Road quilt. I went with this option because I’m leaning toward a purple border. Of course when I get to the quilt shop, who knows what I’ll find.

Old Tobacco Road Center Complete

The center of OTR is done. I think it’s growing on me. Now I’ve got to locate the instructions for the next step, and the rulers to make the flying geese. I’m not certain if they will be yellow geese on purple skies or purple geese on yellow skies.

March Snow


I’ve continued work on my OTR and now have the rest of the blocks sewn together into rows. I thought I’d take a break and check on the snow.

It’s been snowing for about 6 hours. So far we’ve accumulated 5 1/2″ — at least in my backyard. I just heard a weather update that said the snow is supposed to be tapering off.

Moving Along the OTR


For the last couple of days I’ve been working on my Old Tobacco Road quilt, a Bonnie Hunter mystery from last fall. I now have the center half finished and decided to stand back and see how it looks.

Now, back to the sewing machine.

Old Tobacco Road – Part #3

I’ve been working on my OTR the last couple of days and now I have part #3 done. Step #4 is the layout. I need to do some quilting, so I think this will go back into the box and I’ll take it with me to the reteat to work on next month.

Stash Report Week #7

This week more fabric came in than went out.

Monday was the Kansas Trouble Stash Society meeting with a whopping 10.75 yards. Tuesday a package arrived from Tammy with red and greens in exchange for the music fabric I sent her a couple of weeks ago. Since I counted the music fabric Out, I’m counting this fabric In. Then Wednesday I added another 2 yards for borders and binding for my Pink & Brown quilt — which still needs borders. I haven’t made it to the basement with the fabric to wash.

In the use department, I finished setting the blocks together for the Pink & Brown quilt, finished ALL of step 1 on OTR and finished making the pinwheels and half-pinwheels from step 2. Most of this is not countable as it had all been chopped up prior to the first of the year. I did have to cut a few more strips for the pinwheels.

What is countable is the 2 Broken Dishes blocks I’ve made to take to the retreat in April and the String blocks I made yesterday to send to Australia.

So.

Fabric Added this Week: 15.25 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 36.75 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 4.125 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 17.33 yards

Net Stash: +19.42 yards

I seem to be going backwards. Got to do something about that.