Week 19, 2013 Recap and Stash Report

Happy Mothers’ Day to all moms!  We will be celebrating a little later because both of my kids are in the thick of finals.  Jen will finish up later this week and I’ll go down to Madison to pick her up.  She has an internship here in town this summer so she’ll be back at home.  I’m really excited since I wasn’t sure she would ever be home again for any length of time.  Then next Sunday, my daughter-in-law, Laura is running a half-marathon in Green Bay so we will go up there to cheer her on. Hopefully, we’ll have another chance to see her while she’s in town.  Unfortunately Bryan won’t be coming home with her since he’s studying for boards. We’ll go down to Milwaukee in a week or so for a quick visit with him.

This week almost went by without a single finish but this afternoon I got busy and finished up the first rails and chain quilt.  This ended up being a pretty big quilt—60” x 80” so it used quite a bit of fabric.  Everything in this quilt was from stash; 2-1/2” strips, chain fabric, borders, binding and backing.  I wasn’t sure the binding would be finished by dark so I took the picture earlier in the day right after it came off the frame.  The binding is now finished and this one is ready for donation.

The quilting on this was very quick and easy.  The center is overall meandering and the borders have feather quilting.

The weekly stash report:
Used this week:  11 yards
Used year to date:  158 yards
Purchased this week:  3
Purchased year to date: 38 yards
Net year to date:  120 yards used

Be sure to check out other stash reports at Patchwork Times.

Note to self: read instructions first!

I’ve been quilting a LONG time and over that length of time I’ve found methods for piecing that work best for me. All along, I’ve taken classes from many, many different teachers and have learned lots of different techniques.  I’m almost always willing to try new things in an effort to increase speed and accuracy in my piecing.  So usually before I cut a new project I look at the instructions to see if I plan to piece it according to the pattern or use a different methods. 

This morning I finished piecing the blocks for the quilt I’m currently working on and pulled out the pattern to see how the blocks are to be set together. The blocks are rectangular instead of square and they are set in vertical rows. I had a bunch of extra strips cut so I also checked to see where they are supposed to go.  It was very disheartening to find out that instead of sewing the blocks together into rows and adding sashing, this pattern called for you to add a little sashing strip to every block and then sew the rows together.  That means there are 54 more seams in this top than is necessary.  It would have been SO much faster to piece the rows—well actually the columns and then sew a strip of sashing between each column.  Fortunately, I had some extra sewing time this morning and I almost have the top together so that tedious process is just about behind me.  It is a reminder though, to always read through the pattern before cutting!! 

This is a picture of the top so far—obviously before it has been pressed.

A Little Mindless Sewing

“See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come.”  Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (NIV)

Yesterday when I left for work all I could think about was that Bible verse.  It was truly a glorious day and the first day this year when I thought winter is really over.  The grass is green, birds are singing and we may have tulips by the end of the week.  It was too bad I had to work!!

Today is nice too but I had an eye exam this morning and my eyes are still dilated so  it’s painful to go out in the sun.  A little later this afternoon I’ll get out for a walk and enjoy the fresh air.  Now, however, I’m just doing a little mindless sewing.  My small group meets on Thursday and I’m trying to finish up a couple of things for show and share.  I’m winding down the fabric from the “box of stuff” (original post here).  This is the last charity quilt from that fabric.  There is still a bag of leftovers from the Bliss line of fabric.  I’ll probably get two more lap quilts from these “scraps”.  There is also fabric for two pillowcases and an apron panel.  It will interesting to see how many projects came from the fabric in that box.  I’ll have everything finished by the end of the month and then photograph the big pile of projects from that one little box.

This pattern is Off Track by Cluck Cluck Sew.  It’s a simple pattern and the blocks are coming together quickly.  This was kind of a crummy “jelly roll” because there were only about eight prints in the bundle and 20 of the 50 strips were of one print.  I set aside 9 of those to use for binding and added a few more fabrics for a little more variety.  Oh, well.  The point of these quilts is to bless someone who has very little. 

So far I’ve sewn the 56 blocks I need to make this twin size.  Now off to sew the sashing units.

Design Wall Monday-Charm School and Giveaway!

Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.  Kathleen Winsor

When I was a kid my sent one of my sisters and me to charm school.  I don’t know if she thought we were uncouth or if she was just trying to turn us into ladies.  It was held at Adler’s, a nice girls’ and women’s clothing store at Antioch mall and we learned social etiquette, manners, wardrobe tips and posture.  At the end of the class we had a fashion show and tea.  It’s been years  since I’ve heard of charm schools so I  just did a quick google search and there are still some around if you need some lessons in social graces.  I’m pretty sure my daughter would have just laughed at me if I’d suggested something like that to her.

What conjured up that old memory was that I spent a good part of the week working with charm squares—packs and packs of charm squares.  There were several of them in the box of stuff I’m trying to use up and I finally figured out quilts I could make from each of them. 

On Thursday’s post I showed the blocks made from Christmas charms made from a Nancy Halvorson line of fabric called Tidings.  I found a great border fabric, finished the top, layered it up and it’s now on the frame being quilted.  I’m using a pantograph on it so it’s a little slow going.

The second charm quilt is made from Marmalade fabric by Bonnie and Camille.  I used a pattern from the book Quilts from Sweet Jane.  I quilted this with vertical lines.  It’s the first time I’ve done that and I’m not sure I’ll do it again very soon.  It was hard to keep the lines straight and the fabric wanted to shift.  I stitched them random widths apart so it wouldn’t look funny if the lines weren’t the same width apart.

Next I pieced a top from a pack of charms called Baby Geniuses Grow Up. This is a pattern from Villa Rosa called La France.  I like this pattern because you can make a baby quilt with just one charm pack and 1-1/2 yards of fabric for borders and binding. And you can piece the top in under two hours!

Now I’m working on another quilt made from the pattern in the Sweet Jane book.  I don’t usually make the same quilt twice in one week but this is another one using Benartex charms.  Unlike Moda charm packs, which always have 42 charms, the number in these varies.  As it turned out, I had just enough squares to make this quilt.  Hopefully I can get them finished this week, then move on to something else—like jelly rolls!  Just kidding—I need to work on UFO’s.

Since this is charm week and I have an abundance of them, I’m giving away two Moda Marmalade charm packs to one lucky reader.  If you’d like to win these just leave a comment in the remarks.  I’ll use a random generator to pick a name on Friday and email the winner to get an address so I can send them on their way!

If you need a little inspiration this week, be sure to check out the other Design Wall Monday links at Patchwork Times.

Week 16, 2013 Recap and Stash Report

This week I finished the fat quarter baby quilt and pieced some charm square tops (more about that tomorrow when I’m a little further along).  The best finish, though, is this little four patch quilt that has been waiting about two years for a binding.  Now it is finally finished and ready to be shipped to Quilts for Kids!



It’s kind of hard to see but the black fabric is a nice skateboard print.  This will make a nice boy’s quilt.



The weekly stash report:
Used this week:  10 yards
Used year to date:  125 yards
Purchased this week:  0
Purchased year to date: 21 yards
Net year to date:  104 yards used

I’m really happy to see the net yardage go down over 100 yards this year so far.  I’m trying to sew one mile of fabric (1,760 yards) from stash so that puts a dent in it! 

Be sure to check out other stash reports using the links at Patchwork Times.

Come back tomorrow--I'll have a fun giveaway!!

Fat Quarter Baby Quilts

Today I finished the second fat quarter baby quilt.  I had six fat quarters for each quilt and my original plan was to add some white background fabric and make a Disappearing 4 Patch from one set and a Disappearing 9 Patch from the other.  Today is really windy with snow flurries so I finally gave up on taking pictures outside and just snapped a couple in the house.  The color isn’t that great but it will do!

Here’s the finished D4P (the green is really more lime than kelly).



I quilted it in an overall design.



This quilt started out as a Disappearing Nine Patch.  I’ve made a couple of these already where I just randomly placed the fabric when making the nine patch.  For this quilt I wanted the blues to chain in one direction and the green/yellow to chain opposite with the red in each corner.  I make one Disappearing Nine Patch block then decided it was easier to just cut the pieces and piece it block by block.  It was much faster and probably more accurate.  I only used five of the six fat quarters for this quilt and it turned out 51” x 63”. 



This one was quilted in overall swirls.



These were fun and easy quilts to make.  Both are donation quilts.

Be sure to come back on Monday.  I’ll have a fun giveaway!

UFO Parade

What a coincidence that Judy at Patchwork Times has just started a UFO challenge.  Boy do I need some incentive to finish some things as I have a ton of UFOs and I just found more!

I am really inept when it comes to decorating my house.  I knew I’d have guests on several occasions this spring so I wanted to update my mantle.  I found a beautifully decorated mantle on Pinterest  by Dining Delights here—everything on her blog is incredibly beautiful--and wanted to use some of those elements in my house.  So I went downstairs to see what kind of spring decorations I could use and found this on top of the box of spring décor.

It’s another huge stack of UFO’s.  I really don’t understand how (or why) I spend who knows how many hours selecting fabric, cutting, piecing, layering, then quilting only to stop and abandon the project with only the binding remaining.  Some of these quilts even have the binding machine sewn so only the hand stitching is left to do.  Am I the only one who does this?

Here’s a list of these UFO’s.  I’d like to get them finished because most of them could be donated to Quilts for Kids, Quilts Beyond Borders or our local emergency center and that would be a large stack out of my house.  Double bonus!

Technorati Tags: UFO,piecing,decorating

1. Mirrored Boxes
2. Blue and Yellow log cabin variation
3. Scrappy log cabin
4. Buzzsaw variation
5. Christmas block of the month
6. Grandma’s brown and red quilt
7. Brown and green crazy curves
8. Children’s black skateboard quilt
9. Children’s primary star quilt
10. Red/white/blue Ohio Star
11. Unterrageri
12. Peach and green Ohio Star

I just cringe when I think about how old some of these are.  I’m sure the peach and green one hasn’t been touched in over 20 years!  Here’s to getting them finished and gifted!

And my mantle?  I’m really happy with it!