Merry Christmas!

I hope all of you that celebrate Christmas are happily ready and not franticly finishing things. This past weekend I was rushing around a bit, because although I was expecting a very low key quiet holiday, that's not the way things are working out, so I had more gifts to buy and stockings to stuff when I thought I was done. It's all good though, I'm being blessed with seeing some people I haven't seen in several years, and meeting a young person I've never met in person!

I've got company staying every day this week, but not all the same people, so there's lots of laundry and bed making going on around here. It's a bit like running a bed and breakfast! The only quilt related things I've gotten done this week is some cleaning up of the fabric room, because starting tomorrow I'll have to set up a cot in there for someone to sleep in there since the guest rooms will both be full! My fabric room was a disaster, so being forced to clean it up a bit was actually a blessing. 

I did get a bit of sewing done last week after I blogged. Not as much as I would have liked, but it's a busy time of year and it is what it is. The Diamond Terrace quilt that was on the design wall in my last post is fully assembled, but needs to be pressed before I hang it in the quilt closet. 

This was the next quilt on the design wall. I made a LOT of orange/yellow blocks a while back, in my scrap busting mode. This will be a good sized throw, and this one is in rows now.

I realized if I made two throws, I'd have an odd number of blocks left, but if I made a big center block, I could use all the extra blocks in a baby quilt. I looked through my block tool and came up with this block.

I really liked this block, and I think I may make a quilt with those as the main block. I think it was called Duck and chicks , which doesn't make much sense because baby ducks are ducklings, but whatever. 

This is how the baby quilt looks, and it's sewn into rows too.

I got the last of the yellow/orange blocks up on the design wall, but no sewing on these so far. 

As far as cutting goes, the only cutting I've gotten done is finishing the cutting for the blocks for my youngest granddaughter's quilt. That quilt has a March deadline. I still need to cut the sashing and borders, but I'll likely wait until I have the blocks done. 

I haven't cut anything for clue four of the mystery quilt, and I won't have a chance until early next week. Late next week I'll be back to having a houseful, so I'll only have a couple days where sewing time might be possible for the rest of this year! I knew there was a good chance the rest of this year would be a wash, so it's OK.

Merry Christmas and happy quilting if you've got time to!

21 Quilts in 2021

 I finished the Star Wars quilt, mailed it off and received video of the adorable recipient opening his gift! 

I had DH take photos of the quilt before I mailed it off, and I never actually checked his photos until now. Too funny, he had the quilt upside down, so to have the quilt right side up on the blog, I had to flip the photo upside down which makes the quilt look pretty weird, but whatever. Not all the fabrics are directional, so depending on which fabrics he was looking at he might not have realized there was a top and bottom. But, if you were wondering if someone was standing on their head to take the photo, hopefully that explains the weird perspective. 

That was my 21st quilt finish for the year, and likely my last. I do have a quilt I'm FMQ on, but it's a big one, and I've got a fairly busy schedule for the rest of the year, with sleepovers with the grandkids and some out of town company, so I'm not expecting to get another finish in this year. 

I am all caught up on Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, Rhododendron Trail. Not all of the details are worked out as far as when I'll have the grandkids and which days I'll have company, so I have no idea if I'll be able to stay caught up on the mystery quilt. If I can at least get most of the cutting done for each step, I should be able to catch up easily enough later on. 

I still have four seams to sew to get the center of the night fairy quilt together, but since it was off the design wall, I got another quilt laid out, and yesterday I sewed this one into rows. This quilt is called Diamond Terrace, and I made it with a jelly roll I received for my birthday this year! That's a record on how fast I used a jelly roll! I plan to press all the rows today, and maybe I'll get them sewn together, maybe not. Since this one is now off the design wall, I can lay out another quilt, or I can start cutting one of the March deadline quilts. Of course no matter what I'm working on, I've always got leaders/enders going, so more quilts are being made in between assembling others. 

I think cutting may be what I can do over the last couple weeks of this year. Since I'll have company quite a bit of that time, if I get up early, I can cut and that's a quiet activity so I won't be waking anyone up. 

20th Quilt Finish of the Year

Baby Marvel is a finish! It's my 20th quilt finish of the year. I've finished other projects, like the table runner, which I didn't count as a quilt finish, even though it's quilted. I pretty much only count baby sized quilts and up as quilt finishes. 

 I'm happy to have this one finished! I've got the twin sized Star Wars quilt that needs to mailed with this one quilted, I will bind it this weekend, and hopefully mail them both on Monday. 

As with most of my baby quilts, it's wider than WOF, so I needed to make the backing a bit wider. My favorite way to do that is by clearing out some orphan blocks.

I had five blocks leftover from my nephew's wedding quilt, and those five were just about the perfect size to increase the backing!

I've only got a few seams left to have the center of the night fairy quilt assembled. I'm hoping to finish that quilt top in the next couple days, so I can put another up on the design wall. I still need to cut an inner border for it though. 

My mystery quilt progress is slow and steady. Considering I started a week late, and I've been working on multiple other projects, I think I'm doing OK. I've got all of clue 1 sewn, and most of it pressed. That's good, because I looked at clue 3 this morning, and I need clue 1 finished to do clue 3. On clue two I'm about half done. I think I've got enough pieces cut to finish. Since I'm trying to die cut the mystery quilt, and I'm using men's shirts for fabric, I'm actually just cutting a few pieces at a time, and sewing them up then seeing if I need more. This is so NOT my normal way of working! If I were rotary cutting, I wouldn't think twice about just cutting a bunch of strips, knowing if I cut too many, they could just go into my scrap user system. I try not to have a bunch of extra die cuts though, I tried that once and I still haven't done much with them. Since men's shirts are such weird shapes when you cut them apart, I don't always end up with as many pieces as the die can cut, sometimes a couple pieces are a bit short because the fabric wasn't squared off. No worries though, I'm just tossing the wonky bits into the crumb bucket. I saw on clue 3 we need to cut some extra squares from neutrals. Since my neutral is a solid, I may just rotary cut those, which won't take long at all. Die cutting all the triangles has saved me a bunch of time though! 

I need to rotary cut some of the pieces for another quilt too, which needs to be done by March. Actually, after the Star Wars quilt is finished, both my next deadline quilts are due in March. I'm still debating which pattern to use for the March baby quilt, but the twin sized I Spy for my youngest granddaughter I have all figured out. I've got all the novelty fabrics cut for it, I just need to cut the fabrics for the Attic Windows bit. I'm totally cheating on the Attic Window's part. I can't imagine doing 80 mitered corners for one quilt, so I'm doing the cheater method that just uses an HST in the corner. 

I've got so many projects going on right now, I can't really even say which is my leader/ender project and which is my main project. Basically, when I'm piecing, I just always make sure there's something under the needle. I have several quilts cut out, and I just kind of grab whichever pieces are closest to whichever machine I'm at. Since I'm assembling quilts and piecing all at once, it's kind of a free for all. Add to that I've got two machines set up for piecing right now, and it really adds to the chaos. Thankfully, I'm pretty good at working on multiple things at once, and rare is the time I sew the wrong things together. My Janome is always either set up for quilting or binding, I've never done anything else with it, nor do I plan on using it for anything else. I could sew all kinds of things on it, but with three machines set up all the time, I don't have to, and I prefer it that way. By FMQ one hour a day, it keeps my UFO's moving through the queue, without a big commitment to quilting UFO's. If I have deadline quilts, those move to the head of the quilting queue, but other than that, I just try to keep a couple UFO's basted and ready to go so I always have a FMQ project to work on that first hour of sewing. 

Public Service Announcement

 I had plenty of time this week, but I got very little sewing done. Why you ask? Well, I was a little off after taking a Covid test and having it come out positive. I was NOT sick, and it was a breakthrough infection, so the vaccine did just what it was supposed to do. The only symptom I had, I didn't know could be a symptom of Covid, and that's why I'm writing about it. I had cold sores around my mouth, which I have a life long history of having. They come and go, and I've pretty much learned to ignore them. I had no idea cold sores can be a sign of Covid, if I had I would have taken a test before I had people here on Thanksgiving and the weekend after. 

I only found out because DD#2 casually said, "Hey, Mom, you don't think it could be Covid do you?" I told her I had never heard of it being a symptom, and I felt perfectly fine, so I kind of blew it off. After everyone left, I mentioned it to DH. We looked it up and it's not listed as a symptom on any of the big medical sites like the CDC or WHO. BUT, when I googled "cold sores and Covid", there it was! I found several articles mentioning the link between cold sores, canker sores, and Covid. I took a Covid test, and it came out positive, DH took one and his was negative. The thing is, he's had his booster shot, and I haven't, because I was out of town when he got his. 

So at that point I knew I had exposed a large part of my family to Covid, which I never would have done had I known I was sick. It's been about a week now, and to my knowledge no one is sick. My cold sores are gone, and I've tested negative for Covid now. I think since I didn't have a cough or anything, and I was washing my hands constantly because I did have cold sores and I was cooking a LOT, the chances of someone catching it from me was low. 

I had an appointment to get my booster shot this week, and you aren't supposed to take the shot if you actively have Covid, so I cancelled my appointment and I stayed home until I tested negative. The information on when to get a booster shot after having a breakthrough infection is conflicting, but I saw a couple sites suggest waiting four weeks, so that's what I'll do. 

I didn't write this because I wanted to debate whether to vaccinate or not. I was vaccinated, and even though I've got a history of pneumonia, and obesity makes me more likely to have a serious case, the only symptom I had was cold sores. I didn't lose my sense of taste or smell, I didn't have muscle aches, fatigue, cough or anything. I had NONE of the frequently listed side effects. I did have several cold sores, and a couple canker sores, but that is not unusual for me, so I ignored it. Looking back on it it was more sores at once than I usually get, but not the worst breakout I've had. I felt fine, I was only emotionally upset about exposing other people, not all of whom were vaccinated. 

After I tested negative, and it looks like no one caught anything from me, I started to get my mojo back. I've quilted half the Marvel baby quilt, and I just sewed up a couple units from clues one and two of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt.

If you are following this year's mystery, you'll notice I've gone rogue on colors. I'm using a burgundy solid for my neutral, and I'm using men's shirts for my colors. I'm going for an autumn vibe. 

Bonnie's colors                                                My colors

neutral                                                              burgundy

pink                                                                  green

garnet                                                               brown

yellow                                                               yellow/gold

aqua                                                                 orange

Since my background is a solid, and hers is scrappy, I feel comfortable going scrappy on all the other colors. 

Some of you tell me my sewing rooms are so neat! That's just because I don't usually show the messiest bits! I decided if I was going to try to fit in the mystery quilt to my already packed to do list, I needed to try to die cut the whole quilt, at least everything I have dies for. This morning, after FMQ for an hour and getting half the baby quilt quilted, I decided to see what I need to do to start cutting for the mystery. First I needed to clear off the die cutter, because there was a bunch of stuff piled on it, then I pulled out the solid I'm using as a neutral, and the colors of shirts I needed for clues one and two. Well, the shirt pieces all needed to be ironed, and my ironing station is buried! Rather than unburying the ironing station which is in my sewing room, not the fabric room (which I'm thinking of changing), I decided to make room in the fabric room for an ironing board. Well, that meant I needed to put away my last HUGE purchase from Marshall Dry Goods. The best place to put that, which is mostly quilt backings, was in the closet in the sewing room, which is where I normally store quilt backing fabric. Now, I haven't taken the time to clean up that closet in months, and that really needed to be done first, so THREE HOURS later, the closet was clean, and all the fabric was neatly put away! 

By then I was exhausted, way too tired to iron or cut, even with the die cutter. I ate lunch and watched some TV, taking a LONG break, and then I went back downstairs to set up the ironing board. I pressed a few shirt pieces, along with some of background, and cut what I had pressed. I'm not done cutting for those two clues by any stretch of the imagination, but I had enough to sew up some units, and I've got a pile of pieces to use as leaders/enders while I assemble a quilt or two. Now that I've got the Studio cutter unburied, and an ironing board set up, I can just press and cut a little each day, in between doing my other sewing and housework. I might be able to get caught up before clue 3 comes out. 

Sometimes I really love doing sew and flip corners, and getting those bonus HST's, but right now, cutting the exact shapes I need and having nothing left over is exactly what fits into my schedule. Die cutting is a LOT faster than rotary cutting too. 

I may not have sewed much this week, but I did finish Christmas shopping for the hardest person on my list, whom I had saved for last. I may pick up a couple more stocking stuffers, but I'm basically done Christmas shopping. I've even wrapped everything that is here. 

DH and I also took the time to plan out our epic train trip for next year, and we bought our tickets! He's got all the dates to try to set up scooter events in the different cities we're going to, and I'll work on hotel reservations once he's got some of that sorted. We aren't going until autumn, but when you are trying to plan events in multiple cities, and you have to order merchandise for giveaways and such, you need a long lead time. He also had to get permission to take three consecutive weeks off his day job, which can be tricky. As of right now it's a go, and I'm super excited! It's definitely something to look forward to. 

Just in Time

Just as I anticipated, I've had hardly any sewing time, and I expect no more sewing time until next week. I'm hosting Thanksgiving, and I have two different groups of people staying here over the next few days, along with others just coming for the day. 

I did manage to get the table runner I was hoping to use for Thanksgiving finished though! I used a double layer of wool batting because I want to be able to put hot pans directly on the runner, and although a hot dish isn't likely to damage my washer/dryer, if I ever use the runner on a plastic folding table, I still wanted it to completely protect the surface from damage. I have three more of these blocks leftover, so I'll be making a smaller version of this runner as well, but that can wait a bit. This runner uses eight blocks.

DS the Younger sent me a family photo, and it amazes me how much the kids have grown. I haven't seen them since March, and I don't know when I'll get to see them again since they moved so much further away. I'm thankful for photos and video chats when I get them though! 

I'll be very busy over the next several days, and next week I have an appointment for my Covid booster, so we'll see how I feel after that. I felt fine after the last round, and my flu shot didn't bother me either, so we'll see. 

For those of you in the USA, have a great Thanksgiving, and no matter where you are, stay safe!

Less Time Than Anticipated

I thought I'd have quite a bit of sewing time this week, but it hasn't turned out that way. That doesn't mean I've had NO sewing time, just not as much as I thought I'd have, so many of my goals were not met. 

I did finish assembling the Star Wars quilt that was on the design wall last week. I haven't given it a final press yet, but the top is finished. 

 I got the quilt that uses the last of the night fairy fabric on the design wall. It's a little tricky to assemble because three of the blocks are much larger than the rest, but I've got a plan. This quilt will be getting a couple borders once this much of it is assembled. 

This morning I finished making the rest of the quilt blocks that needed black piecing thread, so I'm setting those aside for now, and I switched the thread to grey so I can start assembling the last of the night fairy quilts. 

I haven't gotten back to FMQ at all, so that's a bummer. Now that the two December deadline quilts are tops, getting those basted and quilted are my priority, so I will likely put the quilt I've been quilting on aside once I get the two deadline quilts basted. I'll see if I can get a bit further on it before I have to put it aside. My goal for the weekend is to get the deadline quilts basted. 

Next week is a complete bust for sewing. I've got a birthday dinner to make on Sunday. On Monday I'm babysitting all day (which I did one day this week as well), Tuesday I'll be going out with my sister, Wednesday and Thursday will be all about cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I'm sure I'll look at the clues for the mystery on Friday, but I've got company coming for a three day weekend, so no mystery quilt sewing can happen until the next week. 

As soon as I finish blogging, I'm going to go baste the table runner I am making for Thanksgiving, but I have company coming tonight for dinner, so I don't have a lot of time this afternoon either. The table runner won't take long to quilt, so I'm hopeful I can get it done on time! Even so, finding the time to quilt it could be an adventure. 

Speaking of adventures, DH and I are considering doing one of our bucket list trips next year. We've always wanted to take a big train trip, and we are gathering all the information we need to make a decision on it. Have any of you done a cross country trip on Amtrak? I'd love to talk to someone who has! I've been watching YouTube videos about it, and those are helpful, but I've never done overnight on a train, only day trips. If anyone has any good train tips I'd be anxious to hear them!

Home Again

Whenever I go away for more than a couple days, it takes me a little while to get into the swing of things again. Of course there was catching up on household chores to do, though DH did do the floors while I was away! Yay! I should have gone right back to my deadline projects, but I didn't. 

When I found out one of my nieces is having a girl next spring, my first thought was this was a chance to use up the fairy fabric I've had in a bin. I had a clear picture in my head of what I wanted to make, and then I'd use all the leftovers from the first fairy quilt and the baby quilt in a third quilt and bust all the bits and pieces leftover. The first fairy quilt had a lot of waste. I've since decided to do something else for my great niece after talking to my niece, but that project in my head wouldn't leave me alone. So, instead of working on deadline stuff when I got home, I made this quilt top instead.

 I'm really happy with how it came out, and since I had bonus HST's left from making these big stars, I incorporated those into the last quilt to be made from the fairy fabric. 

I now have all the blocks made for the last quilt, and I'm not sure how it's going to look. There are several different types of blocks going into it, it's literally just the dregs of the fabrics I bought for the first fairy quilt, the waste pieced bits from making all the original stars, plus just enough yardage to make the blocks all the same size. As it turned out, I had more fabric left than I remembered, and the third and last quilt from the night fairy fabric will be twin sized. I'll need to get that quilt on the design wall before I get a feel for how it will look.

Next on the design wall is a deadline quilt though!

This is the twin sized Star Wars quilt I'm making for a different niece's stepson. DH put it on the design wall for me, and I had already had him take down the top row before I thought to take a photo. You can't see the bottom couple rows in this photo either, but this gives you an idea what it looks like. There are 24 different Star Wars fabrics, two blocks with each fabric. 

As if I didn't have enough projects going, I decided to do Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt this year. She's using a spring palette, so I decided to go Autumn. 

I'm using a solid burgundy as the background, though not this piece, I didn't have enough of it. I'll be using my stash of men's shirts for all the other colors. I've since dug through all my men's shirts and have more options in each color now. 

Actually, the first quilt related thing I did after getting home from DD#2's house was sorting all my men's shirts. I started with five containers of men's shirts. After sorting I have one of all neutral shirts, one of all blue shirts, one with the colors for the mystery, and one with all the other colors sorted by color. What happened to the fifth container? Well I pulled out all the shirts that don't read as one main color. If there wasn't a clear background color, like shirts with even width stripes, or checkered shirts, or really large scale plaids, I tossed those into a laundry basket, and I'm cutting those harder to use shirts into leader/ender projects for 2022. I got a ton of quilt tops made this year, and it's largely due to the fact I pre-cut the projects I used as leaders/enders. After doing the sorting, I realized sooner or later I have a lot blue/neutral men's shirts in my future! But that's not a project for next year, I'm still working with scraps and hard to use fabrics, and those will be my main focus, besides continuing to finish UFO's and deadline quilts. 

In case you are wondering, a week off did my arm a world of good, and I'll likely not start FMQ until next week so I'll have two weeks off of that, which will be even better. DH was joking he would buy a longarm and quilt all my quilts for me, and I told him go ahead. I prefer piecing to quilting anyway! He won't do it, but I'd definitely let him if he wanted to!

Not the Faces!

If you've read my blog for very long, you'll know I use quite a bit of novelty prints. A lot of the people in my life like themed quilts, which often leads to the use of novelty prints. Most of the time when I'm quilting, I can happily quilt through whatever is on the fabric and only think about the quilting design, but when there are faces...well, let's just say I have a really hard time quilting through faces. I can quilt across bodies or trucks or fruits and vegetables without a problem, but a face??? I've done it, but it bothered me the whole time, and if I see it later on, it still bothers me. 

The last wedding quilt of 2021 was superhero themed, so lots of faces! I had originally planned to do walking foot quilting on it, since I backed it with minky and that causes too much drag for my arm to handle it well. When it came right down to it, I knew any walking foot design I had considered was going to have me quilting through faces, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I ended up doing an easy meander on it, but it was still a chore moving it around.

I thought I was home free, I made it through the quilting without any serious pain. When I started sewing on the binding my arm started hurting. Surely it will be fine, I'm almost done, right? I finished the quilt, and my niece should get it today. I mailed it out on Monday. I'm happy with how it came out, and I think she and her husband will enjoy it.

If I had been smart, I would have taken a couple days off after that, but I still have two more deadline quilts for 2021, and the year is almost over. I usually start my sewing day with an hour of FMQ, so I grabbed the next basted quilt, which is not a deadline quilt, but neither of those are ready to to quilt, so I just grabbed the next in the pile. It's a big quilt, but normal quilting fabric for the backing, so I wasn't worried about it. I quilted for an hour, and my arm was a bit sore, but not too bad. I took a long break, then spent some time piecing on a different machine. Again, sore arm, but nothing drastic. I quit sewing earlier than usual that day, but of course, that evening I was doing some prep work for the next quilt, and I did a bunch of ironing...That hurt quite a bit. 

Next day I decided to try doing my hour of FMQ, which I shouldn't have done. I got my hour in, but now not only was my upper arm near my bicep hurting like usual, but my shoulder, elbow and wrist are also hurting. I'm reading a really good book right now (if you like time travel books try The Celtic Brooch Series by Katherine Lowry Logan), and I usually only read in bed, but to make myself take a long break, I grabbed my kindle and read during the day! By late afternoon, my arm was feeling a bit better, so I decided to just see about piecing some Star Wars blocks for one of the deadline quilts. I made it through six blocks, that's it. Once that RSI flares up, it gets aggravated very easily. 

Funny how things work out though. I was supposed to be going to spend a week at DD#2's house November 7-14. She contacted me, and now things got moved up and she needs me next week instead, could I make that work? I told her that was perfect, because if I'm not home I won't be sewing and my arm can use the break! 

Now I'll be leaving in a couple days, so I'll be making sure DH has what he'll need while I'm gone. I won't be doing any more FMQ until after my trip, but I am hoping to get a couple smaller jobs done. This morning I finished piecing the blocks for the Star Wars quilt.

I haven't pressed this block yet, but it gives you an idea of where I'm going with that quilt. I really did opt for simple blocks because of the time constraints. 

I have some really easy cutting that I need to get done, and it's not going through multiple layers of fabric, so I might actually be able to do that. If I don't finish that's OK.

This is what I've got done so far on my washer/dryer runner. It needs a border to bring it up to size, and I'd like to get the border on tomorrow, along with the border on the deadline baby quilt. If I only get the two borders on I'll consider that a huge win! The Star Wars quilt can wait, though I'd like to get the blocks pressed. 

I've been mulling over why my RSI got so bad this time, and I think it's because I haven't been taking weekends off lately. DH has weekends off work, but he has had a ton of stuff going on with his side business. Since he's been busy, I've just kept myself busy, to my own detriment. My arm needs those days off, and I have to be better about making myself take them. 

All-in-all, I'm happy with my progress, and I knew I was pushing it too hard, so having my arm act up isn't that much of a surprise. It's a bummer, yes, but a surprise, not really. The change in my daughters schedule really works to my advantage, so next week my arm gets a break, while I'm busy with a couple of grandkids! I won't be blogging next week, because I don't feel like bringing my laptop or iPad with me, and I don't enjoy blogging from my phone. Enjoy the next couple of weeks without me, and if you need a break, try to take one!

Another One Done!

This is the first time I'm blogging on my new-to-me computer. I've been wanting a MacBook for ages, but was put off by the price tag. One of my SIL's helped me buy one from his company, that sells them off every two years. So this computer was top of the line two years ago, and will still have decent specs for years to come, but I only had to pay 10% of the original purchase price, so definitely more in my budget! Since I was upgrading my computer, I upgraded my quilting software too. I already had two activations on my EQ7, and that's all you're allowed, so I upgraded to EQ8, and while I was at it, I added Blockbase to the mix. I was glancing through some of the blocks in that and my mind was racing with ideas.

 I finished the Pineapple Blossom quilt. I had debated scrappy binding, but I didn't think I had enough made to go around this king sized quilt, and I was too lazy to make more. I have a bin of cutoff binding, and I could have easily made more, but sometimes you just want something finished. I opted for a chambray binding, which doesn't really stand out against anything, and that's what I wanted. There's enough going on in this quilt it didn't need an eye catching binding.

As is the case with a lot of quilts, the quilting shows up better on the back. I started this quilt several years ago, and it feels good to have it finished! DD#1 fell in love with it so it can go live at her house.

I was busy crafting with the grandkids last week. 

Miss S made a mermaid shirt, and she beaded the whole bottom of her shirt by herself. What a difference a few years makes, the younger girls needed help, but she didn't. 

Mr L opted for a car design, and he mixed his paints for a camo look. 

Mr LJ wanted a fire engine with two stars. 

And Mr T wanted a school bus. 

This is a better pic of his.

The two little ones already chose what they want on their next shirts, and it just so happens I have extra shirts in their sizes, so I think we'll do that next month when I go spend a week at their house.

DH was busy with the grandkids too.

Mr T is especially fond of sidecar rides, and he was up at 4AM the next morning saying Pappy needed to wake up so they could go riding. I suggested we let Pappy sleep a bit more, but they were riding by 8:30. 

I started quilting on the last wedding quilt of 2021, but it will take a few days to get that done. I plan on doing some piecing this afternoon. I got the last fabric I needed for the baby quilt, and I can start piecing the Star Wars quilt. I have an inkling I'm going to need to make another baby quilt soon, but I don't have confirmation on that yet. 

Met My Goals

 I am a happy quilter! I had some pretty lofty goals and less than a week to get them done, but I met them all!

I just finished quilting this monster a few minutes ago. I need to trim the edges so I can get binding on it. I might be able to trim today, but likely the binding will have to wait. I've got a houseful of company tonight, and I've got a few things to do to get ready for that! So much mess in the background, ignore that. My studio seems to either be clean or productive, and lately I've been going for productive. 

I did baste the last wedding quilt of 2021, so it's all ready to quilt after this one is bound. Well, it's ready to quilt when my quilting thread arrives, which should be any day. 

I've gotten as far as I can on the baby quilt. I've got the borders planned, but I want to use a particular fabric as the cornerstones and part of the border. I only had a fat quarter of it left, and that wasn't enough. My local shop was sold out of it, so I had to order online. No worries, I won't have any sewing time before it gets here anyway. It's due to arrive Friday, and I have company until Sunday. 

I also got the Star Wars twin sized quilt cut out. That will go to the big brother of the baby that's getting the Marvel quilt. 

Those were all the goals I had hoped to get done before I got the grandkids this week, but was doubtful I could do it. I was so busy, I actually got a bit more done than that. 

I sewed all these yellow/orange blocks into four patches just to make assembling the quilts easier. I have enough for two twins.

Yesterday, I took some time in the afternoon to make two of my grandsons weighted snakes.

I didn't have a pattern, but they are snakes, how hard could it be? I did widen the head and taper the tail, but aside from that they are just straight. I thought that fabric would make great snakes, but I used different colors on the bellies so they could tell them apart. The two year old especially likes pressure on his shoulders, so I thought make a toy snake could drape over his shoulders like a shawl to provide some of the sensory input he needs. The eyes are safety eyes, not buttons, and I reenforced the fabric with fusible interfacing before putting them on, so I think it should be safe for them. They aren't big stuffed animal fans, but I thought a weighted option would be good for their sensory issues. I sewed channels in the snakes so all the pellets couldn't go down to one end, and it makes them more easily posable too! I had fun with them, we'll see if the boys like them. 

No more sewing for me until next week, and I will likely need a day or two of recovery time after having a houseful! We'll have six extras tonight, four tomorrow night, and two until Sunday. We have two guest rooms, but even that's not quite enough for tonight. I'll figure it out! That's why we also have a cot and air mattresses. 

Maybe on my recovery days, I can do a little bit of clean up in the studio, in between all the loads of laundry I'll need to do,  it could use it!

Closet full of Quilt Tops

 Quite a while ago, I bought a 25 pack of skirt hangers to hang quilt tops on, and I've never had all of those hangers full, until now. I've actually got 27 quilt tops hanging in the closet now, plus the superhero wedding quilt that's still draped over the cutting table, and I've got a couple quilts basted as well. You'd think after assembling three quilt tops last week, and another five this week, I'd be catching up as far as assembling quilt tops goes. Well, in all actuality, I've still got several more quilts worth of quilt blocks waiting to be assembled, and I've got several more quilts in some stage of sewing, and even a couple quilts cut out that aren't sewn at all. 

I wish I could say I've been doing lots of quilting as well, but I haven't done any FMQ in over a week. I knew sewing time would be iffy for a while, and if I only have have small bits of time, piecing is easier than quilting. 

Over a year ago, I was overrun with 2.5" inch squares, and I took all the squares I had four or five of the same fabric and matched them up for nine patches. I've been using those as leaders/enders for a year, and let me tell you, I am sick of sewing nine patches! This week I decided to make those my main project, just to get them done.

This is the result of a year or so of sewing nine patches as my leader/ender project. I started out counting and clipping them together in sets of ten, but I soon gave up on that. I'm estimating about 500 nine patches, which will make a lot of scrap quilts. I put those all aside for now, I'm pretty sick of looking at them, and I'm using some quilts I have cut out as my leader/ender projects right now. I am considering setting options, and some of my next leaders will likely be alternate blocks for some of these. 

I made several of these blocks this week, because I'm debating using them in the baby Marvel quilt I need to make. I made them in different colorways, and on several I tried to stick with colors representing different superheroes, like a red and yellow one for Ironman, and red and blue for Captain America. I made more blocks than I need, and I need to lay them out with the Marvel fabric to see if that's the direction I want to go. If I decide against it, which I might, I'll just make a whole quilt of these star blocks. I've got several ideas running through my head for the baby quilt, and I haven't made any firm decisions yet. 

Last week I had two of my granddaughters for three days, and we got busy crafting!

I cut out their names and the design they wanted from freezer paper, ironed the freezer paper onto the shirts, and then let then use fabric paint to stamp around the paper. When the paint was almost dry, I used a toothpick to get under the freezer paper and peeled it off. The next day, I fringed the bottom of their shirts and we strung pony beads onto them. These two were my test subjects, and all went well with the craft, so next week when I have four different grandkids, we're going to try it all again! Next week I'll have three boys and only girl, so I think we'll skip the beading unless Miss S wants them. In case you are wondering, neither girl had enough patience to finish the beading, so I finished both of their shirts. These two are 3 and 7, so I figured that would be the case. Next week I'll have two 10 year olds, and a 2 and 4 year old. Fall break makes for a busy Nana with no sewing going on!

I do have a couple sewing days available before they get here, and my hope is to get the wedding quilt basted, and get back to FMQ the quilt I'm about 1/3 done quilting. I'm also hoping to get a bit of cutting done, but we'll see. That may be too ambitious for the time I'll have.

Tomorrow DH and I are going on a day trip. Yesterday we took a day to go see DD#2 and family up in Phoenix. These two weeks off he's had have not turned out the way we thought they would, and we debated going away for a couple nights, but decided we had enough to do, so a couple day trips was a wiser way to go. Next week he's back at work, but I'll be in Nana mode, so I'm not expecting much sewing progress to be made. I do, however, expect another tea party to happen. I have tea parties with all the grandkids, boys like tea and cookies too!

Trio of Tops

 I've been beyond busy this week. I got three quilt tops sewn together. 

This quilt top from bargello leftovers finally got it's borders. I suppose I could add another border all the way around, but I'm not going to, I like the size it is now. I also don't have anything in stash that would work as a border for this, and I'm not buying anything for that. 

The last wedding quilt of 2021 is now a top. I didn't spread it flat for a photo, it's just draped over my cutting table, but you get the idea. This pattern is Film At Five, which I've made two other times scrappy as shown in the tutorial, but this time I subbed big novelty prints for the 25 patches. 

The last quilt top is the trippy looking Cascade quilt I showed a couple posts ago. I didn't take a new photo.

Yesterday I was sewing like mad, and got five quilts sewn into rows. None of these quilts will be getting borders. One good thing about sewing so many quilts into rows is I don't have time to overthink the layouts, which can be a sticking point for me. 

The first quilt sewn into rows was a girly throw I had on the design wall a while back. 

^This is the boys version of the same quilt, but this one is one row larger each dimension. It's in rows too.

^The rail fence blocks I made from scraps a while back and then cut up are now in rows for three quilt tops. This was my first one. I alternated X's and O's.

^For my second I opted for a herringbone setting. 

^The third I just kept all the HST's in the same direction. 

I've pressed all the rows for all five quilt tops, but I won't get another chance to sew until next week. I've got grandkids the rest of this week, then company this weekend. 

I finalized my plan for the Star Wars quilt I need to make. I need 24 different fabrics, because the quilt will be 48 blocks and I didn't want more than two blocks with each fabric. I can actually get enough from each fat quarter for four blocks, so I'll just make two quilts at once. I only need one right now, but I know an extra Star Wars quilt won't sit around long. I tried to only buy fat quarters, but there were a couple fabrics I found that I had to get 1/2 yards, and one or two I had to get full yards. Some of the Star Wars fabric will go into stash, but not much, I'll be using as much as I can right away. I ordered all of those fabrics online, so now I'm waiting for them to arrive. Hopefully they'll get here in a timely manner, so I can get started on that quilt, but I've got plenty to keep me busy in the meantime. 

Shopping Instead of Sewing

 I knew the next month or so was going to be iffy on the sewing front. I haven't gotten much sewing done, but I did do a bit.

I finished piecing the sashing for the last wedding quilt of 2021. It's all directional, so I had to keep track of vertical sashings vs. horizontal sashings.

This morning I put it up on the design wall. You can't see all of it, it's five rows down, and the last row of sashing is actually lying flat on the floor. It's a superhero themed quilt, but I threw in a few Easter egg fabrics in the small squares. I slipped in some video game fabric, some Star Wars, Star Trek, and even a bit of Harry Potter. All the big squares are superheroes, and for the most part, they are alternating diagonal lines of Marvel and DC. The corners got a little weird, and one square is the Incredibles which is Disney, so... I did what made sense to me when I was laying it out, and I'm not sure the recipient will ever notice the pattern. 

I've got the first block finished for the leader/ender quilt project I've got going while I'm working with black. I also sewed up a bunch of black HST's for a table runner. 

I spent a lot of my week Christmas shopping. If you think it's early I'm telling you this year it isn't. I ordered a spring horse my two grandkids in Kansas, and it looks like I ordered the last one available, and it won't arrive until late October. I ordered them both cowboy hats to go with it, and one of those won't arrive until late November! If I had waited much longer, that wouldn't have worked at all. For all the other grandkids I went with books. I'm buying used books when I can, because I think it's better for the planet, not to mention it saves me money. DH and I went to so many thrift shops over the last week, and I got what I could there, then filled in the holes in book series on ebay and Amazon. Some of the books I was hunting are out of print, so used was my only option anyway. I'm now finished shopping for the grandkids, and I just have the adults to do. I'm going to go with gift cards and food for them, so I can wait on that. 

I did a bit of fabric shopping as well, but very targeted shopping. The kid quilt I need before Christmas now has a theme, they chose Star Wars, and I'm out of Star Wars fabric. I ordered a panel, and some fat quarters. I don't have a plan for that yet, but when the fabric arrives, I'll see what I can come up with. If I need to buy more fabric I will, I didn't buy any yardage and I'm probably going to want a border on that quilt. We'll see, if I do something modern I might be able to do without a border. 

Looking forward to 2022, I realized I need to make a big girl bed quilt for my youngest granddaughter. I make all the grandkids a twin sized quilt for their second birthday. Her birthday is in March, so getting an idea of what I'm doing now would be helpful. I talked to DS the Younger, and he said Miss X loves big brother's I Spy quilt, so they wanted one of those for her as well. I ordered a couple fat quarters with that quilt in mind too. I have lots of I Spy squares already cut, but the variety isn't what I'd like it to be. The only vegetable squares I have left are carrots, and I want to make sure I have some squares in hers that brother doesn't have. I may look for a few more novelty fabrics with that quilt in mind, but I'm trying to buy the smallest amount of fabric that's practical. I always use 6.5" cut squares in my I Spy quilts, so most of the I Spy assortments I see available on Etsy or ebay aren't large enough. I did order a novelty scrap bag, and we'll see what I can get out of that.

In case you are wondering where I buy so many novelty fat quarters, I shop here. I've ordered from this shop several times and always get great service. A lot of shops that advertise fat quarters either sell mostly bundles, or don't have a lot of novelty fabrics. I love this shop because I can pick and choose individual novelty fat quarters, and not waste my money on a bundle that has a lot of prints I don't need. I've made so many themed quilts, that buying novelty fat quarters is a perfect way to get a variety of fabrics without adding a bunch of yardage to the stash. Fat quarters also give me more options than 1/4 yard cuts. For I Spy quilts I always use 6.5" squares, but for themed quilts I might do something completely different. The superhero quilt above uses both 10.5" squares and 2.5" squares. You can't get a 10.5" square out of a traditional 1/4 yard cut, but you can usually get two from a fat quarter. 

Today I'm planning to start assembling the superhero quilt. I also need to get my hour of FMQ in, something I've not been consistent about this week. DH doesn't know it yet, but he's taking me out to dinner tonight ;-) That way I'll have extra sewing time while he works on his magazine!