Monday Meanderings 8 - 31 -2020

August is just about gone. Is it just me or has this month zoomed by also?  (And I don't mean a Zoom meeting although I've been enjoying a lot during the month.)  It seems that I may have committed to more posts than I can deliver.  I skipped Friday but I'll be showing a finish today instead. 

First, although I was hoping to make a big dent in my homespun collection, for some reason it doesn't look like all that much has been used. I spent part of a Zoom  get together refolding what is left.  It was completely full to the top before. Hum,  there is quite a bit left still. Maybe I'll need to do another one, strips maybe 'cause I have lots of smaller pieces left. 

Here's one of my finishes from this month. This was completely from stash. The center of the stars was a Hoffman Challenge fabric years ago. I thought I was really clever with the top and bottom row.... but I think it would have looked much better if I centered a flying goose in the middle and then left a half goose (otherwise known as a half square triangle) at the far sides. Oh well.  

I used So Fine thread (Gerber Daisy #495). 

The quilting design is "Star Struck" from My Creative Stitches.  The design comes with both sharp points on the stars and rounded points on the stars.  This one is rounded. 

It's actually hard to see the stars on most of these pictures.  But the one above you should be able to see them.  I decided after I was all done I probably should have made each row smaller.  It was set about 13.5" wide and 10.25 tall.  (I forget the number of repeats.) When I use this particular design again, I'll make these two numbers closer to the same size.  I can do that by changing the number of patterns across and the number of rows.  

I haven't been sewing as much as usual, or so it seems.  I'm hoping to get at least one other of my goals done by Tuesday afternoon.  One of the things I am doing is upgrading the computer that runs the long arm.  The computer came in and we've got a connector I need on order.  My trusty computer guru will come out to move the program and files for me and set everything up. YEA!  I'm not sure when I'll be able to get a design quilted with it but I hope it is soon. 

I'm linking up with my go-to linky parties: Oh Scrap, Monday Making, and Design Wall Monday. (You know the drill, I'll link with these two blogs when they post.)  I'm hoping for lots of fun eye candy when I check out these parties. 

Hum, I see Blogger has changed something else.  I always check my links to make sure they are working, but tonight the option was no longer available. Rats. On rare occasions I have linked incorrectly. Oh well.  

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

To Do Tuesday and Stashbusting 8 - 26 - 2020

 We have less than a week of August left and I realized I hadn't figured out my stash busting stats for July.  And woohoo! It was stash busting this month! 

2020	Fabric In Month	Fabric In Year	Fabric Out Month	Fabric Out Year	Total In or Out Year
July	7.625	53.375	10.250	57.125	3.750

I noticed I'm very close to the amount of yardage I brought in last year.  And I'm less than 10 yards from the amount of usage last year.  I suspect I'm going to be higher on both those numbers by the time the year ends. 

Here's what I accomplished last week: 

8/18/2020

Quilt another one of my quilts√ this one was a little bigger than the first one. Unfortunately, I used a backing from some donated fabric so it won't be a huge amount of fabric out. 

Bind last week’s quilt √ All done, machine work front and back.

I aways sew the binding on the back first because then I can see where I'm stitching on the front.  I may be off slightly on the back but I think it's more important to be correct on the front. 

Finish Wonky Family piece√ Finished the portraits, waiting for finishing instructions from the teacher (who is out of town).

Sew propeller blocks together√

Start next customer quilt Holding off; updating my long arm computer!

Pick a ufo or a new quilt and work on it  √ Earlier this week I shared the Migrating Geese top I started. 

Here's what I'll be working on this week.

8/25/2020

Quilt another one of my quilts and bind it 

Bind last week’s quilt

Finish all Migrating Geese blocks, start sewing blocks together

Start a new baby quilt

Finish Wonky Family quilt

We'll see how I do on that list.  I have sewn about half of a column of Migrating Geese.  The blocks are 9" wide by 3" tall (finished size).  It's going to take a lot of them to bring the quilt up to about 54 x 72 or so.  (I've got some numbers in the studio downstairs but I'm too lazy to go get them to check!)  I've decided I'm going to try to sew some columns together before I decide how tall it will be.  

I hope to donate the quilt to Leashes of Valor. It provides service dogs to veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury.  Virginia Star Quilt Guild will be providing lap quilts for the veterans and mats for the dogs.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish the quilt some time soon.  

On the home front, our neighborhood homeowners association arranged for a soft serve ice cream truck to visit.  Pat and I really like soft serve so we were there early.  There was a little line that grew while we waited our turn.  

We both opted for chocolate/vanilla twist cones.  Unfortunately it was in the low 90s and my cone was dripping while I tried to take this next picture! 

It turns out, I'm not that good at keeping my ice cream from melting all over and taking pictures!

I'm linking up with To Do Tuesday and Midweek Makers.  (I'll come back tomorrow and make sure I link to Midweek Makers.) 

That's it for now.  I hope you are getting some quality quilting time in.

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 8 - 24 - 2020

Recently, I've seen several blogs showing quilts using collections of plaids and homespuns. Hey! I have a collection of homespuns and regular cotton plaids.  What a great idea to use them up, hopefully.  I recently got some Technique Sheets from Studio 180 Designs.  One is called Migrating Geese, a variation on flying geese blocks.  Hum, would this work with my plaids?  Why not? Bigger question, would I have enough of several backgrounds to make a lap quilt?  Maybe.  

The cool part of the Technique Sheet is it has information to make the block, but even better, it gives a variety of sizes too.  Saturday afternoon I decided to cut a few and see how the blocks came out and are put together.  Here are my first few blocks.  I think I'll put sashing between the rows. And, I need to make a few blocks that become the tops and bottoms.  I might have spent an hour on these. 

Sunday we were spending most of the day at our daughter's house to celebrate Sophie's 10th birthday.  But I had 30 minutes in the morning where I ironed and cut several more fabrics.  I know I'll need a lot more background but I have a nice piece from a wide back that I will be using along with a couple of homespun pieces. Each square of plaid makes two of the diagonal shapes. I've got quite a few I can start sewing tomorrow.  

I'm hoping to get some more blocks stitched up tomorrow and perhaps I can mix up all the blocks and get enough blocks to make the top.  These are very quick to make.  Who knows, maybe by Friday I'll have another top done.  Yes, these blocks are that fast to make!  The ones below are not sewn together.  They remind me of making braid blocks. I'll be mixing up all of these colors and hopefully will have a pleasant mixture. 

Even though this is a new start I'm pretty sure it will be finished fairly quickly.  So, who knows, I may need (want?) to start another new project.  I'm a little tired of finishing UFOs for a while! 

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap, Monday Making, and Design Wall Monday. Hope you join me checking out what's being made this week. (I'll add these two links when they are posted!) 

Happy Quilting!  Bonnie 

Sneak Peak: Diamond Chain

Quilting on Diamond Chain is actually done but I'm only showing a bit of it until it's bound and ready for its glamour shots.  The pattern is also called Jewel Box, Northern Lights, Jacob's and World's Fair from what I can tell.  I've got an old booklet (1988) called Templates for 171 Four-Patch Quilt Blocks that I use to find interesting blocks to make.  Most of the names for the block came from that booklet.  (And, don't worry, I don't use templates unless I absolutely have to but it's pretty easy to figure out the block pieces without templates.) The name Diamond Chain came from a video by Jenny at Missouri Star.  I liked the block, found a big hunk of backing fabric and a bunch of scraps and kept making blocks until I figured I'd done enough.(You can see it here and here.) 

That's all the quilting I'm showing today.  I spent most of yesterday watching a couple of Accuquilt Zoom sessions.  I've been to a few educational sessions from AccuQuilt since we started staying home.  I consider a class/session a rousing success if I learn one new thing.  And, yep I did and right after the class I tried it and it worked like a charm.  It has to do with trimming the ends of binding strips to make it easier to sew the strips together.  (I think I'm going to be trying it again fairly soon!) 

I'm including this pic of a butterfly mainly because we've seen so few of them this year.  Wasn't he nice to pose so well for me?  Last year the Yellow Tail was a female because of some blue on the bottom of the wings. I "think" this one is a he. 

 

I believe I mentioned several posts back that I was giving up on my hummingbird feeder as I had seen no hummers visiting.  Well, within a week or so of taking the feeder down, cleaning it, and putting it away we saw one looking for it.  So, I made some more nectar, poured it in the feeder, and hung it outside.  We've seen a lot of single birds there.  I've never seen 2 birds flitting around the feeder but Pat says he has from time to time.  I'll keep supplying the nectar until we don't see any more birds. 

I've already completed a couple of my goals this week.  I'll be sharing how I'm doing on that sometime on Tuesday.  For now, I'm linking with Needle and Thread Thursday, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?, Beauties Pageant #94, and Finished or Not Friday. I hope you can do a little blog surfing to see what folks are up to. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Let's Get It Done!

Here's what I've finished from my goals list last week: 

8/10/2020

Shop at new quilt store √ fun to visit and yep, I bought a yard of fabric

Work on Wonky Family piece√ 3 rows are done. From top to bottom: Ellie, Theo and Sophia. Each background is about 4 x 5".  I keep thinking I might want to change some of the colors of the kids and body shapes.  Mostly likely I won't because this is the first time I've tried this method.  I'll tell more about it when the piece is finished.  

Finish putting together dogs top√ done and moved to the to-be-quilted closet! 

Work on the propeller blocks (have to get the dog blocks off the design wall before I can do this one. √

Finish customer’s quilt √

Quilt one of my quilts √ 

And here's what I'm going to do this week. 

8/18/2020

Quilt another one of my quilts

Bind last week's quilt 

Finish Wonky Family piece

Sew propeller blocks together 

Start next customer quilt 

Pick a ufo or a new quilt and work on it 

Since I've changed the day of the week I'm posting my goals, I can tell you I've already finished one of the goals!  You'll have to wait until next week to see it though. 

Hum, I haven't done my fabric statistics for last month.  I'll try to get that done this week too. 

That's it for today.  Here are a few linky parties I'm linking with: To Do Tuesday at Home Sewn by Us, Mid Week Makers at Quilt Fabrication, and Colour & Inspirations Tuesday at Clever Chameleon Quilting.  Let's take a look at these parties to see what people are working on.  (One I'll have to link up with later but I've been doing pretty well coming back to do that recently.)

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 8 - 16 - 2020

 And, again, where did that week go? 

It zipped right on by . . . and I've been able to blog a few more times each week.  So, I'm changing up my normal blogging dates. (We'll see how well I can keep up with this plan!)  Monday I'll show some quilts or progress on quilts but I'm not going to do my goals list.  I'll do that either Tuesday or Wednesday.  I'm planning on linking up to To Do Tuesday by Home Sewn By Us.  I'll probably figure out a couple of others to link with too.  Then around Friday I'll share a quilt recently finished or moved forward.  I'm not sure if I'll have a finish every week but I'll find something to talk about! 

Today, I'm sharing a customer's quilt I quilted a few weeks ago.  And, I LOVE it. Marlyn was pretty happy with it too. 

So Fine thread 474. The quilting pattern is African Samba. I really like this design and have used it on several quilts over the years. 

I forgot to show my finished top from the Silver Lining Sew Along that Jacquelynne Steves ran.  I think it started Mid-May and finished the last weekend in July. It didn't take me very long to make an extra block and then get the top pieced. 

Eventually I'll find a backing for it and get it quilted.  Hum, I wonder if I could make a backing with the left over fat quarters? 

That's it today! Wow, I like the fact that this takes much less time to create! Now, it's time to list my linky parties.  You know the ones I love to read and share! Oh Scrap, Monday Making, and Design Wall Monday. (I'll add the other links as they post their blogs.) 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie

Ahoy Mateys!

Here's the second quilt I finished last month: Ahoy Mateys!  

Many years ago I purchased an odd roll of pirate fabrics.  They weren't any "known" cuts, just left over fabrics at a quilt store.  I let them marinate for a few many years and finally decided to put them in a twist and turn setting.  Except, I couldn't get a very big piece out of each because through the years I used some in Happy Quilt blocks.  I purchased the embroidery design set called A Pirate's Life from Designs by Juju. (Yikes, there is a sale going on there this month -- 12 sets for $12. I don't get anything if you choose to shop there, I just like their designs, especially for my grands.)  I added 4 embroidered designs to go with the pirate fabric. I love it! 

I was a bit nervous when I quilted it because I thought the quilting might look bad over the embroidery. No, not bad at all.  I used a stipple pattern included with my robotics.  

Here are a few close ups:

Here are two of the embroidered blocks.  I used the same blue print on the back and as the binding. 

Normally, I would donate this to a NICU to be given to a premature baby.  Except, I really like it.  So I'm thinking of putting it away for a future great grandchild. Is that too weird?  My grands run from age 10 to 4 so we aren't talking about anyone getting this very soon.  (I'm pretty sure my children are through having babies.) What do you think?  Does it make sense to start a small stash of quilts for future greats?

I'm linking up with a few parties today. Check out Needle and Thread Thursday, Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop!, Beauties Pagent #93, and Finished or Not Friday.  I think that will keep all of us busy seeing what is new!  I hope you can relax with a cuppa and see what folks are working on. 

And, just a fun image at the end:

It's a UPC made into a bear.  I just laughed when I saw this one. It's on a package of Bear Bites from Kodiak Cakes. (A different take on Animal Crackers.) The cookies were supposed to look like a bear paw, a bear face and side facing complete bear. Unfortunately, they don't really look like the picture on the package. But they are pretty good cinnamon graham crackers.

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie