Monday Meandering 10 - 31 - 2016

Here's what I finished this past week.  There wasn't much to finish but the top is now done. (Quilting will happen??? Sometime but I don't know when.) 

This is a design from Accuquilt. I changed the colors just a little.  You can read about it here.  Next up is deciding how to quilt this.  I still need to figure out the binding and backing.  It won't be finished really soon but it will be finished for spring! 

On to my goals for this past week.  A lot got done but not everything.  

Oct 24 2016

Enjoy playing with Theo √

Sew the flower quilt together √

Check all the Christmas Favorites blocks √ and add what is needed; sew them together oops, still need to stitch down the extras and sew this together

Knit on the second red sock√

Get back to the Stack ‘N Whack top √

And next week's goals:

Oct 31, 2016

Do the hand embroidery on Christmas Favorites

Put the last few items on the CF blocks

Knit on the second red sock

Find a small quilt to quilt on Ruthie

Work on Stack N Whack

You can be inspired by visiting Monday linky parties at Monday Making and Main Crush Monday. Take a look at what's going on in quilting blogs around the world. 

Here's a picture of Sophie when she tried to photo bomb my picture of Ellie eating her cake.  I snapped this cute picture of her. She's growing up.  

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

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October OMG!

I NAILED IT! My OMG for October was to finish the last three blocks of Christmas Favorites. And, yes 2 were ready to machine blanket stitch around the pieces before the month even started.  I did take all three blocks to retreat -- the two I had ready to go were finished.  I finished the piecing on the last block and got it appliquéd down.  When these three were "done" I went back to the pattern to see what else had to be done.  Hum, I missed 3 holly leaves on 2 different blocks.  I have several pieces that will be 3-D and can't be attached until after the quilt is quilted.  And, oops! there's some embroidery to be done.   

Despite those few things that need to be finished I'm calling my October OMG done√√√√. Here's what the three blocks look like: 

Hum, the poinsettia looks weird -- but it has 5 3-D leaves that need to be put on after the quilting is done.  Lots of the blocks have buttons that will be added then too. The HoHoHo block and the Mistletoe blocks have hand embroidery that needs to be done before the blocks can be put together.  Plus I have 3 holly leaves I forgot that need to be added to two blocks.  

This brings me to my November OMG.  Yep, you got it... I want to finish the blocks as detailed above and sew them together.  If I really stay focused I may be able get the two borders added too.  But my main goal is to get the blocks done and sewn together. 

Today we celebrated Ellie's birthday by joining everybody at an indoor play area.  The girls were happy to be bouncing in several big bounce houses.  Some of the grown ups (me included) had a great time with some air guns that shot soft rubber balls.  Sophie and I had a major battle for a while.  The girls were lucky to ride some bumper cars.  (Only Sophie was really old enough.)  Natalie and Sophie really seemed to understand the directions on driving the bumper cars.  Ellie didn't quite "get" how to drive but she moved her car around and actually bumped into the other girls on occasion. It was fun for all of us.  Theo didn't necessarily agree because he slept through most of it. 

After the time at the play space Kevin and Aimee took us out to lunch at a local pizzeria.  The pizza was good and was followed by cake.  Yum!  Thanks Kevin and Aimee for the fun time.  And, they were happy to give me the leftover cake. (It's something I seldom have at home but I do like it!) Here's Ellie enjoying her cake.  She thought it was yummy too. 

I'm linking up with Red Letter Quilts' October link up post.  Take some time to see how folks are have done this month on succeeding on their goals.  I sure hope Heidi plans to continue this program next year.  It has been very helpful for me. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

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Stitching and Traveling

We've come down to our beach house in Nags Head, NC to see how it held up after Hurricane Matthew.  Thankfully it is fine.  We haven't been down here since the end of May because the house has been rented almost the entire summer all the way through October.  It's beautiful weather here this week. 

We went out to dinner at the Black Pelican last night.  Pat took this photo of the beach road -- well what was the beach road and the sand dune before Matthew came to visit two weeks ago. We were here about the same time last year and took nearly the same picture then.  And, yes, dinner was great as always.

                                  

Pat is definitely a morning person and I am definitely a night owl.  He went out to the beach to get these pictures of sunrise this morning.  He captured some spectacular pictures this year. 

And a few minutes later...

I often set up a little sewing area and try to get some piecing done.  Here's what I'm working on this time. I started this in a Stack N Whack class in early September.  I did this block before I left home to make sure the sizes I was cutting were correct.  Today, I finished cutting and then started making the blocks.  I was working around the house also so didn't get as much done as I should have but tomorrow morning I'll try to get a few more blocks done before we do a little shopping.  (Yep, there is a outlet mall not even a mile away...) 

I've also finished one sock.  This yarn is hand dyed burgundy but it sure doesn't look it in the picture. The picture shows some of the variation in the yarn but, honestly, this is a deep burgundy without much variation actually showing.   The yarn is wonderful to work with.  Since this picture was taken I've already gotten about 2" done on the new cuff. 

That's it for me today.  I'm linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop Friday. I'll link up with Whoop Whoop on Friday.  Take some time to check out some inspiration across the internet. 

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie 

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Monday Meandering 10 - 24 - 2016

Are the weeks going by faster for you?  It sure seems that it does for me.  We spent an overnight at Jenny's taking care of the girls when she was working in NYC while Brian was out of town.  We made dinner and got them to bed.  It was really easy especially since it didn't take much longer than an hour and 20 minutes to get up there.   

I brought up the girls' Halloween shirts.  Sophie decided to wear hers to school -- a day the temperature was above 80! I snapped her picture waiting at the bus stop:

I'm pretty sure the shirt is a bit too big! But Sophie liked Frankenstein.  The design is available at Embroidery Boutique.  They have lots of cute designs.  I'm looking at several for Christmas shirts for the girls.

Below is a close up of the design on Natalie's shirt.  It is from Designs by JuJu and is part of the Halloween Harvest Sock Monkeys design.  I tend to choose appliqué designs for the shirts so that they don't have too many stitches in the shirts. 

The next shirt is Ellie's.  The design is by Embroidery Boutique and is called Windy Witch.  Evidently she asked to put it on as soon as she got home from visiting us last weekend.  

I'm also excited that Ruthie is back up and running.  I quilted one quilt using the computer to drive the long arm after we first set it up here.  I actually wasn't really planning on using it for Theo's quilt but I wanted to look at one design to see if it would look ok.  Except the tablet couldn't find the long arm. Wait!  It's right there -- what do you mean you can't find it??? After several days and several packages of chips and cables we decided to dump the old program and reinstall it.  Except the USB port wouldn't read the original thumb drive with the program.  More wait time and finally the new drive arrived and all is well.  I need to find a small quilt to really test it out but I haven't taken the time to do so... let's just say the embroidery machine was running hot this last week or so! 

I did really well on my goals this last week.  

Oct 17, 2016

Finish the last embroidery on the corners of the flower quilt, put quilt together√ ready to sew the last two borders on

Embroider the last two Halloween shirts √

Finish the last Christmas Favorites block√ need to check through all the blocks and see if anything is missing

Visit with Jenny and the girls√

Oct 24 2016

Enjoy playing with Theo on Tuesday 

Sew the flower quilt together

Check all the Christmas Favorites blocks and add what is needed; sew them together

Knit on the second red sock

Get back to the Stack ‘N Whack top

I'm linking up to my favorite Monday blogs: Love Laugh Quilt's Monday Makings and A Place to Create and Share's Main Crush Monday. 

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie  

Monday Meandering -- 10 - 17 - 2016

Finally a finished quilt!  It's been a secret since Jenny and I started it.  As you may remember Theodore Everett joined my son's family on October 19th.  Since my daughter Jenny is also a quilter we decided (again) to do a joint quilt.  I quizzed DIL Aimee about colors and style for the nursery and came up with Elizabeth Hartman's pattern Fancy Forest.  Aimee wanted foxes so Fancy Forest was perfect.  Yes, I could have picked her fox pattern but I also thought I might want to try some of her other designs in the forest.  

My first fox attempt.  There is a lot of cutting with this pattern because, duh, there are a lot of pieces in each fox.  However, after the first practice block which came out perfectly, the background, eyes, nose and cheeks could all be cut at the same time. (Hum, I don't see any cheeks to the left there... And, was the color that different or is this a different block shown?) We decided on a light gray background.  Jenny made a couple of foxes with the dark gray. 
We thought we might not use them but as we were laying them out they looked great in with all the others. Gave it a modern look.  Who knew? 

One Fox

Six Foxes

And now, six foxes.  Jenny was making foxes at her house during the nights and weekends.  

Now that we live "a day trip away" Jenny and family came down for a visit and she and I were able to put the quilt together from our two sets of blocks.  Somehow we both had blocks made from the same fabric. See Mr. Fox on the bottom left?  His navy blue fabric has thin dark black lines through it.  We had a funny conversation claiming the blocks were ours.  But I had this picture to prove I had also made one.  Hum, usually our fabric tastes are different but we both liked this one! 

Our color information from Aimee was grey, rust, navy blue and turquoise.  I found the grey background fabric and sent some to Jenny.  We used our stashes to make the blocks.  

Once the blocks were together we weren't sure it really needed a border.  But I insisted we audition some fabric from my stash.  We loved the turquoise inner border.  Then the navy blue went so well with it and the rest of the quilt.  Honestly, there was so little of each fabric left we had to make the border width dependent on how much fabric we had on hand.  And, I had to make sure I didn't cut it wrong or it would have meant a trip to a store.  I think the navy blue border ended up being 3 1/4" wide with almost nothing left! Jenny sewed while I ironed and cut sashing, borders, whatever was needed. 

Twenty Foxes

Finally, all twenty-five foxes.

I forgot that I sent Jenny several pictures to help pick out the binding.  This was a dark blue fabric that was turned down.  We both liked a turquoise fabric with quarter-sized white polka dots on it.  (In fact the turquoise was just about this fox's color.) 


I stitched in the ditch around each fox and between the turquoise and the navy borders.  I stippled in the gray. I really didn't want to quilt over the foxes' faces. Then I did angles in the blue border.  In the middle of finishing the quilt we were at Kevin's house taking care of Ellie while mom and dad were having her little brother.  So it was delayed a bit. 

Theo gave a thumbs up on his new quilt when we gave it to him on Saturday.  (Mommy and Daddy liked it too!) I was tickled to find this cute fox fabric that really went with the front.  Theo's almost a month old now.  Yea for a great finish! This is the first some-what large quilt I've finished (well Jen and I) almost the whole year. 

On to the goals. I've been busy in the studio this past week and got most of my goals done. 

Oct 10, 2016

Finish binding on secret quilt√

Knit on burgundy sock√

Sew flower quilt together√ made progress but not together yet

Embroider more shirts and onesies√

Make one more Christmas Favorites block√ started

And for this week: 

Oct 17, 2016

Finish the last embroidery on the corners of the flower quilt

Embroider the last two Halloween shirts

Finish the last Christmas Favorites block
Finish first burgundy sock and start next one

Visit with Jenny and the girls

I'm linking up with Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt and Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts. Hopefully we'll all take some time to visit some of the links to see what is going on around the online quilting world this week. My weeks seemed to be chalk full of stuff but darned if I know what! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie