Sunday afternoon I realized I had absolutely nothing on my design wall.  I had taken the blue string blocks down in anticipation of working on Eeyore, but got distracted looking for the backing for the log cabin quilt.  Then there’s the heat.

So, I pulled out the Church block from the Christmas BOM which is due by the end of the month.  Did I follow the instructions? No – but I had good reason.  I wasn’t certain I had enough of the ‘stone’ fabric for the church.  That and the thought of trying to piece a tiny 1/2″ HST to a “window” did not sound like fun.

I modified the pattern to set the windows in via reverse applique.  The first one was beautiful.  The second one I trimmed the building instead of the window!

Between my paper piecing challenges last week and this, I think it is probably time to get back to straight piecing.  But before I can do that I have to make a second window.

Since I was redoing the window, I fussy cut the window so it matched the first window.  Then it was on to the door — when I discovered I cut the walls 1/4″ too short.  Never fear, I solved that problem too.  The roof line is higher!

All in all, I’m really happy with the block and this month’s UFO is DONE!

Now on to Eeyore and thinking about how I’m going to quilt my log cabin quilt.

I’m linking up to Judy’s Design Wall post over at Patchwork Times.

My blue strings yielded a dozen blocks.  That’s about all the piecing that was done this week.  On the flip side, my Connecting Thread order arrived and that made a big bump in my numbers.

This coming week, I have plans to work on Eeyore.  The young lady I’m making the quilt for came over and I had her go though my stash to pick out fabric for the letters.  She ended up picking more fabric that we need, so I’ll do some sort of pieced border.  We started with the blue, black and purple bins then I opened the two drawers of music fabric.  She found a length of brightly colored notes on black which I hope to incorporate as the border – width to be determined by amount of fabric.

The other thing I need to do is prepare a backing for the log cabin quilt.  If I remember correctly I have 5 yards of 60″ wide “fall” fabric that  I will use.

So here are this weeks numbers:

Fabric Added Last Week: 9.847 yards
Fabric Added to Date:  69.185 yards

Fabric Used Last Week: .75 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 38.774 yards

Net Used for the year -30.411 yards

Check out how others are doing with their stashes over at Patchwork Times.

Here’s another paper piecing challenge — remembering to trim the blocks BEFORE pulling the paper off.  I solved this self-inflicted challenge by using another block as a template.  Two more seams and the block will be complete.

Unfortunately, I can’t show it until July 11th during the Red, White & Blue blog hop.

And naturally I remembered to reduce my stitch size.

Off to rip.

I have plenty on my quilting plate, but I’m planning on starting two new quilts next month.  There are plans in the works to get a top quilted before I start either of them, so perhaps that will help even things out.

The first quilt is a stained glass type quilt.  I’ve seen the top and have the fabric requirements and first set of cutting instructions, so it’s not exactly a mystery, but how it goes together is.

Although my stash has many FQs which would work well, they are no longer full FQs — I’ve chopped on all of them.  So the only thing to do was get new fabric.

I have one extra FQ — not sure which one I’m not going to use and then I ordered a strip set to bump me up to free shipping.   Sometime between now and July 11th, I’ll cut this to prepare for class.

The other quilt I’m starting is the Tetris-Quit-A-Long.  I can never do anything exactly by the pattern and this is no different.  Instead of using 5″ squares, I’ve decided to use 1 1/4″ squares.  My quilt will finish at 9 x 13 1/2 before borders.  I came to this decision when thinking about my stash.   I knew I wasn’t going to use 5″ squares and was leaning toward either 2 or 2 1/2″ squares.  A 2 1/2″ square contains 4 – 1 1/4″ squares and each Tetris piece contains 4 squares, so there you have it.  A eureka moment.  No searching for 4 matching squares, a single square will do it.

Then I looked at my pre-cut squares and had to augment them with 2 1/2″ bricks and 2 1/2″ strips — there was no orange in my pre-cut box– probably because it’s in my Orca Bay bag along with a lot of my purple.  I expect that bag may get raided during the construction of this quilt.

For now all the pieces are in a recycled container.  That ought to keep them together until I need them.

Or more accurately Quilt Pick Up.

My BIL (left) stopped by to pick up some stuff he left in the car yesterday.  So, I gave him his birthday quilt early.  I remembered that I only had THIS picture of the quilt, so thought I’d try to get a better one.  I didn’t realize how hard the wind was blowing, so my usual hang the quilt from the gutter wasn’t going to work.

So, my BIL and DH attempted to hold the quilt still so I could get a better picture before it went to live with my BIL.

I think they did a pretty good job.

Who played/plays Tetris?  I’ve got a hand-held game I play occasionally.  My current best is about 2 ½ minutes to clear 24 lines.  I obviously got lucky that day.

I found this as I was reading a blog yesterday.

Melissa at Happy Quilting is hosting a quilt-a-long and charm swap using Tetris as the theme. 

I’m not going to do the swap – just make the blocks.  But as is my nature, they won’t be solid colors (I will try to get all four squares the same fabric) and they probably won’t be 5” squares, but either 2” squares so the quilt top will finish at 18 x 27 before borders or 1 ½” squares so it finishes at 12 x 18.  I think 6 x 9 (1” squares) would be pushing it – but talk about quick sewing…hum…may have to reconsider that.  1 1/4″ inch squares would be 9 x 13 1/2 and that might be good as well.

Anyone want to play along with me?  All the information can be found HERE.

This past weekend I just putzed around the house and sewing room.  I made two of the simpler JT2 blocks which are backlogged.  Since a new set came out on Friday, I am still a ways behind.

Which of course explains why I was playing in my string box.

No telling what I’ll end up working on this week, as my guild meets tonight and I just got the cutting instructions for a class I’m taking in July.

Don’t forget to check out other design walls by following the links over at Patchwork Times.

This was a lazy week in the sewing room.  I haven’t seemed motivated to do anything.  I think it’s because the “new” has worn off the Eeyore quilt and I know I need to get it finished, but I really enjoy piecing and want to make some progress on some other quilts are even start something new. Of course the other thing is I have finished two quilts in the past couple of months and that can also slow me down.

I did work a bit on my Double Wedding Ring this past week, so all was not lost.  I also make a couple of the Just Takes Two blocks, which is all the fabric I’m counting.  Late last night I spotted an old phone book and tore a few pages out of it to make some rectangle string blocks similar to Julie K’s.  Since I sorted my strings back when I started working on Orca Bay (which is still in a million pieces), I pulled my blue strings out and pressed them. So far I’ve made 4 blocks.  Who knows where this will lead.

Fabric Added Last Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added to Date:  59.338 yards

Fabric Used Last Week: .106 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 38.024 yards

Net Used for the year -21.314 yards

Check out how others are doing with their stashes over at Patchwork Times.

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I pulled out our bicycles and took them the to car wash to knock years of accumulated dirt and dust off them.  Afterwards he asked me if I remembered how to ride a bike.

I hopped up on it and the promptly fell down without gaining my balance, dragging the bike with me.  My knee and elbow were scraped up pretty good and I had a nasty bruise on my elbow, but a few days of acetaminophen and a visit to the chiropractor and I was, perhaps not good as new, but at least willing to try again.

But first the bikes needed a tune up and the seat lowered!

Tonight we picked up our bikes.  After dinner we found a nice flat parking lot (next to a hospital).  I think I figured it out!

We didn’t ride long.  I think this video is less than 60 seconds.  I maybe rode for another 3 or 4 minutes.  We didn’t want to over do it.  This after all the first time in I know 13 years and probably closer to 20 or 25 that we’ve been on bicycles.

The forecast is for rain, so I don’t know if we’ll get out tomorrow or not.