Design Wall Monday - 6/15/15

After doing some rain dodging, weeding, plant rearranging, teaching a class and taking the ambulance on several rescue calls and standby at a 5K for the local Girl Scouts, I was actually able to get a little bit of sewing done. Woohoo! I'll share my hexie accomplishments on Wednesday for HeLP for Hexie-aholics...today you get to see my machine sewing.

Yipper, I still do own a working sewing machine. LOL. And since I was just approved for my summer Friday's off, I need to schedule a spa treatment for my Bernina. I actually take my machine to a lovely Mennonite place about 1.5 hours south of here because I can schedule an appointment and take my machine home with me in ~3 hours, instead of dropping my machine at the closer dealer and getting it back a week or more later. I also like the Penn Yann Sewing Center because they offer a map of local quilt stores, fabric stores, restaurants and other sights to see. Yes, there is a HUGE difference between quilt and fabric stores in Mennonite/Amish country!!

I have now finished 15 mini sister's choice blocks from my class with Bonnie Hunter. These blocks are 5" finished so I was thinking that if I put 1 more row of sister's choice blocks and then the fun "sticks & stones" border on each end, the table runner would end up 15" x 40"...a nice size for a mid-sized black and white cat who likes to adorn my table runner clad dining room table =^..^= I would really like 2 more rows of sister's choice blocks to keep it more symmetrical but then it would be longer than fabric is wide for the backing and I think I'm just too lazy to do that at this point...I'm aiming for a finish on this baby! I'll make a final decision after I finish 3 more blocks and 2 borders.

I also worked on some more box kite blocks for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. The theme color for June is light blue. As you can tell, my definition of 'light' blue wavers as I find different scraps to use! It's a little hard to tell from the photo but the middle block on the bottom row uses geese fabric for the neutral. It's a little too busy but I couldn't resist doing just one block with it. I'll be making more blocks as time allows...hopefully at least 4 more before month's end.

Design Wall Monday - 6/1/15

I spent all of my rainy, chilly Sunday in my quilt studio. And I do mean ALL of my Sunday...I forgot just how slow and tedious it can be to sew 16 rows of a quilt together. In between rows I worked on my green rainbow scrappy blocks and played a "couple" of games of Spider Solitaire on the computer. LOL. I also spent considerable time drying off his highness every time he wanted back in the house for him to ring the bell to go back outside 5 minutes later. Little furry stinker =^..^=

I made cheese & choco danish to go with my tea (I told you it was chilly, right? Sunday's high was way less than Saturday's low). It was yummy but I think next time I would make only half the filling or make two danishes as it was pretty sweet. It was a super simple recipe: cream cheese brick + 1/4 cup sugar + a glug of vanilla, spread it over croissant dough, braid the sides and bake. I will be making this again!

Here is my quilt, accordian folded to make it easier to sew the very last seam. You can see my green RSC blocks in the background/on the design wall, amongst all the other goodies - mostly hexies, of course. I'll post a better pick of these and my D4P blocks soon.

And finally I had the last seam sewn and pressed open. Just before I collapsed on the couch with a little fluff ball I folded it in quarters for this shot. I'm not quite sure it's big enough tho - it's for Mom&Dad's bed but I want to sneak to their house and try it on for size. It's a secret! I know it's correct for the mattress but then I realized it might need to be bigger to fit 2 people under it!

Either way it's good enough for show-n-tell at a Bonnie Hunter class next weekend in Jamestown, NY. I started the red/white quilt at a class I took with Bonnie back in October.

See all y'all back here tomorrow for The Bibliophile Files!!

Design Wall Monday - 3/30/15

It was another busy weekend!
Saturday I worked at the LQS for the last day of our shop hop. I'm paid in fabric and get to take some of the extra cookies home. Double bonus!!

Sunday I finally surrendered and did some house cleaning. I only spent a couple hours cleaning and moving some out-of-season decorations back to storage but the house just felt "new." If only the weather had been nice enough to open some windows. I'll share pictures of our trip to Bray Farms for Maple Weekend later this week.

The rest of the weekend was spent in my quilt studio...but you knew that! April's Rainbow Scrappy Challenge color was announced and it's Purple!!!!!! Swoon!! My fav color!!! I did some pressing and cutting but don't have much to show yet.

I also finished the last setting rosette for my Value Proposition project. I can't say that this is my fav block but it's not as bad as I was worried it would be either.  The colors are all coordinated from the red stripe but that fabric is just bright and I wouldn't otherwise put all 4 fabrics together. I'm not worried tho, it will all look fine tucked amongst the other blocks in the final quilt.

And just to share how I have been tracking my progress, it's been on an index card tucked into the light switch for my studio. I kitted 2 of the 3 remaining blocks and I've made a good start on stitching one of them already. As I said last week, LOTS of sashing left to go but I've got my nose to the grindstone...

Design Wall Monday - 3/23/15

I had an excellent weekend!! Saturday afternoon I showed my friend Kim how to use her new sewing machine. She plied me with wine and brownies - our usual M.O. - LOL!!

The rest of the weekend was spent leisurely sewing and listening to audio books in my studio. It was heaven.

I completed 9 yellow box kite blocks for the RSC15. I might get a few more done before the end of the month but it's going to be a busy week so I'm not holding my breath. I have the strips all cut so I might just work on them another month. One can never have  enough yellow :)

I also completed 5 yellow puss in the corner D4P blocks and, obviously, several other colors as well. I really just periodically paw thru my pile of 2.5" blocks to find nice matches. So far I have over a 100 of these little 4.5" blocks. I'm still debating if I want every other block in the quilt to be a solid instead of pieced block. The quilt would come together faster, with fewer seams to match, and you would possibly be able to see the pieced blocks better, but I just adore making these and can't imagine stopping just cuz I had enough for a quilt...

I also worked on my hexie fabric I-spy quilt. I stopped by the LQS for more black-on-blacks and was able to make quite some progress on getting the blocks made and trimmed. These blocks are 3/4" smaller than the original blocks shown a few weeks ago but now I'm wondering if I need to get that last 1/4" trimmed off. I'm almost thinking it wouldn't be worth the effort since I can trim them to 6.75" in a flash if I leave 5/8" black past each corner of the center charm square. That's probably clear as mud but I think I just talked myself out of more trimming, Thanks for listening!

I sewed these up this morning and I think there are 4 more to sew up tonight. Of course then there are the 4 new hexie fabrics I still need to cut into charm squares. It's a never ending process LOL.

I have no idea when I'll be putting the i-spy blocks together since I'm still finding hexie fabrics. (Do you have any hexie fabrics I could barter for??) The quilt certainly won't be finished for some time since there are new fabrics all the time so I'm torn - make today's pile into a partial top just so it's not another pile in the studio or wait until much closer to my hexie trunk shows to have a bigger pile with more variety before assembly...there are nearly 40 blocks at this time. My other option is to make these into 4 patches so just get started on assembly. What would you do? Keep the pile growing  for as long as possible or start assembly just to get the pile out of the way?

PS - did anyone notice that I missed HeLP last week? I noticed just before I hit publish on the Feline Friday post. Oops - clearly too much was going on with my Dad in the hospital. Anyone interested in having HeLP this Wednesday??!!

Wordless Wednesday --> Box Kites!