Monday Meanderings 1 - 9 - 2023

Have you recovered from Christmas and New Years?  Have the decorations been stored until next December or do you leave some snow decorations out?  At our house Christmas quilts on the walls change over to snowman quilts and a bunch of snowmen I have made or purchased over the years come out. These will stay out until February when I'll switch to my Valentine's Day quilts.  The smaller snowmen may stay out but they'll probably be put away mid February.  

I've spent a bit of time deciding what UFOs I want to work on, figuring out how many tops I need to think about quilting, and mentally figuring out a new things I'd really like to get done this year.  From that thinking I've come up with 12 UFOs I'd like to move forward or, even better, finish.  One of the projects I've added to my UFO list is making a tee shirt quilt for our son.  He gave me 2 bags of shirts and said go for it.  He won't even identify the ones he'd like me to use and, believe me, he gave me a lot of them.  I'm looking forward to making progress on all 12 "UFOs."  In the end I'll have some projects that get completely done and some just get moved forward.  It's all good. 

Now, it's time to look at how I did on my first set of goals in the new year.

1/2/2023

✅Sew Let’s Face It mystery together — Center part done.Waiting to decide about the border(s).

✅Keep working on the border of Talking Turkey — done - sent to the “to-be-quilted closet.

✅Finish APQ UFO Challenge Sheet and start on the UFO for January — Done! 

✅Make List of Tops ready to quilt — Done! 

Start on the 2023 Quilting Life — holding off to come up with fabric.

I feel I did a good job with this past week's list.  I'm still up in the air about the fabrics for Sherri's mystery quilt.  Last year I used patriotic fabrics so I could make another veteran's quilt.  I'm still playing with alternate colors but I may just stick with red, white and blue. 

Here's my January UFO project.  I started this "Moose" quilt a while ago but got frustrated.  I had a yard or two of moose in the snow fabric. I thought it would be easy to cut them into scenes and add some go with fabrics and call it done. Um, no. It wasn't easy at all. I realized there were very few scenes of the moose, just a lot of repeated scenes. So some will be duplicated.  Here are the blocks that made the cut once I started working on the project again. 

Actually, only 2 of the pictures had some blue go-with fabric around them when I pulled them out. But I did start adding more blue surrounds. Part of my problem is I don't have a lot of the blue fabric.  Here's where I left it this evening.  I've made a few decisions. 

And then I ran out of the blue. It dawned on me I could put the center column of pictures up against each other and I would have some easy sashing. That may not work since the blocks are differing widths.   I need to do some thinking on fillers around the smaller pictures. I have hunks of brown and black fabric.  And some blue solids that I can use.  Stay tuned while I try to figure this out. 

Here's this week's goal list.

1/9/2023

Continue with RSC blocks in blue

Work on January UFO Challenge — Moose quilt

Work on Spider Web blocks — sew blocks into “foursys”. Decide how many more blocks are needed and make them

Spend 15 minutes a day cleaning up in the studio

I have been cogitating on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt for this year. I wanted to do something with strings so I checked two of my books on string quilting.  I knew I didn't want labor intensive blocks. I was up for something different.  I finally came up with strings in drunkard's path blocks.  I credit the book A New Spin on Drunkard's Path by John Kubiniec for the idea. I hope to make circles with my fabric strings going in differing directions. Here's two layouts from the red string samples. 

One possible layout.  

I may use this layout if I can figure how I can cut the colored part so the strings go perpendicular to the bottom left.  I am making the blue strings now.  I'll have to read John's book to see how I can get all four blocks going different directions. I am using my Drunkard Path dies from AccuQuilt that will give me a 9" finished group of 4 blocks.  I've got a few cut out in blue and I'll be able to play with them before I sew them together. I may need to turn the string sections before I put them on the die to cut.  I'll keep you informed. 

That's it for me today.  I'm linking up with my regular Linky parties and one new to me, Monday Musing at Song Bird Designs. 

Oh Scrap! 

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings

To Do Tuesday 

I noticed that last week I didn't get everything linked up correctly. I thought I had changed my blog and linked up at each of the blogs.  Who knows what happened.  I'll pay more attention this week.  

Please take a minute to check out my post about Mysteries and Sew Alongs.  Check the tab above that links to the post from Jan 3rd.  I'll be posting about Mysteries and Sew Alongs at the beginning of every month. If I get additional events I've missed I'll try to post again with add ons.  Please feel free to let me know of any that I have missed although I tend to post only upcoming events.  I hope you enjoy finding a mystery or sew along that really speaks to you. 

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie