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.

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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.

A few weeks ago my brother called me.  Would I be willing to make a backdrop for him? He didn’t need it until April 5th.

No problem — how hard can it be?  Cut the fabric in to three lengths and sew two seams.  Fold over the top and make a hanging pocket.  Maybe hem it.

13 yards of fabric cut into thirds.  Check

Matching the pattern?  The left selvage is not the same as the right selvage, so this is going to take me longer than I thought (don’t all our projects).  Good think I didn’t leave it until the last minute.

The Wildflower Serenade II 4-Patch Stacked Posies is a top. It measures 60 x 67. The current plan (it’s changed 3 or 4 times) is to bind it in the border fabric. For the backing, I’m considering the same windowpane plaid that I used on my DWR — I had the top tossed on the basket w/the DWR in it and couldn’t help but notice the colors are similar.  All I have to do now is figure out how to quilt it.  Any suggestions?

Hop over to Patchwork Times to check out other design walls.

I had high hopes for my stash report this week. But then I spent the day with my young quilting friend, sister and niece wandering in a couple of quilt shops on National Quilting Day.

There was fabric in:

And fabric out:

It was enough fabric to cancel out my fabric yardage purchases, but the fabric from my shirts are included in my yardage.

Fabric Added Since Last Report: 3.75 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 6.667

Fabric Used Since Last Report: 6.16 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 8.091 yards

Net Used for the year -54.02 yards

Other stash reports can be seen over at Patchwork Times.

This sounds like a school report, doesn’t it?

There were great sales at the quilt shops.  Even though it was questionable if I should even step foot into a quilt shop, I received an e-mail which was simply too good — FQs were half off and if you bought 10, one was free.  Essentially, 11 for the price of  5.  So, earlier this week, I planned to go to my local quilt shop.  Since my young quilting friend was over for the weekend, I was going to take her.

When my sister heard my plans, she asked if she could go.  Certainly.  Then before we left, her daughter wanted to join us.  Or maybe her momma just wanted her along since my niece has recently gotten engaged and a wedding quilt was planned.  Either way, the four of us spent the day together — shopping, eating Chinese food and quilting.

I think my young quilting friend got the most of my purchases.  No pictures — she had it put up darn near before we got into the house. (She’s good that way.) Mostly red FQs since she’s planning a quilt for her aunt and my red stash is low — I haven’t replenished it since I made my sister’s wedding quilt.  This evening when we went back out she also  got some Spongebob fabric to make the quilt she’s working on for her cousin bigger and the backing fabric for it.

My niece has picked this quilt for her momma to make:

I just have to teach my sister how to make HST squares and QST squares – all nice basic quilting skills — the trick to this quilt is the color placement.  A design wall is going to be very necessary.

After they picked out the chain fabric, background fabrics, and 8 red FQs (see comment above), they raided my stash for green, turquoise and blue fabrics.  The pattern called for 32 FQs (each star is a different color), but each star only uses about 3 1/2″ x 13″. I think after we took this picture we substituted at least one fabric and there may be other substitutions before it’s finished.

So, what did I come home with?

10 FQs and a 1 yard piece which was on clearance.

As for the sewing — my young quilting friend made significant progress on her quilt.

She’s still assembling it and the borders need to be cut.

Before I pickup up my sister and niece, my sister worked on the quilt she started on Wednesday.  She made one block and thought it came out 1/2″ smaller than it should have and she couldn’t figure out why.  Turns out her ruler was 1/2″ bigger than she thought.  The blocks were the right size.  She is very relieved — and smart enough to stop after only making 1 1/2 blocks to figure out what was wrong.

As for my quilting, I still need to stitch two long seams and put the borders on my quilt.  But, with all the running around, all I got done was pinning the two bottom sections together so I know how they go together.

But bottom line, it was a great day filled with family and quilting.

My sister posted this picture on Facebook about 6  PM this evening and asked if she could come over to get more fabric.  About an hour later she called and then came over.  She spent the evening cutting up 2″ blue strips into rectangles and supplementing them with strips from my box of blue fabric.

She did a fantastic job with her 1/4″ seam.  The next step will slow her down just a little.  She has to sew 6 blue rectangles around half of these blocks.  When she gets those done she’ll come back to raid my orange box.  However, she may have some of her own orange fabric by then.  We are going to a quilt sale Saturday morning.

While she was here I managed to get the last two rows of blocks sewn together. Two more long seams and then its time for the borders.