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.

I took the day off today and spent much of it in the sewing room.  Significant progress was made putting the quilt together.  More wasn’t done because I had a new quilter in my sewing room today.

My sister asked if I would teach her how to quilt.  Since we were both off from work today she came over and dug through my stash.  She knew she wanted to make an orange, blue and yellow quilt but didn’t know what quilt.  I pulled out Successful Scrap Quilts from Simple Rectangles by Judy Turner and Margaret Rolfe and she flipped through the book. Many of the quilts are made with 2″ x 3 1/2″ rectangles — a size that I have in my pre-cut stash.  She decided to make “Spectrum”, which is the cover quilt.  Her blocks are going to be orange with yellow centers and blue with yellow centers.

I think in the end she found 80 of the 128 yellow rectangles she needs.  A quick lesson on using a rotary cutter and ruler and she cut the rest in no time — mostly from my 2″ strips.  I think she came up 10 or 15 short where she had to pull from my stash boxes.  She’s not going to be as lucky with the blue and orange.  Sydney’s first quilt was primarily blue and the orange is in the Orca Bay box.

Anyway, she took a baggie of yellow rectangles and a spool of thread home with plans to sew them together and press them.  Next time she’s over she’ll pull the blue and orange fabric.

Sydney will be back in the sewing room this weekend.  She’s got to finish the Sponge Bob quilt for her cousin.

Sashing still needs to be attached to the right most and bottom blocks, but that would imply  that I had the blocks in the order they will ultimately reside in.

I’ll stare at the picture and decide which ones need to be moved to where.

I’m just not a food blogger.  I forgot the picture again!

This week I made One Pan Chicken and Potatoes from the Tasty Kitchen website — with a few changes.  I’m getting where I cook like I quilt — can’t do anything according to the directions 🙂

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup oil  – I used canola since that’s what I had
• 1/4 c Balsamic vinegar – I used Regina Balsamic Vinegar since it was in the cabinet
• 1 teaspoon of Dijon Mustard (is that the same as the spicy brown mustard I used?)
• 2 teaspoons Honey (no one said how much honey qualified for a honey recipe)
• 1 Tablespoon minced garlic  (I guess that’s about 3 cloves minced)
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons Tony Chachere’s Creaole Seasoning (the recipe called for Italian Seasoning — but this is what I use on pizza, so I figured it would work)
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika – mine wasn’t smoked
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese (got mine from a green can)
• 4 good sized red potatoes
• 5 frozen chicken tenders

Preheat the over to 425 degrees F.  Cut potatoes into bite size pieces and place into a gallon zip top bag with the frozen chicken tenders.  Mix everything else in a blender until smooth. Pour into the bag. Close and mix until everything is coated evenly.  Pour out into baking dish, putting the tenders on top of the potatoes.   Place dish into preheated oven for about an hour.  Turn the tenders every 20 minutes.  Roast until the potatoes are tender and the juices in the chicken run clear.

The recipe indicated basting would be required, but the ‘vinaigrette’ was rather thick, so I found I didn’t need to do anything, but did flip the chicken.

I’m a simple cook — 2 or 3 ingredients, so it is surprising that I was able to make this from mostly from my pantry.  I  had to get  garlic and potatoes.  The best news, is that both my husband and  I enjoyed the meal.  I won’t make it next week, but it will be put in the rotation — perhaps w/a bit less garlic.

Hop over to see what others did with Honey this week by following the links over at Patchwork Times.

In my mind I had great hopes of getting this top to the flimsy stage Saturday night so I could report the fabric usage on yesterday’s stash report — the one I didn’t write.  As usual my eyes were bigger than my stomach I thought I could get more done in the time I had available.

It was right at midnight Sunday that I finished the framing on these blocks.  I don’t know that I’ll finish the top this week or not.  I really need to do a bit mountain of a laundry and of course taxes are looming.

Be sure to hop over to  Patchwork Times to catch the links to other design walls.

Boy there’s a lot of fabric in a cotton shirt!  I knew this after all I measured one to come up with my “shirt standard” of 1 1/2 yards.  For the last few days I’ve been cutting up shirt fronts.

I’m not sure how many shirts this represents — no, I do know.  The stacks of fabric with the yellow head pins are for a Nifty Thifty quilt.  I’ve cut 20 shirts fronts – 10 light and 10 dark.  From one side of the shirt front, I’ve gotten the fabric for 10 Nifty Thrifty blocks (one is sewn) with 9 pieces of border pieces, 9 spool blocks, 24 strips for Rectangle Wrangler a stack of 2 1/2″ strips, 2″ strips, 1 1/2″ strips, a pile of strings and a few 2″, 2 1/2″ blocks, 2 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ bricks and a pile of 1 1/2″ squares for my postage stamp quilt.

My shirt boxes are still full!  But I’m tired of cutting, so tonight I’m going to put my feet up and read then tomorrow I’ll sew on the 4-Patch blocks.  The Nifty Thrift quilt is being kitted up to have something to work on at my next retreat.  I’m aiming to have 20 blocks ready to stitch.