Two More Finishes

Every month or so (when I'm not traveling), I give myself the gift of a 3 or 4 day in-home Retreat.  All those pesky things that usually distract me from my quilting focus are ignored. This weekend is my May retreat; it started yesterday and will continue through Monday.  I'm focusing on my enormous pile of UFOs, which I decreased by two yesterday (thank you, magic binding).

This piece has been a top for ages. I quilted it with simple squiggly line quilting to  refresh my muscle memory for machine quilting.  It will be a donation quilt, probably for the elderly. 

Back when my friend Joyce had her quilt store, she had a club that met once a month on Saturday. At each meeting she gave each of us a 2 1/2" square of every fabric that had come into the store that month.  I have sooo many of them, so decided to use them - finally.  Each of these squares has a flower, as does the sashing and border. Simple 25-patch. Makes a cute block, yes? 

By the way, did you know that a piece of batting makes a great thread catcher? And don't we all have extra small pieces of batting that seem to multiply like rabbits?

Keep the piece wherever you're dealing with small thread pieces and they'll stick to the batting like magic. When it's too full to hold anymore, run the clean side over whatever dust is driving you the craziest then toss the whole thing in the trash.  

The second quilt is one I made quite awhile back, had quilted just as long ago, but completely forgot about. I added it to the "needs a binding stack" and whipped this out yesterday.  This is the Cheech and Chong pattern from my friend Lynn, over at Country Crossroads. I've made so many of these! This one doesn't count against my "no dupes" project, though, since it was made so long ago. It is a GREAT pattern for showing off fabrics, and when you need a gift.  For variety, make double the blocks called for in the pattern and use them, rather than borders, to increase the size of the quilt.

It feels so good to be marking these things off THE LIST and decreasing my number of UFOs! Monster Week is currently going on over at Animal Planet, so I'm "watching" all the creepy animal shows as I sew.  If I get bored there, there's always a bad movie or two to be found on Syfy: I adore bad movies! Maybe they'll be showing Sharknado again. One can only hope. Or at least some awful zombie films. Maybe the original Night of the Living Dead. Whoa! That would be for the win.

Off to play with quilts and bindings. Thanks for stopping by!

2015 counts

Tops: 8 

Finishes: 14 (6 quilts, 8 other)

Today's progress

I've been working on this for the last two days.

I laid it out on the design wall while back, and am finally picking it up to "get 'er done".  

When I lay out on the design wall, I start folding into rows & columns (think "excel spreadsheet"), and label. Then I can come back to the project when the spirit moves me.

Stacked - see the clip on the right? That tells me that is the seam side - sew those edges together

Labels for columns, so I'll know which one goes where

I managed to get this far before I just couldn't sew anymore.

Just 3 more borders then it will be a top. Yay! First one of 2014.

Meanwhile, these little cutie patooties made it to the "finished" column. They needed only the button on top, but that meant they were still UFOs. Now these little guys (12 of them) are DONE! Woohoo! These are for a gift swap we'll do in one of my classes at Empty Spools.

And that's what I've been up to. Thanks for stopping by.

Oh yes, the Holiday Season

So much to do that the blog has taken a back seat. Well, here are some pics of what I've been doing.

More blocks

Still more blocks. These are free-form cut, and I've cut the curve way too sharp. It's a challenge getting these to lie flat.

These blocks are now a top.

 Yep. Still more blocks. I get in moods where I want to sew but not think. This is when I'll sew blocks for simple quilts.

Prisma is now a top. Yay!

This is a full top now. More pics soon.

 Same here. I think you'll be surprised at the difference the border made.

 Scrapolator blocks. Such fun!

The blocks on the left are straight from the scrap pile; no thinking. The ones on the right are all brights. Isn't the difference amazing?

 I have 29 of each set done (true scrappy, and brights) I love them!

No wonder I haven't had time to blog! Thanks for stopping by.

QOTWs - Weeks 8 & 9

Yes I know - I'm behind!  Here are the quilts for the past two weeks:

Simple "cheech" quilts that were sitting around in the pile, waiting to become grown-up quilts.

I'm almost finished packing. Leaving in the morning, and looking forward to my excursion around this beautiful country of ours. Posts for the next few months should be much more interesting :)

Thanks for stopping by!

QOTW - Week 2

So much for my efforts to blog every day. Seriously - my life is not all that interesting that there would be daily news! I finished this quilt last week:

I'm just about finished with the blocks for this week's project.  I'm trying to get a few quilts "ahead" so I'll have some in reserve while I travel around the US. I'll definitely be sewing "on the road" but am not so sure I'll be getting in enough sewing time each week to make a quilt, so ...  "spares-r-us" for the next couple of weeks. (Maybe I shouldn't tell you the get-ahead plans and instead let you think I'm a perfect time manager that can sew a quilt a week AND travel 7000 miles.) (well - 7000 miles so far. I keep adding to this up-coming trip; who knows when I'll decide to come home?)

The dudes are still siding. Just one more day of pounding - but not today: there will be rain soon. All the STUFF is off the walls and mantle so it will be nice to put the house back together again once the vibrations of the nail guns have stopped. (I did have a massive book slide in my knitting closet ... whoops.)

So that's all that's going on. Home improvements (much needed, rather than serious add-ons). Sewing. Trip planning (I DO love to drive!) The photo taking sort of fizzled out - I never was much of a presentation-oriented person. The pic above is enough for me to capture the quilt even though it's wonky and weird. One of these days "take better photos" will get to the top of "The List"!

And that's it for me. I hope your days are exciting and eventful, and thanks for stopping by!