New Blog

Check out my new blog over at Upstate NY Creations.

I'm trying out a few things differently on that blog and it may become my primary blog going forward, so please update your links and follower status!  :-)

Sarah

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 11-15

I've been pretty busy the past few weeks with work, but I have been able to get some sewing done.  First though....we got a tractor! ;-)

We knew with getting the larger piece of property, we would need a larger piece of equipment to take care of it.  So we ended up getting a medium-sized Kubota tractor.  Right now it just has the front-loader on it, but eventually we will get a snow thrower for the back to clear the driveway and a back-hoe to dig some trenches on the property.  Here she is:

Already getting dirty and having rocks thrown in her. :-)

On the quilting front, I'm making progress on Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt Orca Bay.  Its not really a mystery at this point since she long ago finished hers, but it is still somewhat a mystery as to how all my colors will mix together in the quilt.  Here are some pictures of all the little bits and pieces...

 352 HSTs

 704 wing triangles to go onto the HSTs

All the parts from the previous steps

 I just liked how the stack of string triangles looked. ;-)

I also finished quilting Purple Squared a while ago, but have been bad at taking pictures of it.  Here it is all finished.  Its currently hanging on the railing in our foyer.

So in the past few weeks I've used up a bit of fabric, but I also had to buy 3 more FQs of purple to finish all the wing pieces.

Here are the numbers:
Added This Week:       0.75 yards
Added Year to Date:    12.77 yards
Used This Week:          2.62 yards
Used Year to Date:       9.96 yards
Net Year to Date:         2.80 yards

I'm in the red still by almost 3 yards....I'm hoping that will be fixed soon when I start working on the Lone Star wall hanging for our foyer.

Starry Night

I'm not much of a person who likes to just sit and watch TV.  I'm definitely the type of person who has to do something while I'm watching TV.  When I don't have a quilt binding to sew down, I'm usually doing some needlepoint.

In 2008, I posted here about my progress on needlepoint.  I've copied two of the pictures below showing what I had been working on.  In mid-2008 I finished the trees....

 

And started on the next needlepoint.  This is the very first picture I shared of the design.

Its pretty amazing that that tiny little square ended up as the following (I'm not sure why it uploaded the picture sideways):

We were able to get the picture framed at a local place in Saratoga, which was really awesome.  It turned out better than we had hoped and looks amazingly like the painting.  It only took me 3 years to finish it. ;-)

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 6-10

I've been bad about blogging lately and I was surprised to find its been a whole month since I last posted.  The last 4 weeks have flown by and I feel like I've gotten nothing accomplished other than working an insane amount of hours at work.  The new software our company has rolled out is still causing lots of problems and myself along with 3 other people have been staffing a "war room" of sorts to help people with this program.  All of us have been working 11-12 hour days for four weeks straight now.  Needless to say, when you work that many hours 5 days a week, it doesn't leave much time for anything else.

I have made some progress on Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay along with making some mug rugs and children's bibs.  I don't have any pictures downloaded right now, but these items did add up to a fair amount of fabric being used in the last 4 weeks.  However, I did purchase fabric for a large lone-star wall hanging that I will be making for our foyer.

Here are the numbers:
Added This Week:       12.02 yards
Added Year to Date:    12.02 yards
Used This Week:          2.74 yards
Used Year to Date:       7.25 yards
Net Year to Date:         4.76 yards

I'm no longer in the black. :-(  I think I'll get back there soon though.  I have two quilts that are ready to be quilted and I haven't counted the backing yet...hehehe - that will help with the numbers. 

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 5

Not a whole lot of sewing got done this week.  Work is very busy and most nights I didn't get home until about 6pm (I get to work around 7:15am).  Friday night I didn't get home until 6:30pm...yuck!

However, I did get some sewing done this week.  I'm still working on the yellow/pink string block's for Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay quilt.  I've completely worked through this pile of strings and had to cut more.

This is the picture from last week, but I wanted to include it again for the type of blocks being made.  These strings end up at 5.5" square, then you cut them on the diagonal, perpendicular to the lines of strings.

Since I did sew and had to cut more strings, I ended up using a little bit of stash.  I'm purposely making this entire quilt from stash to see how it goes.  Most of the fabrics are from a FQ pack that I received for Christmas last year, but I've had to throw in some other fabrics to supplement the amount of fabric.  I think it will look really neat in the end...or at least I hope so!

Here's the numbers:
Added This Week:       0 yards
Added Year to Date:    0 yards
Used This Week:         0.84 yards
Used Year to Date:      4.52 yards
Net Year to Date:        -4.52 yards

I'm still in the black...although that won't last much longer.  I am planning a quilt right now to fit as a wall hanging in our foyer.  Since its a specific quilt (a lone star) and it needs specific colors, I'll be buying fabric in the next week or two.  It will probably be around 8-9 yards of fabric just for the top.  But at least I can say that I go all the way through January in the black. :-)

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 3 & 4

I forgot to post my stash report for last week, so I get a somewhat "boosted" stash count for this week since its really two weeks.  I have been doing some sewing, but not a ton.  Work has been crazy busy.  The amount of work we have should be done by 3 times the number of people we have, so its been hectic to say the least.

Among a few other projects, I've been slowing making progress on Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay Mystery.  Here's my pile of yellow and pink strings for step 4.

And a few string blocks made and cut...

I also put binding onto a small quilt that I had started last year.  I'm not going to show pictures of it until I've washed all the marks out of it though.

So here are the numbers:

Added This Week:       0 yards
Added Year to Date:    0 yards
Used This Week:         1.89 yards
Used Year to Date:      3.68 yards
Net Year to Date:        -3.68 yards

*  minus means I've used more than I've bought

First Real Snowfall

Here we are in the middle of January and we're JUST starting to get snow.  This year has been a very mild winter in upstate NY, which I have to say, I'm glad its been easy and mild.  I'd rather have snow just starting now than already being under several feet of snow.  My husband (a snowboard enthusiast) is not quite as happy.

We had our first real snowfall of the year yesterday and here's some pictures of the house.  It was very pretty with the clean white snow everywhere.  The guys hadn't come to plow the driveway yet, so the only thing to "mar" the snow was the tire tracks from my husband's car.

I like the red siding of the house even more with the snow surrounding the house.  The only thing we have to figure out is a better way to keep our wood pile dry.  On the left side of the porch, you can see our wood pile covered with snow.  This is just a "temporary" wood pile for keeping it a little dryer and easier to get to when we're burning wood.  To the right of the house (not in the picture) is our real wood pile that has LOTS of wood and is covered by a tarp.

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 2

This is going to be a quick post since I'm in the middle of making dinner (roast pork, cinnamon apples, rice, and roasted broccoli), but I did get some sewing done this week.  I finished up part 2 of Orca Bay from Bonnie Hunter.  I'm very far behind most people, but I'm enjoying making the quilt and doing some things that I don't normally do.  I also started on part 3 of Orca Bay, so I used fabric for both of those things.. 

Here are my numbers:
Added This Week:       0 yards
Added Year to Date:    0 yards
Used This Week:         0.39 yards
Used Year to Date:      1.86 yards
Net Year to Date:        -1.86 yards

Doing well...haven't bought anything yet and I may not have to this year.  Most of the projects I have lined up are ones that I bought fabric for in years past.

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 1

A new year...a new stash busting attempt.  This year, I'm actually starting out on the good side.  I used about 1.5 yards of fabric in the last week for Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay Mystery quilt and since I haven't bought anything... :-)  I'm in the black for once, which I'm sure will probably change.


Here's the stash numbers for 2012:
Added This Week:       0 yards
Added Year to Date:    0 yards
Used This Week:         1.47 yards
Used Year to Date:      1.47 yards
Net Year to Date:        -1.47 yards

*  minus means I've used more than I've bought


Hopefully I can continue this trend for a little while.

Stashbusting 2011 - Week 52

I think this is the last stash-busting report of the year, but I'm writing this early since Sunday is Christmas day.

I have been able to do some sewing the past few weeks and completed a project and almost completed step 1 of Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay Mystery quilt.

Here's a table runner I recently completed:

And here's the progress on Orca Bay:

I have all 224 QSTs made at this point, although the picture above only shows 122 of them.

Here's the stash numbers for 2011:
Added This Week:       9.72 yards
Added Year to Date:    53.61 yards
Used This Week:         4.87 yards
Used Year to Date:      40.92 yards
Net Year to Date:        12.69 yards

I would almost be in the black for the year, but I bought fabric for the table runner and because it was on sale and the end of bolts...I bought more than I probably should have. ;-)  Oh well...it all works well for stash next year.

Christmas Table Runner

I decided to make a table runner for Christmas this year.  Originally, I was going to make place mats, but Rich doesn't like place mats, so I changed things a bit and went with a table runner.  This is my own design and I did the quilting with my Bernina (DSM).

Binding Tutorial - Perfect Corners

Earlier this year, I took a quilting class (even though I already knew how to quilt and bind a quilt) and learned a new technique for getting the corners of binding JUST right.  Hopefully the pictures and text will be good, as this is the first time I'm trying to do something like this.

 First, you want to start out machine stitching your binding to the quilt top.  The example I have below is for a double-fold binding where I cut the strips at 2.5" wide.  My seam allowance is a little more than a 1/4" as I wanted the binding to be really full.  However, this technique works for any size binding...any seam allowance (and no math involved).

So line up your raw edges of your fabric to the raw edge of the quilt and start stitching with the desired seam allowance.

As you get closer to the corner, you'll want to stop stitching to setup for stitching to the corner.  Now, most binding tutorials have you measure from the corner back towards your needle and make a mark to define where to stop stitching.  The distance from the corner is the width of your seam allowance.  The way this technique works is that before you get to the corner, stop stitching.  Take your folded binding and fold it straight up towards your walking foot.  You'll want the folded edge of the binding at the edge of the corner of the quilt.

Next, while holding your binding folded upwards towards your walking foot, fold the binding again at a 45-degree angle towards the left.  Take a look at the picture below.  I've placed a pin in the folded section to help hold it in place while taking a photograph.  You should be able to see the folded piece that makes the 45-degree angle.

Next, while holding the binding in place, start stitching again and stitch as close as you can to that 45-degree line.  When I get within a stitch or two of the fold, I usually stop the foot pedal and I manually advance the machine with the hand-wheel.  I haven't had the needle catch the fold yet, and I hope it never does! :-)  The picture below will show how close I get to the folded section.

Because we stopped EXACTLY where the 45-degree angle was, we automatically stop at a distance that's the same as our seam allowance from the edge of the quilt.  It works EVERY time.  I've tried it with up to a 1/2" seam allowance and I still got a perfect corner.

Once you get to the folded section, lift up the pressure foot and let the folded piece go straight again.  Back-stitch with your needle to secure the stitches and cut your threads.

Next, fold your binding upwards like the picture below.  This is how you "normally" do the binding corner.

Once its folded upwards on the 45-degree angle, you can fold the binding straight down towards you.  The raw edge of the binding should be lined up with the raw edge of the quilt.  Here's a close-up of the corner.  I usually use some straight pins to hold things in place until I start stitching.

Finally, start stitching again by placing your needle in at approximately the location where the 45-degree angled piece starts underneath.  It doesn't matter if you're a little over it, but I've found that if I start stitching from the edge, it makes it hard to turn the binding when I hand-sew it to the back.

Hopefully this was easy enough to follow.  If anyone does run into problems (or has questions), feel free to contact me.

Quilting Updates - Orca Bay

It's been a while since I posted anything quilt-worthy.  We've been busy with work and with getting the house settled in, plus with Christmas fast approaching, we've been spending quite a bit of time doing prep-work for Christmas (shopping, wrapping, cards, etc.).

I have been sewing a bit though.  A few weeks ago, I posted here about joining a mystery quilt being run by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.  I'm WAY behind the steps that are released, but I'm working away at step one.  For step 1, I need 224 quarter square triangles (QSTs) that are at 2.5" square.  When they are actually sewn into the quilt they will be a mere 2" in the overall design.  These are TINY! :-)

Here's 122 of them sewn and trimmed to size:

Here's the first four I made.  I wanted to make sure I was getting the size right before I did a whole bunch.

Here's about 30 more blocks ready to be sewn.  These will end up with 60 QSTs once they are sewn and cut apart.

These piles are the next pairs of fabrics to make the QSTs.  I think I have enough blocks to make the full 224 that I need.  I'm not exactly sure since I was confident I had all of them the first time and ended up with only 122....exactly half.  I think this set will put me close to the end.  I may have to cut an few squares to get the full 224.  Then on to step 2.

Human 101

In the new house, we have one of these....

....a wood-burning fireplace.

Shortly after we moved in, we tried out the fireplace.....

....and failed Human 101. :-)

Rich had an awful time lighting the fire.  Heck, we couldn't even get the stupid paper to light properly, how did we think the wood would catch fire.  It eventually did catch, but it was a very smoky fire and all-in-all a poor fire.  Precisely 2 hours after starting it...all the smoke detectors in the house went off.  Argh!

After thinking about it a while, we thought maybe it was poor because it was a warm day out and maybe we didn't get a proper draft up the flue.  So we decided to try another fire on a colder weekend.

Fire #2....decent fire, but still not great.  We were able to light it up fairly well, but it was still smoky and 2 hours later, the smoke detectors went off.

Let me tell you....smoke detectors are VERY loud in a house where there's lots of hard surfaces and no rugs down yet because the sealer on the wood floors still needs to fully cure.

Fire #3....we finally got it right...I think we may have passed Human 101 this time. ;-)

We had called the fireplace store and they recommended lighting two pieces of newspaper right up by the flue first and get that heated up.  It was amazing...as soon as the flue was warmed up, you could hear a roaring sound start and it was just all the air rushing up the flue.  It would have scared the heck out of me if I didn't know it was going to do that.

This fire was very good and was a very hot fire.  Definitely nice and toasty considering it was close to freezing outside.  Plus, we were burning with cherry wood - yummy smells!

The only downside so far with the fireplace is that we've determined that every time the blower on the fireplace runs (yes, even though its a wood burning fireplace, it has a rheostat that turns on a fan to blow the hot air around the room), the smoke detectors go off.  If we purposely leave the fan off, smoke detectors are quiet.  We're having the fireplace guys come take a look at some point because its kind of irritating that we can't use the blower on the fireplace, but the fireplace itself is very nice and cozy. 

I'll share some pictures when we get cleaned up a bit and get the Christmas tree up....hopefully this weekend.

Mystery Quilt

Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville is having another of her Mystery Quilts.  This time its called Orca Bay based upon a recent trip to Alaska.

While I haven't ever done one of Bonnie's mysteries, they always intrigued me.  Despite the fact that I don't really have a ton of time to quilt, I decided to try this mystery.  I'm still working on part 1, but I'm excited about this quilt.  Its a "smaller" one of Bonnie's designs, so maybe I'll actually finish it.

Most people are up to step 3 and while I have looked ahead a bit, up to step 3 its still just piecing individual blocks.  If I see a step that starts to get into assembly, then I don't plan on looking at it.

So far on part 1, I have made 4 QSTs that are 2.5" square.  I have the pieces cut to make the remaining 220 QSTs, and have half of them marked.  I hope the string piecing in part 2 goes a little faster than part 1.  QSTs always seem to take a while, especially when you have to mark the pieces twice because I don't have the companion or easy angle rulers that would make it faster.

I'll post some pictures later this week once I get a few more QSTs made.

All Moved In...

We're pretty much all moved into the new house now.  While there's still a lot of thing to do for unpacking and getting everything sorted out, we are officially living at the new house.  The first week in the house was very "interesting" though.

When we did our walk-through on the 18th, we found out that the plumber moved the fridge to put the water line in, but wasn't careful and ended up scratching the hardwood floors.  The builder found that unacceptable, so he wanted it fixed.  The only problem was that you couldn't just blend that area...they had to re-sand and re-stain the entire kitchen AND dining room wood floors.  Then they had to re-apply all 3 coats of poly.  So on Saturday the 19th, we were able to move boxes into the basement, but we couldn't get to the kitchen, dining room or family rooms.  They were also staining the handrails upstairs, so we couldn't go upstairs either....very frustrating.

However, by Monday morning, they had the floors re-stained and covered them with protective paper so the movers could put furniture into the family room.  The movers were wonderful and did a great job with the furniture and with making sure they didn't damage anything in the house.  It was really nice staying our first night in the house.  The only problem was that the hardwood floor guy was supposed to show up Monday evening to do the 1st coat of poly....but he never showed.  We finally went to bed around 9:30pm and were exhausted.

Unfortunately, we were woken up at 5:45am the next morning because the hardwood floor guy showed up.  Even though the builder told him we were moving in, he didn't quite grasp the fact that we were actually going to be staying there.  So by 6am Tuesday morning, we didn't have access to our kitchen again.  Grrr!  I was hoping to at least get some tea or coffee made that morning before people started showing up.

We ended up spending Tuesday night at Rich's parents because the smell of the poly was getting to us and its hard to stay in a house when you don't have access to food.  The hardwood floor guy put all the final coats of poly down on Tuesday and Wednesday morning and we were finally able to get to the kitchen on Wednesday evening (around 9pm).

Since then, we've really enjoyed being in the house.  There's a lot of work to do to get things unpacked, but its good to be in the house.  There's still a few things left that the builder has to finish, but it isn't preventing us from being able to live in the house.

As soon as things are cleaned up a bit, I'll share some pictures. :-)

Almost there!!

Tomorrow is the day!!!!

We're scheduled to close on the house at 1pm tomorrow.  I haven't been over to the house this week with the exception of Monday evening.  I'm trying real hard not to go over after work mainly because I kind of want to be surprised when everything is done on Friday.

Not everything will be 100% done tomorrow, but it will be enough that we can get the certificate of occupancy.  The yard won't be seeded until next year as its too cold now to do it.  Plus, the front doors need to be re-ordered and stained because they accidentally used the wrong stain on the doors the first time.  They tried to strip it and re-stain, but the 2nd stain came out looking very blotchy.  So we will get new doors in about 2-3 weeks time, but for now, we'll be able to move in with the existing doors.

One of the pendant lights over the island also won't be finished until next week.  Its a low-voltage LED light and the transformer in it was bad.  So we currently have 2 lights installed and the 3rd will get installed once the new transformer arrives.

The big plus is that all the appliances are installed...including the dishwasher!  Our old house had a dishwasher, but our rental did not.  After washing dishes by hand for the past 6 months, I can't wait to have that dishwasher back again!  While washing dishes isn't too terribly hard and I don't mind doing it occasionally or washing pots/pans that don't go in a dishwasher, its terribly frustrating to have to hand wash EVERYTHING. 

Let's see.... what else....  the sewing/quilting stuff is all packed up again.  Everything is in boxes again and ready to move.  It will take a while to unpack things, but I'm hoping that with my husband having to go to the doctor's one day next week that I'll have that day where I can unpack my quilting stuff. :-)  I'll have an entire room dedicated to my sewing, which will be a first for me.  There's nothing too awfully special about the room, just a standard bedroom, but its just for me!  I was able to pick a very happy yellow color for the room.  The builder even put in a dedicated line for the iron. :-)  Our last place, while it was only built in 2004, had issues when the iron kicked on.  The iron was a new one, but whenever it kicked on, the lights would dim in the room.  Very frustrating.  So I have a dedicated electrical line in the new room such that the lights won't be affected by the iron.

Anyway - only one more day and the house will be ours!! :-)

Stashbusting 2011 - Week 46

Not a ton of quilting this week, but I did get the final borders onto a "Labyrinth" quilt.  This quilt was made completely from stash.  I'm also hoping the backing will be from stash, too.

When I make quilts, I also keep some 2.5" squares handy and make them into 16-patch blocks.  I plan to make another queen-sized quilt out of the scraps.  So far I have 56 blocks of 99 to make the middle section (before borders).  Definitely well on my way... :-)

I won't have much sewing over the next two weeks as we close on our house and move-in in less than a week.  I'm so excited about the new house and I'll post some new pictures once we get moved in.  I want the pictures to be the "finished" look.

So here's my numbers:

Added This Week:       0 yards
Added Year to Date:    43.89 yards
Used This Week:         2.14 yards
Used Year to Date:      36.05 yards
Net Year to Date:        7.83 yards

Stashbusting 2011 - Week 44

Thankfully the storm that was predicted to hit us hard ended up being a little easier.  Places to the east of us in the mountains got hammered!  The ski resorts will be happy though. :-)

We ended up with about 2 inches of the white stuff.  This is a picture out my sewing "area" windows early this morning (around 8am).  The snow was very pretty.  At this point (1:30pm), the snow is pretty much gone.  It will definitely be gone later this week since we're supposed to have several days at 50F.

I also got some sewing done.  That's one good thing about storms...it makes us stay in and I don't feel guilty about spending an afternoon sewing. :-)

I was able to put two borders onto the Labyrinth quilt top.  I still have one more border to go, so I'll have some more stash busted for next week.  Here are my numbers:


Added This Week:       0 yards
Added Year to Date:    43.89 yards
Used This Week:         3.66 yards
Used Year to Date:      33.91 yards
Net Year to Date:        9.98 yards

So close to breaking even this year!  Just another 10 yards!

Wait just one minute.....

Its not even November yet and we've had 1.6" of snow on October 27th and we're forecast to get another 2-4" on October 29th!

I need to get my snow tires on ASAP!  Who would have thought that we'd potentially get 6" of snow before Halloween.  This is insane.  I guess its going to be a snowy winter...too bad we will have a 700 ft driveway to clear. :-(