Last weekend my quilting buddies went to a quilt retreat.  I had to stay home and work.  🙁  But it wasn’t a total disappointment.  One of the quilt shops they stopped at had  “scrap bags”.  They bought several bags and then divided up the fabric, bringing me what is pictured above.  🙂

With the exception of one FQ in the bottom row, everything is full width, including one piece which is 120″ wide.  There are a couple of pieces which are 5 or 6 inches long, but most are in the 9 – 12 inch range.  One of the red pieces is a yard long and the bundle on the right consists of 3 pieces totaling 3 yards! And to think this is “scrap”!

The scraps above the full cuts range from strings, to 9″ squares.  The white fabric on the top left looks like it excess backing.

I can’t wait to start playing with this fabric.  But first, I’ve got a quilt to finish.  I’m 3/4 of the way through the quilting and with the help of my quilting buddies have picked a binding and a pillowcase cuff – all from my stash.

These floral blocks which I found yesterday (and added to my UFO count!) got me inspired to figure out how to get this into a quilt top.  I have a whole box of florals that I tend to ignore.  So, this evening I pulled floral prints,  pink and lavender tone on tones and some white on white fabric.

With a few minutes (ok, perhaps an hour – had to pet the fabric) I now have 5 blocks kitted and ready to stitch.   Will this become a quilt top before April 15th?  Only time will tell.

Now back to my book on CD and quilting Checkerboard Plaids.  A few more 8 more passes then I’m half way done.

Earlier this week Judy challenged her readers to a UFO Parade — Essentially, find all of your UFOs and make a list to show to the world (or at least the blog readers)  on April 15th.  I thought, smugly, that I knew how many UFOs I had and what state they were in.  I track them in a spreadsheet and I track them on my ‘Quilts In Progress‘ tab.

Last night I pulled down all of the project boxes from the top shelf.

Only one surprise in these boxes.

Mom’s JoAnn Sampler.  It’s not been started, so in my world that makes it a Kit and not a UFO.  I’ve struck it off my Quilts in Progress tab.

Then it was on to the bin of projects.

This one held surprises.  Do you see the box in the box?  This box was given to me a by a friend.  I had briefly looked at the contents, but never really inventoried them.

Last night I did.

There were 4 projects in that box.

A top which just needs borders.

A set of log cabin blocks from a swap.

A few purple blocks:

A bunch of floral blocks.

My Quilts In Progress tab has been updated.   I wonder if I can strike something off the list before the 15th?

Here it is.  My young quilting friend’s Spongebob quilt for her little cousin.  I think the cousin is 2.  She was so excited when she saw Spongebob. At 43″ square, the quilt is almost twice as long as she is tall so she’ll have it for a while.

During DWTS I sandwiched the Checkerboard Plaid quilt. I turned off Castle (which I enjoy) and put the quilt under the needle to get started.  I must be crazy. I’ve decided to stitch on either side of all the seams. That’s 10 seams a block and the quilt has 30 blocks — so that’s 50 lines vertically and 60 across the width.  When I took this picture had stitched  6 1/2 horizontal lines.

I wonder which will happen first — I finish the quilting or the new book I started listening to will finish.  I’m listening to A Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin.  One CD = 16 horizontal lines of stitching, 1 + bobbins and cleaning the bobbin area out once.

The muslin and shirts are generating a lot of fuzz. (I’m using Superior’s Omni Thread in Light Tan on the top and in the bobbin – Warm and Natural batting).

There is nothing on the wall this morning.  This past week my young quilting friend spent most of her spring break with us and she finally got her quilt top finished and quilted.  It’s still in the binding stage – I ended up working for 2 hours late last night instead of getting the binding finished.

The middle picture is what my sister is working on.  This is her first traditional quilt and half of the blocks.  She spent a couple of hours over here Saturday cutting orange rectangles for the rest of the quilt.

Finally something I did (and I think the only thing I did all week).  I made the backing and cut the batting for Checkerboard Plaid.

Hop over to Patchwork Times to see other design walls.

This letting others use my stash is working well for me.  Yesterday my sister was over cutting 2″ x 3 1/2″ rectangles from my orange collection.  She ended up cutting more than she needed.  I told her to keep the rest.  So, I’m counting that fabric as out, along with the blue and yellow she cut the week before.

Then my young quilting friend finished her Spongebob top. Most of the top fabric came from my stash.  The backing is from her stash — which fortunately still fits in a “shirt box”.

But their usage offset my purchases from yesterday.  Also helping is the fact that I finished the Stacked Posies quilt.

Well — this is interesting.  My numbers last week were “weird”.  It’s because I have a separate column for my recycled fabrics in.  Last week I must have only grabbed the purchased # for my report.  These number are correct.

Fabric Added Since Last Report: 4.0 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 66.11 yards

Fabric Used Since Last Report: 8.687 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 16.778  yards

Net Used for the year -49.333 yards

Other stash reports can be seen over at Patchwork Times.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

The other day I stumbled upon a cool looking quilt or block  — not that I can remember where. But it lead me to Phillips Fiber Art and the Squedge 18° ruler.  I asked at my LQS if they carried it or if they could get it for me and it came in this week.  I made a run to pick it up and naturally fabric jumped into my arms.

The stripe was on the clearance rack at 70% off.  I bought two yard of it and then a yard each of the gold and blue — one yard I got free with my punch card.  Now to decide if I’m smart enough to figure this ruler out.

This week’s ingredient was a squash you normally don’t use.  That left out zucchini and yellow squash and if I thought about it pumpkin.  Although I only eat pumpkin in pies.  I did a recipe search and had it narrowed down to either butternut squash or spaghetti squash and suspected the butternut would go over better.

I picked Butternut Squash Fries from Tasty Kitchen. The flavor wasn’t bad, but they didn’t crisp up like I thought they would.  DH wasn’t a fan, but the 12 year old liked them.

To see what others did with their squash, check out the links over at Patchwork Times.  Now to figure out what to do with pinto beans.

I finished the backdrop earlier today.  Doesn’t look like much here, so I hung it on my quilt rack.

It’s so big, I can’t get back far enough to take a full picture of it.   I didn’t measure, but I’m guessing it ended up 156″ wide and  153″ long.  Even at an angle I couldn’t get a picture of the whole thing.

So why did I make this?  My brother asked me to. 🙂

Pretend that my Tonka Beetle is a Pinewood Derby Car.  There is a big regional(?) race that my nephew’s troop/pack is sponsoring and my brother is taking photos of all the boys with their cars.

Now here’s a show off picture.  The black block I’m pointing to is the block to the left of the seam.  There are a couple of bobbles, but you have to look close or enlarge the picture to see them.

Now, to figure out how to get it to my brother.