A Colorful Week

I finished the blocks for the quilt that's for my bed, but with no access to my design wall they'll stay blocks for a bit. 

I'm working my way through some stuff that was hanging around my sewing room.

 The blocks on the left are leftover pieces from the RT Mystery Quilt. I'm doing a different border than Bonnie used, so I'm using the border units in these spinning blocks.  The blocks on the right are all made from Bonus HST's from another quilt I recently finished the blocks for. I have ideas on how to set both of those, but it's not happening right now. 

I've been wanting to tackle my quilt kits, and here's a start on that. I loved this colorful collection of fabrics, and back when Craftsy sold quilting supplies I bought the quilt kit to make Flock Together. The fabrics are the Looking Glass collection by Boundless. I had purchased the queen sized quilt kit, but bought an extra fat quarter bundle so I could make a king. Sometime last month I dug out the kit and got to cutting. I changed the size of the blocks so I could make better use of the fabric, knowing that I could get an extra quilt or two from the fabrics if I was careful. 

I've got all of the big and medium HST blocks done, and I should be able to finish the small HST blocks today. If I can't get it done today, definitely tomorrow. Not too shabby, getting all the blocks done for two king sized quilts in two weeks! 

Since I was so judicious on fabric utilization, I'm going to end up with two throw sized quilts from these fabrics, as well as the original planned king. 

The extra small triangles I added some solid white to, and I've just started making blocks with those. I had enough of that white to make 20 blocks, but so far I've only finished the four shown above. I'll still have more small triangles, but not as many as I'm using in this quilt. Maybe I'll opt for a colorful table runner or something with the last of the small triangles, OR I may just cut up some more colorful fat quarters from other lines and make another larger quilt. 

I've got ideas for the extra medium triangles, but I haven't started working with those. I don't have any extra large triangles, I purposely cut the correct amount of those because they used so much fabric. It's kind of funny that I feel the need to use every bit of fabric that I can when I have such a huge stash, but it is the way I'm wired. 

This was my colorful week, getting to play with all those bright colors from the Looking Glass collection after only working with greens and white last week. Next week I'm leaving color behind, and I'll be tackling a quilt kit that is multiple shades of grey. 

I feel really good about finally tackling some of my quilt kits. It's been on my to do list for the past couple years, but this is the first year I've really set aside the time to work on getting some quilt kits out and worked on. I know I can't possibly finish all the quilt kits I have in one year, but I've been very good about not buying any more, so any time I can get one out of the bin and worked on, it's giving me space in my fabric room. I'm downsizing the REALLY SLOW way! I have a set of shelves in the fabric room I eventually want to pass on, but to do that, I need to get what's on the shelves moved elsewhere or used. It's likely a multi year goal, but that's ok. It's all stuff I still really want to sew up myself, so it's not a problem if it takes a while. It's still good to see progress. 

It's About Time!

I am finally making a quilt for our bed a priority! It helps that I don't have any firm deadline quilts right now. I do have a couple memory quilts I need to make, but no deadline on those. Overall, it's a good time to make a priority of the quilt for our bed, poor DH has been waiting years for it after our last one wore out. 

 The thing is, it's been cut out for at least two years, if not three. somehow I always end up with something more pressing to do. 

Choosing a pattern for other people is easy, choosing one for us is much harder. I finally opted for North Star by MSQC. I'm not using their construction methods, I prefer cutting strips to the correct length from the start, for me that's much more accurate. I hate squaring up so accuracy the first time around is important to me.

Here are my first four blocks, the center of the quilt will be this orientation. Like all half log cabins, there are a bunch of ways the blocks can be set.

Just for fun I flipped them around. If I had more blocks done I could play with a lot more settings.

I've been working on these blocks since last week, and although I'm not finished, I am working on the final round of green for all the remaining blocks. I think I should be able to finish the blocks tomorrow. I won't have access to my design wall for quite a while, so once the blocks are done, they'll be set aside until life goes back to normal. 

I did get the center of this little quilt assembled this week too. I'm thinking a narrow cream border followed by a wider green plaid. Borders will have to wait too. 

I've been trying to be a little more adventurous when I order at restaurants. Last weekend DH and I went out to breakfast, and I ordered an Acai bowl, healthy and filled with antioxidants it said. Now, from the menu description I was expecting a bowl of granola with fruit and a dollop of acai sorbet on top. 

What I got was a big bowl of acai sorbet, with some fruit and a granola sprinkle! Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, but I was not expecting ice cream for breakfast! So, if you haven't had one of these, next time you want ice cream for breakfast you can order a "healthy" acai bowl, and you'll be trendy! I know sorbet is not technically ice cream, but it felt like I was eating ice cream. Thankfully it wasn't very sweet, because I'm not a big fan of sweets in the morning. It was plenty sweet enough, just not ice cream level of sweet. 

One Finish, Two Finish

 There's a lot going on around here, but I had a deadline quilt to finish and I did! 

This is the quilt for my youngest granddaughter's 2nd birthday. It's already mailed, and will get there before her birthday! Go me!

I am going to be having a lot of company soon, more than the guest rooms can handle, so I needed to clear out the sewing room. The table I keep the vintage machine on completely collapses, I dropped the back extensions on the sewing cabinets, and moved all the misc. stuff into the walk-in closet.

It looks pretty empty, doesn't it? A queen sized air mattress will now fit in here without a problem. I'll still be getting some sewing in, just elsewhere. 

While I was rearranging the stuff in the walk-in closet to fit my carts and such that I keep under the cabinet extensions, I came across my basted quilts. I don't have very many basted right now, it's time for a basting spree, but I did have a baby quilt basted and I decided with all the craziness going on in the world and my house, I needed a quick win. 

I got this quilted and bound in just a couple sessions, so I feel good about that! I made another baby quilt from the same kind of blocks, but it had purple sashing and was gifted quite a while ago. It's about time its twin was finished! It's my third finish of the year, but the first UFO finish for this year. I have so many quilt tops in the quilt closet that I ran out of hangers! I don't care if I just meander on all of them, I just want to make a big dent in all those UFO's this year. I know I won't have a chance to do any FMQ for a while, DD#2 and family will be moving soon, and I'll be helping with childcare during all of that. At least I snuck in another finish before all that happens.

Deadlines and Weather

I admit it, I can be a procrastinator, or just an avoider when it comes to deadlines. The thing is, I'm actually pretty good about getting stuff done on time, I just may get seven other things done first in an effort to avoid a deadline project, or wait until the last minute.

I got the deadline quilt top done, and I pieced the backing, and I got it basted, and I'm already half done quilting it! All of that done this week! 

Here it is laid out for basting if you didn't like the other pic. 

Attic Windows quilts are funny, in that they never look 3D to me until you add the sashing. I've seen some without sashing and to me they look flat. Add sashing and it's like magic!

Although most of my sewing this week has indeed been on the deadline quilt, I have gotten a couple quilts laid out on the design wall so they are ready to assemble. 

I found a bunch of green/neutral QST's in a bin. The units are just 3" so this won't be a huge quilt, but it will be a decent sized lap quilt. I used squares from men's shirts for the alternate squares. I think I'll add one border, I have some green plaid I think will look good with this. 

I also had some rail blocks that I never made anything from. I made a quillow from the white background blocks, but I never did anything with the creams. I had enough blocks to make a quilt a bit bigger than I normally make quillows, so I'm not thinking this will be a quillow, just a throw sized neutral quilt. 

I still have several quilts worth of blocks that aren't out of their bins yet. I'm kind of funny in that I don't like assembling quilts when it's summer, so I'm trying to assemble as many as I can before summer hits. There's too much ironing when assembling a quilt, and I don't like all that quilt in my lap while I assemble if it's hot. I am better about keeping the quilt off of me when I am FMQ, so I don't mind FMQ during the summer. Ironing is a big consideration, when it's 110 degrees outside you don't want to heat up the house any more than necessary. I don't use the oven much in summer either. 

I actually prefer basting in summer, because then there's no quilt on me at all, and it's a good time to get a boring chore done without heating me or the house! 

Anything that require a lot of ironing is best done in winter. I keep our house pretty cool in winter, so ironing just helps warm me up! 

For those of you that are start to finish quilters, you probably never take the weather into consideration, but for anyone like me, who has a ton of UFO's, do you take weather into consideration? Am I really odd in this? If I have a deadline, I work on whatever I need to, but if I don't, I always take the weather into consideration when deciding on which UFO's to work on. Maybe if our climate wasn't so extreme I wouldn't think about it. Our summers are very long and very hot, and air conditioning is expensive! I don't do well with the heat, so heating up an already toasty house with an iron is not my idea of a good time. Ironing when the house is uncomfortably cool in winter? Absolutely! I can usually even take off my cardigan for a bit while ironing in winter.