Monday Meanderings 7 - 27 - 2020

Are you getting more forgetful the longer this Covid issue goes on?  I  am.  I keep forgetting little things. Oops, did I forget to brush my teeth?  Why did I walk downstairs?  Mostly, the things I forget aren't really that important.  It's just I notice it more these days.  Oh well.  I did remember to work on almost all of my goals.  Let's take a look at last week's goals to see how I did. 

Goals 7-20

Quilt another personal quilt ✔️ Pictures to come. 

Make more blocks: dogs✔️, Winter paper pieced✔️, CP ✔️ Finished: 1 dog, 2 penguins, 2 more CP in the works. 

Finish Painting Wood Block ✔️ Picture to come. 

Set the airplane blocks from last year’s Rainbow Scrap.  Didn't even look at this - no room on the design wall.

I have sworn off paper piecing for a while after I finished two new penguin blocks.  I auditioned some sashing -- but no.  So, I'll wait for a new quilt store to open next month to check for fabric there.  This guy will be even cuter when he gets his eyes.  He's suppose to have a belly button. I know he's hatched from an egg but Mary designed him and the other one I made as belly button penguins just for laughs.  

Hum, I wonder if I actually finished a dog this week. Oops, nope that was last week.  I did traced some Wonder Under to do a couple of appliquéd dogs.  Maybe I'll actually make one or two this week. 

I didn't take pictures of the 2 CP blocks I started.  Last year the guild made blocks from the book The Anniversary Sampler by Donna Lynn Thomas. I started late but I think I've finished 13 and have 3 in progress now.  Two need to be hand appliquéd down and one I just tried to do a quarter of it as it had "Y" seams. That went ok so I'll do the rest over this week. I'm aiming for 25 blocks.  You can see other blocks here.  (And look under it for the bunny block I'll be talking about below...) I haven't decided if I like the big floral print I've used as the surrounding of the blocks in the link.  I may need to tone that down a LOT.  But I have about 5 yards of the fabric that needs to be used. It's 30 years old or so.  Time to GO! I'll probably incorporate  6" blocks not in the book because I'm not that interested in all the blocks. 

The little bunny block is part of the Silver Lining Quilt Along.  The last block comes out this week and it is time to decide what to put with the blocks.  So here are two choices for a square of fab between the blocks.  Do you like the bunnies? Or do you prefer the white polka dots on pink.  I sure hope you said the white polka dots on pink because I don't have enough of the bunnies to use them. Plus a lot of the blocks have either the bunny fabric or the flower fabric on the edges and you just lose the block. I've got three blocks to finish before I can put this together.  These blocks might be two doll quilts. Or a really small baby quilt. 

Bonnie Hunter's Easy Breezy block challenge. I just really like this one and wanted to share it.

And I nearly forgot to add my goals for this week. I don't often have customer quilts to quilt.  But all of a sudden I'm getting more interest.  I've got 2 in house although one needs a batting and I'm waiting for new thread. And, another one is coming in soon. Hum.  As long as I have time to do my own quilting and piecing! 

Goals 7-27 

Quilt Customer Quilt

Bind Pirate Quilt

Bind Braid Shuffle Quilt

Finish blocks for Silver Lining QAL

Set the airplane blocks from last year’s Rainbow Scrap

It's time to start surfing the web now.  Join me by going to these linky parties and seeing what folks are working on.  I don't know about you but I keep getting more and more ideas.  I'm trying to finish things but I may just bust out a new project one of these days!  Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, and Main Crush Monday.  I sure hope I remember to come back and link with these parties!  

I leave you with a sign of the times. We were out a few times later in the week and threw the masks in the washer.  But we hung them up to dry.  Hum, maybe we should have dried them as the heat gets pretty intense in the drier but not so much in the washer.  At least they are clean and well spun. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 7 - 20 - 2020

A surprise tonight -- I finally decided to figure out how much fabric I used in June. (Yep I'm really late with this!)  It took a bit of adding and multiplication to get the final number.  And, yep, I was surprised.  I used more fabric than I brought in...and I brought in plenty. Here's the data: 

2020	Fabric In Month	Fabric In Year	Fabric Out Month	Fabric Out Year	Total In or Out Year
June	9.000	45.750	12.375	46.875	1.125

It's now official -- I've used more fabric than I've purchased this year.  Most of the yardage was wide backs which means I have more than enough backings for a while. I'm not planning on buying any fabric the rest of this month.  I can be strong! (maybe)

I did pretty well on my goals this week: 

Quilt the Pirate quilt✔️ quilted Pictures after it's bound and I have a photo shoot

Make another Christmas paper pieced block✔️ one more Snowman  (purple brimmed hat.)

So here are the  finished blocks.  I ended up making one too many polar bears.  So the question is should I make a 3rd snowman and 1 or 2 penguins.  If I make 3 of each animals I'll not use the the extra left facing polar bear.  These are paper pieced designs from Sew Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Mary Hertel.  Hum, maybe I should add a reindeer too. what do you think? Mary has some other penguins in her Etsy shop. I think I'll be shopping this week.

Work on painted block✔️ almost finished no pictures yet.

Pull out UFO of dog blocks and make the center of the top… yikes. Need extra blocks...first one is done. ✔️  Here are the blocks I've got.  These blocks are from a swap ages ago (as in the mid 1990s through Prodigy -- one of the first commercial internet service provider for customers.) The blocks had to be multiples of 3". These are the ones I received. Most of them still have the tag listing the maker, location and email address. (I wonder how many addresses would still be good?) The black dog with the red bow is mine. I just threw these on my design wall to get an idea of what I need to bring it up to a decent size. What do you think?  I'm thinking I need to make more; maybe throw out the middle one in the top row.  

I have a slew of dog patterns I can add to these and Mary Hertel has a lot of faces of different breeds. But what about adding some four patches, 9 patches or flying geese?  Here's the dog I finished this week. I forget which book I found this in but it's the same dog as the blue and pink floral one in the upper left above.  I need to add a piece at the top or bottom to make it the same size as the other one. I think I might try some machine appliquéd dogs too.  I bet they would go MUCH faster. 

As much as I "like" the idea of paper piecing I'm not that good at it.  I end up having to take out those tiny stitches and recut fabric pieces all the time.  

That was last week's goal list.  On to this week's list: 

W/O 7-20

Quilt another personal quilt

Make more blocks: dogs, Winter paper pieced, CP 

Finish Painting Wood Block 

Set the airplane blocks from last year’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge

I find that some weeks I am raring to work in the studio.  Some weeks I putz around and don't get much done.  Hopefully this week I'll be getting a lot done.  

Pat got a package in the mail from my cousin last week.  We were both tickled with his new mask.  Marilyn's been making some really nice custom masks.  I'm not sure I need a USC mask but I graduated from USC too.  

I'm linking up to my regular Monday linky parties: 

Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, and Main Crush Monday.  I plan on spending some extra time with these linky parties this week. I didn't last week and I'm sure I missed important happenings in studios! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 7 - 13 - 2020

I'm starting out with these pillowcases.  I sewed about 10 pillowcase kits together this week for the Country Piecemakers in Powhatan this week.  Please remember that when I get on to my goals list.  Most of my time I spent on these instead of things on my list.  

The main reason I wanted to get them done is I was planning on going to the Country Piecemaker's meeting on Saturday and wanted to turn them in before Halloween!  I was interested in the barn quilt block painting we were going to do.  So, some of my time was spent prepping the board -- painting KillZ on all sides and then painting the front with a background color.  I chose an ecru for the background. The board is 20" square. Once we finished our meeting, (held outside in a picnic pavilion and masked up,) we got on to painting the boards. First, I drew the grid for the block, a 4 x 4. I chose the block at the top of the book on the left a variation of Friendship Star.  Then, I "tried" to erase the spots that didn't need the grid marks.  And then I repainted the center square so the erasing didn't show. (bummer...) 

By the time the center background section dried I was getting hot. But I really wanted to see what the  design might look like so I painted one coat of the red in one area.  Hum, it didn't cover as well as I hoped. It was humid although it did seem to dry pretty well but I decided I would finish this at home. I'll have to paint several more coats for each of these dark sections. 

But I was done for the day. It was in the mid 80s and the temp was still rising. And, it was lunch time.  I had an hour and a half drive back. Get the picture? This will be an ongoing project as you have to let the paint dry well between sections. I'll keep posting photo updates. Maybe I'll get more done today. 

With all these other things going on I didn't do really well on my goals. 

W/O 7/6

Load, quilt and bind Pirates Quilt  -- the back is loaded and the batting is ready 

Make Silver Lining Block 8 & 9✔️ Finished on Sunday.

Continue on Winter paperpieced blocks 😩 nothing

Plan quilting for Lonestar quilt ✔️ I’ve found a design but I’ll have to figure out how I can get it the right size! 

W/O 7/13

Quilt the Pirate quilt

Make another Winter paperpieced block

Work on painted block

Pull out dog blocks UFO and put the center of the top together

That's what's been happening here this past week.  I'm hoping for a finish this week but maybe just the quilting will get done.  I'll be painting and working on some other blocks and tops too. 

Ok, I admit it -- I was completely distracted when I wrote my blog Sunday night.  Pat likes to check it out and when he looked on Monday all he saw was last week's.  OOPS I never finished posting it.  When I reread it -- argh!  It didn't make as much sense as I thought it did.  So a bit of editing, a bit of linking up and now I can post my blog! Enjoy. 

Join me in checking out what's going on in other studios this week by visiting these linky parties: Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, and Design Wall Monday. (Yep, you're right I forgot to link up to Design Wall Monday last week. I'll try to do better this week!) 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meandering 7 - 6 - 2020

Some goals were finished, but I became a raccoon and started a new project. I've wanted to do a Lone Star quilt for years and finally decided to give it a try.  I bought Debby Kratovil's Big Block Lone Star pattern.  I wasn't planning to make it right away but as the Fourth of July crept up I decided I needed a wall hanging to hang during patriotic holidays.  So I succumbed to starting a new project.  I jumped in on Friday

I was whipping along and got most of it put together by Friday evening. By the time I quit on Friday I was able to see how the borders were going to look. 

My quilting mojo was low on Saturday.  I was into a book I was reading so I really didn't get much done. I was able to sew the top half to the bottom half. Fast forward to Sunday and I was able to get the borders on. All these fabrics came from my stash. The red and beige were leftovers from wide backs. 

Next up is deciding how I'm going to quilt this.  I'd love to do some fancy quilting on it. But it depends on whether I have computer designs that might work.  I'll be checking out my designs and what's available on line this week.  I also need to look at some lone stars to see how other people quilted theirs.  

Needless to say this little activity caused me to not get all my goals done.  But I did get most done.

W/O 6/29/2020

Bind Ninja Stars quilt✔️ done!

Ninja Stars Done! 

Work on Christmas paper pieced ufo✔️ 5 blocks finished, 4 to go. 

Quilt customer top✔️ finished and returned! 

Load next personal quilt  Picked one but haven't made backing or loaded. 

So here's what I'm planning to work on this week.

W/O 7/6

Load, quilt and bind Pirates Quilt

Make Silver Lining Block 8 & 9

Continue on Christmas paper pieced ufo

Plan quilting for Lone Star quilt 

I also started Bonnie Hunter's Easy Breezy Leader & Ender Challenge. I usually don't participate in these Leader & Ender challenges since I have so many blocks sets waiting to become quilt tops.  But I like this one so much that I've decided to do it. Here's my first one.  I chose 6" blocks but you can also make 4" blocks.  I need to make up some kits so I don't run out when I'm sewing other projects. (the color isn't exactly right on this one... but I did decide that the two dark fabrics need more contrast with the light fabric.) 

Pat and I walk almost every evening.  When we were out the other day we found these flamingos in front of one of our friend's house. 

It turns out a friend of ours had made a donation to Bickford Senior Living for their Alzheimer  Association fund raiser and could arrange for flocks of flamingos to grace a yard. You can read about it here. We are seeing lots of flocks in our neighborhood.  (Just a note -- we live in an active senior citizen community of single family homes that just happens to be right across from Bickford.)  I'm getting a kick out of all these flocks. 

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap, Monday Making, and Design Wall Monday.  Join me as we see what's happening in studios across the world.  

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie