Monday Meanderings 5 - 25 - 2020

Have you woken up recently and not known what day of the week it was?  Yea, me too.  It is the oddest feeling to have no clue what day it is.  Although I did figure out what  day it was,  I'm guessing this will continue to happen for a while.  

I dgot quite a bit of reading done this week.  I put ebooks on reserve and it never fails that lots of them come in at the same time.  I finally had to postpone some of them.  I'm currently listening to Becoming Mrs. Lewis, by Patti Callahan.  It's the story of Joy Davidman who becomes C.S. Lewis's wife. It's been interesting and very different then my normal read. I need to spend some more time with it because it's due in 3 days and I'm only a third of the way through.  You know what I'll be doing while I quilt over the next few days!

Pat made us a new bird feeder recently.  It's been very popular because bigger birds attempt to eat from it.  I was pretty surprised to see about 5 starlings trying to get on it the other day.   (Click on the picture to get a larger view.) We get beautiful yellow finches on a regular basis, along with mourning doves, blue birds and even a curious hawk every once in a while. But these starlings were just being piggy. And, great news, we had our first hummingbird of the year on Saturday. 

Surprisingly earlier today a bird got caught inside the house feeder.  The right-side roof raises so we can clean it out and refill it.  Some crazy bird got in there, we suspect through the tray, as we always keep the roof down.  Pat opened the roof for the bird but he had to tip the bird out to get him to fly off.  

I did get quite a bit of quilting and piecing done this week.  
Here's what was on my goal list last week. 

1) Finish binding the table runner. √ (pictures to come) 

2) Make 5 blocks from last year's BOM for Country Piecemakers. How about 3? 

3) Quilt charity quilt for a friend.√

4) Cut out a bunch of little rail fence pieces to do as leader enders.√

These are 3 1/2" square blocks.  I loved the rainbow version that Nann made.  You can see her's here. 

I also have been working on another UFO called Braid Shuffle by Karie Patch Designs. (Scroll down to see the pattern.)  You can see a couple more braids from February 2017 here. All the blocks with the white on the sides were left over from 2017 RSC.  I decided I would make some more blue ones and try to make a small baby quilt.  I've been hitting the blue scrap bag but it isn't going down at all!  I may have to do a pink one at some point since I have some of them left too. 

I felt pretty good about getting my goals moved forward this week.  I also made a couple more masks. But the biggest surprise is I actually redid my batting pieces inventory.  I wrote about it here a week ago when I was the guest blogger on Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I've had it on my to do list for months... or so it seems to me.  I finally took one morning and actually took all the pieces out of my big plastic bin, measured any pieces that weren't marked and then entered them on my Excel spreadsheet.  It was so great to be able to find a couple of pieces on the spreadsheet without having to plow through every piece.  I made sure I moved them to the "used" section too.  

Next up are my goals for this week. 

1. Pick a top of mine to quilt and get it done. 
2. Make some more BOM from Country Piecemakers.
3. Make a bunch more braid and split rail blocks. 
4. Clean up front end of cutting table 

   I'm linking up with my regular linky parties:   

   Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, and Design Wall Monday.  Have fun checking the various blogs out. 

I'll leave you with a beautiful dogwood I found in the neighborhood.  We've got a different type of dogwood in our yard but I do love these pink ones.


Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie 

15 Minute Studio Spiff Up

January is National Organization Month.  You can tell because all sorts of retailers are selling things to help us get organized. Lots of baskets and plastic containers are on sale now. I have to admit to being a plastic box junkie.  I have to tell myself over and over again I don’t need more boxes. If the stuff is on sale? It’s even harder to pass it up but I’m getting stronger.

My studio is a wonderful space until I get so busy that I pile things up.  Sometimes finding things reminds me of an archeological dig.  I’ve got strata of fabrics and leftover projects.  I’ve got papers that I’ve written measurements on. I’ve even got mugs and water bottles buried in with the rest of the stuff. 

I’m ready to fight back against the stuff.  Join me in 15 Minute Studio Spiff Up.

First up on our journey is to vacuum what ever amount of floor you can get to.  Let's get the dust bunnies and threads out of there.  It'll make us feel like we are starting with a clean slate. 

Our first assignment is to physically put our hands on our UFOs and list them so we can refer back and remember what we have that we can finish. I chose this first because I want to do Vicki Welsh's UFO Challenge. And, how can I bust UFOs if I don't know what I've got. I made an Excel spreadsheet. I've been keeping my UFOs on spreadsheets for a while but this time I decided to get them out, neaten up my storage areas and see what I could do with them. I've labeled all the boxes and bins I'm storing things in and listed the location.  










Because I started fresh it took me a lot longer to do this. Some things actually got thrown away. (I know, amazing isn't it?) Some of the fabric is back in the stash.  

This did not take me just 15 minutes.  I spent several days working on this and often when my timer went off I continued for another 30 minutes or even longer.  BUT, I made that decision deliberately.  And, even better, I still had sewing time so I didn't feel deprived.  

Here's the awful truth about my UFOs.   I had 55 items listed.  I have spent a few minutes comparing the 2015 list with last years.  AGH! There are several I forgot to enter -- like 6 or so that are in the closet waiting for quilting. It is pretty eye opening, to say the least. Surprisingly a lot of my items are actually 4.5" blocks from swaps from when I was on Prodigy. Yep, I'm talking very early Internet. I definitely need to participate in Vicki's UFO Challenge. 

Let's get going gals!  While you do the UFO's, I'm planning next week's area.  Heck, I already know what it is. It'll take me several 15 minute sessions but not nearly as long as the UFO listing, hopefully!   

I'd love to hear from you on how your Spiff Up is going!  

And, when your 15 minutes of Spiffing Up is done you can get to sewing with no guilty feelings at all cause you have a plan to do your whole studio.  See you next Wednesday for the next installment of our Spiffing Up adventure. 

Happy Quilting All!