Stash Busting - 7/19/2009

Surprisingly, I was able to get a fair amount accomplished this week despite work being insanely busy. Here's a picture of the quilt that I finished last weekend and never got a picture of:

This is a closeup of the quilting...sorry its a little fuzzy.

Here's the quilting on the back of the quilt.

This week, I was able to finish up the quilt top for Rainbow Skies. At this point, I'll have to put it on the shelf for a little while because I have 3 baby quilts to make (babies due in October, November and January). So I'll be making little quilts for a while, which may be nice after the last few being larger. Here's the Rainbow Skies with borders on it....the colors aren't as good in the picture as they are in real life. I'm not sure why the colors are off a bit in the picture. The variation in colors comes across really well in person.

Some of my stash used this week was for the borders on Rainbow Skies. They're 3.5" wide borders (finished) so it used a fair amount of fabric with very little sewing! ;-) The rest of my stash that I used this week was for one of the three baby quilts. Here's a picture from the book that I'm making it from. Its called "A Star is Born" by Tammy Tadd. Its a very cute quilt and it will be my first foray into applique.

Here are my numbers this week:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 109 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 2.50 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 20.54 yards

Net Fabric: <85.96> yards

I'm slowly whittling down the stash. One of the baby quilts already has fabric bought and it was added to the stash back in May. Another of the baby quilts will be completely made from stash (not buying a stitch of fabric), but the third one will most likely involve some fabric purchases. I'm also hoping I can get a few other stash busting quilts done, but it will highly depend upon work and how busy it gets over the next few months.

So how did everyone else do with their reports??

Almost......

.....Done!

I'm so close to being done with making the quilt top for my Rainbow Skies quilt. I finished putting the entire quilt top together tonight with the exception of adding the borders. The material is pressed, but I need to cut it and piece some strips together to make the pieces long enough for the quilt top.

My handy quilt holder, Rich, was kind enough to hold this up for me...with a little bit of convincing from me. :-) High maintenance is not having to hold a quilt top for someone! The flash made the colors a little washed out in the first picture. The colors are very vibrant and the darker colors are in the "jewel tone" family.

Here the colors come out a little bit better since the flash isn't directly facing the quilt. You can see Ellie, my cat, thinking about walking across the quilt. She's learned that if a quilt is on the floor and she walks on it, she gets yelled at. Once its folded up sitting on the back of the couch, or the sewing table, or the ironing board...its fair game! :-)

Enjoy!

Stash Busting - 7/12/2009

No pictures to show for the progress I've made, but I was able to get some things done this week. All of my applique pieces for a baby quilt are cut along with 288 squares for the main pattern of the quilt. I still have to press and cut the main colored squares for the middle of the quilt along with the white background pieces for the appliques.

I also got some pictures from my sister. I had shipped a quilt to her just before July 4th and she received it earlier this week. It looks really nice in her condo.

Its absolutely gorgeous here today so I'm not sure how much quilting I will get done. :-) Here are my numbers so far this year....

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 109 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 1.25 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 20.54 yards

Net Fabric: <88.46> yards

Happenings....

Around the middle of June, we had a pretty bad hail storm come through one evening. We ended up losing power for about 3 hours which is a very long time for us. The power lines in our development are all underground, but the storm took out the power everywhere around us so there wasn't any way for the electricity to get to us. Our roses survived the storm, but many of our other plants really took a beating. Here's some photos as the storm was ending (just rain coming down at this point) and you can see the amount of hail that we received....

This past weekend, after spending July 3rd at my parents' visiting them, we were back here in the Albany area. Saturday afternoon we decided to go hiking at a local nature preserve. We've been there before and saw some nice waterfalls, but we thought with all the rain we've had recently that the waterfalls should be really good. And they were! ;-) We took some pictures above the first waterfall and leaning out over the waterfall. Then we were able to hike down to the base of the first and second waterfalls. Our feet got a little wet, but not too bad. Enjoy the nature shots!

Plotter Kill Nature Preserve

Entrance Bridge

Part of the upper stream

1st Waterfall from above


1st Waterfall - looking down below

1st waterfall - leaning over the edge to get an awesome shot

Stream below the 1st waterfall

stream below 1st waterfall again

Base of 1st waterfall

Closeup of 1st waterfall

Another close-up

2nd Waterfall

There's another set of waterfalls further down the gorge, but we were starting to get a little tired and decided it was best to call it quits at that point. We could have hiked further in, but then you have to get back out!! Next time we go we'll probably get down to the other set of waterfalls.

Stash Busting - 7/5/2009

This week was actually a rather productive week considering I didn't touch the sewing machine until Thursday! I was able to add binding AND finish the hand sewing for the Rainbow 9-Patch quilt (I don't have a picture of it yet, but I will soon!). The little bit of stash used this week is for the binding on this quilt. However, I did receive the kit for the Purple Squared kit, which ended up being about 2 yards (not including the backing which hasn't shipped yet....so I haven't counted it yet).

A few weeks ago I posted about making the "Rainbow Skies" quilt and I had a few requests for pictures (I didn't have any at the time). I now have a picture of the full quilt laid out on the floor (minus borders). I wasn't too careful when laying it out so it looks little off-square, but once everything is sewn together I think its going to look awesome!

I also started another quilt this weekend (surprise, surprise). My cousin and his wife are having a baby girl this November, so I started making a quilt for them. Its my first time doing applique, so its a little daunting right now. I did trace some of the shapes yesterday (sunday) and transferred them to fabric and cut the pieces out. Now I just have another 26 pieces to go. Hopefully I'll get most of the shapes done this week and I can then count it as stash busted!

So here's the damages.....

Fabric Added this Week: 2.00 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 109 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0.42 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 19.29 yards

Net Fabric: <89.71> yards