Finishes Times Two

I got the bindings sewn on the two quilts I had quilted. Now all three of my "Why does everyone hate pink?" series is done!

I've already started quilting another quilt from my basting pile. The new one is purple and white, so I get a break from looking at all that pink. It's also one of the big ones, queen sized. I'm not sure I'll have the next quilt quilted before we get a bunch of out of town company, so it could be a while. 

Today I was very busy in the sewing room. I got the bright version of Allietare sewn into rows. I pressed the rows and hope to work on sewing the rows together in the next few days. 

I also sewed the rows for two more weighted blankets, and started the last one I have cut. I don't think I'm going to have to make any more weighted blanket tops after these. I think the three tops I have finished along what I have going will use the rest of the pellets. I may even run out of pellets before I finish that many, in which case I'll make the tops a bit wider, and turn them into quilts. 

I started working on units for one of the wedding quilts I need to make as leaders/enders. I had been using split nine patch blocks as my leaders/enders, but that quilt has no deadline, and the wedding quilts do, so I switched my leader/ender to deadline quilts. I'm working on the simplest blocks first, just to get some momentum going. 

Christmas 2019 is already on my mind. I decided I wanted to make all the grandkids something, and I even decided what that will be. It's a bit ambitious, so I need to start working on it soon. I've been so busy working on new deadline quilts and finishing UFOs that my scraps are languishing. I'm making new scraps, but not using any. This is where my Christmas project comes in. I can use my scrap user system for a lot of the fabric I will need. I can use any of size strips I save for this project, and all tolled it should bust a lot of scraps. I need to subcut all the strips I use to the same size, but I have the strip die for that size!

I'm using a silver Sharpie to make registration lines on my dies, so I can use the strip dies to crosscut and get rectangles or squares with nice 90 degree corners. If I ever decide to make diamonds, I think I'll buy gold Sharpies for those lines, but I don't use diamonds very often. I know a lot of people don't put this many registration lines on their dies, but I wanted to be able to keep checking if I have the strips straight, no matter which size strip or stripset I am cross-cutting. If I have figured correctly, I should be able to cut subcut enough strips for one project in two passes of the die through the Studio cutter. That's MUCH faster than rotary cutting!

So the Christmas project will bust a lot of scraps, and it will be quick to sub-cut. It's also a fantastic thing to use as leaders/enders, so I can fit it in whenever. 

The thing I haven't worked on, but I really need to, is the next grandbaby's quilt. He's due in May, and I have it designed, but I've gotten no further than that. Besides the background, I think all the fabrics can come from my scrap user system. Yay for scrapbusting!

I still have to finish cutting up the scraps from the backings of that last basting spree. They are in a pile on the cutting table. I hate that, but my scrap drawers are so full, I haven't been motivated to process the scraps because I had no place to put them. With this new project, I can cut for it and make some room for the newest scraps. Of course, some of these new scraps will likely make their way into the Christmas project too!

My Kind of Day

Today was a really nice day, in a way that reminds me of my childhood, but I rarely get where I currently live.

SNOW!

And more snow!

And even a slide avalanche!

I loved the snowy day, and although I know most of the USA is sick of snow, it's a novelty here. 

It was a good day in another way too. I got another weighted blanket crossed off my list. It's not a UFO, but done is done!

This is for one of my grandsons, and he wanted a Minecraft weighted blanket. I ordered the fleece that's on the back first, not realizing how huge the images were. To get a small enough design for a six inch square I had to buy the cotton print on the front. I had wanted to make it all from fleece, but now I had this cotton. I decided to mix the cotton with fleece, so the lime green squares on the front are fleece. It was trickier than I thought to sew those together. Fleece is fairly stretchy, quilting cotton is not. Let's just say not all my corners line up right and leave it at that ;-)

The seemingly "zillions" of Flying Geese are finished. 

That's eight stacks of Flying Geese almost 5 inches high! What I love best about Flying Geese, is double sewing the corners and getting bonus HST's to play with.

A "zillion" flying geese lead to two "zillion" bonus HSTs. Sure they are small, but with this many, I can make a decent sized quilt with them. 

I'm back to FMQ every day, and the quilt I've been working on has a very pretty, very busy print for the border. I was having a hard time seeing where I had quilted and where I hadn't on this busy print. I decided to add another lamp. The lighting in my sewing room stinks, so I am constantly adding lighting. 

This is my longarm with the lighting it came with on. I knew when I bought this longarm I would need additional lighting. My sewing room is in the basement, it's not bright down there.  Yes. the lousy overhead lighting is on too. 

I immediately bought LED lighting for the throat of the machine, and this photo is taken with the LED lights, the light it came with, and the room's overhead light on. This is how I usually quilt, but I was really struggling to see the pink thread on that busy border.

Here I've added an OTT light that was elsewhere in the house. You know what, If someone told me they were using three additional lights to sew, I might think it's overkill, but looking at this, I don't really think it is. 

It may just be because I'm in my 50's, but I really need task lighting these days. I normally don't like things too bright, I've been known to wear sunglasses in the house on super sunny days, but to do detail work, I need my work space well lit. 

BTW, the quilt in that photo is now quilted and trimmed, so I have two quilts waiting for binding. Both quilts are getting the same pink binding, so I decided to wait until I had them both finished before binding either. I did bind the first pink quilt, just to get me off the queen's list in the UFO Challenge. This is the last of my "Why Does Everyone Hate Pink?" quilts. 

Three of the ten quilts I basted are now quilted. Not bad! I don't FMQ every day, but most. I never quilt more than 75 minutes per day, but it's usually an hour. I'll go a bit longer than that hour to get to a good starting place for the next day, but never more than 15 minutes over. My arm complains if I push it too much. 

I wound bobbins for the next quilt in the queue. I decided to tackle one of the big ones next. I rethreaded the machine with purple thread, and it's ready to go for the next quilt. 

No quilting this weekend, I've got family stuff going on, and that's ok. In fact, I'm going to go make dessert for tomorrow's family lunch.

Second Finish of 2019

Here is my second finish of 2019, and I've got another quilt quilted and waiting for binding.

I'm actually taking a couple days off from FMQ, and I'm pushing through with all of those Flying Geese units. I have another plastic shoe box half full with units, and I've got one wing sewn on most of the rest. It's an unscheduled detour, but I really just wanted those finished for some reason. It's not even a deadline quilt. 

I haven't touched the weighted blankets nor the quilt on the design wall. The quilt on the design wall has been claimed now though. I had DD#1 look at it in person, because it never photographs well. She likes it much better in person, and so she's claimed it for her youngest (which I was hoping would happen). I try to make all the grandkids a quilt for their big beds by their second birthdays. Miss E will be one in May, so I've got plenty of time to finish it, but I won't have to start a whole new quilt for her. Using a UFO for what would be a deadline quilt is a  win/win situation. I finish a UFO, they get a quilt on time.

I've been chuckling over this.

See the empty spots of my fabric shelves? That basting spree created several spots like this on my shelves. I'm perfectly OK with using my fabric, but what I find funny, is it takes making backings to see yardage disappear. Since I like my quilts to use as many fabrics as possible, my scrap user system, fat quarters and less than one yard pieces turn over quickly. Yardage really only goes quickly if I'm using it for background, borders or backing. 

When I first started quilting, I bought lots of yardage. I kept thinking I'd need large pieces to make a quilt. I didn't buy fat quarters at all, thinking they were too small to be useful. Now that I've been avidly quilting over ten years I think exactly the opposite. I still buy yardage of solids, blenders, and tone on tones, but unless I absolutely love a print (which rarely happens) I never buy yardage of a print without a specific project in mind. If I want some fun new prints to play with, fat quarters work just fine. 

In some of my online groups I hear women complain of exactly the opposite problem. They use up all their yardage, and the fat quarters they bought sit neglected in a corner. I really believe they key is knowing what kind of quilts you want to make. Some women really hate scrap quilts, but they are my favorite. I've made some quilts with just a few fabrics, and it bored me to tears. If a quilt is too "matchy-matchy", it looks like something you could get at a department store to me. 

That said, I really love looking at quilts made from the same patterns I've made scrappy, but someone else has made with only a few fabrics. I don't want to make those quilts, but I do like looking at them. That's why when I do a mystery quilt, I always use a different color scheme. I like looking at the same pattern done multiple ways. It's amazing to me how different the same pattern looks with different fabric choices. I've used several patterns multiple times, and a couple times people have insisted the quilts are not the same pattern, even when the quilts are side-by-side. Fabric and color choices completely change the feel of a quilt. 

How many of you would have a completely different stash if you knew when you started what you know now? To be fair, a lot of my stash was inherited, and I'll buy almost any cotton fabric if it's dirt cheap at a thrift store, so that wouldn't change. I would have less yardage overall, and likely a larger collection of fat quarters. No worries though, I go through lots of fabric, and eventually a lot of it will be used. 

Results

I finished my basting spree, and in the end I basted TEN quilts! 

How's that for a pile of basted quilts? Even better, I just finished quilting one this morning. as soon as the binding goes on I'll have a finish! 

I've had a couple people ask me how many pins I have, The answer is a lot, but it didn't happen all at once. All of my pins (and the plastic pin covers) were bought either on sale or with a Joann's coupon. The curved basting pins I like come in packages of 300, but the pin covers I like come in packages of 200. You have to have at least 600 pins for it to even out. I have more than 600 pins though, and most of that is because of the way I work. I tend to do everything in bunches. I'll have a cutting spree and cut several quilts, then a piecing spree, followed by a basting spree and a quilting spree. I'm not a fan of binding so I never save that for doing all at once, as soon as the quilt is quilted it gets a binding. 

There have been a few times that I've had a fast deadline quilt come up, but all my pins are in basted quilts, so I end up buying more. Again, I ended up with a disparity between pins and pin covers, so eventually, I ended up with 1200 pins. I think I actually have a bit more than that even. Overkill? Maybe, but because of the way I work, it still works for me. 

Now that I have a sit down longarm, I don't baste as closely as I did before, because I can keep so much more of the quilt flat when FMQ. That makes the pins I have go further. Also, in these ten basted quilts, The largest is queen sized, and there are two that size, two are twin sized, and the rest are throw or baby quilts. 

Now that I've got a nice pile of quilts ready to quilt (all 10 of which were UFOs), I can make a new plan. I only FMQ one hour per day, because my arm hurts if I do more. When I first cut down to an hour, I felt like quilts would take forever to finish, but I've since realized that if I quilt one hour EVERY day, they actually don't take that long. Even a big quilt can be finished in less than three weeks, and that's with fancier (for me) quilting. 

My arm can handle doing some other sewing, even after quilting an hour, as long as I take a break in between. I have a lot of projects out right now, but what I opted to work on is the zillion Flying Geese I need to make. 

 So far I've got this shoebox full, and that's only about half of what I need to make. I double sew all the corners of the Flying Geese and now I've got a box full of bonus HSTs too.

I'll end up with twice this many HSTs by the time I'm finished all those Flying Geese units. I have several ideas of how to turn the bonus units into another quilt, but I haven't made up my mind which idea I will use. 

Now that ten UFO's are basted, and so many quilt tops are out of the closet, I'm looking at UFO's that need to be assembled into quilt tops. I'm thinking I can assemble at least one quilt as I finish making tops for weighted blankets. 

With that in mind, I put a quilt on the design wall. This is my bright version of Bonnie Hunter's Allietare mystery quilt from a few years ago. Once I have this quilt finished, I will have all the mystery quilts finished, and I can start another mystery quilt guilt-free.

This is the men's shirt version of the Allietare mystery. I finished it last year. I finished all the blocks for both quilts shortly after the mystery ended, I just never got them assembled. I really wanted to do the mystery in two colorways because I love seeing how different they end up.