The Texas Braid is done! It just needs washing.

Today, a little bit of several things.

On the wall proper, are 15 of the 20 blocks from Victory Quilts.  I think I can safely say that this quilt top won’t be finished in October.  But I have 8 more blocks than I did at the beginning of the month.

Closer to a UFO finish for October is the Texas Braid.

I have a few spots I need to fix on the binding and then this one will be done.  I would have finished it last night, but I dropped my seam ripper and couldn’t find it.  By the time I found it, I had changed my foot and thread, so this will have to be done while I wait for Trick or Treaters.

In the meantime, I pulled out my log cabin which I was working on as my leader/ender project.  I added one more log to 40 blocks.  There are another 80 blocks for this round.

As I mentioned last week I’ve decided to make an Ocean Waves quilt.  It needs 1536 half square triangle blocks.  I have a deadline of mid-May to have the quilt completed. Based on these two facts, I’ve decided I need to make 75 a week.  Then I started digging for my bonus HSTs.

After my marathon pressing and counting session of my bonus HSTs I came up with 320 usable HSTs.   I’ve since sewn another 80 – meeting my target of 75 a week for a total of 400 triangles.

Even though I’m ahead of the game so to speak, I’m going to continue to aim for 70 or 80 a week.  I might need more time than I’ve ‘allowed’ for the block assembly.

To see if anyone else is bouncing all over the place, or if they are working on just one, maybe two things, check out the links over at Patchwork Times.

There they all are. My bonus HST units.  These are 2″ so they’ll finish at 1 1/2″.  There are a few less than 1400 squares — or right at 8 yards of fabric!  All of this fabric is already counted “out”, so as I make additional HST for the Ocean Waves quilt, I’ll go ahead and out the fabric out.  This past week I made 40 HST using about a 1/4 of a yard.  I also made the binding for the Texas Braid quilt, but is still needs to be attached to the quilt.  What can I say — I got distracted.

On the other hand, no new fabric came into the house (nor is there any hiding out in the car).

Here’s this week’s report:

Fabric Added Last Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 118.754 yards

Fabric Used Last Week: .855 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 158.905 yards

Net Used for 2011: 40.151 yards

See how others are doing with their stash by following the links over at Patchwork Times.

That’s some of the last row of quilting. Now on to the trimming and binding after I get off work tomorrow.

No, I’ve haven’t been sewing all day, but I have found my two bags of bonus HSTs.  These are just some of the bonus HST I have from Oklahoma Backroads & Springtime Flowers (bottom row), Carolina Christmas (pink) and Star Struck (red, blue and gold).

I still have more that need to pressed, dog ears trimmed and counted.  And I still haven’t gone through my orphan block box.

Many quilters can’t be bothered to take the time to stitch the second time and trim these square.  But think about it.  In just the 700 HST which I  have counted I have at least 4 yards of fabric!  I’m guessing I have another 500 blocks to press and trim, which is nearly 3 yards.

After they all get pressed, I think I’ll have about 300 HST units I’ll be able to use in my Ocean Waves quilt.  Does these mean I don’t have to make any until December?

It’s time for me to get back to the quilting. It’s getting easier to manipulate the quilt as I work out from the center, so I should have the quilting done before I go to bed.

I’m supposed to be finishing the quilts on my Texas Braid –hey I only have 14 more rows to go.  Those of you taking bets on whether I’m binding on Friday or Saturday, I’m leaning toward Saturday, maybe even Sunday. (I have to work Saturday morning).

Anyway, as to my mind.  I am making a graduation quilt for my niece.  Turquoise (still need clarification if it leans blue or green, so suggested paint chips), no paisley.  That’s all the direction I have.  So what I have decided to do?

Ocean Waves. Bonnie Hunter style.  But a tad smaller (but not by much). Here’s my EQ rendering:

I pulled out my overflowing 2″ strip box and proceeded to cut 300 – HST pairs.  I think I need a 1500+ for the quilt, so this is just a drop in the bucket.  Now for the really fun part.  As much as I’d like to do this as a leader/ender project (and I will to a certain extent), I need to make 75 HST squares each week from now until mid-March if I have any hope of finishing the quilt by mid-May. If I can find the bonus HST squares from Carolina Christmas and Star Struck quilts, I should be able to cut that number down significantly.  I  need to dig through the orphan block box as well.

If any one sees my mind, please send it back to me.

Or at least to a Texas Braid Quilt.

I think I finished another 9 or 10 rows of the quilting this evening bringing me to the halfway point.  So, what do you think?  Binding by Friday or will it be Saturday?

Friday night I started working on this Jelly Roll quilt.  I ‘cheated’ and didn’t do the bias joins, but I think it still looks good.  The finished size was a bit odd, so when I got home I dug through my Kansas Troubles Quilters box and found enough fabric to add six rows to the quilt and the “borders”.  I think it now measures 57 x 76 — still a bit narrow, but I’m over it.  I even found fabric to match for the binding when I get it quilted!

I’ve been trying to clean up the sewing room — yesterday I dug through all of my quilt tops and sorted them into two stacks — those with backings (or fabric for the backing) and those without.    I was surprised to find that I have the backing fabric for nearly 2/3 of the quilt tops.     Those quilt tops and backing fabric went in the box under the shelves.  The box on the top shelf contains quilt tops which still need backings — well maybe one or two tops with backings made it in there since it’s the larger box.  Sitting on my ironing board are five quilt tops and backings.  Hum… I wonder if that means I think I’m going to work on them.

This week I want to finish the quilting and binding on my Texas Braid.  I need to quilt 28 rows across the width of the quilt — so 6 rows for 5 nights and I’ll be done by Friday night — giving me the weekend to get it bound.

Stay tuned to see if I get it done.  Any check out the link s at Patchwork Times to see what others are working on.

I’ve made a quilt completely from stash — but then I bought backing fabric for two quilts  Oh well, it will work out in the end.

Fabric Added Last Week: 10.12 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 118.754 yards

Fabric Used Last Week: 3.89 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 158.05 yards

Net Used for 2011: 39.296 yards

See how others are doing with their stash by following the links over at Patchwork Times.

Well, it was quilting and shopping this week.  Tomorrow’s stash report is going the wrong way, but I should be able to finish two more quilts in the next couple of weeks so perhaps it will be a wash by the end of next month.

First a visit to Heritage Fine Fabrics and the bolt sale.  I’ve setup another appointment to quilt on the long arm at Rocking Chair Quilts and want to take a second quilt.  I’m seriously considering quilting this quilt:

So, I needed a backing.  I found this fabric at 50% off.  The cool part is that I used this print in the quilt top.  I got what was left of the bolt and will be extending the backing with some back art.

Then on Friday night, instead of our usual dinner, my friends and I attended a Get Into The Swing event at Quilted Memories.

We made one of those 1600 Jelly Roll Quilts.  I used a Wildflower Serenade II jelly roll that I found in my stash to make my quilt top.  Today I’ve been adding to it.  I found enough fabric to lengthen the quilt by 12 inches and add a 4″ border to each side.  I just need to square it up.

Of course with plans to quilt a couple of quilts, I needed to make a run for batting.  I love Warm & Natural for most of my quilting.  For me it’s the right balance of warmth, cost and ease of quilting.  I found some Jo-Ann’s coupons and ran to the store. Also on my list was basting spray, blades and gray thread.  Some wide backing for the Jelly Roll quilt came home too.

It was only after I got home that I realized I didn’t get basting spray — but stencil marking spray!

Looking at the two cans, I shouldn’t have gotten the wrong stuff — but  if you aren’t paying attention it’s easy to get them mixed up.  Clearly another Jo-Ann run is in the works as I don’t need the stencil spray, but I do need the basting spray.