Stash Busting - 6/28/2009

Not a whole lot of progress on the quilting front that I can show. I was able to sew a bunch of the rows for the "Rainbow Skies" quilt into pairs. Next I have to press them so I can pin and sew the rows into sets of 4. However, that quilt has been put on the back burner for a little bit.

I went back to quilting the Rainbow 9-Patch quilt (sorry - no pictures right now). I finished quilting the center of the quilt a few weeks ago but was trying to decide what to do in the borders. I've never tried free-motion feathers or anything like that and while I thought about doing it, I decided I didn't want to try it out for the first time on this quilt. So instead I did SID between the black and brown borders and then did stippling in the brown borders. I hadn't really done stippling before either (I know its probably one of the easiest and I now agree after doing it). I did get most of it done Sunday morning with the exception of one half of one side.

I have about a dozen quilts in the queue right now including two baby quilts for babies due this fall. Once I get the binding added to the Rainbow 9-Patch quilt, I'll be focusing on the baby quilts to make sure I get those done in time for the babies.

So here's the stash numbers:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 107 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0.25 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 18.87 yards

Net Fabric: <88.13> yards

Oh...the fabric added YTD will be growing this week. I purchased a quilt kit from Keepsake Quilting a few weeks ago called "Purple Squared". I'm not sure exactly how much fabric is in it, but I bought a yard of backing and the quilt is 32 x 40, so probably about a yard and a half or maybe two yards in the top. So I could be up by 3 yard, but probably 4 yards once it arrives.

Stash Busting - 6/14/2009

Another week down and not a lot of sewing done. Work has decided to be very busy later this year and I've been trying my hardest to work ahead as much as I can. We also went out to visit friends many nights this week, so no quilting on those nights. I think the only thing I got done on the "quilty" front is cutting my HST that I messed up last time. I did test it this time before I cut all of them, so at least I know this time they'll work. :-)

I was able to completely finish sewing the rows for the Rainbow Skies top. The rows aren't put together yet as I need to put the triangles on the ends of the rows first, but the top is about halfway done. Here's some of the rows that I had laid out earlier this week:

On the house front...we are having another open house today. We actually had someone call to request a showing for today, so they are going to come during the open house. At least now we've had someone purposely call to come see the house. Our roses are really flourishing now, so maybe that will tempt somoene to give an offer. ;-)

Anyway...so here's my stash numbers. I used a little bit this week with finish up the rows, but I added the fabric that I bought last weekend for the baby quilt....so I'm still in the red.

Fabric Added this Week: 6.50 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 107 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 1.25 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 18.62 yards

Net Fabric: <88.38> yards

Lots o' Pictures :-)

Last night when I got home from work, look what I found waiting for me. The strawberries were absolutely delicious! And they were still warm from the sun. Yum!!

While snacking on my strawberries I had a chance to enjoy some of the flowers in the garden. Its taken a little while for things to start blooming, but now that we've gotten some rain and a lot of sun, they've really taken off. Here's one of the annuals we put in this year. I absolutely love the orange color on them.

After admiring things for a while, I went inside and got changed so that I could start mowing the lawn. I mowed about three strips and went to empty the mower bag and look what I saw in the other part of the yard!! The turtle was HUGE! At least huge for our area. I had never seen a turtle in our yard before (we've seen lots of rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, frogs...). This one was a large snapper, so there was no way I was going near the front end of that thing. Apparently she was looking for a nice place to lay her eggs and tried to find it in our rose garden. Thankfully she moved on before she could dig a large hole. When she started heading toward the road, my neighbor across the street was nice enough to come and move her for me so that she wouldn't go into the road. She was none too happy about being picked up though. You could hear her snapping her jaws shut from 15 feet away!

After the turtle excitement, I didn't get a lot of the lawn mowed! Oops! ;-) I finished up the first half or so and my husband finished the rest up while I sprayed the roses and went inside to fix dinner. I did get some sewing done last night. I was able to get all the remaining rows sewn last night and laid them out. There's only one color missing from the picture below, which is a very dark red...almost a brick color.

Now I just need to iron and re-cut the setting triangles for the ends of the rows. Hopefully this time I'll cut the right size or even a little big is OK...just not too small again. ;-)

Happy Quilting! ~Sarah

Stash Busting - 5/7/2009

My quilting has taken a major hit with trying to sell the house. Between cleaning up and searching for the next house, I haven't really been able to sew much. I did get most of the quilting done on one quilt, but I don't have any pictures of it yet. This was the first weekend really spent at home and I did make some progress this weekend on using "the stash"; however I also bought some stuff. Since I haven't counted how much yardage yet...I'm not posting it this week. Next week I will have to add it in. I was able to start sewing the Rainbow Skies quilt this weekend, and I actually make quite a bit of progress on it. Here's a picture from Friday evening. I do have a lot more done at this point...more than half...probably about 2/3rds done. The only downside is that I cut my QST's wrong and I had to go and get more fabric to get the right size triangles. :-( I'll have to figure out a use for 64 QST!

So here are the latest numbers:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 100.50 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 2.5 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 17.37 yards

Net Fabric: <83.13> yards

A long overdue update...

Its hard to believe its been almost a month since my last post. Our house is now officially on the market and we had an open house this past weekend. We had 6 different couples come to the house (7 counting one nosy set of neighbors) and while most of them liked the house but didn't seem overly interested, there was one older couple that stayed for a long time and seemed very interested in the house. Maybe we will get lucky and they will send us an offer.

In the meantime, here's some pictures of our roses. They have finally started blooming this year and hopefully some more will come out this week.

Here's also a picture of the planting bed at the front of the house. The phlox in the back are starting to get VERY tall, but no flowers yet. The only ones we have flowers on are some annuals and the painted daisies in the front. It will look really nice later this summer. I think this is one of the few things I will miss about this house. Rich built a wonderful stone wall by hand and the flowers are just spectacular. We're hoping we'll be able to make an even bigger planting bed at the next house and surround it with a similar stone wall.

On the "quilty" front, I have been doing some sewing, but not as much as I would like. With the house on the market, I have to pick up everything EVERY night and put it away and then take it out the next night if I want to sew. While it makes my sewing area very neat and organized, its not very conducive to sewing. ;-) However, I did get the binding finished on our quilt a few weeks ago and its been on our bed. The weather has been mostly cool, so its actually being used at night.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures this week of the quilt that I'm in the process of quilting. I'm doing a feathered wreath pattern in the setting blocks and its coming out pretty good.

Happy Quilting! ~Sarah