Since I had my blocks out, I started assembling what I could.  I suppose, if I would pull out the directions they might tell me the best way to assemble this top, but that would be too easy.  I’m just going by the picture.

I’ve got 4 “chunks” sewn together, as well as some of the filler blocks.  The biggest chunk goes from the tree block in the top left corner all the way across to the checkerboard on the right and down to the star and rocking horse.

The next chunk is the cookie jar and pie, the trees on either side, the teddy bears and the star.

On the bottom the teddy bear and rocking horse on the left over to the right where the two trees are is the third chuck.

The final chunk is the gingerbread people and star down through the pinwheels.  The bottom two sections will connect when I get the snowmen done.

The hole at the top left is for Santa’s sleigh and a couple of reindeer.  Below that are 4 row houses.  In the center should be a train.   Then below that are stockings, Noah’s Ark and a tall pieced Santa.

I really might have this quilt top done by the end of the year.  If I would get on the ball, I could have a Christmas quilt this year.  I have two other tops done.  This Crazy 8 lap throw which has been waiting to be quilted since Sept 2006 and this Christmas Row Swap top which I finished in Sept 2011.

There really shouldn’t be any excuse for me not to have a finished (quilted, bound & labeled) Christmas quilt for next year.

After dinner I decided I would forgo radio and television – after all, I voted this morning and watching the results is not going to change anything.  So, I’ve been listening to a book on CD and sewing.

First I prepped the snowmen for the Christmas BOM.

I still need to decide what I’m going to do about the stick arms, but I’ll embroider the faces when I get that far.

Since I had the project box out, I thought I would start sewing some of the blocks together.  The first thing I did was re-do one of my earlier blocks.

This poor star.  I made it in August 2003 — shortly after I got seriously infected by the quilting bug.  Let’s just say I didn’t do HST squares very well.

During the past 9 years my quilting skills have significantly improved – including being able to get the same look with different shapes.

This quilt using coping strips and lots of partial seams – something else I don’t think I could have handled when I started this quilt in 2003.

This is the largest section I have sewn together so far.

After sewing for a couple of hours, my room now feels more ‘creative’.  I need to pick fabric for another coping strip, then I can sew the next few blocks together to get all the way across the quilt.  Then I’m going to have to get on those last 8 blocks as the rest of the blocks are scattered throughout the rest of the quilt.

The last thing I did before going to bed last night was to prep the last three blocks for my Winter Wonderland redwork.  I haven’t had a “to go” project for a few months – not that I’ve gone anywhere, but with the holidays and a couple of weeks of vacation between now and the end of the year I figured I should be prepared.

The blocks were previously traced so all I had to do was baste the muslin to the back to help prevent my stitches from showing through.  I also wound off a length of thread from my large spool making it much more transportable.

Six days ago Judy picked the next to last UFO Challenge # – 9. I didn’t post about it because I was so far behind – still am.  But I’m happy to report that for my first sewing project in my newly cleaned sewing room is Evergreen the second block to UFO #3 which I think was July’s #.  That’s also when I got off track.

This month’s blocks are the Snowman Family and Piece Santa.

It looks like I’ve already started hand appliquing the snowmen, so I guess I’ll do the rest of the block in HA.

Well, this is post # 3 for the day.  I think I’ll call it a day.  Who knows if you’ll hear from me again until it’s time for the Stash Report.

I did not take before pictures – it was too bad.  There are those who would say this room still is too bad to post, but I’m excited — if I can get over it being too clean to quilt in.

Yesterday afternoon we put up a new set of shelves which allowed me to get a bunch of boxes up off the floor.   I know, I know, I should go through those boxes but quite frankly they were taking up so much room I didn’t have room to sort.

To get the room to this point, I emptied my recycling bin and my trash can twice each, collected a bag of books to take to the library, a box to take to the fabric recycling place, hauled a bin of old muslin to the basement,  took an empty milk crate to the basement, hauled out all the shoes except for one pair, removed a layer of dust off the furniture and swept.

Now, I have to find a project to work on that won’t mess up the room too badly.  Perhaps some of the Christmas BOM blocks that I’m behind on.  I know there is at least one maybe two which are prepped for the machine applique.

At first glance it looks like nothing.  And I suppose technically that’s true — either that or there’s just threads on the wall.

But what I’m excited to show today is that the entire wall is assessable.  And, no, it’s not the trick of shoving the boxes over to the other side of the room — although I do admit to having a couple which still need to land in their final resting place.

My DH finally talked me into another set of shelves.  They were sitting in the garage unused so all we had to do was buy a set of wheels and assemble them.   They are just visible on the right edge of the picture.

There are now three sets of shelves on the front wall of my space.  Ultimately I want to get rid of at least two of those sets, but I’ve got to get rid of “stuff” to make it happen.

It’s not much, but I already have a box full of old quilting/sewing/crochet and cross stitch magazines/books which I plan to take to the fabric recycling place.  I’ve got a paper sack full of paperback novels which I’ve either read, or won’t get around to reading (love my Kindle!) those will go to the library for them to either put on the “free” shelf or sell.

Since there’s still a bit to do before I can actually sew again it may be two weeks before I have anything on the wall again.  But I had to do this.  My area had just gotten to the point where I couldn’t do anything without spending 15 minutes clearing an area so I could sew/cut only to have to move it again so I could work.

Hopefully others will have more inspiring design walls.  They can be checked out over at Patchwork Times.

Well, I did it.  I came up with a yardage figure for the shirts I purchased last month.  Let’s just say I won’t be breaking even on my  fabric usage vs purchase this year.   After I finished Checkerboard Plaids last week, all I did was stitch pieces of batting together.  The end result is I have 3 batts ready to go and more importantly all the batting contained again.

Here are the numbers.

Fabric Added Since Last Report: 64.5 yards (all recycled fabrics!)
Fabric Added to Date:  163.032 yards

Fabric Used Since Last Report: 5.33 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 83.818 yards

Net Used for the year -79.214 yards

Ugh.  On the other hand, I am looking forward to making more quilts with the recycled fabric.  See how others are faring with their stashes by following the links over at Patchwork Times.

This afternoon I attended two quilt shows.  The first was the Blue Valley Quilt Guild’s and the second was Lees Summit Quilter’s Guild.  Since both shows were the same day, the joined together on the advertising and there was a “passport” prize drawing for anyone attending both shows.  Did I mention they were on opposite sides of town and the state line?

My batteries died on my camera partway through the BVQG show and I didn’t think to pull out my cell phone.  I did think to pull out the cell phone at the LSQG show, and the pictures are not very good.  But the quilts are just as awesome.

Once all the blocks were made the quilt top came together quickly.  Somehow I managed to end up with an extra block which I’ll toss in the orphan block box.  One of these days I’ve really got to make something with those blocks.

Still working on cleaning up the sewing room, but I really need to get back to Eeyore and the Christmas BOM.  Last week my stitch card finally came in so now I can resume machine applique.

Hop on over to Patchwork Times to check out what others have on their design walls.

As many of you know I follow Judy over at Patchwork Times.  In fact I started blogging in part to participate in the Sunday  Stash Reports and Monday Design walls.  I’m also a big Bonnie Hunter fan.

Over the past few years I’ve picked up shirts here and there, but didn’t have enough variety to do anything with them.  It’s only in the past couple of months that I decided I had enough variety to make a quilt.

At the beginning of the year I start my usage and purchase counts at zero.  I really don’t know how much fabric I have and I’m not sure I want to know.  But it’s kind of nice at the end of the year to know if I used more fabric than I purchased or vice versa.  This is why I track the yardage.

So far, when I’ve purchases shirts, I’ve only measured the resulting fabric when I deconstructed the shirt.  If at the end of the year there were 5 shirts still in shirt form, it wasn’t considered “fabric” toward my end of year stats.  On the other hand, if I then cut into the shirt the following year, it was already “stash” so I didn’t count it in the new year’s totals.

But now that I’m making a quilt, how do I count the usage?  It wasn’t counted in, so I how can I count it out?  I’m not using all of the shirt, so I can’t just say “6 shirts used in this quilt”.

I’ve decided I need a “shirt standard”.  Buy 3 shirts then immediately count the yardage based on the “shirt standard”.    My shirt standard is 1 1/2 yards based on the shirt pictured above.  It is a man’s large long-sleeved shirt.  I picked this shirt as most of the shirts I’ve purchased have been larges or even smaller if I liked the fabric.  Not all have been long-sleeved. On the other hand I did get lucky and find two 4XL shirts yesterday so it will all even out.

So how did I arrive at 1 1/2 yards?  I started by de-constructing the shirt, then I rough measured the pieces.

The yoke:

The front (times 2):

The sleeves (times 2):

Finally the back:

I ignored the “missing” fabric as I got strings out of the deal and this is only a large shirt.  So here’s the math:

• yoke:  5 x 19 x 2 = 190
• front: 19 x 22 1/2 x 2 = 855
• sleeves: 11 x 26 x 2 = 572
• back: 22 1/2 x 24 = 540
• Total yardage in square inches = 2157.

I divided the shirt number by 1440 – the number I use for a yard (36 x 40 usable inches).  The result is 1.497 yards or 1 1/2 yards.

Maybe 10 minutes of time results in a fist full of strings, a pile of buttons, and the equivalent of 1 1/2 yards of fabric to go into one of my scrappy quilts.  (That pile on the top left is what I threw out).

I guess now I need to check my spreadsheet to figure out how many shirts I’ve bought this year so I can include it in next week’s stash report.