Finishes #10 and #11 for 2024

 I've been busy clearing the decks again. DS the Elder and family arrive on Saturday for a week of visiting. I wanted things cleaned up before they got here. One of my deadline quilts is for their son, and here it is, finished!

He really loves dragons so I'm hoping this quilt is something he'll enjoy. They are allowed two bags a piece on the airplane, so I'm just going to send this home with them and not have to pay postage. 

I also finished a random scrap quilt. It's slated for donation. 

I've finished so many quilt tops in the past couple weeks it's crazy! I think around a dozen, but I've completely lost count. It could be higher, but I don't think it's lower. One of the quilt tops is a deadline quilt, and I've already basted it. It will be the first thing I start quilting after my company leaves. I won't be blogging next week, because no sewing will occur while family is here. I'm really hoping I hit my goal of finishing 40 quilts this year, because I've got 30 quilt tops hanging in the quilt closet plus a stack I don't have hangers for! 

I'll still have sewing time tomorrow, and I'm hoping to get my March blocks done for the Greek Murder Mystery. If I can get those cut out today, I think it's likely I can finish them tomorrow.

Saturday is our 40th anniversary! I may have married "too young", since I was just 16, but I chose really well. I don't regret a day of the time we've spent together, and a lot of time it is!

A while back I bought some decor for our bedroom.

It's hard to get a good photo of it because it's in the hallway entrance to our bedroom. The first sign says, "I choose you. And I'll choose you, over and over and over." The second sign says, "Without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat I'll keep choosing you." When DH saw it he loved it, and we both agree, we're going to keep choosing each other!

Do Partial Seams Scare You?

 My first quilts with partial seams were not long after I started quilting. I think I hadn't been quilting long enough to know they intimidate people. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of things in quilting that intimidate me, I've done Y seams, but if there's a way to make a block without Y seams I'm going do that. I haven't done much with curved seams, I've never done mitered borders. I've done paper piecing and although it doesn't scare me, I don't prefer it. 

I watch a lot of quilting YouTube videos, and I really enjoy Conquering Mount Scrapmore with Brenda. I watched a recent video about partial seams. That video got me to thinking, one, I may have to make a quilt with the block she demonstrates, and two, I had a project already cut out that uses partial seams and maybe I should get it out and start sewing it up. 

The project I had cut out has two partial seams per block, but aside from that it's a good leader/ender project. I've been working on assembling quilt tops all week, and I needed something more interesting to work on. 

Here's my first block finished, and I really like it! Everything I've been working on is either a deadline quilt or a scrappy quilt. This project is something I cut from fat quarters that I curated. A few of them came in small fat quarter bundles, but I mixed two bundles together with stash fabrics to round it out. 

For anyone wondering, the pattern is in this book and is called Caught in the Middle. I have one of the hashtag quilts from the cover cut out as well, but I resized the blocks to use up some scraps I had. There are several patterns in this book I plan on using. 

Assembling quilt tops- I already mentioned that's been my main thing this last week. The largest quilt I've been working on is a twin, everything else is a throw, I have five quilt tops together that aren't getting borders. One is an on point setting with oversized setting triangles, and it needs to be trimmed. I debated putting a border on that one, but I find myself using borders less and less, so I'm going to skip it. I did assemble two other quilt centers that do need borders. All seven of those I just mentioned need to be pressed. We were dog sitting for several days, and that dog sheds like crazy, so I didn't want to press quilt tops with so much fur around. Yesterday was big vacuuming day, so now I can get caught up on the pressing, which will allow me to get those borders sewn on the quilts getting them. I often just finger press a block as I go along, then press when the block is complete, but I'd never add borders to a quilt without pressing the quilt center well first. 

Good quilt progress this week, but a stressful week overall. We're getting estimates for some house repairs, and the first one came in 50% higher than the figures I found when researching that repair. We are getting more estimates on that. I had a package with $100 worth of quilting supplies say it was delivered, but it wasn't delivered here. We have a video doorbell, so I would have seen a delivery. Not a porch pirate situation, but a delivery to the wrong house. Our neighbors are usually good about bringing over a mistaken delivery, so I'm researching my options. It's not the sewing companies fault, it's all on the post office. I'm still hoping the package shows up. 

Next weekend DS the Elder and family come for an Easter visit. I only have a couple things I really want done before they come. I need to get the binding sewn on his son's quilt so I can send it home with them and not have to mail it. I'd also like to finish Mr. T's quilt top (just needs borders) and get it basted before their visit. Mr. T is local, but his is the next deadline quilt I need done, so getting it basted before having out of town company will give me a great starting place once the company leaves. Other than those couple things I'll just be working on random projects until my company arrives on the 30th. 

How Many Projects in a Week?

 I mention working on multiple projects often on this blog. I don't think I've ever given an example of how many projects that could mean. Since last week, I took photos of every project I've touched in the past seven days. I'll start with the basting/quilting/binding projects first, because that list is shorter. 

Project 1- I finished FMQ and bound this baby quilt. That's finish #9 for 2024.

Project 2- I basted and started FMQ this deadline quilt.

Project 3- I prepared a backing and laid out another quilt for basting.

Projects 4 & 5- I'm not sure if I actually sewed on the project on the left, but I did take the time to count the blocks and make a plan to use them all. I have 100 blocks, and I could make a king sized quilt or multiple smaller quilts. I don't need a king right now, and I have several king sized quilts on my docket, so I've decided to make two quilts set 5x7, and one set 5x6, which will use all the blocks. The blocks on the right I absolutely sewed on this week, and I have 72 of those. I could make one queen sized quilt or three throws, and I'm going with the three throws. So these two projects will actually become six quilts.

The first throw I got up on the design wall and sewed it into rows. 

After I was finished those blocks with the black background, I still had quite a few solid squares left, plus I had a few solid strips left. Rather than put all of that back into the Scrap User System, I decided to use up as much as I could in another project. I made more 16 patches, strip piecing as much as I could and adding in squares to keep up the variety. I was out of the black background, but I had extra WOW strips that I had cut for the other scrap fabric. 

Project 6- I'm going to have enough of these blocks to make another throw.

Now only these squares and two strips will be going back into the scrap user system. 

Project #7- The pieced neutral strips have been done for ages, but I cut the blue/green strips and sewed up all these blocks as leader/enders this week. This is already sewn into rows too. 

Project 8- This lego quilt for Mr.T was started this week. I made all the blocks in a day, and now I need to start assembling it with black sashing. I have enough fabric left for at least two throws for Project Linus. 

Project 9- I ran out of leader/enders, so grabbed another cut project to use as leader/enders. I need to add another round of printed strips outside of the black, so these can be my leader/enders for a bit longer. 

That's it, in the last week I've worked on nine different projects! 

Using the Same Fabric Twice

 The grandtwins are 13 now, but once upon a time DD#3 and I were decorating their nursery. With boy/girl twins in mind, DD#3 wanted a samurai/geisha themed nursery. I bought some fabric from Japan, and made some curtains for the nursery. When we took the curtains down, I put them aside because the fabric was in great shape, and eventually I cut them apart and put them in a couple quilt tops.

I just finished sewing the binding on this quilt top a few minutes ago. It's finish #8 for the year. Without looking, I think I made a smaller quilt top from the leftovers of this one. This one is twin sized, the other I think is a baby quilt. Like I said, I didn't look through the quilt closet to check, but if my memory is correct, those curtains went into two quilt tops. 

Originally I wasn't planning on using sashing, but the quilt was much too busy without it. There is actually quite a bit of black in the novelty fabric, so black was the obvious choice. I used a solid black, which looked rather stark against the busy print, so to soften the black a bit, I quilted with a pastel variegated thread. 

The thread mostly looks white in the photo, but it's not white at all. I took several photos, but I couldn't get the thread colors to show up. A pastel thread on black is not an intuitive choice, but I wanted to soften the solid black, and I knew if I quilted with a strongly contrasting thread, the black wouldn't look solid anymore. I could have just chosen a solid light colored thread from one of the colors in the quilt, but I happened to have a variegated thread with all the colors in it. The black and white gingham binding was another choice meant to soften the look of the black. 

I'm happy with how the quilt came out. Quilting flowers on a twin sized quilt was not quick, so my next quilt will be a simple baby quilt I'm just going to meander on. I switched my Janome over to FMQ as soon as I had the binding for this quilt sewn on, and it's threaded and ready to go for the next quilt in the queue. 

As far as piecing goes, I finished a quilt top for a deadline quilt today too, and I'm planning to baste it this weekend. That quilt needs to be finished this month, so it will jump ahead in the quilting queue, but I think I can get the baby quilt quilted first without any risk to getting the deadline quilt finished in time.