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

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

Where, Oh Where, Has Sarah Gone??!!!

Cleaning....that's where! After many discussions, my husband and I have decided to sell our current house....hence the cleaning like mad and fixing stuff up to get it ready to sell.

We were contemplating doing some construction to make the kitchen/dining room better and to do some painting in our tall living room, but when it came down to it, we have a puny yard (less than 1/3 acre) and there's nothing we can do about it. So we've decided to put the house on the market and see if we can find somewhere with some more land.

We did find one house for sale that's still close by and its on 11 acres of land with a 2800 sq. ft. house. We like the idea of it and its at a good price because its going into foreclosure, but we need to make sure we sell our current house first. We DO NOT want two mortgages!

So the past two weeks have been spent doing all sorts of projects around the house that we would have done anyway, but we've had to speed up the timetable. We've had to finish up the crown molding, caulk the crown molding, caulk the bathtubs and windows (no leaks or anything, but just sealing the small cracks that happen due to houses shifting over time), cleaning everything, re-painting our front door, fixing our garage side door and various other stuff. We've also re-mulched all the planting beds and filled in some bare spots with annuals where some of our perennials didn't make it through the winter. Hopefully someone will like the house and want to buy it!

I did get two quilty things done this week. I was able to finish the binding on the big quilt I made and its now on our bed. Thankfully its still cool enough at night that we need a quilt. ;-) I was also able to cut all the fabric for the Rainbow quilt that I'll be making. The fabric is nice and neat in a plastic shoebox so that when I get my Bernina back from getting cleaned I'll be able to start sewing the squares together when I have a few minutes. Once I'm done sewing, the fabric will go back in the box so that things stay neat for showing the house.

Anyone want to buy a house?? :-) Let me know...I have a good one. hahaha

Stash Busting - 4/26/2009

Another week down and still not much stash used. I've been busy lately with doing hand sewing on binding (it seems to take me forever compared to others). There won't be much sewing this week either as I had to drop my machine off for servicing - I can't believe I've had it for more than a year now! I was very good though...I went by myself to the sewing store and didn't come home with any fabric - not that I didn't want to!

I did start cutting material for the next quilt though. So while I'm not going to count it as stash used until I start sewing, at least I'm making progress to get the stash used!

Here's the latest numbers:

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

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 14.87 yards

Net Fabric: <85.63> yards

Wow!

I'm sure most of you have probably already heard of Susan Boyle. For those of you who don't, she auditioned on the show "Britain's Got Talent", similar to "American Idol", and she completely wowed everyone! She's a 47-year-old from Scotland and as soon as she stepped on the stage, the entire audience (including the judges) were smirking and laughing. Everyone expected her to be completely awful. They went through the typical "interview" which only made people smirk more. Then she started singing.... It was unbelievable! She has the most incredible voice and, in my opinion, is better than many broadway singers who have tried to sing Les Miserables.

If you haven't heard her sing yet, check out the YouTube clip here: Susan Boyle. You won't be sorry.

Stash Busting - 4/12/2009

Another week down in 2009 and another quilt finished along with some more stash used! While I don't have any new pictures of the quilt, I did post some pictures a few weeks ago of the quilts with the binding machine sewn but waiting for the hand sewing. Last week I finished a baby quilt along with the Irish Rails quilt. Today, I was able to finish the Garden Pleasures quilt. Yay!! Now I just have our large quilt to finish. With a few hours of sewing today, I was able to get about half of one side done...so about 50 inches sewn.

I also layered everything for the Rainbow 9-Patch quilt, so that's counted as stash busted. It's not quilted yet, but I'm not taking anything apart after putting in what seemed like a million pins. :-) So here's the stash report:

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

Fabric Used this Week: 1.67 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 14.87 yards

Net Fabric: <85.63> yards

Stash Busting - 4/5/2009

I haven't been doing much stash busting this week as the majority of it was spent in Maine for a business trip. However, I did get two quilts finished up this week. First, we have the baby quilt that I've been working on. I finished it up last Saturday morning actually and the baby was born Saturday afternoon. Talk about good timing!

I also finished up the binding on the Irish Rails quilt yesterday. Since I had counted both bindings already in the "stash used" bucket, there's no change in my stash reports. Here's the finished quilt (its not floating in the air...my husband is behind it and didn't want his picture included, so he held the quilt so it completely covered him).

Fabric Added this Week: 10.25 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 100.50 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0.25 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 13.2 yards

Net Fabric: <87.3> yards

Binding, No Blogging, Travel

I know I didn't post a stash busting report on Sunday, but that's mainly because I was trying to do all the normal chores and pack for traveling this week. For work, I'm spending 4 days in Bangor, Maine. There was a small group of us that drove up on Monday (left Albany, NY around 7am) and arrived in Bangor around 3pm. We're spending a few days up here visiting our manufacturing shop to visit with the engineers up here and also to run some workouts with the manufacturing team. Hopefully it will be a good trip overall.

So back to quilting.....

I was able to finish the binding on the baby quilt on Saturday. Yay! I also found out that the baby was actually born on Saturday afternoon, so I finished it up JUST in time. :-) I also got a bunch more of the binding sewn on the Irish Rails quilt. At this point I have less than one side left to do, so I'm pretty close to being done. I thought about bringing the quilt with me and sewing binding in the vehicle and here in the hotel, but decided that I didn't want to pack the quilt and I didn't think I would actually have time to sew. At least progress was being made and I'm hoping that I might actually finish it up this weekend.

So here's the list of things to do over the next few weeks:

• Finish sewing binding on Irish Rails
• Finish sewing binding on Garden Pleasures
• Thread baste and quilt the Rainbow Patch quilt
• Start sewing binding on 54-40 or Fight

Its a little ambitious considering that the weather is getting nicer and I will be doing gardening soon and work is busy, but we'll see how far I get.

Stash Busting - 3/22/2009

Over the next few weeks, there won't be much stash bustin' happening as I'll be sewing binding, binding, and you guess it.... more binding. Here's the main stack of quilts that are quilted with the binding machine sewn, with the exception of the quilt with the brown border sticking out. That one is a top that needs to be quilted, but it was in the middle of the pile and I didn't feel like pulling it out. ;-) The quilt on the bottom I haven't even started the hand sewing yet, but the other two are both about 50% done.

So here's the little baby quilt that I've worked on the past week or so. I got the whole thing quilted in about 2 hours with a new pattern that I was trying out.

Here it is with the binding machine sewn and one edge of it hand-sewn. This is for a baby due at the end of March, so its now on the top of the pile of things to get hand-sewn.

Here's the Irish Rails quilt with the quilting done and the binding halfway sewn. This one is moving right along, too, but its going to have to sit for a little while until I finish the baby quilt.

And the stash report...

I saw the picture on Jill's blog for the Memories of Monet quilt. It was so gorgeous that I just "had" to have it. ;-) I've never actually made a quilt from a pre-made kit, so we'll see how it goes. The fabrics are absolutely gorgeous though. The only problem... 10 more yards bought this year. I'm definitely in the hole stash-wise, but I will eventually get out of it!

Fabric Added this Week: 10.25 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 100.50 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0.25 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 13.2 yards

Net Fabric: <87.3> yards

So WHAT have I been doing???

Over the past few weeks, my quilting progress has been limited by having to help Rich with projects around the house. Earlier this winter, we ordered a media bookcase from an online store in order to store some of Rich's books from when he was a kid. He's been collecting books from the Landmark series for quite a while now. The books are actually pretty good at teaching kids about history without being just a boring textbook that you would read in school.

We've also been working on the foyer that we painted more than a year ago. A while ago we bought crown molding to put up, but we picked out a pretty intricate pattern which took FOREVER to paint. We only have it tacked in place right now, but it looks pretty good!

I've also been growing a few plants in the kitchen to get some of the ready for putting outside. Soon the kitchen will be its own minor jungle!

Progress...

I've been poor at blogging lately, but I think its mainly because I spend all day at the computer so I don't really want to spend time at night on the computer, too. I have been making progress on the quilts that I'm working on though.

• #7 - "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" - hand sewing of binding not started yet
• #9 - "Garden Pleasures" - hand sewing of binding ~50% complete
• #10 - "Irish Rails" - hand sewing of binding ~45% complete
• #11 - "Rainbow 9-Patch" - top pieced, needs to be basted
• #12 - "Charmed Baby" - quilting complete, needs to have binding added
• #13 - Rainbow Quilt - fabric washed
• #14 - "Heat Wave" - fabric washed
• #15 - "Shine on Bayou Cane" - fabric washed
• #16 - "Memories of Monet" - fabric arrived from quilt shop (shipped)

Phew... that's a lot of quilts in progress! I've been having to re-prioritize things based on my progress and the due dates. The receivers of quilts 9 and 10 don't know that thye are coming, so there really isn't any date except what's in my head. I had tried to get #10 done by St. Patrick's day...but you can see how well that worked out. ;-) I do need to get Quilt #12 done close to the end of the month since the baby is due on the 29th. However, this is the couple's first baby so I'm hoping it will come a little bit late.

Once I get the binding sewn onto the baby quilt, my machine is definitely headed into the quilt shop to get serviced. The shop I bought it from offers free servicing for 5 years, so I definitely need to take advantage of that! Plus, since I've made about 6 or 7 quilts in the past year, it makes sense to get it cleaned up and make sure everything is working well. I'm sure it probably needs a good cleaning in the areas where I can't get to.

Happy Quilting!

Stash Busting - 3/15/2009

Its been fairly quiet here on the quilting front. Work has been busy and I haven't had much time for getting quilting things accomplished. I did however finish quilting the Irish Rails quilt. I have about 40% of the binding hand sewn now and I'm hoping to get the majority of it finished this week. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures. :-(

The good news is that I've used a little bit of stash this past week to get the binding done on the Irish Rails quilt. The bad news is that I saw a post on Jill's blog about a beautiful quilt kit that her LQS put together. I loved it so much (and the fact that I got a promotion at work ;-) ) that I ordered it yesterday. I won't be counting it as stash until its actually here, but it will make my numbers look worse. I definitely need to get some more sewing done!

Here are the numbers for this year:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 85.50 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0.53 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 12.95 yards

Net Fabric: <72.55> yards

My goal is to get to 0 Net Fabric by the end of the year. Since the majority of the fabric I bought is actually for planned quilts, I should be able to do it.

Happy Quilting!

Honest... I haven't disappeared!

The past few weeks have been incredibly hectic and nothing really blog-worthy. Work has been extremely busy the past week or so with a lot of things happening and projects having deadlines. Whenever I have a really busy day at work, sometimes the last thing I want to do is come home and do more stuff.... even if it is quilting.

However, I have managed to get some quilting done although no pictures right now. I finished up the quilting on Irish Rails (I showed a picture of the top pinned here). I also got the binding sewn on to Irish Rails and I've started the hand sewing. The hand sewing on the Garden Pleasures top is about half done at this point. Hopefully I'll get more done this week!

Stash Busting - 3/1/2009

I haven't gotten a whole lot of sewing done lately...at least nothing picture worthy. I spent most nights this week hand sewing binding, so there's not a lot of progress there. I did get a few rows quilted on the Irish Rails quilt, but I haven't been able to take any pictures of it yet. Today I got about 6 rows of quilting done in between doing loads of laundry and other general chores. I also got the backing material cut and basted for the baby quilt that I posted about here.

Here's the stash report for this week...nothing in and a little bit used.

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 85.50 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0.75 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 12.42 yards

Net Fabric: <73.07> yards