More Congratulations and a UFO Finish

I should have posted this on Monday, but I forgot. Congrats to my husband and his friends Tom and Bob. They spent Sunday morning and into the afternoon ice fishing. Bob is the expert fisherman and it was the first try for Tom and Dan. Now it doesn't sound like fun to me, but they had a blast and caught bunches of fish. I'm sure there is more ice fishing in their future. As a matter of fact, when it was raining yesterday, Dan said, "Darn, It's going to melt the ice!" Here is a photo of Tom and Bob, proud as can be!


UFO #5
I finished this one up and gave it to my daughter yesterday. She will be presenting it at a baby shower on Friday. I hope this cute little quilt provides lots of comfort to the baby-to-be.

CONGRATULATIONS

First, a big round or applause to my grandson Matt. He won a 1st Place Blue Ribbon Medal in the Hendricks County Solo and Ensemble Competition on Saturday. His performance included the song "Candle on the Water" from the Walt Disney movie Pete's Dragon. I wasn't able to attend, but hope to see the video real soon.

ATTABOY, MATT!!



Second, my son Jeff, a Staff Sergeant in the US Army, has just completed ANOC training at Ft. Sill. He was awarded the Distinguished Honor Student Award in his class. Here he is pictured in Iraq about 2 years ago. It is one of my favorite photos of him.

HOOAH JEFF!!

Stashbusting Report 1/28/08 - 40.375 Yards

I'm counting the Hunters Star-NOT fabric this week. I have been working on these blocks for several weeks now, but they are all finished. You would think that by now I could see a difference in my stash, but not yet! I still haven't added in the fabric used in the Carolina Crossroads. I have figured the amount to make the blocks and I think it's over 8 yards, but not the borders yet. I'll save that for next week.

What is it?

Can you guess what this is going to be?


It's 100" by 58" if that helps any....

Carolina Crossroads with Borders

I finished the borders to the Carolina Crossroads, a Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt. I cut the backing for this one and hope to get it loaded and quilted this week.

The last step of this mystery included 20 additional triangles making the total number of pieces 2,560 and then the borders add another 12 pieces making the entire quilt top: 2,672 pieces, all from my stash.



Yep, I see a mistake...........but it's staying! My humility block, I guess.

Hunters Star-NOT

Which one do you like?
I made some more blocks for the Hunters star-NOT quilt and when I put them on my design wall I had some of them turned the wrong way. Well, that led to trying some new layouts for this quilt. My design wall isn't big enough to hold more blocks than this, but I think you can get the idea.





Here's the original one:



Please leave me a comment with which one you like best.

Stashbusting Weekend Retreat

Boy have my machines been busy since I got off work last night. I finished a customer quilt and then loaded the Pooh baby quilt and quilted it. This morning I sewed the binding on the Pooh quilt and loaded Baby Nines and quilted it.


In my online quilting group several years ago a bunch of us decided to make Baby Nines quilts. I had an assortment of pastel homespun FQs that I thought would work just fine. Well, as it turned out, I didn't need the quilt at that time and I wasn't happy with it, so I put it away. In my quest to finish UFOs, it's number was drawn to be finished this month. I have been looking at it for weeks now, trying to decide if I wanted to do the applique vines and how to quilt it. When I was quilting the Pooh quilt, I decided that I would just use the same pantograph, Popcorn, to do Baby Nines also. And it's quilted!


I paper pieced another 12 blocks for the "Hunters Star-NOT"

Stashbusting Baby Quilt & Weekend Plans

I completed the Pooh baby quilt top last night. I figure I used 30" for the squares, 10" for the inner border and 30" for the outer border, for a total of almost 2 yards (2 inches short).

One of my Yahoo groups: Stashbusters is having a retreat weekend and I plan to get some of this stuff finished and out the door. I have a customer quilt on the longarm and 4 more in waiting, but I will probably do the baby quilt next and then the Hunters star NOT, and then my Carolina Crossroads. Should be a busy weekend for me.

Baby Toes

Don't you just love baby toes?

There's hardly anything sweeter in my opinion.

They do need to be covered by a quilt made by their grandma, though.

So, that means that I need to get busy and make a baby quilt, because we will have a new grandbaby in our family in September.
We just found out that my stepson Cory and his girlfriend Mandy are expecting. They live in Colorado, so it will be a long trip to go see this new little bundle of joy when it arrives.

Quilted Pinks and Pooh Quilt

The pink quilt got quilted last night using light pink PermaCore thread. I did freehand flowers in each block, leaves & loops in the sashing, and swirls in the outer pink border. WOW, my stack to have the binding hand sewn is getting bigger.


After quilting last night I started on a baby quilt that I promised to my daughter. Again, I opened a bag with leftover pieces. This one from the Pooh quilt I made for her before Andrew was born.

Here are the squares, sewn into rows.

I think rather than using the green Pooh print for a plain border that I will make a strip border with all these leftover strips.

All About Pink

Pink was the color of choice last night in my sewing room. This is going to be for the new baby girl of some friends of ours from Colorado. I did get the other border on and machine appliqued all 4 of the curved borders last night, but didn't get a new photo. My plan was to do something simple like a Popcorn pantograph in variegated pink thread, but my husband came in last night and said he would recommend a flower in each square, so we'll se how this one gets quilted tonight.


The borders were done using the Wave Edge ruler, which I purchased at the Sewing Boutique in Hoopeston, IL, while on the Illiana Shop Hop last year. About a dozen others on our bus purchased this ruler also and I don't think I've seen anyone at Show & Tell with a finished project using it, so I may be the first.

Stashbusting

I used up another 6 1/2 yards of fabric this past week.


Finished a UFO
The Butterfly 4-Patch Stacked Posie is done including the label.


When I am working on a project all the parts are kept in a clear tote, ziplock bag or blanket bag. Typically, when I finish, the leftover parts stay in those containers. While cleaning my sewing room I came across 2 of them that I couldn't just add to my scrap bins. One was duplicate heart shapes already with fusible on them that I made while teaching a class for this Button-Up wall hanging class at a LQS.

I pieced the placemats and basted them together, then loaded a wide backing and quilted them all at once with 2 rows of the panto. I started hand sewing the binding last night during the Green Bay Packers game---poor Packers (Did I mention that I'm a Packers fan? My parents were both from Green Bay)

Carolina Crossroads

I worked on Step 7 last night and have the blocks up on my design wall. I LOVE IT! I probably shouldn't have used any blues that were darker than my reds, but I still LOVE IT. Thank you Bonnie!


Shabby Chic Bags
I attended 2 guild meetings this week. One is a guild that I just joined and they asked me to teach a Shabby Chic Bag workshop.
I really like doing guild workshops. They are much more relaxed for me than classes at quilt shops.

"You Make My Day" Award

Steph has awarded me the "You Make My Day" Award and I wasn't sure what it was so I did a little research.
The awards rules are to: Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

There are so many blogs I check every day with Bloglines. Thanks so much Karen, makes it much easier to keep up.
I get inspiration from all of them and am in awe of some of the work that is posted daily. Here are just a few that come to mind right now: Gail, Judy L, Mary, Bonnie, Deb, Tracy, Karen

UFO Chart

One of the purposes of my blog is to serve as a quilting diary for myself. People ask me all the time, "How many quilts have you made?" I have no idea, so I am trying to make a list, but it's really hard to remember every one. I know that I've taken photos of all of them, but haven't made any sort of journal entry. This year I am keeping track of my accomplishments in an Excel Spreadsheet and a composition book when I finish a project.

Shabby Chic Fabric Swap and UFO

Our guild has a fabric swap of fat-eights every other month. there are usually between 12 and 24 participants. I was shopping with my friend Janet (the swap hostess) and said that more people might join the swap if they saw something made with the theme fabrics of the swap. The upcoming swap is Shabby Chic and we found a pattern for a cute bag using Shabby Chic fabrics called "Mini Charmer" by Penny Sturges, so she bought it and we made bags on Sunday. Turned out pretty cute, don't you think?


UFO Finished
I finished the binding on this one while we were driving on Sunday morning, so I can move it to the completed list now.

Stash Busting Report

I can't believe how well I am doing this year, so far, with finishing UFOs and using stash. I haven't bought any fabric this year.

Stash Used: 22.5 yards

I used Judy L's idea of creating a spreadsheet and so far it is working well. Thanks Judy!

UFO Finished

This one is changing locations on the sidebar, as it is finished, label and all.

Grocery Game and Flooding

I don’t usually write a lot here, but today, I just might write a book.

Last year, about this time, I joined an online group called The Grocery Game, thanks to my friend Angela. This community uses The List, which is published every week for certain grocery and drug stores. The list contains the very best deals on items for that week. The Rock Bottom Prices are listed in blue and good deals are listed in green. If it’s an item that you use, you are supposed to buy enough to last you 12 weeks, as they say that pricing runs on a 12 week cycle. It tells you which manufacturers coupons are available for each item and one of the main concepts being you can use those along with a store coupon for the same item.

I joined the group and started shopping like you wouldn’t believe. We had so much free or almost free stuff that I was giving it away. My son came shopping here about every other week. And my grandkids picked something from the snack basket whenever they visited. I earned Extra Care Bucks from CVS and used them the next week to purchase items that produced more Extra Care Bucks. It’s like a circle, and once you get into the loop, you’re hooked (almost as fun as buying fabric.)

The downfall - It takes quite a bit of time to sort and clip coupons, but it can be very profitable. And did you know that you can buy coupons on ebay?
Here’s a typical shopping trip where I spent $32.


Anyway, fastforward to this week..........

As you may know we have had flooding in nearby areas in the past week. Hundreds of people were evacuated and many still haven’t been able to return to their homes. I only personally know one person that was evacuated. She is the mother of one of my co-workers and guess what, she is a quilter! Her quilting studio is located in the second level of her home, so it remains intact. Channel 8 ran this news story about the flooding Sunday morning and I said to my husband, we should jump in the truck and take all those extra products to the distribution point. So we did, and I feel so good about helping that little bit.

Here’s what we took:

On the way home, I said that if I didn’t have a day job, I would start making quilts for every person evacuated. I know I have enough fabric. (That’s another post - later today)

A New Quilting Buddy

Wednesday and Thursday evenings my sister-in-law (well, actually my ex-SIL) came over to work on a baby quilt for her very first grandchild, a little girl expected to make her appearance later this month. Another friend helped her get started, but she was on vacation, so she came to see if I could help. What fun we had and I'm sure we did lots more yakking than sewing, but she got all her nine-patches put together. She will come over to do the quilting when she is ready.

Carolina Crossroads Blocks

Step 6 of the Quiltville mystery quilt had us make blocks out of lots, but not all, of the little nine patches we made. They are turning out very pretty.

Quilters Cache

One of my ongoing quilt projects is to test block patterns for Quilters Cache before they are online. I have been testing patterns for Marcia, along with about 10 others, since 2002. This table runner started as a test block called Belted Star in March 2006. I liked it so much that I made 2 more, added setting triangles and made a table runner. Then I put it aside and started working on something else. When I was taking pictures of my UFOs, I knew that this one would be a quick finish. I'll work on the binding tonight and then it will really be finished. I quilted it using the Chantilly Lace Block patterns from the back of my machine, like a pantograph. PermaCore Camel thread for this one also, which is becoming my most favorite color of thread.

More photos are in my webshots album.

Carolina Crossroads & Stashbusting

I am all caught up in the mystery quilt
There are 100 of these nine-patch blocks in Step 2, which equals 900 1-1/2 inch squares, bringing the total number of pieces to 1200.
There are 80 of these nine-patch blocks in Step 3, which equals 720 1-1/2 inch squares, bringing the total number of pieces to 1920.
There are 40 of these nine-patch triangle blocks in Step 4, which equals 120 1-1/2 inch squares and 120 triangles, bringing the total number of pieces to 2140.
There are 100 of these quarter-square traingle blocks in Step 5, which equals 400 triangles, bringing the total number of pieces to 2540.

Since I straightened up my sewing room this weekend, all the parts of the mystery quilt are neatly placed in this basket.


Stashbusting Report
According to my calculation so far this quilt has used more than 5 yards of fabric: 2-2/3 blue, 1-3/4 white, and 1-1/8 red

Longarm Quilting
Finished quilting the Ribbon Candy for a friend using the Jingle Bell Dance Panto and PermaCore Olive thread. Turned out real nice, but you have to really look to see the quilting design on the front and the back makes my eyes all wonky if I look at it too long.

Carolina Crossroads

YEA, last night I finished Step One of Carolina Crossroads. This one is going to use up lots of red, white and blue scraps.


I also spent some time quilting with Mabel. I'll have picts of that tomorrow.

1st UFO Finish of 2008

I finished the binding and the label on this one last night. It isn't even listed in the sidebar, but I did start it in 2007, so it's a UFO. I really like how this turned out. I hope Lamar is equally happy with it and I hope it adorns a wall in his new home for a long time

Stashbusting Sudoku Quilt

We had the wonderful job of watching DGS Andrew on New Year's Eve. He had his bath, his bottle and was in bed by 8:30, so I had some quilting time.

I knew I shouldn't, but this little New Years Eve project caught my eye and I could use 9 fat quarters that I already had. I really love to do these puzzles and so thought that I needed to make one of these. It went together really easy, with some organization. So, looks like I will need to add one more "ready to be quilted" to my list.



First quilt on the frame in 2008

Yesterday my friend Adrienne came over to use Mabel. She got this Saturday Sampler quilted and motivated me to get mine done also. It's on my list to be quilted, so that is what I will quilt next. Ironic as it may sound, the number that I drew yesterday for our guild UFO Club was 2, and that is the number of my Saturday Sampler on that list.