Quilting and other Things

At the end of December I had a todo list that I wanted to work on for this year.  Its here .  Six weeks in and I have made progress.  Quilting: 1.  In January we went and quilted twice so two quilts have moved to the completed tab of my spreadsheet.  (there's a empty version of it on google drive here ) The schedule doesn't work to get out again in February but I have an appointment booked for March.  Last Sunday Karen and I measured the tops of Mom's that are at my house and sorted them into to all over, custom, top needs finishing and needs hand quilting.  I still think there are some tops up at Dad's but we'll start with these ones.  Tomorrow I'm going to get some backing fabric for some of those tops and some of my own so I have backing ready. 2.  The 365 quilt is going well.  I've completed up to Feb 10th so am keeping up with each week.  A few blocks last week were working with very tiny half square triangles and I...

I'm still stitching and still keeping up with the 365 Challenge Quilt The last photos I showed were the blue ones for week 2.  I finished week 3 last Wednesday which was 1 blue and 6 purple.  Last night I worked on the week 4 blocks and was up to date until this morning's email came.  Week for will be 2 purple and 5 red.   On the weekend I went back to Whirls n' Swirls and quilted the Red and White Chunk of the Month quilt that was the guild BOM in 2013/4.  Its still sitting folded up on the end of the ironing board waiting for me to trim and bind it.  The delay is deciding what to use as a binding.  When I got home on Saturday, I pulled a red, a white and then some white with red and red with white prints and laid them along the edge.  Took a photo of the possibilities and am debating. The prints wouldn't be the ones I use because I don't have enough of those but it gives a general idea of what the possibilities are. I'm stil...

Wednesday evening I got this weeks blocks made for the 365 challenge. In a "we are here" post, she let us know that there are 96 blocks to be made for this dark border. I'm going to work in groups of 8 and do a rainbow. First 8 are green and second 8 are blue. Next up is Purple. After the 6 colours I'll do 6 pairs of colours. Last night I went downstairs to get some orange scraps for Karen for her 365 challenge blocks. On Sunday when I wanted to trim the quilt to add the binding, I had to move stuff off the cutting table and piled it onto a small table. I looked at the stack last night and thought I should start sorting through it and find homes for things. Still waiting to be sorted A few things got put away then I found the table runner from a Guild workshop in February 2014 with Judy Cotter on Celtic quilting. It wanted some borders so I looked at the fabrics I had used in the centre and decided which ones would go where. There wasn't a lot o...

On Saturday I went to whirls and swirls quilting store and rented a long arm. I was able to get the 2007 $10 quilt quilted using cloud nine as the pantagraph. It now has its binding and sleeve and label so I can go move this line from the in progress tab to the completed tab. This is Lori Smiths Patchwork Sampler. Elaine taught the class at hobby horse in 2007. This is fresh off the long arm Once the binding was on last night, I sat with the quilt over me while I watched the end of the program I had recorded. Very cosy.

Over the last few days I've actually done some piecing and prepping. Monday I got the backing pieced for the quilt I'm quilting on Saturday. Then cut out and stitched the first five blocks for the 365 challenge Tonight I cut and pieced the bonus block and the other two for week one. Here are my first 8 blocks. All are 3.5 unfinished.  Monday I also cut out and stitched the lightening row for the guild bom that I was suppose to do in October. At least I thought I had it done until I pressed and realized I'd only done enough pieces for four blocks instead of eight. Got the other for made tonight and now the row is complete and ready to show that I have made at least some progress and should get the next pattern It's been nice to be piecing again. Except for the mistake with the community outreach kit that I made the Monday night. Still working on plan B for that.  Linking up with Esther's WOW .  She just annouced a pieced BOM for this year.

This morning I saw a badge on Elaine's blog.  Normally I read through a reader and don't see the badges.  Planning what to complete or atleast to progress over the next year sounds like a good idea.  I use lists when I have deadlines or at work to keep track of what needs doing.  Quilting I like to keep track of my projects. The list is long and has gone back to more undone than done. This is the top part of the spreadsheet. There are 53 54 things on the in progress tab. The completed tab has 47. I enjoy moving items to the completed tab.  1.  I've pre-purchased 10 hours of quilting at a new long arm quilting store called Whirls and Swirls and completed the training program. In January I'm going to go quilt the my first quilt there. The goal is to get at least 8 - 10 tops quilted next year. Actually 12 would be ideal (one a month) but I'm not sure that will be practical. Some will be from this list and some will be tops that Mom had comp...

The guild speaker and workshop teacher this month was Al Cote . The class was on making a quilted rug. On Saturday we layered up the fabrics and trimmed it down to the size of the batting. Did some doodling then stitched lines and started removing fabric. I meant to take a photo before I started the removal process but forgot. So this is taken after the first round of removing fabrics and part way through the second round. Near the end of the afternoon he had everyone put their project down on the floor for admiring. It was a fun day and we certainly had a great collection of rugs in progress.  It was a really fun day.  Karen came too so it was even better because I got to stitch with my sister. The next day I continued removing fabric stopping every once in a while to throw it on the floor and look at it to see how it was looking. By the end of Sunday, this is how it looked. I still have a few pieces to remove before continuing with the quilting and final s...