Gymnasts, Royalty, and other stuff

Tomorrow I head out to the World Quilt Show in West Palm Beach, FL. Ah, 3 days of gorgeous quilts and shopping. How can that be bad?  I thought I better hurry up and post before I leave since I am, once again, behind.

I'm still meeting my goal of losing a pound each week. This reasonable expectation really has made life easier. I eat pretty much anything, just not everything. And of course I feel better. I've become kinda hooked on exercise - even to the point of walking in the rain twice last week.  A mild rain ... kind of a heavy mist really ... but still, rain.  I listen to books when I walk and zone out the rest of the world.

I didn't exactly finish anything last week ("finish" meaning the project is completely done - no more work to do on it): I got sidetracked by those red tumbler blocks I cut with the GoBaby a couple of months back. Here's how they started:

Here they are, a little further along, and borders being auditioned.

And here's the final product (I decided against any of the other auditioned borders ... too much red).  Soooo .... instead of getting something finished, I now have another top waiting to be quilted! I can't help myself - I enjoy it too much.  I named this one "Communist Gymnasts".  Ha!

Here's another group of little blocks that sort of fell out of my sewing machine this week (the "royalty").  You'll have to check back next week to see what they grow up to be!  Even I'm not sure yet!

And that was my non-eventful week. Check back over the next few days for pics from the quilt show.  Thanks for stopping by!

Friday

Progress continues on the jacket. One of the sleeves is on so I'm just about done.

I've decided to take a leap a day for the rest of the year by trying something that I don't know how to do.  I tried a couple of journal pages - just adding color so they'll be ready for journaling ....

I have a lot to learn but at least I gave it a try! :)  I spritzed the pages after adding the color, but didn't get much movement/removal of the ink.  Ah, sooooo much to learn!!  (I DO enjoy the learning part!!)

I've started sewing together rows for a red tumbler quilt:

These are just tossed up on the design wall & will be getting shuffled a number of times, I'm sure.  Earlier this year I cut up all my red scraps using my GoBaby.  I was going to add another color, but decided to stay with just red (for the center) for an "all reds clash beautifully" sample.  The tumbler blocks finish at 3".  There will be lots of dups, but not next to each other in the final quilt.

This will be a small piece - just about 30" x 42" (or maybe just 36" or 39" if it gets too out-of-proportion) before borders. This is another thing I want to do ... work smaller.  These smaller pieces will be experiments, practice, sample pieces ... and at some point in their life, they'll be just the right size for wheelchair quilts.  So far I'm liking the red tumbles!!!!  I can't wait to see where this little piece goes.

And that's my day!  Thanks for stopping by!!

13-Weeks check in - Week 11

Another week flies by. Another week of summer gone (a lot of us in Florida say "thank you!" to that!!). School is starting for so many already! (I'm sure we didn't start till after Labor Day).  And the 11th week of my 13-week challenge is complete.  Report card?  Straight A's!!  (OK I know the apostrophe doesn't belong, but "Straight As" looked weird.)  Another quilt, another pound, another recipe.

Here's the quilt - another from Lynn Provencher's pattern "Cheech and Chong":

(I don't do very straight lines using Photoshop's eraser!!)  I tweaked the pattern again this week, using more than 9 fabrics, sewing them randomly, and adding a "chopstick" to the white blocks because I didn't like the way they looked - like big blobs of square dough.  I used the "remains" of the strip sub-cuts as the chopstick inserts. Cool! Less scraps!

Speaking of scraps .... this little jewel found its way into my house this week:

The Go Baby is definitely Oh Baby! I used the tumbler die to make quick work of my red scraps. If you haven't seen one of these demo'd, search the blogs - there are plenty out there!  Here's just one: 

Laura Wasilowski's blog

No affiliation with the product; just a happy customer!

Yes indeed another pound found it's way into droppage - woohoo! The recipe involved chicken, cream of chicken soup, ranch dressing, and panko bread crumbs.  It was quite good!

I'm narrowing down my options for my next 13 week challenge!  Stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!