Quilting and other Things

The 2016 planning had mixed results. Probably because I saw post and created the list at the last minute. I am really pleased though with what was accomplished. I'll look at that another day. Quilting  The spreadsheet still has 52 things on it but the completed tab has 51 completed things.  1. I've already thought about what 12 things I would like to move along or complete next year. Elaine has a series going for Motivational Monday's so I spent some time thinking about those.  For 2017 I'm going to work on these twelve things:   Some will get fully finished.  Some will probably just get moved along.  The Common Bride is a big quilt.  Love Entwined is also big but I think I'm stopping once the centre is completed.  Still lots of applique to do there though.  Each month I'll be picking on to work on and then deciding what can be done in the month.  January's goal is to get caught up on this years Guild BOM and then ...

Decembers One Monthly Goal Link up is open at Elm Street Quilts and the three quilts I was binding this month are completed.  First up is the Guild Mystery from 2006.  Its bound and a label sewn on.  I'm still debating keeping or donating.  Its an odd size but long enough to cover me well for an afternoon nap.  I'll try it on one of the twin beds and see how it works.  If it works well, I'll probably give it a wash and send it to the guilds community outreach. Next is the string quilt Mom made.  Its binding is on and its labelled.  Its even on a bed being slept under.  And finally, the last quilt Mom was working on.  It has its binding, label and sleeve.  Its also on a bed being slept under.  This is Judy Laquidara's Note to Self quilt. Dad was watching the binding on the last two and after a quick lesson, he worked on the bindings.  He finished all of one side of the string quilt and part of another and...

I'm still working on the 365 quilt and should be able to finish it by the end of the year.  I'm a few blocks behind at the moment but I'll get caught up and have it ready to quilt by the end of the year. But my goal for this month is to finish binding and labelling the guild mystery quilt I quilted in October and to finish the binding and labelling of the two quilts of my mothers we quilted in November.  My sister and I are sharing the binding so the goal is really to finish my half.  One is almost finished and I have the sleeve ready to add to it.  The other needs three more sides done. linking up with the December One Monthly Goal

The goal for this month was to stitch all the dark blocks for the outer border together. They are all now joined and the two at the side are joined to the main body. I need light squares to join the other two as there are some large blocks to go in the corners. This is the 365 quilt Linking up with one monthly goal at Elm Street Quilts

Last weekend Karen and I went to Whirls and Swirls and quilted two of Mom's quilt tops.  One was a Judy Laquidara pattern called Note to Self and the other was a string quilt. Note to Self String Quilt  The string quilt was made to fold neatly over the corner of the bed so there are two inside corners to bind.  That's not something I had ever done before so I did some google searches, looked at several websites then took a piece of the cut off from one of the quilts, cut out a corner and grabbed a scrap of binding that was sitting on the table. Before beginning clip the corner at a 45 degree angle part way through the seam allowance.  I'm working with binding that will finish at a half inch so I clipped perhaps 3/8 of an inch.  You can see the clip open in the second photo. I forgot to get a photo of the first part when I did the trial with the scraps.  Stitch the binding along the edge leading in to the corner like usual.  When you sta...

Last month I quilted a guild mystery quilt from 2005/6.  I have material to make the binding but want a bias binding as its a stripe and I like the look of a bias binding for stripes.  The quilt is very bright and the round dots are all clock faces. I think the mystery was designed by Billie Lauder.  The printouts I have don't have the designer name but they are labelled as clue #1,2,3 etc and the components are called Suspects which I think is how Billie's instructions are written.  This year I've been doing the 365 Challenge quilt. The current lot of dark blocks should be finishing shortly. Then there are a number of lighter blocks. The other choice for a goal this month is to take the dark blocks and start assembling the dark pieces. They cannot be joined to the center of the quilt yet as I'll need the light blocks to make the row tall enough to match with the large corner blocks but getting the 3.5 blocks turned into 6.5 inch blocks and then jo...

How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  That's a pretty good description of how this quilt is going.  Its been a long time since I started the Love Entwined quilt.  I thought it was two years ago but when I look back it was 2013.  I found the pattern when Esther was first releasing it as a free BOM.  I've changed my mind several times about how much I will do but at the moment I'm just doing the centre block. The quilt has had long periods of idle time. Back in 2013, one of the first steps was the tiny circles around the compass.  They seemed very intimidating at the time and I tried several ways of prepping them before going back to my favorite trace the shape and needle turn.  As documented here , they weren't so scary after all.  More little circles appeared on another shape in the centre and I took this photo during the preparation to show the size of them.   One of the next things that looked really intimidating wa...

Last month I signed up to do a Gravity Quilt workshop at Hobby Horse .  Yesterday was the second class.  I decided that I should take some of the 365 blocks with me to use as enders and leaders while I was stitching the blocks for the gravity quilt.  The gravity quilt blocks I was making used 6.5" components.  The 365 block had me make half square triangles that I trimmed to 7/8" the joined with some 7/8" squares to make a four patch before joining with some slightly larger pieces to make a 3.5" square. Its a study in contrasts :) two gravity blocks and Tulip Lady Fingers for the 365 quilt I really enjoyed sewing the larger seams.  I had a second block with me but didn't get to it.  That's the block from Oct 21st so I have three more blocks to make from this week to be up to date.  (since the designer is in Australia, I always get tomorrows block today.  Rather fun).  Soon I'll start stitching these small dark blocks into four pat...

Participating in Heidi's OMG worked well last month so I'll try again this month .  This month I'd like to get the zig zag border stitched down.  I wasn't sure if that was practical but last night I made really good progress stitching the first border at the guild meeting so I think its quite doable.  Once the zigzag is done, I'll be able to start planning the 4 vases of flowers that go in each corner.   Other things to be worked on this month are the wedges for the Gravity Class, the 365 blocks and place mats for the guild to donate to the Meals on Wheels. 

At the beginning of the month, I joined Heidi's OMG . My goal for September was to get the zig zag border prepared for my Love Entwined quilt. Despite having to make some new pieces because I had the wrong number of each colour, the border pieces are joined together and its pinned in place ready to be stitched. It's nice to have that bit done. I'll probably machine baste it in place so it's easier to take in my purse and work at when I'm out. The stretch goal was to get the applique done as well.  That didn't happen but I'm pleased to have the pieces ready to stitch.

On Friday night, my sister and I went to Paint Nite at the Aquarium.  She got the more experienced apron -- her choice, she picked two aprons out of the bag and handed one to me.  More Experienced Apron Inexperienced Apron Over the course of the evening, we painted an underwater scene with two turtles.  We sat at tables and each had an little easel, a paper plate with the required paint colours, some brushes and a red drinking cup with a bit of water.  The evening started with us making a promise to enjoy ourselves, not moan, groan and complain and to NOT drink from the red cup.  Good idea.  It looked uninviting.  The instructor took us through step by step demonstrating on her canvas.  A bit of yellow and blue on the brush to start and start filling in the canvas.  Table setup; Don't drink from that!;  Painting started; Getting messy Water finished; rocks added; underwater life added; turtle begun At the e...

Elaine wrote a post the other day about what stops us from moving forward.  It was inspired by this post from Anne Sullivan at PlayCraft. The two posts got me to thinking about why my list of Quilting Projects is so long.  So I went back to look at the list.  There are currently 52 projects on the list (it will be 54 by Sunday night as I'm taking two classes this weekend). 1.  SQUIRREL! There are 52 (almost 54) items on the quilting projects list because something else came along that grabbed my interest and took me off another path.  I've been trying this year to move projects along.  I picked a few at the beginning of the year that I wanted to progress and some of them have been moved along. I also said I wanted to get some finished and I have including one that was started about 1996/7.  My design wall earlier this year.  There are atleast six different projects up there. I cleared the cutting table off for something and pu...

Last month I finally finished stitching down everything I had basted into place on my Love Entwined Centre . I had cut all the zigzag pieces months ago but didn't leave notes as to what my plans for them were. I think I've figured it out although there aren't as many of each colour as I think there should be so maybe not. On the weekend I paired up the colours and spent most of the drive home from Dad's stitching pairs together. It was rather nice that Karen was driving :) I've pressed some of the pairs and started to sew them into pairs. I hadn't used these little scissors before. They were in a gimme bag either at our guild anniversary dinner a few years ago. I was taking a flight and wanted to take the sewing with me on the plane. These seemed to be the correct size but I thought if they got confiscated I wouldn't mind too much. I've changed my mind. Not only are they cute, but they cut well and are a nice size for carrying with my sti...

I'm still working on the 365 Quilt Challenge blocks. For the current round of dark blocks I had marked that I wanted the 4 baskets for the corner flower blocks to each be one of the colour combinations. It makes the math work out if I add them in.  I put all the blocks from the 2nd dark border on the design wall on the weekend.  I also looked at how many I had made of some of the colours and thought I'd better figure out which ones I need to save a block for baskets. Without double checking the layout on the website I started to sketch out where the colours from the last round are and where the current round should go.  The sketch got messy so I found my graph paper and did it more neatly.  Some how in doing this I changed it from one row of 6" blocks that the pattern shows to two rows of 6" blocks for both the dark and light round. That messed up the math that I had done earlier but I persevered and figure out how many of each colour I should...