Brrr

It is cold again and the only thing to do is stay inside and sew. Well, there is lots I could be doing but I’m trying to get Adirondack Autumn finished. Still have about 50 unit five’s to finish. Had to cut more orange and yellow to make more  HST’s. And I think I’m still short 30 chevrons, haven’t counted them yet. While working away on these pieces I’ve been using the Strip Twist blocks as leaders and enders.


Here’s what I have so far. Bonnie shows this in  a 3 X 4 setting, in her free patterns, so need another 4 blocks, which means another 16 sets of strips.




I did venture out into the cold for a little retail therapy one day last week. Wandered around thrift store checking for sewing machines. Didn’t find any but found fabric. Not that I needed either.

But I couldn’t resist these delights. Although what I”m going to do with 4 yards of Christmas print escapes me at the moment, if my imagination fails me I can fall back on giving it to my very imaginative sister. We have been swapping fabrics back and forth this year. The African ladies dancing is so gorgeous, I’ve been looking through my books for something special to do with it. And that red batik is a ginormous 4 yards also.  The red and white is tiny red hearts and feels like a broadcloth but should have lots for binding and backs from it.



All that cleaning up in the sewing room paid off when DH wanted to use his machine.
Here he is making a pocket for his new cell phone. His is the 99-13 in a beautiful cabinet. He is usually sewing with heavy duty fabrics, like canvas and denim and the 99 handles them well. This time it was with a fake leather that came in the Great Fabric Acquisition Road Trip (only picture is of it in the back of the van here ). Unfortunately this only used 10” of fabric – still have several yards still to use up.

And just to demonstrate  how imaginative my big sister can be, here is a quilt she just finished. Inspired by the umbrella fabric in the sashing, she found a bunch of applique blocks with umbrellas and then designed some of her own when there wasn't enough for the layout she wanted. I especially love the little elephant in the bottom left as she did them on a quilt for my oldest daughter.

Nothing much to show

I’m still poking along on the Adirondack Autumn. More four patches and chevrons to do before I start putting blocks together.

I did get the Framed Nine Patch sashed, just thinking about what I want for a border, if any.


This hardly made a dent in the basket of 2.5 strips. So on to another pattern, this one I didn’t want too do as much matching, something simpler.  A scroll through Bonnie’s free patterns and Strip Twist was the prime candidate. The shortest the strip can be is 9” which means all the discards from the Scrappy Rocket Trips would work. Sorted out the  bin into stuff that is either long enough for a Bargello, long enough for Twist, and anything smaller is getting chopped into square that right now are tentatively scheduled to be made into a checkerboard square.
 
Here is the basket, with what hasn’t been sorted yet and the first blocks made. Re-reading the instructions, I see these are aligned incorrectly but am not going to set them up again for pictures tonight

And one more impulsive top. For reasons that seem trivial and obscure now, I was inspired to make a Streak of Sunshine top, using all the transportation themed fabrics I had. I thought this was brilliant and would be wonderful for the quilt DH wants for a co-worker. Only two things wrong with this brainstorm; co-worker is not a Ministry of Transportation employee and baby to be is not a boy. In my defense, DH used to work for Transportation, his department amalgamated and now covers several ministries.

I’m all set if one does turn out to be expecting.  What I might end up doing, is finish it and offer it for the charity raffle like I did last year.  Only if it is ready before hand, some advance notice can be given.
So really, not much happening around here, well not much quilting, just piecing up a storm or through a storm.

New Year Sum up and Reflections

There were a lot of posts around New Year’s with resolution type themes and to do lists for the year.  I was thinking the same thoughts but hadn’t gotten them formalized enough to post yet.  And of course being a fully paid up member of the Procrastinators Club (oops, forgot to mail that membership form), I’ve put off actually writing anything.

I thought I needed to make a resolution to finish things because that’s what everyone else was talking about. So I went back through my list and pictures to see what I had done last year. And I don’t think I need to be worried. Turns out I finished 24 quilts last year. That is only counting the ones done all the way, quilted and out the door. I’m not counting the 4 tops and backs I sent to the Calgary Flood Relief effort because they weren’t quilted by me.

Of course there are a great many unfinished, there are 6 flimsys hanging off my banister rail still to be quilted plus more hanging in my closet in the sewing room.  Then there are the baskets of projects in various stages of undone. so  that is my task this year, turn flimsys into finishes and clear out the baskets/bins/buckets.  I’ve started cleaning up the sewing area and organizing the overflowing stacks of fabric, finding more WIP’s as I go, my list is up to 12 at the moment. It is hard to resist pulling them out and working on them. But I am making a giant list on the wall and trying to focus on one thing at a time. Maybe that should be my word “Focus”.

Well, this is a lot of wordage and not much pictures so here is a collage of some of the finished quilts of last year.

Turns out it was a very good year.

Mystery Monday Link Up #6

And here it is Monday again and time to see what all the mystery quilters have been up to. Although it is hardly a surprise to find that I have very little done. I’ve been working away at the various units in little chunks of time, not spending as many hours in the sewing room as last month. This is on purpose, as I am trying to do more elsewhere, like cleaning and socializing with my family, LOL. Plus we are trying to get the fabrics we brought back itemized and stored somewhere other than the living/dining areas.

As I looked at my pieces to put together a show piece block, I realized that there were only two unit 5s. Duh, I hadn’t cut them. Last Monday I whipped up two units to photograph and didn’t follow up by cutting the rest. Can’t sew them if I haven’t cut them.

 A stack of 20 cut, ready to get sewing.


And some sashing done on the framed nine patch. A really fun Batik for the sashing found at Mary Jo’s this summer. Decided to forgo the cornerstones and do just solid pieces crossways.

And a little shirt de-construction done on some great finds this week while out thrifting. As well as the shirts I found two great pieces of yardage to add to the stash.

That’s it for the sewing time today. We are off to Toronto to pick our son up at the airport. Hopefully better driving weather than when we took him.
So before I go, I’m linking up with Bonnie