Monday Meanderings 11 - 29 - 2021

We had a great time on Thanksgiving.  It was wonderful to be inside, chatting and eating with the family.  The grands had a blast playing with each other. Now it's full steam ahead for Christmas.  I've already purchased (or made) quite a few Christmas presents so I feel ahead of the game. 

I still plan to make quilting progress even if Christmas prep take up some time.  Let's look at last week's goals.  

11/22/2021

✅Make doll dress -- finished and given to Ellie

✅Trim and bind Dino quilt -- done! 

Quilt small quilt of mine -- started, but I didn't like the design or thread I chose so I'm starting over on it.

✅Keep making string blocks -- another 6 or so are done 

✅Embroider last t shirt for the grands -- done and given away. 

Finish clearing off right side of design wall -- didn't touch it! 

I'm repeating some items and adding a couple new ones for this week's goals.  

11/29/2021

Quilt and Bind small quilt of mine

Clear off design wall 

Finish blocks for Ombre log cabin 

Start new quilt 

Keep making string blocks 

Here are the last two Christmas shirts for the grands. 

This design is part of the Elegant Christmas 1 set from Designs by Juju.  There is a great sale on until Wed, 12/1 if you are looking for some new machine embroidery designs. 

This design is called Naughty and They Gnome It by Urban Threads. Another good sale is going on -- 60% off site wide until Tuesday, 11/30. This looks like a dense design but it really isn't.  

In case you are wondering, no, I don't get anything from sharing these sites.  I just like the designs I chose and wanted you to know where to find them in case you want to use them too! 

We didn't celebrate two of our grand's birthdays when they happened. So we brought our gifts over Thanksgiving day.  Here's the dress and purse I made for Ellie's AG doll.  I used the same fabric as the dress I made for Ellie this summer.

I'm pretty sure her favorite present was the doll table and chairs Pat made for her.  (hum, she's wearing her Christmas t shirt too.) 

Hopefully next week I'll have some more quilty things to share.  I've finished a quilt or two that I haven't shown yet since I've been skipping my normal weekend post. 

I'm linking up with my favorite early week linky parties. 

Oh Scrap

Monday Making

Design Wall Monday 

To Do Tuesday 

Are you a fan of the Outlander books?  A new one (Go Tell the Bees I Have Gone)  came out last Tuesday.  Surprise, surprise -- I reserved the audio book and I got it first.  Down side?  Um, it's 49hr and 27 minutes on Overdrive. (And 49:51 as an MP3.) There are 155 chapters, and I'm at 9.  EEEK! I had it on most of the day once I was in the studio.  It's grabbed my interest from the beginning.  Now to make sure I get it finished before it is due. The back up plan is I have the book on reserve too.

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 11 - 22 - 2021

Do you remember what happened on this date in 1963?  I was in junior high school that day and I remember it pretty vividly.  Our president was assassinated.  It's hard to realize that was almost 60 years ago. 

Not so vivid in my memory is what I should have been working on this past week.  Although, surprisingly I did get to check off most of the items. Here's last week's goals. 

11/15/2021

✅Quilt Jenny's quilt

✅Border friendship stars

✅Sew ombré blocks together — hum stated wrong, I’m still making the blocks and I did get 2 done

Clear off the right side of design wall — started but no where near finished

Figure out turquoise blocks — this one is on the far back burner 

✅Keep making string blocks — Can you say leader ender? 

Here's the friendship stars quilt.  The stars were made each month as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Because this is hanging over the ironing station you can't see the top row of light stars. This quilt makes me smile.  In the back of my head I'm trying to decide what I will do for the 2022 RSC.  The only thing I'm thinking so far is I want a larger block -- say 9" finished so I can use my Accuquilt Go Cube to cut the blocks. Time will tell. 

Now this week's goals. 

11/22/2021

Make doll dress

Trim and bind Dino quilt

Quilt small quilt of mine

Keep making string blocks

Embroider last t shirt for the grands* 

Finish clearing off right side of design wall 

*I embroider Christmas motifs on T shirts most years (along with Halloween and sometimes Valentine's Day.)  Notice it says last shirt. Yep, I've already finished 3 of the 4 shirts.  See Theo's and Ellie's below. 

This is Merry Rexmas from Urban Threads.  I think Theo is going to like that dinosaur. Are you an embroiderer?  Do you mix thread types in your stitch-outs?  I've got several different brands of thread and a mix of poly and rayon threads.  I generally go with the closest color. 

Hum, this didn't get done until early evening so this picture is not as bright as I wish it was.  This one is Feline Festive -- Christmas Present also from Urban Threads. I'll try to remember to share the last two later.  

I've been remiss in announcing my Stash Busting (or Enhancing) for October.  Weird that I haven't as I actually figured them in early November.  Nothing to shout about because I brought in more fabric than I used. But the out for the year number is pretty darn good still.

2021	Fabric In Month	Fabric In Year	Fabric Out  Month	Fabric Out Year	Total In or Out Year
Oct	18.00	105.250	11.25	123.625	18.375

 
I'm calling it done for this post.  I'm linking up with my normal parties. (Have you noticed I haven't gone back to link up To Do Tuesday for weeks??? I'll keep posting in hopes that one of these days I actually do it.

Oh Scrap!

Monday Making

Design Wall Monday

To Do Tuesday

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie 

 

Monday Meandering 11 - 15 - 2021

It has been a great week or two.  A week and a half ago Pat and I went down to our beach house in Nags Head.  He had some windows to replace and I was going to count silverware.(It's amazing how much silverware vanishes when tenants are at the house.)  And, we were going shopping.  I came down a day later than he did as I had things to do at home and I was going to visit Sharon after Nags Head.  

By Friday all the windows were done.  I'd pulled out my sewing machine and had stitched a bit. But our main activity was to get new furniture for the great room.  So off we went to a local furniture store that actually had furniture in stock. (Thank goodness!)  It didn't take us all that long to pick out a sofa, love seat, barrel chair, two end tables, and two new lamp shades.  It helps that there weren't a thousand choices and everything pretty much gave off the beachy feel. Everything was delivered the next day. (Our saleslady said that ordered furniture was scheduled out 14 months!) 

Our house allows dogs.  I started the dog quilt long before we owned the house. We decided it looked good with the previous furniture so it was finished and hung.  Not so much now.  I actually have a pattern and fabric picked out that might work with the new look.  Someday I might even make it. Heck I might even pull it out and see if it would work -- it has under the ocean theme! We've had a couple of mishaps with dogs and both times dogs pulled up berber style carpet through their crates. Our plan now is to change to a non-looped carpet and see if that protects it better. If we continue to have damage we might have to stop accepting dogs. We no longer have out own dogs. Time will tell. 

Lots of progress was made on the goals, but, not everything was done.  Here's the scoop.

11/8/2021

✅Enjoy sewing with Sharon

✅Finish sashing 16 patch stars

✅Border glorified 9 patch and oops friendship stars didn’t get bordered

✅Finish all the turquoise blocks and nope, not sewn together

✅Sew some string blocks

Sew more ombré log cabin blocks — nothing done on this either

Here's this week's list: 

11/15/2021

Quilt Jenny's quilt

Border friendship stars

Sew ombré blocks together

Clear off the right side of design wall 

Figure out turquoise blocks

Keep making string blocks

I was happy I worked on almost everything listed on the goals list.  As usual, Sharon and I had fun. I came home Thursday ready to sit around and not do all that much.  But by Saturday I was back working in the studio.  Sharon inspired me to clean up some of the mess on my cutting table.  (Of course, what I did was get an empty plastic bin and put lots of scraps in it.)  The fat quarters strewn about were put in my storage system mostly based on colors. 

Then I went back to work on my to do list. All the turquoise blocks were made but I ran into problems trying to figure out a layout.  Here's my first layout.  I had planned to alternate dark strips on the outside of the blocks with light strip blocks. 

Um, this didn't do anything for me.  I love the fabrics but they just don't work this way. I decided to see what it would look like in greyscale.  Hum...

Do you know about using grey scale? On my iPhone or Mac I can choose to make it black and white.  It really looks horrible without the color but does show what reads dark and what reads light. Of note is the one 2nd row, 1st block.  It's really light compared to the rest of them. I took a close look at the pattern (a Villa Rosa Designs postcard pattern called Voyager. Click on the link to see their version.) They didn't alternate light and dark blocks.  In fact most of the blocks are more medium to dark and are scattered around rather than placed purposely. So everything got moved again.

Oops, that really light one (and maybe the wrong color) sticks out still. This is better but the second row needs to be dispersed so the whole row doesn't look light.  My plan now is to make some decisions about placement and possibly changing some of the blocks that stick out.  Definitely the one that looks light pink. (It's really light purple and blue....) 

Here's the plan for the lightest block.  I've put an alternate fabric on the bottom left to get an idea.  I've already used one strip of this in the quilt so it will work and make this one blend in better.  I may end up doing a double swap because I'm not thrilled with how yellow green it looks in a sea of turquoise.  Nothing will happen really soon on this one.  But I've made forward progress.  

I'll keep you posted on this quilt although I might let it rest a bit before I get back to it.  There are always other quilts I can work on. 

This has been a long post so I'll finish off now and let you get back to your own sewing. I'm linking up to these parties. 

Oh Scrap! 

Monday Making

Design Wall Monday 

To Do Tuesday

That's it for me.  I'm so late getting this post written.  Hopefully I'll get back on my normal schedule soon.

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

 

   

Monday Meanderings 11 - 8 - 2021

Last week I was busy with non quilting stuff. We went down to the beach house to check on it and make some repairs. Although I did check off all my goals some were only partial completions. 

11/1/2021

✅Make the rest of the turquoise blocks; sew into top — more made but not all

✅Finish quilting Dinosaur quilt 

✅Sash the 16 patch stars — first step sashing done — see pic below

✅Make some string blocks 

✅Do a bit of shopping  I hit a small outlet mall

Here's one row of the 16 patch stars with the start of sashing. I’ll be working on the long sashing pieces next. Then I’ll either find a border or possibly use the blue as a small border.

11/8/2021

Enjoy sewing with Sharon

Finish sashing 16 patch stars

Border glorified 9 patch and friendship stars. See picture below. 

Finish all the turquoise blocks and sew together

Sew some string blocks

Sew more ombré log cabin blocks 

Two fun tops — Glorified 9 Patch and Friendship Stars. Yes I’m planning on using the same border fabric for both of these tops.  Why not, it looks terrific with both of them. 

I’ll be sewing with Sharon until Thursday morning when I’ll head home.  I  have several tops ready to be quilted. I wonder if I should have listed quilting a top or two?

This is short as I’m writing it on my IPad and it is very clunky compared to my laptop.  

Up next are my normal linky parties .

Oh Scrap

Monday Making

Design Wall Monday

Enjoy your surfing!

HappyQuilting All! Bonnie

Friday Finish

I’ve been trying to finish some smaller tops, especially at the end of the month when I need to show more finishes so I can count the fabric in my stashbusting statistics.  Here's the latest.

Some of blocks were from my FCQ E Quilter turn many years ago.  I made more blocks and added the plain yellow blocks to make it into a reasonable size. I really like this chunky churn dash block.  I tend to make each block as if it were a little quilt.  I coordinate the fabrics and often put something cute in the center. I used my favorite Fern Gully quilting design on it.  I like how it gives texture but doesn’t really conflict with the quilt. 

Here’s the back. You can really see the texture that Fern Gully makes. 

Hindsight says I should have put the extra solid fabric on the bottom since  I didn’t have quite enough of the tree fabric.  I’m tickled to be finished with this little lap quilt.  I’ll donate to Virginia Star quilt guild. My guess is it will go to seniors.  Hum, interesting concept of  a senior making a quilt for a senior.  

I’ve been working on a bunch of different projects over the last few days.  It means a lot is getting done but not any finishes yet.  Hopefully I’ll have something to show on my next blog.

I’m linking to these link parties:

Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?

Finished or Not Friday

Beauties Pageant

Have fun surfing the Internet. There are so many wonderful blogs with lots of great ideas. 

Happy quilting all. Bonnie