UFO update

I had such good intentions. I went to the sewing room last night, got out my UFO project, established which clue I was on, got the pieces ready. Even put a few blocks together.  Thinking all the time that I would go down this morning and make some serious progress on this. Then I would link into Jo’s Country Junction
Didn’t happen. Day was totally hijacked by a request for a baby quilt. I knew I had some ready and some ready-to-quilt. So down I went and pull things out of bins, finding all the ones that could be ready within a week. Nine ! I found nine, two just waiting for a new home, five waiting for quilting and two needing borders.

After a photoshoot and some creative editing, I had a collage of them ready to email out. And soon I had a happy customer.
But that threw my day off. Instead of going back to the UFO in the basement (which now had fabric everywhere as I prepared to put borders on the last two in case that was their choice), I put the Bricks and Stepping Stones top together. And worked on the checkerboard for the Checkered Past top. 

I managed to get all the Bricks and Stepping Stones assembled and it is now ready for some borders.  As well, the blocks for the Checkered Past have all their sashing and are ready for a layout and webbing together
There is not room enough on my wall for all 20 blocks so will have to lay this out on the floor to get the right light/dark arrangement. Pretty happy with how’s it’s going so far.
 It is hard to see in the pictures but all those center blocks are shirt pockets.  And the majority are from my husband’s shirts. I have been taking a few at a time over the years. When I saw this pattern on the Quilted Twins website (Checkered Past )I knew it was perfect for them.  I augmented the selection with some others just for the colour and uniqueness of some pockets.  But mostly they are shirts he will recognize. I have been pushing to have it ready for his birthday. Except,I forgot about the sashing between these blocks. I just noticed it when I went to add in the link to the pattern. Oh, well, back to the cutting board. I was already going to omit the border once I increased the blocks from 16 to 20 but the sashing strips totally slipped my mind.
So no UFO today. But very productive.

Monday String Update

My string project took centre stage this week. I really was energized by the sight of them all on the design wall.  And soon there were more.
And the question became, many would be enough? This is largely driven by the length of fabric remaining. Bonnie’s directions show a setting of 5 X 7 or 35 blocks.  I started doing calculation of remaining fabric, how many strips I could get, how many kites that gives and how many blocks that gives. And the number I came up with….33. This is because I took two strips of this fabric for the On Ringo Lake mystery when I decided to go with scrappy sashing.
Have decided to just go for it and make as many as I can.  And in the end if I need two more blocks, maybe I can piece some cut off bits into big enough pieces for kites. Thrown in amidst the rest of the scrappy, strings they might not be noticed.
In the meantime, I need to spend more time on the Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt. It actually has a deadline which is now less than a month away. Have almost finished attaching the Stones and Bricks together, just 9 left to go. Then comes the tricky bit, putting them in twos. Do I just do random, pull from a pile or try for some organization?
Really tempted to go with randomness
This could be a case of overthinking it if I try and impose some sort of order on these. Although since there are three of most bricks I was going to try and keep the duplicates in different areas maybe assemble in thirds.
Time to link up with Jo's String Update and spend some time looking at others progress. Procrastination is my motto.

Mystery Monday Link Up

What a great day it was yesterday. Well, yes it was extremely cold outside and probably even snowing but I didn’t have to go anywhere but my sewing machine. And, extra bonus, QuiltCam !
I was feeling so enthusiastic I even tried to send a picture of my sewing set up to Bonnie. However technology failed ( a much too tedious tale to tell).  So sharing it now

I was trying to get a whole bunch of blocks done so I could check the layout. Managed one and three quarters of a second.
Well, still tried the layout with what I have already done.
This is a knock-out. Totally stupendous. And complicated. Definitely need to pay attention to what goes where.

What I wanted to check most of all was the scrappy sashing. I wasn’t sure if changing from a constant in the blocks to scrappy in the sashing would work out. But also not sure if I have enough of the constant to do all the sashing and the blocks. Thought since I had a really long length of this fabric it would be sufficient however, it didn’t have the width. Instead of 42 inches or even 40, this was only 35.

A closer look with better colour, picture from my camera instead of my tablet. I think this will work.
 Now to just get all the pieces finished.  A whole lot of sashing left to sew.
Did get all the setting pieces cut, so I can put all the blue away. A few more brown HST and QST to cut so that is still out.  And so glad I bought the Folded Corners ruler, made this last step go fast.


So now just sewing ahead but first to link up with Bonnie.Mystery Monday Link Up

First Week of BOM challenge

YAH ! It’s here. The first week of the challenge and I feel ready to dive in.
First of all, I have to pick a pattern from the 18 left to make. To keep myself from over thinking this, I just open the case and grab one without looking at it. Going totally random here, and what do I get? Flying Geese ! As if I haven’t done a couple hundred of them over the past weeks of Bonnie’s Mystery. Booyah.   Even better, these are 2.5inch geese, yowser, they seem huge.

The next step is to choose the fabrics.  When I started this, I didn’t want to use the same red all the way through, so I have used two different ones already. And now that I’ve been ordering from Quilted Twins, I have even more choice. I picked up one of their bundles of red back in November.  Just head on over to the shelf, shove my hand in the stack of red and pull one out.  Keeping it random.
The white isn’t so random. The designer said she chose flying geese as a memory of fall in Southern Ontario when the geese flock to fly south.  So I pull a white/on white with small flowers that resemble the fall asters.
And off to the cutting table
A slight hiccup is encountered.

The centre block has the option of some embroidery, the years of the sesquicentennial. ( isn’t that a mouthful but faster than saying 150th birthday) . I trace the numbers with a chalk pencil and hunt up some embroidery supplies.


And that’s where all this progress came to a screeching halt. Three hours later, I surfaced to write this.  Finding the floss and needles didn’t take all that much time. It was sidetracking on cutting for other projects, patching a hole in hubby’s quilted shirt, straightening up shelves that were avalanching fabric all over. And  so on.  But I have the pieces ready to sew and I am now sitting close to a sewing machine. This could happen.
but first to link up with Jo, because this is her idea after all. Jo's BOM Challenge

String Update

I started to write this yesterday to link up with Jo and then realized that I had made very little progress on my string projects. So I held off until I could report something. Last night I had only 5 new kites/units/ 1/4 blocks, whatever they are called,finished. Today I have my weekly allotment of 11done and the 11 new pieces cut for the upcoming week.



Since I had over 40 of these units done, I decided to put some blocks together to make sure I liked the outcome.





Yes, yes I like it. The light in this room doesn't do this justice. Will have to take a better one in daylight.  With only 4 or 5 strips on each side of the kite, they go fast so it should be quick work to get a whole bunch more made.  The only thing slowing me down is all the other projects demanding some attention right now.

I started cutting and sewing on the bar mitzvah quilt and oh didn’t I mention? My hubby requested another present for a cousin.  The last time I gave the Orange Crush I had in the UFO pile, the time before that I did a Bricks and Stepping Stones. The Bricks and Stepping Stones is faster to do from a cold start ( uncut fabric) so that’s what I’m going with.  A dash over to Joanns provided some current novelty fabric and I have been slicing away at it. Only 30 more bricks to cut.  But first while I have a sitting down break from cutting, off to link up with Jo

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.