Monday Meandering 5 - 4 - 2020

Welcome May!  The gardens are gorgeous as we take our walks.  And, the lawns have greened up and have needed mowing twice a week this week. Staying home worked for me this week.  I was successful on two of my goals.  Especially quilting the huge quilt.  Here's a peek at what I got done.  

First I finished making pinwheel blocks and got them sewn together in to a top.  Unfortunately the top has been put in the closet to be quilted after I get a backing for it.  Eventually it will be donated as a Quilt of Valor. 

 My biggest finish was the quilting on the king size quilt for the local guild. I won't be able to show the whole quilt until later.  But here's one of the blocks. 

Actually, that's the only two things I got completed on my list, but I was so happy to finish the quilting.  It wasn't on the list, but I once again started working on a hand quilting project.  Talk about a UFO!  I started this quilt on a mystery quilt weekend in 1995 (or so.) I've been hand quilting it for years. (Or maybe not quilting so much as letting it sit around a lot!) I am stitching 8 strands of quilting around the outside border.  I'm about half done but I only get a little bit done each time I work on it.  

And, since it's the beginning of new month, here are my statistics for April.

2020	Fabric In Month	Fabric In Year	Fabric Out Month	Fabric Out Year	Total In or Out Year
April	2.625	28.000	9.000	23.625	4.375

Even though I've been making masks like crazy and finished one small quilt, I still haven't made up for all that fabric I bought in Feb and March.  The yardage in is fabric I was given by someone getting rid of her fabric.  Most of it I have in a separate box and didn't count it as coming into my stash.  But I was in need of white on whites so I decided I would just add them to the stash. Maybe by the end of May I'll have made a dent in fabric! 

Here's my goals for this week: 

1) Sewing all the churwndash blocks into a top. Several rows were sewn together last week.  I'm hoping to get these into a top. 
2) Loading and quilting my granny square blocks on Ruthie. 
3) Starting a new quilt.  (To heck with all these UFO's for a week!) 
4) Updating my spread sheets on UFOs and batting pieces.  It's still my maybe goal. All the other ones I really want to keep up with. 

I'm linking with Oh Scrap, Slow Sunday Stitching, Monday Making, and Design Wall Monday.  Spend some time seeing what people are working on during these extra days at home. 

Happy Quilting and Stay Safe!  Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 6 - 17 - 2019

As usual I'm not exactly sure where this past week went to -- appointments, picking up a grand dog, and finishing some embroidered clothing for the grand kids.  (Later I'll show Sophie's sweatshirt that turned out so cute.)  When we picked up the grand dog, I gave Theo his sweatshirt (turtle embroidery from last week.)  Ellie got a beach cover-up that had a cute "Beach Princess" statement on it. They were happy to get them and immediately put them on.  

I think I spent more time reading on my new Kindle than I spent quilting.  I had an original Kindle.  But it eventually died a slow death.  Generally, I have been reading on either my cell phone or my iPad.  But I was running through my battery, especially on the cell phone.  So Pat suggested I pick out a new Kindle.  Good idea.  I've been using it mostly for the last week. 

Here's the grand dog, Cassie, and Kona squished into the back of our Prius.  They've been friends for a long time so they seem to enjoy getting together. (Thank goodness since we take Kona a lot when we are invited to visit and Cass comes to spend some weekends with us.) Cass is a yellow lab and Kona is a black dog.... with a lot of variety to her! We were getting soft serve ice cream cones.  They each got a little bit of my cone and ice cream.  

It was a beautiful morning although the humidity has come back.  I took several quilts outside this morning to get some pictures.  This is the quilt I call the old Christmas quilt every week when I list my goals.  I have  a little over half of the border still to do.  It's bad enough to have decided to hand quilt this thing but when the inside was done I decided to quilt the borders with a stencil that has eight (8) rows of quilting on it!  Heaven only knows what I was thinking.  Well, probably that was the only stencil I had that would fill the border.  So, until I'm done it's going on the list every week.  (Or I get sick of it and give up for a while!) (You should be able to click on my photos and they should enlarge a bit.) Someday this top will be done.  Just don't hold your breath. 

Despite not spending all that much time quilting I did move all my goals forward this week. 

June 10, 2019

Hand quilt on old Christmas quilt√

Trim and Bind Ladybug quilt√

Finish borders on Butterfly quilt√

Make more BOM blocks for Country Piecemakers√ 1 more done 

And here's what's on tap this week.  

June 17, 2019

Hand quilt on old Christmas quilt

Quilt Butterfly quilt

Work on Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks 

Prep backing of Parrot Quilt

Make 1 pillowcase

Hum, nothing there about mailing off my last two quilts for Hands 2 Help.  They are going to Jack's Basket.  I'll be doing that sometime this week.  

I'm linking up with my favorite linky parties: Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday and Moving It Forward.  As usual, I'll link up whatever links are not live when I first publish this. (And, if I remember to link up....) You know the drill:  take some time to surf these sites.  There are all sorts of inspiring photos -- don't you need another project??? LOL! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

How Would You Quilt This?

Remember this picture from last post? It is 10 1/2" x 8 1/2" with 2" finished blocks. I'm doing clamshells on it but it is really wrinkling up. Or so it seems to me. I'm using an 80 weight DMC cotton. Hind sight says I probably should have used regular quilting thread. Honestly, I can't tell if it seems thicker or thinner than normal hand quilting thread. After one false start I decided on clamshells. I figured it needed some softening of all the angles. And, I actually had a stencil I could use.

Here is what it currently looks like, a bit under half way done. I'm not trying to do tiny little stitches just quilting along. I spent quite a bit of time on it yesterday but I don't feel I got very far. (Hum, could it be that I was watching a movie and then a few episodes of Bones and not paying as much attention to the quilt as I should?) I'm going to be back at it after this post.

My question to you all is how would you have quilted this? I am NOT taking this out so this is a rhetorical question. I have a whole box of these things left and heaven knows I try to use them up! Leave me a note with your ideas.

Yesterday I continued to preshrink a charm pack. Ok, call me crazy but it wasn't all that hard. I soaked a few pieces at a time in hot water in the sink. Then laid them out to dry on a towel. I didn't want to mix washed and unwashed fabs. These are going to be used to make a small wall hanging from Moda Bake Shop. It's 1800's Vintage Quilt. I think it will look great in the front bedroom which is navy blue and brick red. I've got a quilt in progress so this will pretty much finish off the room for the time being. And, yes, these are some of the fabrics I'll probably use. I have to figure out how many are needed and then work from there. Most of the dark ones are black not navy -- the navy were in a different washing. I'll put more of them in then the black, no doubt. I'll keep you posted.

On to the hand quilting. Happy Quilting All!