Year End Reckoning 2019

I am pretty happy with my quilting life for 2019. I just looked back at my list of goals for 2019, and I actually only completed four of the eight goals I listed. I did, however, move forward on the other four, they just aren't finished. 

Here are my empty thread spools from this year. They represent 17,930 yards, or over 11 miles of thread. I know I used a lot more thread than this, because I had 37 quilt finishes this year. Of my 37 finishes, 14 were UFO's, 23 were new starts. Hurrah for 23 new starts not becoming UFO's!!!

By my figuring, and I did figure square inches of each quilt, and doubled it (all finished quilts have backing too) I came up with over 225 yards of fabric used in finished quilts in 2019. I'm sure that is low, because I only took off 10% for seams, and I'm sure I should have taken off more than that. I made a lot more than just quilts this year though, baby swaddling blankets, burp rags, pillowcases, bowl cozies, etc... all take fabric as well. I'm going to guess I used around 300 yards of fabric in 2019. I gave away quite a bit of fabric in 2019 as well!

Here is what my sister did with some of that Christmas fabric I gave her. She made aprons for all the women in my family. These are the women who were here on Saturday for our family Christmas. 

Now that I've wrapped up 2019, what's on the agenda for 2020? 

I have a few deadline quilts.

1) baby quilt for grandbaby due in March (pattern chosen)
2) big girl bed quilt for granddaughter turning 2 in May (quilt top done)
3) wedding quilt for nephew getting married (narrowing down pattern choice and fabrics) wedding date undetermined

I have a few quilts I'd like to finish, that are currently UFO's

4) quilt for our bed, could 2020 be our year? (cut out)
5) quilt for Miss S that got set aside (some blocks done)
6) King sized quilt for DD#1 (I need to cut sashing so I can start assembly)
7) quilt for a great-niece (quilt top done)

My main goal for 2020 is to get my second sister's clothes sewn into memory quilts for her family. This will mean 3-5 quilts. 

I had a few people ask for quillows after Christmas, if they weren't one of the 15 that got one. I have enough pellets left for one weighted blanket, and I'll have to actually make it, because one of the ones I made early on met a tragic end and needs to be replaced. 

I'll continue working on moving UFO's to the next step, especially if I can do it as a leader/ender. I have a stack of UFO's pin basted and I'd like to quilt my way through that stack, no worries if I don't though. 

2020 will be more about new starts for me than finishing UFO's. I'm sure I will finish some UFO's, but really my deadline quilts and the memory quilts are much more important to me to get done. 

2020 calendar is already filling up with family stuff, so I'm expecting another busy, busy year. It's good to have goals, but it's also good to know life happens and you can't always finish what you want to do. Family always comes before quilts. 

Wishing you all a wonderful 2020, may it be a year of clarity, new beginnings, and lots of quilty goodness!

Reorganizing for the New Year

Sometimes things come up that you never would have expected. For years, we had a houseful of kids, and no space for a guest room. When guests came we just had to make do. As kids moved out, I not only gained a sewing room (or two), but I also have a guest room with a queen sized bed, and a grandkid room with two twin beds and all the grandkid toys. I would have thought that two guest rooms would be plenty, but we often end up having people in DH's office, or people in my sewing rooms too. When we have company, we often have a LOT of company. 

I had created a large cutting station in my fabric room, which was convenient when quilting, but made that room unusable for guests. The thing is, my cutting station was made of separate pieces, so if I reconfigured it and bought a countertop, I could have the center of the room available for an air mattress when needed. I decided that's what I wanted to do, so began the fabric room reorganization project.

The first thing I did was ditch my ironing station. In the past year, I've done most of my ironing upstairs while watching TV. I just wasn't using my ironing station very often, except as storage. By rearranging some things in the room with my sewing machines, I was able to relocate everything I had stored in my ironing station, and I gave the storage pieces under the big ironing board DH made to my sister. I can use the big board top on my regular ironing board, so I kept that. 

My ironing station had been right under the shelves on the wall. The kitchen cabinet bases I used to have back to back to make up my huge cutting station, are now next to each other against this western wall in my basement. I bought the kitchen cabinets a while ago, at a used building supply place. The countertop now on top was simply the cheapest option Home Depot had in stock. The cabinets on the left have the shelves removed, and all my tall Studio dies fit in there. My Studio cutter is right above those covered with some scraps I need to cut. On the far right, you can see a short set of shelves peeking out from under the end of the countertop. Those have small Studio dies, Go dies, Blue Wren dies, and Sizzix dies, all of which I can use on my Studio Cutter. My rulers are hanging on pegboard, and although there is a small cutting mat on the counter right now, I ordered one that is 59" x 22" and it will arrive tomorrow. 

I spent two days refolding fat quarters to all the same size, breaking up several fat quarter bundles I had, and mixing them with other fat quarters I had. I choose fabrics by color, not collection, so they'll be used faster this way. One of the top shallow drawers holds other precuts, the other is just a bunch of miscellaneous stuff for now. The bottom drawers hold bias tape and thread that didn't fit where I moved most of thread to. 

Now the opposite wall looks like this. I had some smaller plastic drawers which I emptied, and those will go to my sister too. The wide plastic drawers hold my scrap user system. The purple drawers hold mostly 1/2-1 yard pieces of fabric. If I get the projects done I have planned for 2020, those will take a huge hit and I'll be getting rid of the purple drawers as I empty them. The gray and white bins on the set of shelves hold projects, some just a collection of fabrics, others cut or partially cut. 

Now the center of this room can be a guest room when needed, and I feel pretty good about the fact I was able to consolidate so much, it gives me a good indication that I've used a LOT this year. My sister helped with that, she pretty much busted my Christmas fabric stash, and I wasn't sorry in the least to see it go. 

I'm working in my actual sewing room too. I had used up enough in the closet in there that I've moved all my batting into the sewing room closet instead of the upstairs guest room closet.

DH and I talk about downsizing someday, and I realized that although I want a healthy stash for retirement years, I don't want to move everything I have. In my head, I know what storage furniture I want to move, and what I don't want to move. Now my goal is to sew up enough that my stash fits in the furniture I would want to move. This was a big sewing year for me, and that gave me a great start towards my long term goal. 

I hope all of you had a lovely Christmas. DH had Christmas Day off for the first time in probably 20 years! We aren't having a family celebration until Saturday, so it was just DH and I all day. We thought about it, and it's only the second Christmas Day we've ever spent alone in our 35 year marriage. I've spent several Christmas Days by myself once our kids were grown, but DH is usually working, so this year was a treat. We slept in, made a nice breakfast, I put dinner in the crockpot while I was cooking breakfast, and we just had a really relaxing day. 

DH got me some quilty goodness as gifts. So many fun looking quilts in these books! I already put the fat quarters away in the cabinet drawers.

DD#2 wanted more microwavable bowl cozies, so I did snag some time to sew her up some! Another quick project, start to finish took a couple hours with several interruptions. I'll give them to her when I see her on Saturday. Sewing up a bunch of these is on my 2020 list! I bought a die to cut the size we use most and they were so fast to cut now! I've figured out how to chain sew them too, so it's a really quick project. 

I've got company now, so I'm not expecting any sewing time until next week. My first order of business will be dealing with the scraps all over my Studio cutter! 

Good Reminder

I make a lot of queen and king sized quilts. I like huge usable quilts, that are large enough to have extra space for kids or pets to snuggle under too. Making giant quilts is a big investment of time. I work on stuff in between, and mostly during the time I'm working on the big ones. Because I'm usually working on big stuff, and other projects are only being worked on a little along, I actually forget that not everything takes weeks or months to make. 

I've been cleaning out my kitchen cabinets, tossing stuff that is far past it's prime, and donating things I don't use anymore. I tossed a bunch of ratty bibs, and realized I only have one bib in decent condition. There are a lot of babies in the family right now, so one bib at Nana's house just isn't going to cut it. Now that all the quillows are finished and wrapped, I actually had time to fix that problem. 

I made five new bibs for my house, in ONE DAY!!! A lot of you do smaller projects all the time, so you know there's a lot you can do in one day, but I honestly forget. I am so used to projects taking weeks or months, that I tend to put off the small stuff, because I think it's going to take multiple days, and I don't want to take that time away from a marathon project. 

Making 15 quillows was a marathon project, and I just wanted a bit of downtime to enjoy the finish. I have projects going that I haven't touched during that mad dash to finish the quillows for Christmas, so I can easily jump back in to those, but I decided to take time out to make the bibs, and I'm so glad I did. I needed the reminder, that some projects are quick, and don't really need to be put off, so much as they need to just be done and over. Instead of my to do list being filled with little stuff I never get around to, I could knock a few off my list, and be less stressed about it. 

Thank you ratty bibs that needed to be tossed! You ended up giving me a good reminder that I really needed!

Full Disclosure

Hmmm....I wanted to take a photo of all the quillows together, but I knew I would have to mail the first ones out before I was finished the last ones. My solution? Once they were all quilted, DH and I laid them out to take photos of them. 

DH's first idea was arches, but he didn't have good luck doing that. Then he wanted to lay them next to each other.

That makes for a really weird photo. 

I wanted them laid out like a donut, in a ring.

Now that's a great photo, and lots of people agreed with me. I put it up on a couple Facebook quilt groups, and it caught lots of attention! I mean a LOT of attention. Last I looked it had over 3000 likes, almost 300 comments, and it had been shared over 50 times. I did not volunteer that the quillows were not finished, but if you read my blog, here's my confession. 

While my online photo was blowing up, I was busy getting some of these finished. All they needed in the photo was a pocket and binding. Not difficult, but there are 15 to finish. 

This was the first I finished. All the rest have pockets that match the backing when the quilt is open, but with the amount of gray fleece I had left that wasn't happening. This is the only quillow that has both sides of the pocket done in quilting cotton. 

This is one I finished today, but I took a photo just before I pinned the pocket into place. The other side of the pocket (the side that shows when its a pillow) is a print, but when the quillow is a quilt it blends in. That was my plan all along. 

Here are five finished quillows, and I've got three more currently in the washer. Eight done, seven more quillows to finish. I've been pretty easily finishing two per day, so I'm hoping to get the last one finished on Saturday. My out of town company is being delayed, so I've got some extra time now. If I don't get the last one finished on Saturday it's not a big deal. I only have one more to finish that needs to be mailed, and that should be finished tomorrow. 

Now I've got to work on getting all the Christmas boxes to be mailed all packed and addressed! 

UFO Finish!

I finally finished the UFO I quilted maybe three weeks ago? Four weeks? Whenever I quilted it, it's bound and finished today!!!

This is the second garden quilt I made with this pattern. I used the leftovers of the first quilt to make this one, and I have none of these fabrics in any kind of yardage left. I might have a few bits in my scrap user system. The seed packet fabric I used for the border is gone too, I figured the size of the border based on how much fabric I had. I really love this pattern for novelty fabrics. It's an easy pattern, and leaves the pieces large enough to show off the novelty fabrics. 

I have started quilting another UFO, but with 15 quillows to finish, I'm not sure I'll get it finished this month. If I do it will be after Christmas. 

I also finished quilting the last quillow today. Tomorrow I'll get back to it by cutting the pockets. I need to get the ones that need to be mailed off finished first, but I'll likely do all I can do with the same color thread at once too. I have out of town company coming late next week, and wouldn't it be great if I could have most of the quillows finished before they arrive? We'll see, I have other things I need to do too, including making some more bibs to have at my house, since I recently tossed all the ratty ones I had. With all the grandbabies around, Nana needs to have bibs handy too!

According to Plan? I Think Not

I am a planner by nature. I like making plans, I like seeing plans through. Lately, not much is going according to plan. I had planned to have 17 for Thanksgiving dinner, I had 7. Thankfully, I found out about the cancellations before I had made very much of the food. I did, however, find out that I use the same number of pans, bowls, cutting boards and such to make Thanksgiving dinner for 7 as I would have for 17. Tomorrow I'll cut up the leftover turkey and ham and get it in the freezer. I had only made a turkey breast, and I already made turkey salad with some of the leftovers, so not a whole lot of that will end up in the freezer. I have a lot of ham left, but that's a great thing to add to lots of meals, so I'm OK with that. 

DH and I took a trip to California last weekend. It was a business trip for him, so I brought fabric to sub-cut in the hotel room. I've never done any English paper piecing, but I'd like to hand piece at least one quilt in my life, so I bought a bundle of reproduction 1800's fat eighths, and I'm going to use those in my EPP attempt. I decided on diamonds instead of hexies, because if I really hate EPP, I can sew diamonds by machine fairly easily, though not in the pattern I wanted to do. At least I've got a backup plan so no fabric will be wasted no matter what. 

I cut the fat eighths into strips before we left home, and when I started at the hotel, both containers looked like the one on the left. I forgot to take a true before photo. 

This is what I've got now. For the pattern I chose, I need six diamonds each of two different colors to make a star hexie. Since I needed the diamonds in sets of six, I cut the rest of each strip into squares, and I will make four patches for a different project with those. The baggie holds the crumbs, but they are pretty small. I'll see if my sister wants them for fabric postcards. I didn't have hardly any waste from those fat eighths. I have no idea how large of a quilt I'll be making, and it won't be made anytime soon. I want this to be my standard travel project, so on most car trips I'll just be bringing a couple sets of diamonds with me. I already have everything I need to paper piece it, and I'm no stranger to hand sewing, so I know I can do it, it's just an unknown on how much I'll enjoy it. I am thinking this will be a several year project and I'm OK with that. Not everything has to be fast. 

BUT, speaking of fast, I've got nine quillows quilted now. 

The ninth one I haven't trimmed yet so it's not in this pile. I hope to quilt the tenth one tomorrow, then I'll try assembling a couple before I finish quilting the other five. I need to get the ones that need to be mailed ready to go. 

I officially have two more quilts on my 2020 list now. The engagement I expected has occurred, so I'll need a wedding quilt, and I found out the gender of the latest grandbaby, so I know which quilt I'll be making now. They wanted a llama quilt for a boy, and a flamingo quilt for a girl. Looks like the baby quilt is for the birds!

Taking Advantage of a Lull

Starting tomorrow life is up and running again, but I had a few days with surprisingly little going on. I took advantage of that as much as I could, and here's what I've accomplished.

I've quilted five quillows, plus one UFO. I'm halfway done quilting another quillow, and hope to finish quilting it today. I am completely ignoring my hour a day quilting rule to get this much done, but if I have any chance to get the quillows done for Christmas I can't stick to that. I am taking breaks, and icing my arm when it needs it. It is so frustrating to really come to grips with the fact my arm injury is going to be an issue for the rest of my life. 

None of those quilts are finished, they are just quilted. I decided I wanted to concentrate on quilting in November, then in December I'll alternate quilting with making the quillow pockets and binding everything. I had planned walking foot quilting on the quillows, but in the end I decided to meander. It wasn't as much a time factor as the fact that with all the pulling and stuffing you do with quillows, I thought meandering would hold up better than all the stress being on long straight quilting lines. 

I quilted that UFO because I'm back on the queen's list in the UFO challenge. Last I looked I was #37, but I'm probably higher than that now. I'll try to get that binding sewn on the first of December, so I can likely stay off the list the rest of 2019.  I've decided to not do the UFO challenge in 2020, because I have so many new starts planned. I still plan to work on UFOs as well, I just don't want the pressure of the challenge. 

Now that I've reclaimed the basting pins from that UFO, I have just enough pins available to baste 4 quillows at once. I have three basted now, and if I finish the quillow I'm quilting today, I'll baste a fourth tonight. 

I still have five quillow tops hanging in the closet untouched, but if I can manage to finish what I've got going today, I'll have six quilted and four basted before DH gets home from work tonight! That would be a win! 

The rest of November only has maybe four sewing days in it, and that's pretty optimistic. I've got more company coming, I'm hosting 17 for Thanksgiving, plus there's a few other things going on. I've been trying to quilt one quillow every day I have with a chunk of sewing time. I've been quilting half of one, taking a break, then quilting the other half. Of course, my breaks, like most women I know, consist of laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc...BUT, I have been binge watching DC superhero shows on Netflix too. I'm usually doing something else as well whenever I watch TV (lately that's wrapping Christmas presents), but TV shows tend be my timer for breaks. If my arm feels pretty good, one episode of Supergirl is long enough for a break, if my arm hurts, I need at least two episodes. In the sewing room I normally just use the timer on my phone, but with Christmas fast approaching, I've ditched the timer and I'm just setting goals before I take a break. It takes me under 1.5 hours to quilt half of a quillow, so that's pushing it, but not by a bunch compared to my normal quilting habits. It's the second session per day that's really pushing it. 

I am starting to have hope I'll have at least most of the quillows done for Christmas. I started this project in July, I really didn't think it would go down to the wire, but life has been busier than I expected. I can only do what I can do, and although I hope to finish on time, the world won't end if I don't. 

Life Keeps Interrupting

I'd sew everyday, if, you know, life didn't interfere ;-) Every time I think things are slowing down, life surprises me again, and it gets crazy all over again. It's all good though, and although I didn't really get much sewing done last week, I did get a handle on Christmas shopping, so if the quillows are late, which is quite likely, the grandkids will still have something to open. I'm hoping to at least the get the quillows that need to be mailed finished. 

I did get two of the quillows pin-basted today, that's all I had pins for, since I haven't gotten much quilting done lately. 

DH finished laying out a quilt for me. This is all the extra fabric from a Postcards From Sweden kit I bought. I had so much extra fabric, the second quilt is bigger than the first. DH named this quilt Visual Frustration, because he kept starting patterns then deliberately stopping them. This is the first time I've pressed all the seams open on the HST's, but I wanted DH to be able to turn them any orientation without a buildup of seams. He doesn't normally layout my quilts for me, but I thought he might have fun with this one. 

Since I haven't been sewing much, I have been thinking about sewing a LOT, and I've been working on goals for 2020. I have plans to move things around a bit in my fabric prep room too, but the quillows need to get finished before I start on any of that. I'm pretty excited about my ideas though, so it should be fun!

A New Village and Sneaking in Sewing

My oldest sister is so talented at crafting, and she is at her best when making things from what others call trash. She loves multimedia, creating different textures and depth by using a variety of materials. My family tries to help her out from time to time, and when she wants to focus on a specific material, I get everyone saving whatever she's looking for. For a while it was soda cans, right now it's cereal boxes. The latest thing she gifted me used both of those.

She made me a Christmas village made from cans. Cereal boxes give them structure. She put hangers on them so they can hang on the tree or go on a shelf. The schoolhouse has a bell. 

The church has "stained glass" windows. With my love of reading, she gave me my own library. 

DH and I have our hobbies represented. I get a quilt shop with a quilt hanging in the window, and DH gets a scooter shop made from a root beer can which is his favorite. DH not only runs a scooter club, but also publishes a scooter magazine. 

The flower shop has two of my favorite colors, and the coffee shop (DH and I are both big coffee drinkers) is made from an iced coffee can.

The clock shop reminds me of DD#1's FIL. He repaired clocks all over South Africa. 

The candy shop adds more whimsy to the village. 

She even made me little people for the village. More boys than girls because I've got more grandsons than granddaughters. 

Having such a talented sister is a blessing in my life. 

I wasn't sure I'd have any chance to sew this week because I've got company, but I did get 30 quilt blocks done in between guests. Here is a sampling of those.

These were made from the extra Flying Geese units I had from misfiguring how many units I needed for my main project. I'd like to use the same purple sashing I am using for my main project, but I don't think I have enough, so I'll need to buy more. I'll look at my stash first though, and see if something else will make do. A dark green would be a good option too. 

I've also been assembling a large 99x108" quilt top. I still need to sew two more seams before it's done, but I hope to do that sometime today. I want to keep getting UFO's to quilt top stage, if I need them finished quickly, its a lot easier to quilt a completed top than have to finish making units or blocks then assemble before quilting. 

Tops Are Done, Now What???

I've got all 15 quillow tops finished, pressed and hanging in the closet! Yeah, there's a few UFO's beyond that too, along with some other quilt tops from this scrapbusting spree. I have extra people around for the next nine days, so no sewing will be happening, but after that, I guess I'm going to have to work on how to actually make a quillow. 

Have you ever gotten yourself into a situation like this? You've never actually made something, but you are sure you can figure it out so you just jump in feet first. I've never made a quillow, but I've made a lot of quilts, and I've made plenty of pockets, so how hard can it actually be? I guess I'll find out, but I figure by the time I finish the 15th one I'll be pretty good at it. 

I finished sewing those Flying Geese units into sets of five as leaders/enders while assembling the quillow tops. I needed another thing to use as leaders/enders, since I haven't cut any of the other pieces for the Flying Geese quilt yet. I grabbed the leftover HST pieces I had from a Postcards from Sweden quilt I made for my youngest granddaughter. I had my oldest granddaughter help me pin the HST pieces into pairs.

Miss S, who is 8, is an accomplished pinner, and had a great time choosing color combinations, since I just wanted a pretty random look. I just finished sewing the last of these tonight, and I've actually pressed all the seams open, which is really odd for me when quilting. Tomorrow I'll work on snipping all the dog ears, and I'll figure out how many HST's I actually have. Once I figure out how many I have, I can decide on a setting as in number of rows and how many per row. I already told DH I plan to have him lay this one out for me. I pressed the seams open so that he could move the HST's in any orientation he likes, and I can still sew them together without major issues with bulk. I don't ask DH to lay quilts out for me very often, but I though he might have fun with this one. There are 36 shades of solids total in this bin. I've never heard of a quilt kit having this much extra fabric, but I will admit I did not follow the cutting directions, and the way I cut the pieces used less fabric, even though the pieces were the same size as the pattern called for. Sometimes specialty rulers are well worth the money, and if they save a bunch of fabric, that's one of those times. 

I"ve been sewing such long days trying to get these quillow tops done, that I've really pushed by arm. The repetitive stress injury is rearing its ugly head, so nine day of company is likely a blessing in more ways than one. I hope to get a little sub-cutting done with the company, or maybe just finish a couple hand projects, but we'll see. I hope you'll sew a few extra stitches for me, while I'm busy doing other things. 

Blocks for Quillows Done!

I worked on the remaining blocks for the quillow project, and I am finished with the blocks. I also caught up on ironing, and pressed the eight quilt tops that were together, but hadn't been ironed. Five of those were quillow tops.

Warm color leftovers led to warm colored four patches. I've got a pretty good amount already, but I won't be trying to make a quilt out of these until I've got a lot more. It will likely take a couple years before I have enough to start with it. These four patches finish at 2", so it's going to take a LOT to make a quilt of any size. 

Since I am all about assembling quillow tops right now, I switched to a light gray thread, so I can use the same thread for all, and it gave me a great excuse to switch my leader/ender project. I needed to switch leader/ender projects anyway, because all the four patches I had going are sewn. 

I dug out a UFO that has been stalled for a year or so. Those corners on the Flying Geese units are silver, so light gray thread was perfect for sewing these FG into sets of five. I have all the Flying Geese made for the quilt I wanted to make, but I realized I made too many Flying Geese, since I wasn't counting sashing in the size of the quilt and I need fewer blocks than I originally thought. No worries, I figured out another quilt to make with the leftovers, and I'm just as excited about that one. I really love using those plastic clips to clip groups of ten units together. It makes it so easy to keep count of how many units I have, and I much prefer the clips to pins. I wish I had bought the clips years ago!

Whenever I'm assembling tops I try to take a look at my UFO's and see if I've got anything that's an easy assembly to add to my pile. DH had figured the layout for this quilt a few months ago, and the rows were labeled and piled neatly waiting for assembly. I decided getting this one assembled would be a nice bonus. No sashing, no borders, so it's easy to work in. I'll be in no hurry to quilt it, but having it a quilt top instead of a pile of blocks is progress. 

This was the last quillow I needed blocks for. I've got this sewn into rows now, and another quillow up on this design wall. I was wondering how an all gray top would look, but I'm pretty happy with it. 

I'm not sure if I seems like I'm just sewing all the time or not, but I've actually been out of town a lot lately. We spent five days in Prescott, AZ, then we spent another three in the Flagstaff area a week later. The only time I allow myself to buy men's shirts for quilting is while I'm on vacation, so we hit a couple thrift stores and I got 16 shirts, a pair of pajama pants, and a dress that I am cutting up to use for quilting. I got a few more shirts than that, but some have been claimed by family, which is always OK with me. I also bought some holiday fabric at a thrift store I'm passing to my sister. My best thrift store deal was 26 items for $16. 

Here's my haul of shirts, I've already cut up the pajama pants and dress. If it's 100% cotton, I'm game to use it. I LOVE plaids, and men's shirts is the easiest way to assemble a good collection of them. 

Northern Arizona is mostly pine trees, but we did get to see some pops of color here and there. I really miss having four seasons, so it was nice to get a glimpse of autumn. 

Utter Scrap Annihilation

Scraps multiply in the night, right? You'll never get rid of them, right? I'm actually starting to think I may RUN OUT of them!!!

My scrap busting projects are going so well, I have actually emptied entire drawers of scrap strips. I store my scrap user system in kitchen base cabinet pot drawers, so not small drawers, big ones! I've emptied one drawer completely, and one is mostly empty. It is blowing my mind how much fabric I've gone through. 

These are the blocks I've been working on this week. I need to make another stack of the warm color blocks at the top of the photo. After the second warm stack of blocks, I just need to make one more stack of gray blocks, and I'll have all the blocks for the Christmas quillows finished. These blocks are all made with 1.5" cut strips (1" finished). I'm trying for a good variety, so even if I have a WOF strip, I'm cutting it in half and matching each half to a different fabric. 

When I was making blocks with 2" cut strips, I didn't mind sewing the whole block before pressing, but with the skinnier strips, I find it easier to sew the strips into pairs, press the pair then sub-cut before I sew three pairs together for a block. Since I'm using up scrap strips, they aren't all the same length, and I don't always have the right amount to evenly sub-cut into 6.5" sections. Anything less than 6.5" long I've been cutting into 1.5" sections, and I've been using those to make four patches. 

These are the cool colored (plus pink) four patches I ended up with, and I sewed a small pile of warm colored four patches today, but haven't gotten them pressed yet. I'm thinking I could bust my small stash of 1.5" squares to make even more four patches, and maybe eventually I'll have enough to make a decent sized quilt using all the four patches. I'm thinking alternating white squares but I haven't decided if I want to straight set or do something on point. If I can add enough other four patches, I can ignore the color pattern of this batch and just use all of them in the same quilt. Some of the four patches have only two fabrics, others have four different fabrics. This is the end of the road for these scraps, and I'm just using what I can, however I can. 

I just dug out a bunch more warm colored strips because I greatly underestimated how many I would need. I started sewing them, but it's pretty late and I am getting too tired and sore to sew anymore. This was DH's first day back to work in two weeks, and I really sewed too long today. I do sew when he's home, but I also take a lot of breaks. 

My goal was to get all the quillow blocks finished by Friday evening, and I don't think I will make it. At this point if I just get all the warm colored blocks finished by then I'll be satisfied. 

I just remembered I completely forgot to make granola today for DH to have for breakfast, so I better get that started so it's done before I go to bed! Oops!

UFO Finish

All piecing and no quilting gets nothing finished, so I spent my hour a day quilting until I actually had a finish!

This a nice throw sized quilt, made from bonus HST's from two baby quilts I made early last year.

This was one of the baby quilts, and I made two just alike. The Flying Geese units in the baby quilt finish at 4x8, so by double sewing the sew and flip corners, I didn't even have to short the seam to get bonus HST's that finish at 3".

Between the two baby quilts and the throw I used every bit of that blue in my stash. I did make a few extra units for the throw, but most of the HST's were just bonus from the flying geese units. I know a lot of quilters don't like doing sew and flip corners, and that's fine by me. I love them, because playing with bonus HST's is one one of my favorite things to do. I feel like I got a free quilt, even though in reality I sewed just as much, it feels like less to me. 

3,4,5,6 Rails

I am making great progress on my scrapbusting projects! I've been making rail fence blocks, some with three rails, some with four, some with five, and others with six. For my quillow project, I wanted 6" finished blocks, so most of those have four rails since I was using 2" cut (1.5" finished) strips. I'm now using 1.5" cut (1" finished) strips, so now I'm making six rail blocks. 

I'm also making rail fence blocks in other sizes for other projects. The scrap user system is taking huge hits, which was exactly my aim!

My last post I showed a three rail purple/pink baby quilt on the design wall. Now I've got a five rail purple/pink baby quilt too. The blocks are different sizes, but both quilts finish at the same size. 

The three rail baby quilt is in rows now, but the five rail is actually a top already. 

This is an all purple quillow top for one of my DDIL. It's sewn into rows, and the rows are sewn into pairs. 

The largest of my pink and purple rail fence blocks ended up being turned into this. I am not counting anything as I cut up my strips, so I'm just making do with whatever I have. I had fewer pink blocks but I think my framed squares nicely make up the deficit. Even the white strips were from my strip drawers, so I am making all these quilt tops from 100% scraps. I hate "scrap quilt" patterns that use 50% more or background. What I'm doing is really using up the scraps quickly. I've already got this sewn into a quilt top too. 

When I started sewing today, these were all the quilts that I had sewn into rows. I'm sewing by thread color, busting some colored piecing thread I had, and right now I'm using purple on everything. You can see a pink quilt on the design wall in the background, but it's going to wait until I change thread colors. If you look closely, you can also see red rows on the bottom of the stack of rows over my chair. Those are going to wait too. Right now it's all about purple. 

I finished the last of these blocks this morning, and this quillow will be for DD#2. I had run out of 2" strips in purple, so now it's onto the 1.5" strips. I'm sewing this quilt into rows are leaders/enders while I sew the other quilt rows together. I've got everything labeled, and the blocks are different sizes and these use a different sized strip, so it's not too difficult to keep things straight. 

Lest you think I only had purple and pink scraps, here are the spools I've been using on this scrapbusting spree.

The third spool in, the blue one? I'm on my SECOND spool of blue! Both were about full when I started. Remember, I've already completed three blue quillow tops, and I've still got stacks of blocks I haven't worked with yet. 

I'd like to get all the purple quilts into tops this week, but I'm not sure I can do it. I am doing three quillows in mixed colors that include purple and I don't even have those blocks done yet. Those are all with the 1.5" strips so it's six rail blocks which is a bit more sewing. We'll see. I thought I'd only have two mixed quilts with purple, but I decided to make two more quillows than my original plan, so now I've got 15 to make! Fifteen quillows to make for Christmas, and it's already October??? Ambitious or crazy, one or the other I guess. 

Scrapbusting

My scrap user system had gotten huge, and if you had asked me how long it would take to sew it up into quilts I likely would have said a couple years. Usually I'm really good about turning over the scraps regularly, but since I've had so many wedding quilts and a focus on UFO's I just wasn't using scraps like I normally do. Well, I am surprising myself on how fast my strips are being converted into quilt blocks. Granted, I am only doing easy patterns, and I haven't actually finished any quilts from this scrapbusting spree yet, but I did get the first quillow top together today. 

I've got so many piles of blocks in my sewing room, I decided I need to get some tops assembled. Tops I can put on a hanger in the closet, and basically be completely out of my way. Before I can sew up quilt tops, I have to figure out layouts. 

This looks like one big quilt in the photo, but it's actually two quillow tops on two separate design boards. The one on the right is the one I sewed into a top today. I've even laid out another on the empty design board. These look better in person than in the photo. I'm doing monochromatic tops for the quillows just because it's a quick way to bust scraps, and it busts the most scraps possible, I'm not using any background or constant, it's 100% scraps. I am specifically thinking about car use for the quillows, and you don't need anything fancy for that. These will make a fun game of I Spy though. I had so many novelty scraps, these tops have Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and Thor fabric, Air Force, Navy, and Army fabrics, multiple sports fabrics, cartoon characters, land and sea animals, holidays, lots to keep kids entertained with an I Spy game in the car. 

Blue was the most popular request for quillows. The two dark blue quillows will go to grandsons, the light blue was requested for one of my granddaughters, and I need to come up with another blue one for another granddaughter. I'm going to have to make the next blue quillow from a different sized strip though. 

I laid out the purple/pink rail fence. I think it will be a cute baby quilt. This one will not be a quillow. 

I have enough blocks sewn up for 3 blue quillows (one of which is now a top and the other two are on the design wall), 1 red, 1 pink, 2 green, and 1 purple. I also have other sized blocks sewn up for regular quilts. Today I was working on figuring out if I needed more of any blocks to have a good layout. I ended up making 1 more of one style block, and 20 more of a different style. Tomorrow my goal is to sew up at least one quilt top, and maybe figure out plans for some of my other stack of blocks, and make any more blocks for at least one of those if necessary. 

I'm still sub-cutting strips a little along. I'm finding my arm does best with short sessions of cutting and ironing, so I'm interspersing those activities throughout my day, no marathon sessions. 

It's been an eventful week, and I've had a lot of unexpected things come up, so I haven't gotten back to quilting on that UFO. I need to though, the new queen's list came out and I'm number 38 now. If the UFO Challenge stays the same as usual, I should have over a month before I am queen, but I'd like to get this quilt done and drop down to the bottom of the list long before that. The UFO I plan to quilt after this will just get meandering, so it will go a lot faster than this one.

Life has been an adventure lately, but it feels pretty good to be using up my scraps in the down times.