Monday Meanderings -- November 21, 2022

Did you have a great week last week?  I felt like I made some very good progress.  Today I'll share my goals for last week and this coming week along with my fabric use statistics for October. (I didn't realize I hadn't figured them or share them until I was talking with my daughter today.)

It was a pretty good week for making forward progress on my projects. I love seeing all those check marks.  I didn't get everything on each item done but I definitely made progress. I'm particularly happy with the ornament progress.  I was almost done with one 1. Now 2 are done, one has had good progress, and the last one is ready to be cut out. Not a bad week for sure. 

11/14/22

✅Finish trimming Melodic Mystery HST and work on November clue - made progress on both but have more to finish on both clues. 

✅Make Nov BOM from Quilting Life, and blocks for FCQ Equilters — done! You can see the FCQ Equilter block here. 

✅Work on grands’ ornaments — 2 of 4 are completely done

✅Halloween quilt as time permits — center section done; started sewing  border together.

✅Rehearsal and ✅concert for Heritage Singers -- one concert done, 2 more for Spotsylvanians to go.

This week with Thanksgiving Day will mean I have less quilting time.  But that's ok.  I'll focus on the Christmas ornaments and getting a top finished  and the rest will be done as time permits. Here's the list. 

11/21/22

Border r,w,b quilt

Quilt and bind r,w,b quilt 

Keep working on next ornament

Enjoy Thanksgiving 

Finish trimming clue 4 and sewing and trimming the rest of Clue 5

Work on Halloween quilt as time permits

The only picture I took was of the November block from A Quilting Life Block of the Month 2022. I was tickled that I could use a lot of my precut 2.5" squares.  I'm looking forward to the last block although I probably won't put it together until next year some time. I'm pretty sure I'll do it next year if Sherri plans to do it again. 

Here's my stats for October. Whoop, Whoop! It was a very good month. I only bought one fat quarter and won several at retreat. On the other hand I used a lot of fabric (for me.) Hopefully I'll get at least one quilt done in November. 

2022	Fabric In Month	Fabric In Year	Fabric Out  Month	Fabric Out Year	Total In or Out Year
Oct	1.25	92.25	10.5	114.25	22

I've been helping a friend get rid of her quilting supplies as she isn't able to quilt anymore.  I am keeping some of her notions but I'm also going to make some available to members of my guild.  After seeing all of her supplies I realize I have way too much also but I'm not ready to go wild moving things out.  I will be looking at my stuff to see what I could move out so someone else can use those notions.  Below was a real surprise to me.  Not that I had the snaps (I have enough for years since I don't use them often) but the cost of the them from years ago. 

See that price tag? It says 59¢. If I remember correctly Longs was a drug store but I don't remember if it was in Virginia or California. I must have something like 5 to 10 cards like this (mostly full.)  Do you have old sewing notions hanging around?  I even have a darning egg.  I like having it but I doubt I'll ever use it. How about you? Do you use any of your "antique" supplies?  I still use a pair of black scissors that I was told was used by medics in World War II. I can't think of any others but I'm sure I do have other treasures from either my mother or my grandmother -- they both sewed. 

I'm linking up with my normal Linky parties.  I hope you have some time this week to surf the web and see what people are making.  

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday 

To Do Tuesday 

Midweek Makers 

Wednesday Wait Loss  

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 10 - 8 - 2018

What a great week last week was! There were a few glitches -- our road was being top sealed so I couldn't drive down the street -- all cars had to be parked on other streets. (YUCK!)  I loaded up my car with everything except my sewing machine and parked it at a friend's house down the street.  Luckily she wasn't that far away.  In the morning I rolled my sewing machine down and packed it in and left.  But coming home wasn't as nice.  The street is still undrivable so I had to schlep suitcase, projects box, cooler, etc farther up the street.  I waited til Pat made it home before I got some of the stuff.  He was happy he had a weekend away starting Friday morning.  But it is foggy and humid this am so I doubt we'll be allowed to drive on it for awhile longer. Ick. 

Retreat was wonderful, as usual.  I have such a good time with these gals.  It dawned on me yesterday that a retreat is like a giant slumber party except you get to quilt as much as you want and you can go to bed (in a bed) whenever you want.  The only downside of this particular location is the food is very much institutional and it seems to me it is getting worse.  I figure if I don't like the dinner next year I can always go out and get dinner at a nearby restaurant. 

So here are the results from retreat: 

If you look at this picture I show my plan for the blocks with the twist pieces.  It seemed to take me forever to sew the pieces on the blocks.  Finally I decided to do all the blocks twisting the same way at the same time.  That helped speed it up until I went to lay them out.  

I had a lot of duplicates of the upper left block and the various colored monkey blocks.  So I was trying to make sure duplicate blocks weren't next to each other as well as the twist fabrics not being next to the same fabric.  I'm pretty sure I drove myself crazy trying to do that because half the blocks leaned right while the other half leaned left and I had to think about that too.  

In the end I made some decisions and just sewed it together.  The embroidery wasn't very flat (just look at that cute parrot).  I needed to use a heavier stabilizer or an additional piece.  But I'm fairly confident it will not look so "gathered" once it is quilted. 

I didn't get any pictures of the friendship star blocks I was working on.  I ran out of the background fabrics when I was cutting so I could only sew 15 or so blocks. 

Retreat had a monkey theme this year so someone had gathered a bunch of sock monkey fabric and offered us kits to make monkey wrench blocks.  They were gathered up to be made into a baby quilt for the NICU we support. Plus there were prizes for two of the finishers. 

I also did a little retail therapy.  I'll try to remember to take a picture of what I added to my stash.  My third project wasn't very big but I did get some of it done.  I was using the book Sew Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Mary Hertel to make two blocks for a Christmas wallhanging.  Except, I hadn't thought about what background fabric I wanted to use so the blocks aren't finished yet. 

The block below is the block of the month lottery block for Faithful Circle Quilters.  Sharon and I both made one so MaryBeth could take them back up to Maryland for the drawing. (Yes, this retreat was actually for the Powhatan group but in the past they haven't been able to fill all the spots so when the call went out for more people I let my buddies in Maryland know and they were thrilled to come.) It is called Electrify.  Scroll to page 4 of this link for directions. (FCQ has a totally open web site.  If you noticed the info below the block directions -- there is a mystery quilt going on.  I think it started in September so you can go check that out if you like mystery quilts.) 

My goals were met somewhat.  I only really finished the one top but several others are well on the way to being finished. 

October 1, 2018

Finish cutting 2 projects - pirates and friendship star√

Embroider 4 pirate blocks√

Figure out a 3rd project√ kind of 

Knit on Theo’s sweater (maybe start the body over….) √ I’m unknitting but did make progress on that

Finish sock um, nope, didn’t do that

Attend retreat!!! YEA√√

Finish pirate top√, friendship star√ (as much as I had parts for)  and one more project! √ does the block I made count?

And this week I'm not planning on sewing as much.  

October 8, 2018

Theo’s sweater — finish taking off rows & then start knitting using the correct info!

Continue cutting out pieces from Wacky Family Portrait, lay out pieces and fuse in place 

Load small quilt on Ruthie and quilt it! 

Put everything away from retreat

Figure out additional fabric for friendship stars

On to some more pictures from our Canadian trip.  These are all from the same area as the umbrella's I showed here.  In fact the gates were behind me as I took pictures of the murals.  This mural depicts some of the history and culture of Quebec City.  And, yes, it is quite the tourist destination.  I didn't have much time so I just took the pictures with tourists. 

Left and center mural sections.

Right mural section.  It almost looks like someone is standing on the street talking to the men on the balcony. (Wait, when I enlarge this page the "someone" on the street looks more like a giant crow???!)

Left mural section. The bottom section looks very modern.

Because I was shooting over the heads of tourists I  missed the steps which depicting the stairs between upper and lower town.

Here's an overall view of the mural with tourists in front. If I'd had the time I could have spent much more time looking at the murals. To read more about them with much better photos visit Amusing Planet. 

I'll continue to add pictures from our Canadian trip each posting until I've shown all the major spots we enjoyed.  I'm linking up with my regular Monday linky parties: Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, and Moving It Forward. 

I'm looking forward to a calmer week.  I may not get as much quilting done but I will be relaxing after two pretty busy weeks! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie

UFO's -- Slowly Finishing a BOM

Do you remember A Tisket, A Tasket from Bunny Hill Designs? It started life as a free Block of the Month in 2009.  I decided to do the appliqué version of it.  I will admit to starting several months late -- and I never caught up.  My blocks have been languishing in the UFO pile for quite a while.  Every once and a while I would take them out sew a little bit and then put them back away.  

Recently I've been trying to finish some blocks.  4 blocks were totally done, 7 blocks were in progress and one wasn't started.  After my session the other night I've got 8 blocks done, 3 needing some embroidery or buttons, and the last one is fused, ready for me to cut out and prep the appliqué pieces.  In other words, I'm making progress.  Here are some of the blocks I was working on Wednesday night. 

Three more blocks added to the finished pile.

And here's one I am still working on. 

Generally I was writing what still needed to be done on the top of the pattern sheet but this one had a long list of items to do so I listed them on a post it note.  I still need to embroider some words above the basket.  Happily, I found my bias bars today so I can make the handle for the last block.  (There are still quite a few odd items I haven't found after the move into the new studio. I still have a couple of boxes and bags of stuff stashed away.  One of these days I'll go through them and find places for them or get rid of them.) 

Richmond area has been hit with 2 snow storms -- last Tuesday 1/21 and this week, Tue. 1/28.  We weren't originally forecasted for any snow this week and we ended up with about 4" in the back yard.  The biggest issue with snow is the dogs won't go outside while either a) it's actually snowing or b) the deck has snow on it.  Usually by the day after they are happy to go play in the snow.  Go figure.  A long term forecast calls for 3 - 6" next week and 1 to 2 FEET on Feb. 8 and 9th.  WHAT?  Feet of snow in Richmond?  I'll keep you posted.  And, I'll make sure I have plenty of projects to work on! 

Here's the thermometer for this morning at 7:15 or so when we left for our workout at the Y. That is 5.0 -- not 50.  Yikes.  No wonder I was cold overnight.  Tonight is suppose to be much warmer -- 16º.   

I sewed the binding on the front side of the stained glass quilt and took the brown and blue quilt off Ruthie today.  Tomorrow I'll be sewing the binding on the brown and blue and then sewing all that binding down.  Oh fun.  But I am looking forward to a very good month of fabric usage.  

Happy Quilting All! 

Machine Applique -- Give it a Try

One of the things I get to do for my local quilt guild is to choose a block for the block of the month.

The next one for Mountain Laurel Quilters is a Halloween theme -- 8" finished. Today I made a little machine appliqued witch as an example. Here's how I did it. I'm no artist so I went on the Internet to find a witch I could machine applique. She's doable -- not a whole lot of lines but she's too big. So I reduced her... it's hard to see but I wrote 85% on the smaller one. I generally write down the size I reduce or enlarge on the copy.

Next I traced the witch pieces on fusible web. I began picking my fabrics for the different pieces. Luckily for me it was easy to pick fabrics for my little witch. After ironing them on to the fabric I put the witch together on a piece of mylar so when she gets put together all I have to do is iron her on as a whole, rather than pieces at a time.

Because the witch was all together I decided to audition various background fabrics. Here's a background -- purple on purple print.

Then I tried a blued purple solid. It washes out the green face.

I tried it on a darker purple. I was happy with this one. Just an aside -- this fabric is from the very first large quilt I made. It was the backing to a Quilt in a Day, Log Cabin. I made it in 1982 during a class with Eleanor Burns.

Here she is being ironed down. Silly me, I forgot to peel the paper off the top of her hat.

Then I put a piece of stabilizer under neath it before I machine applique the pieces down.

Here she is with a tiny zig zag stitch over the pieces. Usually I do a tight zig zag on machine applique but this time I wanted less weight from the threads. She still needs her face which I will probably embroider on her. Notice the fringe on the dress -- the fabric was frayed and before I cut it I decided I would use it on the dress.

Here she is ready to trim down the background fabric and add her face. We'll see what she inspires in the guild members.

Happy quilting all!