Quiltathon 2009 - Sunday Update

I was able to get a little bit more sewing done tonight and got this little baby quilt put together. Its just a top for the time being, but I'll figure out some borders to add to it and then get it quilted. I have a co-worker who's wife is having a baby sometime in March, so this quilt will be going to them. I love the Pooh fabrics that I have and I'm definitely going to have to get some more since I'm just about out.

February Quiltathon

Judy, over at Patchwork Times, is having a quiltathon this weekend. While I wasn't able to participate yesterday (Rich and I spent most of the day running errands, doing some shopping at a store that's going out of business, and then watching some movies), I have been doing quilty stuff this morning.

Rich got up early and met one his friends and they both went skiing/snowboarding (we're expected to get about 6 inches of snow today - so prime weather for skiing), so I've had the entire house to myself! :-) First thing this morning, I browned some meat and put all the fixings for some chili in the slow cooker. Now I don't have to cook the rest of the day. Yay! Then I started pinning the Irish Rails quilt.

However, since I haven't marked the quilt yet, I have to baste it with thread so that I can take the big, fat pins out and not have to worry about stitching over them. So I've gotten the entire backing pressed today, everything laid out, pinned and I have about a quarter of it thread basted at this point. Since its almost 1pm, I figured its time to give an update and have something for lunch. I should also probably shower at some point. ;-)

I hope everyone else is enjoying their quilty weekend!

Stash Busting - 2/22/2009

I was able to make a little more progress on the stash busting front. I cut, washed, and pressed the backing for the Irish Rails quilt that I've been working on for a while. Lately, I've gotten stuck on the quilting part of the whole process and its been tending to slow me down a bit. Plus, I've told myself that I'm not allowed to cut into my new fabric that I bought a few weeks ago until I get the 4 quilts currently in process finished. Two of them are almost done and only need binding added, but the other two still need to be quilted. Hopefully I'll be able to make some progress now that I'm no longer sick!

Here's some pictures of the quilts that have binding on them:

And the stash report:

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

Fabric Used this Week: 3.0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 11.7 yards

Net Fabric: <73.8> yards

Yicky!

Yes, I did spell the title correctly. I am definitely still feeling yicky! I decided after more than a week of dealing with a sore throat that I should go see the doctor. Somehow I managed to pick up Strep throat somewhere which explains why I have been feeling so crummy. Now I'm on a 2 week course of antibiotics to try to clear it up. Hopefully I'll start feeling better soon so I can get some quilting done. ;-) Not to mention that the house is starting to look like a tornado went through it.

Stash Busting - 2/15/2009

I wasn't able to do much sewing this week as the cold I had last week is still kicking around. The only reason I can function right now is due to taking DayQuil. I've been taking a combination of allergy medicine and cold medicine to make sure I cover all my bases. My mom has had some troubles with allergies already despite it still being February in Upstate NY and nothing is growing yet. We've had a few days of warmer weather, so everything is wet and the mold is starting to grow. I'm hoping that my allergies haven't progressed to being allergic to mold. All I can say is that this cold better go away soon because I'm tired of it!

This week is going to be a lonely week since DH is traveling. He'll be in sunny San Francisco for a few days at a conference for work. Hopefully things will go smoothly for him and he won't get sick while he's there. In the meantime though, I'll have plenty of hours in the evenings to do sewing if this cold ever goes away.

So here's is a picture of the Garden Pleasures quilt with the binding attached. I still have to hand sew the back, but I'm not too concerned about that. I'm usually pretty good about sitting down and getting binding done. I decided to use a nice, dark purple color for the binding to anchor the white border. If you zoom in on the picture, you can probably see the quilting on the lighter fabrics. I used a burgundy-ish color that blends into the redish and purple fabrics pretty well, but when you have the quilt in front of you, you can easily see the quilting in the lighter fabrics and on the blues.

And for what we're all waiting for.... the stash report! I did get some stash used on the binding above and I also made the binding for our large quilt, I just haven't sewn it on yet. I'm still counting it as stashed used though. ;-)

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 85.42 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 1.50 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 8.70 yards

Net Fabric: <76.72> yards

How did everyone else do this week?

Kitty Approved!

A few weeks ago, I was able to pick up our large quilt from the longarm quilter. I haven't put binding on it yet, but we decided to put it on the bed anyway. Its very warm and comfy underneath the quilt and it looks good on the bed. Most importantly....

Its kitty approved!

Every morning this week, we've woken up to find our cat, Ellie, curled up on the blanket. The picture I took above was actually when I came home from work one night. I was looking around for Ellie in her usual spots and when I couldn't find her, I called her name and up popped her head from the quilt. She was very content and didn't want to move. :-)

That's my only picture to share at this point, but I have been doing some quilting... honest! I finished up quilting Garden Pleasures (I'll post a picture later this week) and I've started making binding for it and the big quilt. Right now, I have about 700 linear inches of binding to sew! Yikes! However, binding counts as using stash! :-)

Stash Busting - 2/8/2009

Man, this was a bad week for stash busting. Work and a cold kicked my butt this week and I haven't gotten much done on the quilting front. The good part is that since I was sick... I didn't ADD to the stash. ;-) Hopefully next week will be better.

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 85.42 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 9.40 yards

Net Fabric: <76.02> yards

**** UPDATE ****

Somehow I had something mis-calculated on my original post. I've actually only used 7.2 yards so far this year vs 9.4. :-( I think I somehow was counting some of the backing material twice! oops! Here's the updated numbers:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 85.42 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 7.20 yards

Net Fabric: <78.2> yards

Exactly 1 Year Ago....

Exactly one year ago (almost to the hour right now - its 11:39 EST) I was getting home from having surgery on my foot to remove a piece of bone that wasn't healing and to re-attach a tendon. Its very hard to believe it was a year ago already. The first few months after surgery were awful, which I guess can be expected. The only good part was that I got lots of binding sewn onto quilts! ;-)

So its been a year and I'm pretty much pain free. The foot bothers me once in a while when we have really drastic weather changes, but its pretty much OK. I still haven't been able to wear "normal" shoes yet. Granted... I haven't tried in a while, but a few months ago when I tried to wear some low heels (about 1") I was limping after just wearing them for 5 minutes in the house. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to wear shoes again versus sneakers all the time. I know the sneakers are probably better for me, but I like my shoes. :-)

Now I just need to figure out how to get more quilting time in!

Stash Busting - 2/1/2009

This was not a good week for using fabric, but it was a good week for buying fabric. ;-)

A local quilt shop had a Super Bowl Sale going on from Friday until today and there was up to 60% off all their fabric. The least amount off was 20%, which is still pretty good. Anytime you can get fabric on sale is a good time. My purchase was even "husband sanctioned" this time so he knew what I was going to come home with. Its a good thing I only came out of the store with the fabric I intended to buy though. The store had the new Bernina 830 on display and let me tell you... even though its ungodly expensive at about $12,000, it definitely is pretty amazing. However, for $12k I think the machine should be able to cut all my fabric by me just giving it the pattern that I want to make.

I have a few pictures that I want to share before I get to the stash report. Here's an updated photo of the bear my mother-in-law made with his quilted blanket. The picture I had posted earlier this week was a little dark since I took it at night. This one is better though.



And here's some pictures of the fabric that I bought. Doesn't it look yummy?? This is for the Rainbow quilt that I posted about on Friday. It took a while to pick out all the fabrics, but I think its going to look awesome when its finished.



Here's a picture of the fabrics I intend to use in Judy's Shine on Bayou Cane quilt. It didn't take too long to pick out these ones, but I think that's only because I had 5 colors instead of 15.

Finally, here are the fabrics for Judy's Heat Wave quilt from her book Nine-Patch Extravaganza. I wanted to use very similar colors to what she choose since I really liked the look fo the quilt.

And now.... the stash report:

Fabric Added this Week: 30.75 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 85.42 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 9.40 yards

Net Fabric: <76.02> yards

I really need to start cracking and using that stash!

Happy Quilting!

Quilt Ideas

I know I've been bad about posting lately. A class that I'm taking at my work has me spending too much of my own time doing the homework. I love it when its a "work" class that takes 3 hours and about 4 hours of homework and you can only charge 1.5 hours of time to it. The rest is on your own. Yuck!

Enough of my ranting though. I thought I'd post some sketches of the quilts that I plan on making over the next few months (otherwise read as probably the next year). One of the quilts is from Judy Laquidara's Nine-Patch Extravaganza. Its called "Heat Wave". I don't have a sketch of this one since I have the book and the pattern at home. Its looks like a very cool quilt though.

The second quilt I'm doing is actually a color variation of Judy's "Shine on Bayou Cane" that she did as a Quilt-for-an-Hour project last year. I saved the instructions since I didn't have time to do it right then, but now I want to make it. I did sketch it up in EQ on my own because I wanted to test out some other colors. I don't have a stash of lots of different colors (yet), so I couldn't just do the stars in it as scrappy colors like she did. Here's my sketch from EQ. I like the reds/pinks and the greens in it. When I pick out the fabrics I just need to make sure the reds and greens aren't too close to being Christmas colors!



The last quilt that I'm doing is actually my own design that I did in EQ. I plan on making it for my husband's grandmother. Its a variation on the Trip Around the World pattern and I thought the rainbow colors would look really happy on the quilt.

It may be a while before you see any actual pictures of the quilts because I have three quilt tops that need to be quilted and bound, our large quilt needs to be bound, and I have a baby quilt to make for a co-worker (baby is due in March so I better hurry up!).

Happy Quilting!
~Sarah

Quilty Pictures

I actually got some things accomplished tonight despite it being an EXTREMELY long day at work. Not only did I go to class (a work training class that meets 3 hours every Monday and has homework - yuck!), but I made dinner, finished adding some borders to a quilt, and took some photos. I also managed to break a needle in my sewing machine (a first for me).

I'm usually ultra careful about putting things close to the needle while its moving. Unfortunately, my little stylus that I use to keep seams together right up to the needle got a little close. A HUGE pop and twang and the needle was in pieces. Thankfully it didn't damage the quilt (or more importantly the machine) and I just needed to put a new needle in after finding all the pieces of the last one. I also got some binding strips sewn together for the Rainbow quilt. I decided to use strips of all the colors that I used in the 9-patches for the binding and it works out pretty much perfectly. Now I just need to find time to quilt it!

So here's the quilt that I picked up this past weekend from the longarm quilter, Karen. She did a fabulous job. I didn't have time to really spread it out, so its just a few pictures of some of the squares. I used the traditional Fifty-Four Forty or Fight pattern with just a slight modification to the middle square (solid instead of a 4-patch). I still haven't figured out what I want to call it though. No matter.... it will be weeks before I can get the binding on it. ;-)


I tried to get some photos of the music notes in it, but its hard to see on the white fabric. Karen didn't want to make the quilting stand out too much, which was perfect for this quilt. I'll definitely go back to her when I have a few more large ones.


I also made a quick little "blanket" for the bear my mother-in-law made for us. It was really just some testing of methods, but it seemed to fit right with him. Sorry about the quality of the photo... the flash on the camera wasn't that great since the battery was low.




Finally, here's the picture of the Rainbow quilt. Its not quite rainbow colors, but it seems cheerful. Now its JUST a matter of quilting it! :-) It will be a while before I get to this one as I have two others in line before it.

Quilter's Block

It seems like over the past week or two I’ve had major quilter’s block. For whatever reason, I haven’t been able to get much done quilting related although I’m sure it has to do with work. For those of you who don’t know me very well, I work 40+ hours outside of the home as a mechanical engineer. I work at a company where I design components for steam turbines that are sold to customers for generating electrical power for all of us to use.

Work has been crazy busy since the beginning of the year. Late last year, it was like pulling teeth to find work whereas now, I have more to do than I can think about. It seems like its either feast or famine around here when it comes to how much work you have. I’ve been pretty stressed out about work and having so much to do and not having time to do it. By the time I get home in the evening, I’m so exhausted from work that I almost have to force myself to sit down at the sewing machine, which makes it no fun. Last week I was able to get a fair amount accomplished at work, so I don’t feel quite so harried anymore and hopefully I’ll be able to devote more time to quilting.

This week my real goal is to choose a couple of patterns that I would like to make over the next few months. As I said in my stash busting post, a local quilt shop is having a fabric sale this coming weekend, so its time to pick out the patterns and get the fabric! My plan for tonight is to get some borders sewn onto the Rainbow Quilt and take some photos of the few things I’ve accomplished over the past week or so. I also want to take a picture of our big quilt now that its been quilted.

To help myself feel like I’m getting things done at home along with at work, I’ve actually started making a list of 5 things that I want to get done each evening. One item is always going to get done because its making dinner. ;-) But it is something that has to be done and then I know I can at least cross off one thing on the list. I used to make the lists really long and I would never get even close to finishing the list, so I’m now limiting it to 5 reasonable things. That way I don’t feel too discouraged if I don’t get everything done. If I get more done than what’s on the list…. BONUS!

Stash Busting - 1/25/2009

Definitely fell off the quilting wagon over the past week or so. I haven't gotten a lot accomplished quilting-wise, but I've been doing a fair amount of "testing". I have two lap-sized quilts that I need to quilt and I've been experimenting with different methods of marking them so that I can actually remove the marks!

I also picked up the BIG quilt this weekend and its fully quilted. It looks amazing and the longarm quilter did a fantastic job. Now I just need to bind it! That's going to take a while since its close to a King sized quilt. All together, its about to be about 450 inches of binding. Ooof! I guess it will keep my hands busy for a while.

I'm also trying to pick out a few quilt patterns that I want to make over the next few months. A local quilt shop is having a sale next weekend on all the fabric (60% off everything) so I definitely want to pick out some stuff to work on and get the fabric at a reduced cost. Expect to see some yardages added next week. ;-) I figure I'm just doing my part to help the economy. haha!

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 45.4 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 7.20 yards

Net Fabric: 38.2 yards

Stash Busting - 1/18/2009

I did get some sewing done this week (see here), but since I hadn't counted that material in the stash reports... it can't be counted this week. However, I was really good and didn't buy any material either! ;-) So here's the report:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 45.4 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 7.20 yards

Net Fabric: 38.2 yards

Hopefully everyone else had a more productive stash busting week!

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

I finally got around to taking some pictures of the stuff I've been working on the past few days. I actually ended up taking them early this morning while I was waiting for my tea to brew before leaving for work.

I've finished up sewing the binding on the tea cozy. Its not as great as I had hoped, but it was a good testing ground for some free-motion quilting.




I also finished up putting the rows together for the Rainbow 9-Patch quilt. I was able to get the 9-patches done during the Quiltathon last weeked, but the rest of it was done in the evenings this past week. I'm waiting to get to the fabric store for some tan fabric before I add borders, but hopefully that will happen this weekend. I still need to put the setting triangles on the four corners, but its pretty much set at this point.



The only item I can't take credit for is the stuffed bear. My Mother In-Law (MIL) loves to knit. She knits like a mad-woman and can make just about anything. She's made bags, purses, sweaters, kid clothes and now toys. For Christmas, Rich and I gave her a book for a whole bunch of patterns for really cute kid toys, and she was able to finish the teddy bear and gave one to us. The bear is completely knitted and the sweater is knitted, too. The sweater even has these tiny little buttons on the shoulder so you can take the sweater off and put a different one on. Its completely adorable!

Quilting Away

I know I don't have any pictures to post right now, but I have been doing some quilting stuff this week. The class that I'm taking at work took up a few hours of valuable quilting time, but at least my homework is done for the class and I can REALLY start quilting now. ;-)

I finished sewing the binding onto the tea cozy last night. I had originally intended on sewing the binding completely by machine, but it was pain to get the awkward shape of the tea cozy under the sewing machine so I decided to do it by hand. I also have all the 9-patches and setting squares/triangles sewn into rows. The QST on the four corners of the quilt aren't sewn into the rows yet, but they'll be added after I have the rows trimmed up.

I hope to have some pictures for everyone in the next day or so. I won't be able to do the borders until this weekend, but I can do pictures of the majority of the quilt top. I had originally sketched the quilt on paper and colors just the 9-patches, but after receiving EQ6 for Christmas I put the quilt on there and colored everything. I decided I didn't like a black and white border because it just looked like too much white. So I need to make a run to the fabric store this weekend to get some tan fabric for the borders. I want the borders to kind of have a picture frame feel with the tan and black.

Aside from quilting, its been STUPID cold here the past few days. Currently it is 2 degrees with a windchill of -6, which surprisingly is up from yesterday when the windchill was -15. I've had to break out the REALLY warm winter coat and wear my wool pants to work to try to keep warm. Thankfully I have a little heater under my desk so when I get into the office in the I turn it on and try to thaw my feet out. I'm glad that I have a hobby that involves doing stuff inside right now! :-)

January Quiltathon - Sunday

I didn't get as much sewing done as I would have liked today, but I did get some done. The morning started out with having to clear the driveway of 7.5" of snow. Since we don't usually get a ton of snow in the winter (typically just one or two good snowfalls), we don't own a snow-thrower and the clearing is done the old fashioned way....brute force. My husband and I were out for about an hour clearing the snow so that he could go snowboarding and I could go get a facial (my one vice that I really allow myself).

Once I got back from the facial, I put the crock pot on and started the laundry. I had to press all those little squares that I had sewn last night before I could put them into the 9-patches, so that took a while. Eventually I did get everything sewn together. I have a total of 30 9-patches that will be a finished size of 4.5". I still need to press the white material for the setting squares, but that will be another day.


Hope everyone else had a good quilting weekend!

Stash Busting - 1/11/2009

While I didn't get much sewing done this week (a little bit yesterday), I did get a bit of stashed used...mainly because I had to supply the backing material for the quilt that I'm having quilted. So I've used 5 yards of material this week. I'm not counting the fabric for the Rainbow quilt because I already had that planned and didn't count it as part of the stash. Here's the final report:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 45.4 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 5.0 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 7.20 yards

Net Fabric: 38.2 yards

Quiltathon 2009 - Saturday Evening

I was able to get some sewing done today despite having to do a lot of errands and help put together a bookcase. So the first two pictures are an experiment of mine. I'm a big tea fan, but I do not have a tea cozy to keep my teapot warm. So I decided to try to make one with some fat quarters I had laying around. I also decided that it would be a good thing to practice my free-motion quilting on. I know it looks a little funny, but I'm sure it will work. Today I was able to put the two halves together and to machine sew part of the binding on the bottom. I was going to machine sew the entire binding, but its a little difficult to fit under the machine, so I'm just going to do it by hand.


Now here are all the little squares I had cut out earlier this morning. I'm about halfway through the last set and its time to clean the machine, put a new needle in and all that.... so its waiting until tomorrow to get finished. ;-) I have plenty of sets of 3 to press tomorrow too, but you can see the fairly large pile of sewn pieces. Right there is about 80 of the sets of 3. After I get them all nicely pressed, it will be time to match all the those seams and make 9 patches.

On the weather side....it looks like we're going to be having a lot of snow. The snow started around 7:30 and its only gotten heavier and isn't supposed to stop until tomorrow at lunchtime. Then it will be time to move all that snow! Yuck!

Quiltathon 2009 - Saturday Update

The quiltathon is on! While I did get up early this morning to get to cutting fabric, the majority of the cutting got delayed a bit. My husband insisted that the Christmas tree come down this morning, so we spent about an hour or so taking down the tree and boxing everything up. Since Mother Nature is deciding that Albany should be in the Golden Snowball Race this year, we had to do our grocery shopping since we have a winter storm warning in effect from 4pm until tomorrow afternoon. We're expecting to get about 8 inches of snow.

I did however get some "quilty" stuff done. I dropped off the "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" quilt to be quilted. I also did get the colored fabric cut for the "Rainbow Patch" quilt. Here's some before and after pictures from the cutting:


I'm hoping that I'll be able to get a few of these sewn this afternoon before I quit for the day. Happy Quilting!