UFO Challenge update

Oh my, I went down to get some pictures of the progress and totally lost the rest of the day.
I haven’t been sewing downstairs much this week but I did get a good chunk of my UFO project together.
This was a mystery quilt and I am now working on clue 8 of 9. And that means pieces are starting to look like something. The little nine patches and strip pieces are going together to make big blocks.

Please excuse the streak of sunshine. The time of day I like to work in my basement sewing room is mid-afternoon when the sun is shinning in my window. It makes the cutting easier but messes up the photos.
There are still a lot of pieces to go. However this assembly requires precision, with careful placement of blocks, so I only work on it when I have a big chunk of uninterrupted time.
Which hasn’t been that frequent. Mostly I've been running down to cut more pieces to then bring up to the sewing machine in my bedroom.
Slowly it will get done, it has been waiting for two years, a few more days is nothing.  Now to link up with Jo's UFO challenge

A new challenge !

And challenge accepted.
Jo has issued a challenge to finish a sampler/BOM project and do I have one? Yes I do. Not very old, it is a BOM for 2017 which was Canada’s 150th birthday. Several quilting projects were inspired by that occasion, fortunately I only signed up for one.
As you can see from the glare, they are mostly all still in their packages. Untouched. Except for the first month which I did do. And as Jo said on her post, the process of all that work for only one block seemed a waste of time and effort.

This was an on-line signup, and they had my credit card to bill every month.  So even after I gave up on it, the patterns kept coming. I didn’t have to go anywhere, they came to me, every month, two of them a month. It became overwhelming after the second month and I just shoved them away, a couple not even opening the paper envelope they came in.
I felt guilty because I was paying for them and not using them but had too many other things on the go to tackle the backlog.
I did get the first months blocks done.

So I’m not completely behind. LOL.
Now with Jo’s help I will get this done.
The first step is admitting the problem right? The first step here is to link up with Jo's Challenge because she always gets me moving on a project. Almost as good as a boot in the rear. EDIT: oops, it wasn't a link-up today, just a start up post.

The second step was getting them all out and in a project box. Now to go pick a fabric for the next month's block.

 

Ringo Lake Mystery Link Up

I feel very confident writing this week. Lots of progress was made on all the clues. Clue 2 is almost done.  It could have been checked off however I came up 2 pieces short. This could just be that a couple of the stacks clipped together have more than 10.  Rather than go through and recount them all, I figured it was simplier to cut and sew two more. And cleaning off the cutting board I found one, so only had to make one more.
I also am feeling more confident because I have the clues all organized, sorted and tabulated. Doing that makes me more relaxed. In my old sewing room, in my  previous house, I had a white board stuck on the wall over my cutting table where I tracked the clues and could see at a glance what needed to be cut, sewn or was done.  That didn’t come with us and I have been missing it.  Fortunately when my husband was cleaning out his cubical at the office prior to retiring last month, he brought home an easel pad.
While it doesn’t provide the wipe-off ability of the white board, it does give me a place to chart what is going on in the mystery.(When taking the picture I put a piece of white paper over the numbers since we’re not supposed to be sharing them.)
Then as a second step to organizing, I assembled the pieces for each clue on their own paper plate.
This is way easier to carry them upstairs all intact to the machine to work on and back down to the cutting room to replenish when I run out of pieces. Which I have done. Several days of intense sewing has depleted the cut browns and I need to resupply.
But before I do that (since the chances of me resurfacing for several hours after going to the downstairs room are 1. slim, 2. none) time to write this and link up with Bonnie and the other mystery quilters.  How did you do this week?

String Link Up

Linking up with Jo's Country Junction to share progress on my string projects.
I got so many of the Spider Web pieces done I had to go cut another batch. Yay. Plus during the drive to my In Laws today I de-papered the finished pieces. As an attempt to do it as I go, rather than have the whole bunch to do at the end.

 
I also finished a whole stack of the neutral blocks and de-papered a bunch while we were sitting around the fireplace chit-chatting. However the stack I had just finished still needs to be trimmed, the de-papering was catch up with ones already done weeks ago.

At the same time as I was working on these, pieces of the new mystery passed through the machine but I will do a separate post on them tomorrow.

We are mid-calf deep in snow and looking very picturesque. Fortunately the roads are well cleared and our trip in the in-laws was easy. Things are very relaxed and low-key here as our celebration has already finished and my husband even started putting away decorations today. He does the train, it needs to have the batteries removed for the year long storage.
I hope everyone’s celebrations are as stress-free and joyous as it has been here.

Monday, Monday

Blame it on Bonnie, she said it first and now that tune is stuck in my head.  And she’s also the source of my obsession,  fondness for recycled shirts as fabric. Although Jo was the source of the box that I picked up Friday.  Since I am linking with both, I will apportion blame equally. Thus the fabric overload situation I am currently dealing with. Not only did I get a ginormous box of shirts that need to be cut up, I also picked up a half dozen packages from Quilted Twins that have been accumulating at my US mail box.  I received so much fabric I didn’t know which to fondle first.

 
So I left it all and went to sew. And sew, and sew. These string blocks seem to be going on forever. Just when I think I am coming to the end of the neutral blocks, I find another clip of papers. Or two.

I cut more of the kites for the Spider Web blocks while I was down cutting pieces for the mystery clue 4 . At the same time I measured the kite fabric so I would have an idea of how many more I can make. Lots and lots.  (110 at least)

And in between the two string projects, I sewed some mystery pieces.  They still need to be ironed on the next trip to the basement sewing room but here they are.

So that brings me up to date on everything I’m working on. Now to link up and see what everyone else has done.

Bonnie's Mystery Link UP

Jo's String Quilt Link UP

Wednesday UFO update

I almost said that I had forgotten that today was Thursday but that would be untrue. I haven`t lost track of the days, I`ve just been busy. Hanukkah started this week and I had a whole lot of stuff to do to get ready for it.  Thus most of the sewing I have been doing hasn`t been on UFOs but on the string projects and Bonnie`s new mystery. Mostly because they are upstairs in my bedroom ready to sew on whenever I catch a few minutes.
Here`s hoping for better progress next week. Linking up with Jo`s Country Junction.com: Ufo-challenge

Monday Link up

What a way to start a week, two link ups to do. First up Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link UP.
This clue really proved the decision to go with a solid for both my neutral and coral was the right one ( for me at least).  The coral I picked has no right side, so the diamond shape can be cut and flipped either way. Same with the neutral which is almost like a muslin. This means a big saving in cutting time and almost no thought required in sewing , just pick up a piece and sew it.
I do have to make sure I have an equal number of both but at the moment that isn’t an issue. I just put one through in one direction and the next in the other.
And in between them, I put through a string piece. I have two projects that I am working on with strings. The first is another mystery quilt and that needs the neutral blocks at the top of the picture.  Plus it needs another size going diagonally. I have been working on both
And in the strawberry box at the top of this picture are a whole bunch of shirt strings. I did some cutting of 2.5 inch strips and these are the leftover from the sides . I am using them in a Spider Web quilt from Bonnie’s Free Patterns page. The hope was this would clear out a large amount of the shirts, some of which have been in my stash since I started using shirts several years ago now. However the Spider Web doesn’t seem to consume as much as I hoped and another string quilt out of shirts might be needed. String X maybe?
I’m not sure how many blocks I will do for this, Bonnie used a 5 X 7 setting which would be 140 of these. I have just been cutting strips of the pinkish fabric into the kite shape and sewing them up. When I finish a bunch, I cut more. There was a yard of the fabric when I started and I just want it gone. The colour didn’t work with any quilt I tried to use it in.  Maybe today I can measure to see what is left and how many more I can get out of it.

So that was my weekend. We had a snowstorm outside and I just sat and  sewed. I moved these projects to my bedroom machine which a recent rearrangement has placed in front of the window. So I can watch the snow come down and string away. Pure bliss.
Now to link up with  Jo's String Challenge. I’m glad she threw this out there, it’s really given me a kick in the rear to get moving on these.

UFO update

I finished a whole clue of my current UFO, a mystery from 2015 by Deb over at My Quilty World ,Ribbons of Love.  Unfortunately all I have to show for it is a stack of blocks. Not yet at the point where is starts to look like something.
A whole bunch of sewing left to do, (the blocks on the wall aren't really supposed to go together like that)

And I also started a project that has been on the to-do list for a long time. Gifts for my husband’s co-workers using fabric picked up on our trip to Iowa.  They are Packers fans so we found some team fabric and I had been tasked with coming up with gifts using it.
My thought was a wine bottle gift bag and mug-rugs ,aka coasters, with the remains. The Christmas fabric bag was a prototype to test the pattern. Which was a good thing, the pattern I found had the fabric going sideways. Not a big deal with snowmen, a big deal with the lettering on the Packer fabric. So I figured out how to make it with the fabric running the right way. I also need to get some smaller ribbon. All I could find in my stash of non-quilty sewing stuff was inch and a half, really only needs one inch. So two more things to work on, smaller ribbon and the mug-rugs.
So that’s what I’ve been doing this week, off to see what Jo and everyone else have been doing.
Jo's Ufo Challenge

Mystery Link up–Week 2

I missed the first week of link ups. Went down to the sewing room to take a picture and got totally distracted for the rest of the day and most of the week.
To start off, here are my chosen fabrics. Although Bonnie called for all scrappy, this time I am going for two constants. The neutral and the coral. Mostly because this was pretty much the only fabric I had in coral, and there was more than enough of it. I went constant with the neutral also because it was a large piece of fabric in my stash and I wanted to move it out. Plus when the pattern calls for strips I can pull out my Accuquilt and slice a whole bunch.
At the time I took this picture I thought I would do constant with all the colours but now have a whole selection of browns and blues.
It feels like I am off to a good start on this one. Clue one is finished and Two is cut and well on the way to being finished this week. Looking forward to the next one.
And now to link up with Bonnie
mystery-sunday-link-up-part-2