One Step Forward and Two Steps Back, and for What?

The upside is that today was gorgeous! It started out cold but warmed to about 60 and no wind for a change. Tomorrow is supposed to get up to 70, but it will be breezy. We've decided that breezy is a meterologist code word for a stiff wind, and windy is code for anything between a stiff wind and tornado.

The downside is that my mother-in-law has shingles and a UTI and is feeling pretty miserable. Hubby took her to the doctor yesterday and spent the rest of the afternoon getting her prescriptions and other things she needs. Evidently, she is a grumpy, needy patient. Hubby told me it was my turn to listen to her today. I had shingles a few years ago, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, so I think I'm a little more understanding than Hubby. Shingles are (or is that shingles is) miserable. If you are over 60 and haven't gotten your shingles vaccine, go get it as soon as the flu epidemic is over.

Speaking of flu, our little town is in the middle of the outbreak. Schools have been closed, and now there is a sign on the library asking people who have a cold, cough, or any flu symptoms to please just drop off their books in the overnight box. At the grocery store, when I handed my cloth bags to the cashier, she picked up the corner of one bag with her fingertips like it was crawling with germs. I told her I wash them but it didn't seem to make any difference to her. Of course, the first thing I did when I got to the car was to slather my hands with sanitizer. I don't remember the flu ever being this bad.

I've been spinning my wheels in the sewing room. I did get the backing made for the Double Irish Chain quilt, but most of my time has been on scrappy blocks. I should be finishing a UFO, but instead, I have been piddling with blocks for the RSC Challenge. Originally, I was going to continue working on Twinkle Star blocks since I didn't get very far on them before. But I can't find the blocks I made before, or the pattern I used on them. Since I need to make them the same size, I decided not to do those after all and make some blocks that are quick and easy. I decided to make Puakenikeni Flower Blocks except make the flowers in the color of the month. I made the blocks like Lisa suggested, but the more I looked at the blocks, the more I thought they didn't look right.

Yeah, I didn't put all the white pieces on the corners, I was in a hurry to see what it would look like. I think the yellow in the center needs to be larger, and I wanted it to have more of a scrappy look. Plus, I don't have enough scraps to make any more blocks this size. So I changed the white squares on the corners from 1-1/2 inch to 2 inches, and made each of the four blocks in a different fabric and I think I like it better. I just turned down the outside corners to see what it will look like, and I like it. Now I have to rip apart all the blocks I have made so far. I also had to buy some fabric because I don't have any purple or lavender, which is the February color, and I didn't have much medium blue either. I don't think I have any aqua or turquoise either, but I'll worry about that next month.

That's it for me. Tomorrow I'm leveling dirt if the wind is under 20mph.

Linking to:
My Quilt Infatuation
Can I get a Whoop Whoop

Cars Quilt

Began and Finished 2018

Design Wall Monday - Cars is Quilted!

This weekend and this morning, I spent just about every waking hour quilting and it will be the last time I quilt on my little Janome. My shoulder may never recover!

It looks distorted in these pictures but that's because I didn't have Hubby here to hold it and I had to stuff the corners in a couple of cabinets to hold it up. At least I hope it's not distorted. After all the pushing and pulling this weekend, I should probably block it before binding.

It didn't help that I was working in the trailer with my machine on a tv dinner table. I also haven't found my quilting gloves yet either, but found that my dishwashing rubber gloves have a better grip. Who knew? lol

Jo from Jo's Country Junction is doing a BOM Challenge in 2018. The challenge is to finish a BOM that is a basically a UFO. The assignment for this week was to find said project. That might be easy for some quilters, but when most of my stuff is in boxes, unmarked boxes at that, it made it a little more difficult for me. I didn't find my BOM. In her post describing the challenge, Jo said that the reason she doesn't like BOM's is that it seems such a waste to spend all that time reading directions and cutting just for one block. That clicked with me and I realized that I feel the same way. When people talk about doing a sampler challenge, I just cringe. So thank you Jo for not making me feel guilty when I say no to samplers.

Here is my BOM, even though I haven't found the actual project yet. This is what it looked like the last time I saw it. I only have one block left to finish. I'm not sure why I never finished it, except it was the first BOM I had ever done and I was tired of it by the time I got to the last block.



I'm linking to:
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts
Moving it Forward at Em's Scrapbag
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Getting a Fast Start in the New Year

The sun is out today, after what seems like a week of misty, gray skies. Yesterday was cold, gray, and windy. Today is just cold and windy, but it seems so much better. Happy New Year sun!

Yesterday, I was going to iron the backing fabric for Cars, but I had been sorting my scraps by color and didn't have another place to put them. So I shelved the ironing plan, or rather, I wanted to shelve it, but I have run out of shelves! Instead, I put together a hutch I found on craigslist a couple of years ago. I had painted it black to match my dining room table, but when we put our house on the market, I took it apart and put it in storage to make the house look uncluttered. After putting it back together, I realized how much my eyes have gone downhill. I have been having trouble seeing dark things against dark backgrounds, but I couldn't even tell where the outside frame ended and the open inside area began. This wasn't going to work at all.

By evening, I had decided to strip the paint inside the hutch to make that part lighter. The temperature in the attic was a balmy 44 degrees and dropping, and I wasn't sure Citristrip would work in that temperature. I usually do my stripping in summer and have to worry about it drying out, not freezing. lol But I brushed it on and went back to the trailer to eat dinner. Afterward, I ran a wide blade across it and the paint peeled off like skimming froth off the top of a boiling pot. It was amazing. Today, I'll sand and stain, and I should be able to use it in a few days.

In the meantime, I need to find a place to put my sorted scraps, and get Cars sandwiched. Today, the top is in the flimsy state. Finishing Cars is my January Goal at One Monthly Goal. I've already decided that the UFO challenge at American Patchwork & Quilting won't work for me. I've already lost it on my facebook feed among the random crap that people post.

If I can get the backing made today and pinned tomorrow, I think I can set up a sewing table in the trailer where it is warm. If that doesn't work, I'll have to wait until it is warmer in the attic. Hubby is drilling through studs for wiring today, so it is too dusty downstairs to do anything. His January goal is to finish the bathrooms in the house. I will admit, taking a shower without running out of hot water sounds pretty good.

In 2014, scraphappy at soscrappy posted a tutorial for making a Twinkle Star block. I made a couple and then put them aside, and then forgot about them. I found one the other day and after watching Kate at Life in Pieces make her Twinkle Stars quilt, I've decided to make that my block for this year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This month's color is blue. I also hope this will make a good leaders and enders project.

Linking to:
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Design Board Monday - Cars' Roads is a Flimsy

Sorry for the lousy picture. It's a gray, foggy day and my phone doesn't like low light. Maybe I'll have a sunny day when it is finished and I can break out the good camera for a picture.

I thought I was going to be able to start quilting on this yesterday and finish it tomorrow. But the fates have conspired against me and it looks like it won't get done until after Christmas. That means I can't take it to my daughter, Brownie, over Christmas week. The little one's birthday is the first week of January though, so I will have to get to it right after Christmas.

Linking up to
Moving it Forward at Em's Scrapbag
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

The Return of the Ripper

It was a dark and foggy night...

Actually, it was a bright, sunny day, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the dreaded ripper returned nevertheless.

What happened is I that dug out a quilting box so I could make a quick quilt for a little boy who loves the Pixar Cars movies. I found out about his birthday Friday and rushed out to buy some Cars fabric and then began work Saturday morning. It was a frustrating project in the beginning, mainly because I only found two rulers (and I don't like one of them) and I am sewing in the attic. Yes, the attic. Low light, sewing machine and iron plugged into an extension cord, and no heat. Or there wasn't heat until I brought up a space heater. THEN, I had to unplug the iron to use it. Not ideal sewing conditions, but I thought I could stand it long enough to get this quilt put together and then wait until a room was finished down below before sewing again.

By Saturday evening, I had also brought up a light bar, reworked my plan twice, and had the center four Cars blocks sewn together with a border of black and white checkerboard. But the checkerboard didn't line up at the corners and looked pretty bad. So Sunday afternoon necessitated the return of the ripper. I replaced the corners with the same red fabric I used between the four cars. After replacing the corners, I pieced on the "road" border around the center and between the side background pieces. And then I had to find Mr. Ripper again to take the red pieces off so add a white strip.

This is where the Electric Quilt software would have really come in handy. Instead of drawing a pattern on a notepad,

I could have had it to scale and with the seam measurements included. But since I forgot to add a half inch when I cut the reds, I had to improvise and add a white stripe to the side of the road.  I actually like it better this way.

Now here is where I have a problem. I hadn't intended to use that red as the background and am now short one 9x11 piece. So a trip to JoAnn's on on the schedule today. The red I had intended to use was a Cars fabric and looked fine under the fluorescent lights at the store, but looked decidedly reddish orange in natural light. Next to it is a fabric with a collage of cars. I was going to use a strip of that at top and bottom of the quilt, but now I am rethinking that also.

Now that I have the quilt center together, I think the style of the collage clashes with it. What do you think?

While at JoAnn's, I think I'll look for some other fabrics to complete the end borders. I have enough scraps from all the fabric I've used so far to piece in something too. Or I could make a strip and applique his name on it.  Or I could find something else that fits the bill.  A trip to the fabric store is always an adventure.

Linking up to:
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts

March OMG Goal

Just one goal this month because I think it's going to be a tough deadline to complete. I want to finish the Summer Crossroads quilt. The picture below is one I posted in early January and I am farther along with it now, but everything is also packed away right now. That's just one of the reasons it is going to be a tough goal. The other one is that we are well into spring and soon I will be spending hours every day in the garden instead of the sewing room.



My goal is to just get the pieced top finished. At this time, I am planning on doing some applique on the borders, but that could change after the top is pieced also.

Speaking of the garden, we both spent all day doing yard maintenance and didn't begin to make a dent in the work that needs to be done. Hopefully, we can get some tilling and planting done tomorrow, and then it's supposed to start raining. Talk about deadlines!

Linked to:
Red Letter Quilts OMG, It's March!

Design Wall Monday and Stash Report

I'm making progress on the Summer Crossroads. My goal has been to complete at least one block per day during the week, and finish a row by the end of the weekend. So far I have four rows completed and four rows of blocks ready to finish. Then just four more rows to complete the main section of the quilt. Right now I feel that I will actually finish this one this quarter as planned. I probably shouldn't say that out loud though and risk jinxing it.

I thought I'd join soscrappy's Twinkle Star Column Along. It seemed like a good way to use up my scraps: make pretty blocks while using up one color at a time instead of using a bit of one color here and one color there. But I found that I just don't have enough big scraps to do that star. I might be able to find enough large pieces to do one Twinkle Star block each month, but most of my scraps are narrow, so I'm going to make single color string blocks. Boring, I know, but maybe I can do something interesting with them at the end. Here's my blue Twinkle Star block for January. (I shouldn't have tried to take a photo at night as the flash bleached it out. I did a auto correct which seems to have only brightened the corner colors.)

Also on my design board is this piece of panel cloth. I've probably had it twenty years and of course have none of the fabrics I bought with it at that time. So I've had it on the board, studying it from time to time in hopes that inspiration will strike. So far, it hasn't.

As far as my stash goes, I'm working on it, but still showing more in than out for the year. Drat that after-Christmas sale!

Linking to:
Scraphappy Saturday 53 at soscrappy
Monday Making 3 at Love Laugh Quilt
Main Crush Monday 1 at Cooking up Quilts
Moving it Forward Monday 6 at Em's Scrapbag

Design Wall Monday and Stash Report

I've made some progress on the Summer Crossroads quilt. After finishing the donation quilt, I turned my attention to this quilt, and my goal was to complete at least one block every day and join a couple of them. Yesterday, I finished the top row (10 blocks). A quilting friend suggested putting the blocks together in small sections instead of long rows. She said it was easier and less likely to show any unevenness. What do you think?

The stash report has showed very little change since the only thing I'm doing now is making blocks out of fabric that has already been cut, but I have had to cut fabric for a few more blocks and some sashing strips.

Linking to:
Design Board Monday at Bits 'n Bobs
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilts
Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts
Moving it Forward at Em's Scrapbag

Q1 2016 Finish-Along Goals

I hate to keep repeating myself, but I want 2016 to be the year of the finished quilts. I still have plans to start one or two, but my priority is on finishing the ones I've already started.

There is a group of quilters who have a quarterly sign-up list to motivate and give accountability for those of us trying to set goals to finish those UFOs. So today I need to put in writing the things I want to complete before March 31, 2016. Once it's in writing, there are no take-backs, so I don't want to bite off more than I can handle.

1. From another post, my goal for January was to finish the Donation Quilt. I'm almost finished, so I have no doubt I will finish that long before the end of January.

2. Another almost finished UFO is my Around the World from the Couch.

3. Another close but not complete is this Double Irish Chain. My goal for this quarter is to get the top complete. I can't pin or quilt it for quite awhile.

4. And here's the one I'm going out on a limb to complete, but again, just the top. The Summer Crossroads Quilt. The quilting will have to wait until the frame can be set up.

Linked to:
Clover and Violet Q1 Finish-A-Long Goals

Design Wall Monday

It doesn't look like much has changed on my design wall, but I've been plugging away on the crossroads blocks and trying out finishes for the Irish chain. That is when I have had time. We've been digging in the mud lately trying to get our yard to dry out. Not fun. So this is just a quickie post before I have to get my mud boots on for the day.

Linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday

Still working on the crossroads blocks. I also decided to start using up my boxes of little scraps making string blocks as leaders and enders. I think I may be in danger of not finishing my UFO of the month either. Eek! I'd better hop to!

If you remember from last week, I originally made the crossroads blocks 7-1/2 inches and then decided that was too big, so cut then down to 6-1/2 inches. Being the frugal sort, I thought I'd use the cut off strips to make some string blocks. What a nightmare that was! Not only were all those strips cut on the bias, but they were so narrow that they stretched and curved as I stitched. And it took a lot to make a block. So after one block, I decided those scraps were better off in the trash.

I used that one block to make a pot holder. I thought it would be an easy way to practice free-motion quilting, and boy was I wrong about that. The center wasn't too bad, but there is nothing to hold onto at the edges. I also wanted to try out a method of binding a potholder where the end of the binding was also used to make the hanging loop. I'm not sure I did that right, but it worked. I first used binding that was too narrow and tried to trim the bulk of the potholder to make it turn, but then gave up and made 2 inch binding and just double folded the end that made up the hanging loop. By the time I finished, my potholder wasn't quite square anymore, but since it is just for me, who cares?

On the wall:

Linking to:
Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times 29
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts
Design Board Monday at Bits 'n Bobs

Design Wall Monday

Hubby went hunting this weekend so I got a lot of work done on my new quilt. But when Hubby is gone, I don't sleep well and I made up for it this morning, so I'm getting a late start today.

This is based off a quilt I saw in a quilt store. I also found some similar online with the name Summer Porch. Eleanor Burns has a pattern that is similar but different, also called Summer Porch. I thought these would be just the right colors and pattern for my grandmother's four poster bed.

The living room/sewing room is in sewing room mode again and the design wall is up. So much easier than the floor for bigger pieces.

I started by measuring the bed and decided that seven inch blocks would line up best across it. But after I made quite a few blocks, I thought they were too big, or maybe it was too much color and the sashing looked too small. So I cut the blocks down to six inches and like it much better. Now I have a lot of one inch strips, so I can see some strip quilts in my future.

Linking to
Patchwork Times
Love, Laugh, Quilt
Bits 'n Bobs
Cooking up Quilts

Such a Cut Up

Began and Finished 2014

Such A Cut-Up Quilt Progress and a Tip for Stretched Block

The top is finished and I like it so much better than the original.

Now the tip, which you may already know, but was new to me.

I knew the bias cut triangles were going to be a problem, especially the larger ones, so I spritzed them lightly with spray starch. (That's not the tip for you, I already knew that would help prevent stretching.) I had a problem with the spray can and soaked one of them. Afterward, I noticed that it shrank as it dried but ironing it straightened it out. Originally, the strips were 7 inches, which was actually good for me because after I sewed the pieces into 12 inch blocks, there was enough excess to square them up nicely. Still, when I put the rows together, I found that one was a half inch longer. It had two of the large triangles in it and they had stretched. I pinned them together, matching the seams and spaced out the "ruffle" of the stretched triangles and pinned them. Then I saturated it with the spray starch. When it dried, no more "ruffles" and it sewed together perfectly. After ironing, the starch relaxed and it looked fine.

Have You Ever Wanted to Cut Up a Quilt Top You Just Finished?

I do, and I did.

A few months ago at our quilt guild meeting, someone demonstrated this fast and easy quilt. Online, it's called a strip and flip. I think theirs was in 1930's reproduction prints, and it was really cute. I thought I'd whip one out this weekend, and since our little quilt group needed some lap quilts for men, I chose masculine colors. The top went together in less than an hour, and was indeed fast and easy. But the more I looked at the finished top, the less I liked it because it was sooooo boring, so I decided to cut it up and see if I could come up with a more interesting pattern.

I did have to rip out a few seams, leaving three sections of two joined strips. I also left the reversed strip as it was.

I first cut the two strip rows into squares.

Then cut each square into two triangles.

And then cut each triangle in half.

Then laid out the pieces so the patterns and colors are spread out and started sewing them back together.

I have one leftover strip but haven't decided if I am going to use it or not.