Most of this past week was spent prepping the Log Cabin quilt for quilting it yesterday.  Maybe today I’ll get the binding on it.

After quilting, I went in search of Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 on a roll.  Three stops later I  found the 24″ wide Steam-a-Seam, which will work better for me than the 12″ wide that I set out to buy.  While I was there I also picked up a few FQs.

Fabric Added Last Week: 2.5 yards
Fabric Added to Date:  71.685 yards

Fabric Used Last Week: 7.152 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 45.926 yards

Net Used for the year -25.759 yards

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

If I only look at my “official list” not only did I finish my blocks for June, I got caught up.  Here are all three blocks.

May’s block:

June’s blocks:

I don’t know if I’ll get caught up on my unofficial list this afternoon and evening or not (4 – Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler blocks).   I spent the morning quilting the log cabin quilt and then I went to the quilt shop to pick up some Lite Steam-A-Seam 2 for the Eeyore quilt and a few goodies for the Red, White and Blue Blog Hop.

My day is July 13th and I still need to finalize my block.  But as soon as that and Eeyore is done it will be on to UFO # 3 – Evergreens and Christmas Star.

Hop over to Patchwork Times and check out how others are doing on their UFOs.  With the help of this challenge I might just finish these blocks by the end of the year.

The zippers are on the backing and top.  I have my thread (King Tut #920 Sands of Time on top.  Bottom Line Pre-wound bobbins probably #603 Red) and batting (Warm & Natural) ready to go.  And I have decided on how I’m going to quilt the top — free-hand Baptist Fans.  I suspect this is going to take me longer than the 2 hours I have reserved on Saturday morning.  Perhaps I’ll get lucky and no one will have reserved the 2nd slot and I can keep going.

The backing is a Cranston Print Works 60″ wide fabric.  My guess is it’s from the early 90’s.

This morning I finished the mistletoe block from May which brings me up-to-date on my ‘official’ UFOs.  I said unofficially I wanted to make 2 Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler blocks and quilt one ring on my quilt.

The DWR is way behind, but I’m not going to attempt to “catch up”, but rather just work on it when I can.   I have made some progress this month, so there is hope.

I didn’t get the May SBS blocks done, so I may try to knock 4 blocks out in the next day or two.  If I do, I’ll be sure to post them.

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.