Monday Meandering 10 - 30 - 2023

 Good bye October! Hello November. Except we've been having summer weather here. It was in the 80s over the last few days. On Halloween the 80s give way to the low 50s. Yikes. Back to sweater weather. 

We had the two younger grands overnight Saturday.  We took them on a Ghost Walk in downtown Fredericksburg.  I'm not sure how much they got out of it because it was more about historic people (now ghosts.) We learned that Clara Barton was working in F-Burg during the Civil War.  She treated both Union and Confederate soldiers from a local church.  After the tour we went to a restaurant for pizza. And then stopped for Frostys on the way home.  We were really tired but had a great time. 

Needless to say Pat and I were pretty tired today.  I didn't do all that much on my quilting.  I did wash some fabric and then did some ironing. I also trimmed a quilt but didn't do anything about the binding. Overall I felt I did really well on my goals this week though. 

10/23/23

✅Sew some rows of Ombre Log Cabin together -  6 out of 13 diagonal rows are together

✅Finish trimming units and ✅make blocks for Malted Mystery - done! 

✅Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments - making weekly progress 

✅Continue sewing Christmas present quilt together - 3 long columns done 

✅Have fun with grands this weekend - we enjoyed it and they seemed to have fun too although they kept saying it wasn't scary at all.

I finally finished all the trimming and block making for the Malted Mystery. I'm ready for the November clue. 

Here's what I'll be working on this week. Hopefully I can get all these things done.

10/30/23

Finish 3 Flower Song blocks

Sew more ombré log cabin rows together 

Continue on Christmas present quilt 

Sew on ornaments 

Maybe quilt a little quilt? 

When I was figuring out this week's goals list I decided to look back at previous goals to see if there was one I could add. I like to have a variety of projects to keep me interested.  So I added the Flower Song blocks.  We'll see how I do. 

I'm sending several Happy Blocks to Cynthia who blogs at Oh Scrap!  She is collecting blocks and making compassion quilts. The Happy Blocks quilts will be going to kids.  You can find the directions here. 

We've added some more color to outside of our house.  We couldn't get any mums last week so enjoy our marigolds and pumpkins. (Hum, I wonder if they will live through the cold weather this week!) 

Yep, small pumpkins -- we waited too long. Oh well. Hopefully we buy a plant and few pumpkins earlier. 

The bannister on the steps down is new too.  We don't understand why it wasn't included with the house originally.  We live in a 55+ community.  There are a lot of houses that did not have bannisters on their front steps.  

I hope you can spend some time surfing the Web by checking out these Linky Parties. I hope to have some time to do some surfing too. 

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musing 

Sew and Tell 

I leave you with what I noticed across from our parking place when we were going to work out last week. EEEK! 

Happy Halloween All! 

Happy Quilting.  Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 10 - 23 - 2023

Yikes! Our temps are suppose to go into the high 30s tonight. I guess I can finally say that it feels like fall.  It has been a busy week but I also got a lot of quilty stuff done.  

Here's my goal list from last week. 

10/16/23

✅Plan the Christmas present quilt and start sewing it together — I actually got some sewing done on this one -- no more planning, just sewing. 

✅Continue trimming units and making blocks for the Malted Mystery — not finished yet.

✅Bind a quilt or two — one done, one 3/4s done.

✅Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments — 3 wool ornaments have the main designs sewn on.  Once the 4th one has the elements sewn on, it’ll be time for details.  

👎🏼Straighten up the cutting table (I may forget this one!)  I keep working on this but I’ve spread too much out across the front. Sigh  — nothing done — or at least I don’t remember putting anything away! 

✅Make a couple of placemats — 4 done and turned in. 

✅Guild meeting 10/18/23 & ✅World Singing Day 10/21/23.— I had fun at both events. 

I can't share many of the pictures as they are Christmas gifts. But I can share some more placemats. I turned these 4 in to the guild at the meeting last week. All were done as quilt as you go.  The rose one used Pat Sloan's String Bean block. The Pinwheel was an orphan block that worked pretty well as a placemat.  I quilted the block on my domestic machine and then added the side pieces to make it a bit larger. 

This space one was started with an odd size in the middle and I added strips log cabin style. (Different sizes but very similar style to the String Bean mat.) My favorite is the string mat.  It took a bit more time too. I started in the bottom right corner with a triangle and added various size strips as I went along.  It was a bit time consuming but when all the strips were sewn in place all I had to do was trim and bind it.  I'll probably do this style again as it helps use up some of the strings I have hanging around. 

Below is the beginning of the space mat. I didn't crop the picture very tightly so you can see the batting, backing and, oops, my wool mat in the background.  I used the sew and flip method to create the placemat on the batting and backing. Once I get to the edge of the batting, I cut strips with widths that would finish off the front so it matched the batting. (I carefully trimmed the front so no extra was hanging over.) Then I turned under about a 1/4" of the backing and turned that over the edge to the front to form a binding. I machine stitched around the placemat and that was it.    

On the string mat I actually had a piece of binding made that matched and was big enough so I applied regular binding to the red mat.  I think when I do more string mats I might not put the backing on while I do the sew and flip.  It would make the back look a little neater even though I would need to add some in-the-ditch quilting stitches to hold the front to the back.

At the guild meeting I turned in 3 quilts for donating to various organizations we as a guild contribute to:

Baby quilt will go to the NICU at one of our local hospitals. 

Granny Squares Quilt 

This quilt was made from blocks from the FCQ Equilters for my turn in 2018. I know I started making it sometime in 2019. You can visit past pictures of it here, and here.  I still have more blocks from this group. And, I honestly think I made another quilt with some of these blocks and donated it. (I don't keep a record what I donate but I should! Do you record your donation quilts? Or keep an ongoing record of quilts made?) 

I call this quilt the Big Pinwheel Quilt. The blocks started as large flying geese blocks for a retreat block drawing. Except I used homespuns and cottons. Oops. I was suppose to use batiks. I found the flying geese blocks too big so cut them in half and made pinwheels. Worked great. 

Granny Squares and Pinwheel quilts will be going to Valor Ranch.  (Read more about their work with wounded veterans and their families.) 

I'm hoping to get the following things worked on this week. 

10/23/23

Finish trimming units and make blocks for Malted Mystery

Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments

Continue sewing Christmas present quilt together

Sew some rows from Ombré log cabin together

Have fun with grands this weekend

Finish binding two quilts

Phew.  It's getting late and I need to get some sleep before another busy week starts.  Here's my favorite Linky parties. I hope you can check them out. 

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musing

Sew and Tell

To Do Tuesday 

I hope you all have a wonderfully quilty week. 

Happy Quilting. Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 10 - 16 - 2023M

Last week was really a surprise to me.  Usually after 5 days of retreating I'm not all that interested in piecing or quilting. I'm ready to take it easy, read a book or three, and hang out with friends. Um, that did not happen. Sunday I was finishing a quilt and putting away my supplies from retreat.  Then my normal Monday: work out early in the am, breakfast, shower, go to the neighborhood stitching group and attend choral rehearsal.  Tuesday looked like it would be a great day to relax and read and maybe get a little quilting done.  Except. I really wanted to be quilting, so I did. And we got notice that someone at rehearsal had just tested positive for Covid. UGH. Hubby sat next to him so he maintained some separation: eating across the room from each other, wearing masks if we went out, sleeping in separate rooms. And, testing for Covid. I was still hoping that no one brought Covid to retreat. Luckily we've both tested negative every time we tested. 

So this week I spent a lot of time in my studio working on lots of different projects but not all the items on my list were completed.  Let's take a look.

10/9/23

✅Sew the setting triangles on Ombre Log Cabin — Setting triangles on; ready to sew rows together but it’s being retired for a while. Sorry, no picture. 

Plan the Christmas present quilt and start sewing it together — oops no progress on this one. 

✅Quilt a couple of small quilts — 2 small ones done and a customer quilt. See below for a pic. 

✅Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments — all are prepped for stitching. 2 have been started. 

This is my smaller version of Pat Sloan's Traffic Jam.  Quilting is done, waiting on binding. It's about 36" square. Quilt design is Pipe Line and came with my long arm. You can just see the fun marbleized backing fabric I used at the top of the picture.  I haven't decided on binding but it's on my list for this week. 

Quilter Carol brought me this very cool Steam Punk Halloween top to be quilted.  She had Steam Punk fabrics and made her own design.  Great job Carol! 

Sometimes it's really fun to find the right quilting design and see how it progresses on a quilt.  This was one of those times.  She chose Spider Web from My Creative Stitches. See below for a close up. ⬇️ Carol was also brave enough to choose orange thread. It looked great! 

Sharon and I FaceTimed Saturday afternoon to work on the next clue for Malted Mystery -- something I didn't know we'd be doing this week.  Neither of us finished everything even working for 3.5 hours! I prepared all of the pieces for the flying geese in advance and I was able to get all of them sewn, cut and ironed. I still need to trim those down to the correct size. There were also 8 blocks that needed to be made. Sharon focused on the 8 blocks and completed all of them.  I completed 2 of them.  But I still haven't trimmed all of the 2.25" squares from last month's clue that were needed so I'll be working on that and then finishing the blocks interspersed with trimming the flying geese . We have until November to get all of these done.

I've packed a lot of goals into this week although I may not succeed as there is a lot of other things going on. 

10/16/23

Plan the Christmas present quilt and start sewing it together

Continue trimming units and making blocks for the Malted Mystery

Bind a quilt or two

Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments

Straighten up the cutting table (I may forget this one!) 

Make a couple of placemats 

Guild meeting 10/18/23 and World Singing Day 10/21/2023 

One of the things I worked on today was making a placemat using Pat Sloan's String Bean pattern. (Here's the link to the measurements and here's a link to directions to make this log cabin block.) I decided I could actually use the quilt as you go method for the placemat. This one is my test run which actually turned out well.  I'm going to make more over the next few days so that I can take them to the guild meeting this week. 

The guild is collecting all sorts of place mats to give away at the end of the year. I thought this Christmas fabric looked good as the center. Next I'm trying a kid's novelty fabric but I'll have to come up with my own measurements as I don't have a piece the right size.  But the system worked really well. I think it takes longer to pick the fabric and cut out the pieces then it takes to make the placemat! 

October and November is my turn to receive blocks from Faithful Circle Quilters Equilters. I showed my block here. It's a block from Mary Quilts. Click here to see her instructions. Sharon and Pat W were over achievers. Sharon made hers during the retreat and "showered" me with them when she was done. 

Here are my, Pat W's and Sharon's blocks together. These are going to make great quilts for a variety of people.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the gang sending theirs.  (On the other hand I still have untouched blocks from last year, and several leftover blocks from previous years. EEP!) I have to say I was surprised with the yellow and blue blocks but don't they make a great POP of color? It'll be fun to receive more of these. 

That's it. You know the drill. Please visit these Linky parties to see what quilters are working on this week. 

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musing 

Sew & Tell

To Do Tuesday*

*I'm hoping I remember to link to this one -- I seem to miss it more often than I remember to link up. Sigh. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings - 10 - 9 - 2023

It was an epic retreat week.  I had a ton of fun. It was wonderful seeing old friends and making new friends. But in terms of getting quilts done -- it wasn't great for me. More about that later.  Here's what I had on my to do list. 

10/2/23

✅Attend the Country Piecemakers retreat — lots of fun. 

Put Ombre Log Cabin top together— quilt was too big for space available.

Finish Flower Song blocks and put the top together — Made one block but didn’t get the other three blocks sewn nor put the quilt together. 

✅Make Happy blocks for Cynthia — I made them as one of my leader ender projects. 

✅Make Wiggle Time  top — Finished! But boy was it a challenge. Read about the challenge below.

✅Make Snoopy top  — Finished it -- but the last border was done at home Saturday. 

I can't say I enjoyed making this quilt, Wiggle Time. But it is all my own fault. Even though the directions clearly said don't use directional fabric until you understand how the pieces fit in the quilt, I used two directional fabrics. But my bigger mistake was using the wrong size of strip at the beginning and cutting the pieces apart before I realized my mistake. Directions called for the smaller strip of background fabric to be sewn to the strips of wiggle fabrics. Oops.  For some unknown reason I used the larger strips. And then I kept making mistakes sewing pieces together.  For every time I sewed pieces together correctly, I sewed at least one piece, if not more, incorrectly.  Yep, lots of seam ripping.  In the end, I did figure out how to make the blocks look like the pattern. Although my blocks are not sewn the way the pattern showed, I did get all the directional pieces in correctly and I finished the top.  

I plan to make another Wiggle Time but I will follow the original directions scrupulously.  I actually already have the fabric but I won't be starting it for a while. Wiggle Time is a pattern by Cynthia Brunz and can be purchased here.  Her directions were easy to follow if I had paid attention. Might I say I was being really spacey when I tried to make this quilt?  I'll let you know how it goes when I make my second Wiggle Time quilt. 

Remember the lost quilt package?  I got those pieces out and figured out a layout with help from Sharon.  I was able to get it almost finished. I had the yellow small border on before the end of the retreat.  On Saturday I was able to put the dark blue border on. Luckily there was little ripping out on this quilt.  

I can't tell you when I got the little Snoopy and Charlie Brown squares but I was happy to put them into a quilt.  This will be going to a NICU once it is quilted. 

Remember the secret project?  Sharon and I made a little "gifty" to give to each of the retreaters.  At one of her guild events she made a this little wallet. Super easy.  So we decided to make one for each retreater. Here are my 15 ready to be finished purses. (oops, that ironing board cover does not look all that good as a background for the photo.) The bigger side is folded over first and then smaller one is folded over. The edges are top stitched to hold it all together. I also top stitched the top edges of the folds to give them a little more body. 

So, the funniest thing is one of the retreat projects was making this very purse. The retreat planners had found the same pattern on the web and provided it and supplies for everyone to make.  Luckily, we gave ours out before the project was presented.  

There were three retreat projects. I chose not to make the wallet again. But I did make the other two. One was a block holder. I forgot to take a picture of it but I'll try to share a pic of mine next week.  The other project was making a paper pieced star block for a quilt. Here's mine. From what I could find on the Internet it is called Mills and Stars although I thought it was called Twinkle Stars. 

When I got home from retreat I was exhausted. (It didn't help that the retreat was a 4 hour drive from home.) Most times after a retreat I don't feel like doing any sewing or quilting. But Saturday morning I went to my studio and started unpacking and putting my supplies away. I pulled out the Snoopy quilt and added the last border so it is ready to be quilted once I figure out a backing.  

Then Sunday morning I pulled out a top from the to-be-quilted closet. After making the backing I was able to get the top quilted.  Here's the end result. I used Mermaid Fingers quilting design. 

It still needs to be bound but one more top will soon be a quilt. I've got quite a few tops with backings ready to be quilted. I'm hoping I can get several more done this month.  

My plans for the coming week are less involved but I'm hoping to move a couple of projects ahead. 

10/9/23

Sew the setting triangles on Ombre Log Cabin

Plan the Christmas present quilt 

Quilt a couple of small quilts (or at least one!) 

Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments

That's it for today.  Check out the following sites to find lots of links to bloggers across the Internet. 

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musing 

Sew and Tell

To Do Tuesday

  

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie