I have things I want to finish with self-imposed deadlines of next month. What am I doing? Cleaning my sewing room and digging through my scrap basket for blue and light scraps. However, now that I’ve found all the blue and light scraps (need them for a workshop next month), I think I will go make myself make a pillow case. At least I haven’t started a new quilt…yet.
I have no idea why I didn’t get this posted Wednesday.
Last week two goals:
Both were done by Thursday evening! I also finished Part 5 of Carolina Christmas.
Yesterday I outlined a few little (and not so little) things that I want to get done. So my goal for this week is to make progress on at least two of these tasks.
Check out Bari’s and others’ lists of weekly goals over My Crazy Quilting Life.
How hard is it to make a pillow case and attach a label to a quilt?
Sew blocks into a quilt top?
Do some simple machine applique and finish a small quilt ?
Catch up on my Sylvia Bridal Sampler Blocks? (not pictured)
Pick one of my Bonnie Hunter designed quilts and quilt it? – OK, this one is tougher
Several of these things have self-imposed deadlines — Dancing Flowers preferably by mid-May, but at least by mid-June. Quilt one of the Bonnie Hunter quilt tops and complete Carolina Christmas and Oklahoma Backroad tops by mid-May. Keeping up with the SBS is simply prudent since I have less than 50 blocks done. The pillowcase and label need to be done so I can put up the rest of the fabric.
I could easily do one or more of these over the next few days, but I’m sitting here contemplating starting something new. Why is it I can’t finish a project before starting a new one?
Update — before I left this evening for the concert, I got the label on the quilt. I also discovered the baby due in May arrived today!
My favorite quilting notion varies by what I’m working on. The current favorite is this seam ripper.
Yesterday I pulled out Dancing Flowers to finish up. Applique is not my favorite, but darn it I want to finish this wall hanging. Just two more blocks. Besides that, I finally decided on and bought sashing fabric for this and the coordinating king size quilt, so I need to get the top done, so I can pull a backing so my numbers don’t look so bad Sunday. But I digress.
I’m using invisible thread on top, black in the bobbin. I’ve set my machine to a blind stitch at .03 length and 1.0 width – in other words tiny. Instead of placing all my pieces on the background to verify they are in the right place, I started with the stems. I thought they might be a tiny bit high on the background, but I wasn’t worried. It wasn’t until I had two stems, two leaves and one of the two part flowers on the background that I admitted defeat and knew I had to rip it all out.
Tiny stitches. Invisible and black thread on a black background. Ugh.
But this wonderful seam ripper came to the rescue. I was able to slide the blade between the pieces and the background to slice the thread where it bit into the piece. Had the whole block ripped out in no time. I still have to pull the bits and pieces of thread from the background, but that won’t take long. Then when I do this block again, I’ll verify ALL of the pieces before I start sewing.
My design wall is still not back up on the wall from last week’s retreat. For that matter, I’m having difficult moving around in my sewing room. Stuff is piled up every where. It has not, however prevented me from basic piecing. All of my Carolina Christmas blocks are done.
Last week I picked up several books from the library (I love my library — ‘quilting’ returns 1746 listings) including Saving the Scraps – Great Quilts from Small Bits by Gayle Bong. I think there are 4 quilts that I would like to make in this book, so I think I’ll be buying it for my personal library. The block pictured above is 1/4 of a block for Fractured Diamonds.
Having made one unit, it going to go into my orphan quilt block box (which is almost as stuffed as the sting box). I don’t really want to start a new quilt right now — too many quilts waiting for me to complete.
See if anyone has started something new or if they are working on their UFOs by checking out the links at Patchwork Times.
I’m still plugging away on my Carolina Christmas. I’ve just finished piecing the last of the Fox and Geese blocks.
Not much fabric used this week. The pincushions didn’t use up much fabric — in fact, I had trouble closing my strings box afterward — I think they multiplied when my back was turned. I worked on Carolina Christmas, sewing blocks together, so no new fabric used there, but I can count the squares used as the leader/enders for Oklahoma Backroads.
On the other hand, I pulled out some of Momma’s fabric to wash and put away. I’ve got to get a bigger box for Christmas fabric. A new box of Shout Color Catchers is needed as well. After washing, the first one was RED. The black fabric went in the dryer and the red back through the wash. The second time the catcher was only PINK so I went ahead and dried it.
So here’s this week’s tally.
Fabric Added this Week: 19 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 62.181 yards
Fabric Used this Week: .325 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 30.246 yards
Net Stash for 2010: 31.935 yards
Last week Judy said she was losing sleep over this week’s report. See if anyone else is by checking out the links at Patchwork Times.
This weekend is the Kaw Valley Quilters Guild quilt show. I went this morning and saw lots of great quilts and got a few ideas on how to finish one of my UFOs.
Additionally, I had two quilts hanging in the show, which meets one of my goals for the year.
If you get a chance, head over to the show Sunday. It runs from 10 AM – 5 PM at the Douglas County Fairgrounds in Lawrence, Kansas.
Provided the hanging sleeve stays stitched to the Music Lessons while it goes through the wash, I’ve finished my goals for this week. Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but I machine stitched the BOTTOM of the hanging sleeve to the quilt. It was a case of if I didn’t, it wouldn’t get done. I used the blind hem stitch on my sewing machine and the ‘bite’ only bit through the backing and batting. All I have to do now is check it when it come out of the dryer.
The second task was stuffing the pincushions. Again machine stitching to the rescue. This time, a zig zag with monofilament thread in the top and black thread on the bottom.
Now off to look at quilt books.
Last week I had a huge list along with the priorities. Here are the highlights:
This week, just a couple of goals
Of course all of this needs to be done by Friday morning, so perhaps I’ll be able to sneak something else in — like finishing the rest of the Carolina Christmas blocks.
See what others are planning on doing this week by checking out the links at Bari’s.
