UFOs Out of the Closet!

Recently I got on a UFO kick.  I keep UFO projects that have been donated to me in big ziplocs in the closet. I got most of them out last week, laid them out on the design wall, and ran them through the sewing machine assembly-line style.  Now several are one step closer to being a finish!

I just noticed a block with backward pieces in it, anyone else see it?

This is made mostly from sampler blocks donated by a couple of local quilters.  I decided to do a narrow sashing to space them out a little bit.  I believe this was a block-of-the-month at a quilt shop in Tyler a couple years ago.  I really love these colors.

I have absolutely no idea where these red, white, and black scraps came from.  I have all these fabrics in my stash, so it's possible I actually cut them for something, but if it was me I have no idea when!  If you sent these to me please comment and claim them!

These large disappearing nines with the pretty colors came from Tricia.  Note Rey playing Vanna White at the bottom :)

I think I mentioned I've starting listening to audio books while I sew.  It really makes the time (and the stitches) fly by.  The one I'm reading right now is Censoring an Iranian Love Story, and I definitely recommend it!

Linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

Lots to Do

Lots going on around here.  The faded quarter cabin block to Jan/Feb's Covered in Love block drive have been coming in and they look great! I've been experimenting with layouts and really like the one above.  There's still nearly a whole month left on the drive if anyone wants to jump in and contribute!

Nearly all of the blocks from my Nurture circle pals for January's do. Good Stitches bee are here. I have been experimenting with layouts. What do you think of the one above vs below?  They look kinda the same to me, even though they aren't...

Nancy R. gifted me some leftover black/white/bright paper pieced blocks that I've started peeling the papers off.  Going to see what I can do with these.

The actual goal for the week is to get the last of the corner blocks sewn into 2 tops.

Meanwhile, what I should be doing is studying this, but I don't wanna!

There were some great projects linked up to Sew Some Love last week. Remember to come back every Wednesday to check out what folks are sewing and link up any charity sewing you've got going on!

 Linking to Oh Scrap! and Design Wall Monday.

This and That Scraps

There's been lots of activity on my design wall lately.  My body celebrated my return to Texas in right fashion by developing a cold, so I haven't felt up for the hours-long process of basting and quilting tops.  Instead I sewed a few little things, arranged and rearranged the design wall, and put together backings for various tops for when I do feel up to it again (thanks you to Louise, Gail, Nancy, Amanda, and others of you who have generously contributed backing fabrics!)

I put up some of the hot and cold corner blocks to just see how they look and it's even better than I hoped! These won't be sewn together until the last of the stragglers are here. (By the way, if you're looking for the January block drive for CiL it's HERE). I also sewed up several more string herringbone blocks from my 1.5" strings. 

I'm actually running out of the string scraps I'd cut (don't worry, there's more! I just haven't trimmed them yet), so I switched to another old scrap project, these small pinwheels.  I started sewing the fourpatches into chains and putting them on the wall. I'm trying to avoid doing math as much as possible by just building it in place.

After some debate I decided to cut my setting triangles from scraps instead of white fabrics, so I cut 6.5" squares from my scrap piles today.  Cutting a 6.5" square into quarters lets me make setting triangles with no bias stretch on the outside edge.

I sewed up the corners as they are so far with the setting triangles in place.   It's a crappy night-time picture, but what do you think?  I'm a fan of the colored triangles for the edge.  Of course my quilting supervisors have been hard are work.  They're trying not to let on too much, but I think they missed me, too!

By the way, don't miss the 2016 Year in Review post about Covered in Love.

Linking to Oh Scrap! and Design Wall Monday.

More String Maddness

 For about the past year I haven't sewn many blocks for each of the CiL block drives.  I always test the blocks and make a demo block or two, and of course if I wind up a couple short of a whole quilt I make up the difference, but beyond that I usually don't make any more.  You fine folks have done such a good job of supplying blocks for the quilts! And knowing that I will soon be sewing so many of them, it keeps me from getting burned out, I think.  However, I do often find myself wanting to sew along a similar tangent. Something inspired by the blocks piling up on my desk.

Just before October, when the CiL string block drive officially began, I trimmed up the strings in my scrap box and set to work on bright and loud string log cabins.  That quilt is about wrapped up now and yet I still have plenty of strings!  Next up? I'm trying something like a string herringbone.  Here are the first dozen blocks on the wall. What do you think?  I'm not sold yet.  With my glasses off the herringbone effect is really prominent and I like it, but in-focus the lines between the blocks catch my eye much more than the herringbone.

Linking to Oh Scrap!, Design Wall Monday, and Moving it Forward Monday.

Design Wall

Are you tired of seeing the same thing on my design wall? 'Cause I sure am.  Fortunately, the string log cabins have moved on toward the quilting stage and the last of the disappearing 9s are ready to become a top.

You can just see the top of my stack of string blocks from October's Covered in Love block drive there at the bottom left of the picture. They are continuing to come in!  There's still plenty of time if anyone wants to join in with this month's block drive to support CiL :)

I also recently sewed up my blocks for my do. Good Stitches circle. Louise has us doing a fun flying geese design.

I'll get the last D9 top sewn later. Right now I'm about to get binding on the freshly quilted scrappy log cabin.  Happy sewing ;)

Linking to Oh Scrap!, Design Wall Monday and Moving it Forward Monday.

Tortoise and the Hare

I've got two projects on the design wall right now, a quilting "tortoise and hare" situation.  The September Nurture circle blocks are on the right.  Made from low volume and red/purple scraps I got them done relatively quickly last night.

The tortoise in this case is a top I am s.l.o.w.l.y. getting together to show off novelty fabrics.  I love the way it is looking and I am halfway there, but because each block has to be custom assembled it is taking its time.  Currently I can make about 1 block per 45 minutes or about 1 column per day.  Slowly but surely...

I'm done with work for another week and looking forward to some good sewing time I hope you are, too!  In closing, enjoy this picture of Rey demonstrating how NOT to sit like a lady :)

Linking to Oh Scrap! Moving it Forward Monday and Design Wall Monday.

Progress

Yesterday I sat down at my quilting machine for the first time in weeks, maybe a month to finally get some quilting done.  I started myself off easy with a quick little flannel baby quilt.  No sooner had I cut the threads off the machine than Rory made use of the fresh quilt!

My quilting day was fruitful, with two Covered in Love quilts added to the pile. You'll have to wait for Friday to see those ;)  With the triangle quilt finally off the design wall I threw some of the August CiL blocks up there to get a look at them.  This is not at all a final arrangement; I see that much lighter patch in the lower left, and the quilts will be smaller than this.

I'm looking forward to finally having a finish this Friday!

Linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

A Temporary Absence

The first quilt top from June's Covered in Love block drive is together.  This one I put together in the same way the original pattern showed, the next one I'm going to "invert" the blocks as I had on previous design walls.

I wanted to let you know the blog's going to be quiet for the rest of the month.  I'm going on a trip, followed by 2 weeks of almost solid work in order to make some money before the semester starts.  Normally I save up some posts and schedule them for while I am out of town, but I'm afraid I'm all out of ahead-of-time posts. 

Don't worry, CiL will continue to gather blocks and quilts this month and the chaplains will still be passing them out at the hospital. Remember, August's block drive is underway now if you want to participate. I'll be back in September ready to hit the ground running!

Linking to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Sunday Morning in Sober Tones

Frequent Covered in Love contributor Amanda from Louisiana sent along a jelly roll of Moda "Remembrance" a month or so ago.  During my sew day a while back I started turning these into blocks for the titular "Sunday Morning" quilt from Amanda Jean and Cheryl Arkison's Sunday Morning Quilts. Now I'm finishing them into a top. It's kind of interesting to see the modern design is such not-modern fabrics.

The top was a tad small without borders; fortunately I found the perfect matching plaid fabric in my stash.  Pretty sure that plaid was a donated fabric, too, but I can't remember who from. I'm thinking I'll put a narrow black border on between the top and the plaid to break it up a bit before I sew it together.  Once this one gets quilted up it will be a donation top for Covered in Love. 

The July block drive is up for those who want to contribute and a few people have already sent their blocks in (thanks Christy, Nancy, and Kathy!)  This time we're making whatever star block takes your fancy in patriotic red, white, and blue.

Linking to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Design Wall Flannel Scraps

Happy July 4th everyone!  I am playing on the design wall with some of the results of last week's sewing extravaganza. I put together the 16 patch and 4 patch blocks for this flannel scrap quilt and today I am laying them out. 

Do you think that one large red square stands out too much?

I am thinking about what size quilt to make.  I have enough blocks to make a 64" x 80" quilt, which would be a generous size for an adult and quite heavy because of the flannel. Some of the fabrics are a little juvenile, so it might make more sense to make child-sized quilts. I could make a 64" square big-kid quilt and a 36" square baby quilt... What do you think?

Sleeping in the human-bed, as she should be

In other news, little Rey continues to settle in. Rory still hisses at her but Rey doesn't even seem to notice. In between the hissing there have been some moments of calm when they were almost playing together.  Rey is very independent and curious and thinks she rules the roost.  Things in her world have changed a lot in the past 2 weeks since she was almost a greasy spot on the side of the road.

Linking to Design Wall Monday.

Sun and Sea Design Wall

This month's Covered in Love block drive is a pretty blue and yellow block I'm calling Sun and Sea.  Quite a few block have come in but there is still lots of time left in June if anyone wants to contribute more blocks!  I haven't started putting these together yet but I have been playing with arranging them.

I think I like this arrangement best, which is sort of the inverse of the original layout, with some to-be-determined sashing in between.  Probably each quilt will be square, with 9 of these large blocks... We'll see.  At this point I am still just enjoying playing with them.  Last week and the weekend were very busy for me so I am looking forward to some relaxed  sewing time this week.

Mindless Scrappy Sewing

This has been a busy week for school stuff. Sometimes when I'm listening to lectures I do some mindless sewing to keep my hands occupied. This time I pulled out the crumbs I've been working on for... almost a year now.  Just little 2.5"x1.5" rectangles joined first into pairs and then into four patches as in this Bonnie Lass pattern.

The first few four patches are done and I arranged some of them up on the design wall.  Since these are my scraps (for the most part, some of Judy's too) the color palette is overall blue-ish. ((If you're squeamish stop reading here, thanks for coming by!))

I actually did some school-related sewing this week.  We spent an afternoon in the classroom learning to suture! Perhaps unsurprisingly, being a quilter did not give me any particular advantage when it came to suturing.  We all brought chicken, cow tongue, or pig feet to practice on and it was a pretty fun afternoon.  The meat was not wasted, after all the sutures were removed it was taken to a local Tiger Rescue where the big cats were very grateful :)

Linking to Oh Scrap! at Cynthia's blog.

A Sewing Retreat at Home

Last Wednesday as I sipped my morning coffee I noticed there was a Cutthroat Kitchen marathon on Food Network leading up to the premier of the new season.  Cutthroat Kitchen is my latest TV obsession and I couldn't resist the draw of 9 straight hours of episodes.  Now I was supposed to spend that day on school stuff, so I decided that if I was going to spend an entire day not doing school it needed to be an exceptionally productive day!

Machine turned sideways to make room for cutting

I set myself up a sewing station downstairs right in front of the TV and prepped sewing and cutting projects to keep me busy.  There's something neat about this picture that I didn't realize until afterward:  that table.  That table is old. It used to sit in the corner of the kitchen in the house where my mom grew up.  It wasn't their eating table, it was for butchering chickens and that sort of thing, and has the cut marks to prove it.  Mom's parents both died when she was a child and this table was forgotten for years. Turns out some cousins had rescued it. They refinished it and a few years ago they gave it to us and it now sits in the corner of our living room.

My mom's mom is my only family connection to quilting, although obviously I never met her.  We have several of her quilts.  It's neat to think that decades later I can sit at the table of another quilter and work :)

Here's my tally from my personal sewing-retreat day:

sewed together the rows on a May block drive top

quilted and bound the blue and orange baby quilt

cut and sewed (112) 8.5" HSTs for an upcoming wedding quilt 

sewed up another May block drive top

 began sewing together the April block drive bonus blocks

Over the weekend I pressed and trimmed the HSTs and sewed them into flying geese units.  Here is my initial design wall layout.

These are Cotton and Steel fabrics (my first time working with those, in general I'm not a big fan of their designs).  This will become a wedding quilt for friends of a friend. I don't know the newly weds or what their tastes are but I was told they like "everything hipster" and the store Anthropologie.  I sent my friend a few snapshots of fabric swatches and the Cotton and Steel fabrics passed the "hipster" test.

Sewing downstairs (and away from the distraction of the computer) was a lot of fun. Definitely going to have to do more of that in the future!

Linking to Design Wall Monday.

Midweek Works in Progress

There has been a lot going ton lately around here.  All the H2H quilts have me so inspired! Last week I made backings for all the the tops I had built up, some from yardage and some from stash.  The 'to-quilt' list is bulked up again and soon I will have a quilting day.

Rory has also really enjoyed all the H2H quilt arrivals, primarily because she gets new boxes to lie in.  I've also started sewing together the May blocks drive quilts.

 

I decided to do several different layout for these blocks.

I love these simple blocks!  I have made 2 baby quilt variations of these blocks, too.  One is going to be my "Friday Finish" this week and the other is not yet done.

In this case I melded together the middle rows of small blocks into 4.5" squares.  This quilt is going to be the companion quilt to this one for a friend at work having twins.  That's what is happening around here, I hope you're having a good week!

A Different Kind of Scraps...

 When cleaning the sewing room sometimes you find things you'd forgotten all about. Or is that just me?  I stumbled across my stash of UFOs and abandoned projects and discovered it was a lot bigger than I remembered! Oh bother.

I quickly put together this top from a dozen abandoned blocks and some donated fabric.  I think the red brings together all the different florals. Hope so anyway.

Next I pulled out these two large Swoon blocks a blog reader sent me and started rifling through my orphan blocks for others that might play well with them.  This orphan quilt is still in the design stages ;) Happy weekend!

Linking to Oh Scrap! and Design Wall Monday.

String-y Design Wall

Always a happy day to have new scraps on the design wall!  First I put some of the Covered in Love block drive lattice blocks up to see how they look. I'm not sewing these together yet, just playing. I know the lighting's bad, but don't these looks cool?  This is from the April block drive, which is still going on if you would like to contribute!

Next I finished the string color blocks that I was working on yesterday. These are made from Cynthia's Scrap-a-Palooza tutorial.  I did end up adding green as a 4th color way to have enough blocks for a 50"x70" quilt. 

Today I'm hoping to sew together the color block quilt and test drive some blocks for future block drives.  Hope your Monday is productive!

Linking to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Giant Eye Spy Design Wall

Finally a change on my design wall! I got the Nurture circle Forest QAL top sewn up so I covered the design wall in March's eye spy blocks.  At least 2 tops to come here.

This week I also got my April Nurture circle blocks done.  Can't wait to see what Louise does with these.

I thought you might get a kick out of these pictures of Rory.  She does this whenever we bring home groceries.  She purposely weaves into the handles of the bags and wears them around like a dress :)

Silly cat.  She'll wear her pretty dress for a few hours, until she has to make a bathroom stop.  The bag doesn't go into the litter box so well.

Linking to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday.