Monday Meanderings -- 8 - 5 - 2024

What a week I had. I'm calling it the week of fabric acquisition.  Yea, I really needed more fabric.  Don't you?  I've been trying to not go wild buying fabric so I tend to just buy backing fabric. But there was a quilter's estate sale on Friday and I decided to go with a friend, chauffeured by Pat.  More about it later... 

Here's what I got done on my goals. 

7/29/24

✅Quilt one of my quilts — done!

✅Remove borders and replace with smaller borders of Forest Animals Easy Attic Windows quilt — done. 

✅Start another knit hat — started. 

✅Make RSC blocks for July and ✅ FCQ Equilter blocks — Most RSC blocks are done, all the FCQ Equilter blocks are ready to mail, and the last RSC block for July is ready to sew. 

Make more Kid’s snowball blocks, make into top as part of UFO Challenge — 9 blocks are ready to sew but nothing else was completed. 

Here are the snowball blocks that I am starting with: 

I realized that most of them are animals and I decided to pull as many animal prints I could find to go with them. Below are 9 more blocks ready to sew. I'll be sewing them this week. I may decide to sash them.  What do you think? Do you sash snowball blocks? I will probably need more than the ones I've planned to get it to a decent size for a kid.  Wait a minute... there are way more cat fabrics than dog fabric. I may have to find some more doggy fabric to use! 

These pieces are ready to sew into my RSC bowties.  Orange for August. And, two of these oranges are from the fabric acquisition trip! 

I thought I would show all of the sea glass blocks I finished this week with the group from last week.  I'm hoping these work with the ones others send. I think most of the aqua/turquoise ones will work but some of the gold ones may be too dark.  

Next week I'm trying to finish all of these. 

8/5/24

Bind Melodic Mystery

Prep magenta backing

Quilt and bind one of my quilts

Sew snowball blocks then evaluate whether more blocks are needed

Keep working on seaside top

So, about that fabric acquisition trip... 

This was the fabric available the second day.  (I borrowed this pic from a guild email, so thanks either Boni or Nancy T, and Bea who sent it out to the guild.) My gang made it fairly early on the first day. I had planned what I was looking for: backings, yellow, and orange.  I was able to get 2 pieces big enough for backing, and a few yellows and orange.  But I went a bit crazy grabbing dog fabrics, Laurel Burch pieces, an Eric Carle piece, and a patriotic snowmen panel.  Here are some pics: 

Mostly dog fabrics.

Yellows, oranges and Laurel Burch fabrics.

Blue for a backing and Patriotic Santa panel.

My fabric weighed in at 5 pounds -- $3.00 a pound = $15 for all the fabric shown. I measured it all and it came to approximately 19 yards. I think they rounded down when figuring the price. I might have found more if I realized I wasn't spending all that much!  On the other hand, I'm not sure where I'm going to store all of this new stuff. 

And just because I didn't find a lot of backing fabric pieces I hit up another good sale at JoAnns.  I think both of these fabrics came out about $4.50 a yard not including tax. The magenta will be a backing and the green stripe will be the binding on my Melodic Mystery quilt. They were both Fabric Traditions products. I've already cut the green for the binding and hope to get it on this week. 

As I was prepping my 15 Minutes of Stitching, I realized I had to make a decision about my day shopping Friday. Was that part of my stitching concept?  Or was I going to stick with either stitching of working with my fabric?  I decided to go with the 2nd idea -- I need to be working in my studio or actually stitching on something.  So I missed one of the stitching days this week. But I'm really pleased with how much I'm working in my studio and/or stitching. (I really need to "do the dishes" as Bonnie Hunter says. That means dealing with the bits and pieces left over from cutting quilts or blocks out.)

W/ending 8/4 — 217 days in to 2024. 

• 15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
• 15 minute days/July = 31/31days
• 15 minute days/Aug = 3/4 days
• 15 minute days/2024 = 208/217 days
• Success rate = 95.8% 

I'm linking up with my regular parties: Stitching Stuff, Oh Scrap, Design Wall Monday, and Monday Musings.

That's it for me.  I'm looking forward to a cooler week and lots of stitching time. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie