Olympic Quilting Wrapup

I never know what to expect when I plan these heavy quilting times. All kinds of things can come up to thwart them, and that first week of the Olympics I ended up having a bunch of things to do that I didn't expect. In spite of that, I was able to get quite a bit of quilting done. Thankfully the second week was not as busy and that was a good way to end, had the busy week been second, I would have definitely felt that my Olympic quilting experience was tainted some.

I finished the shade on Thursday of the second week, which means I spent most of the Olympic days working on it. I'm really pleased with how it came out and, though I had hoped to finish it during the Olympics, I wasn't sure if it was really possible. Here is a closeup view.

Here is a view from a little further back. The next step is to turn it into a Roman Shade, something I'm still trying to figure out. I found what looks to be some good directions online and hope to get it strung and hung before too long. It will replace the blue checked curtains you can sit a bit of in this picture. I'm hoping that I can figure this out without too much trouble as I have one to make for our bedroom, too!

When I was nearing the end of the shade, I took some time out to baste the baby quilt that I made on my sewing night and I also basted the Oriental Roads. I started quilting on the baby quilt on Thursday and finished the quilting on Sunday. I don't think I've ever quilted a baby quilt that quickly. I put binding on both the shade and baby quilt a couple of days later.

I was still watching Olympic coverage when the quilting was finished on the baby quilt so I picked up the Oriental Roads and started quilting on that one. Here it is in the hoop, with a view of part of one of the Jacob's Ladder blocks.
Here is the center block. The middle and squaring up triangles have this feather motif, in red, with off white crosshatching. The rest of the quilting is in red.

This one will take at least a few weeks to quilt, and I will probably take days off to work on the Posies and Celtic so it is ready for the hoop when the Oriental Roads is finished.

Looking over my challenge list, I realized everything left (except for the sewing together of blocks) is hand work....hand piecing, hand applique and hand quilting. Though I prefer handwork, I actually do enjoy machine piecing when I'm in the mood for it and am thinking ahead for when my challenge year is over. I printed paper for the next strip quilt. I did one where the whole block was strips, one where half the block was strips and the other half background (the shade) so this one will have strips on both sides of the center line with a background triangle at each corner. The pages are printed and I played with the lines, now all 256 have to be marked like this one.

I'll be working on this project when I have a hankering for machine piecing, and on my late night sewing nights, which lend themselves better to machine work than handwork most of the time.

And finally, Ruthie. Here she is, bed head and all. It was around Christmas time and our oldest had just come back from the youth Christmas party (he is a leader) where they all brought white elephant gifts. He received a Barney video, which he gave to Ruthie when he got home. She had just woke up from a short nap and was THRILLED to get this video. She has since "bought" a couple more of them in the Awana store (where they trade earned shares for various trinkets.)

Hopefully this is a big quilting day for me. I have nowhere to go, a few daily household chores to do, but mostly a day that is wide open. I'll quilt on the Oriental Roads and if I need a break will work on drawing more lines on the strip quilt and/or cutting some more strips for scraps. With the successful mastering of the curved piecing foot, some Drunkard's Path pieces will also be cut from scrap and a new "when I feel like sewing" box will be started.

But nothing will happen if I don't scoot!

Happy Quilting!

Sue

Long Time, No "See!"

It's been busy here! Not really anything particularly different or interesting, just the "usual" busy-ness of a household of 8 with a quilting Mom. I had hoped that by the time I posted again the ring quilt would be done, but when I laid it out and saw how much there really was to do, I knew that was unlikely. It's getting there, though, I have 11 blocks left to quilt (of 64) and the borders to do. My plan earlier in the week was to be on the borders by the time the kids left for the campout tomorrow noon, that won't happen. Now I'm hoping to be on borders by Friday night and binding by next weekend.

Since I last posted, Jonathan has had a birthday, he turned 15. Birthdays in our house are pretty nicely spaced overall. Our oldest two have birthdays only 11 days apart, but the rest of us are spaced 6-8 weeks apart, all year long. Birthdays tend to run several days in our house as my husband works evenings. The big birthday dinner always happens on the weekend, when he is home. The kids get to choose what they want for dinner and dessert for the family dinner and now also get to choose the meal on the actual day, if it's during the week. Now that they are bigger, most of them opt for shopping and lunch out for their birthdays, rather than us trying to pick out something they'd like. Jonathan wanted tools and camping equipment, so my husband took him to shop and then they picked me up and the 3 of us had lunch out. His birthday dinner was lasagna with homemade rolls, his choice nearly every year, and a trifle for dessert. We eat our big meal soon after church on Sundays, so the trifle was served at supper time, along with a variety of snacks.This is the next set of strip blocks. They were going to be "just" a throw quilt, but once I decided the roman shade for my sewing room would be made of them, I shifted the plan. I thought I'd be using some of the blocks for the shade, and could add a few more to make a matching throw for the couch by the window...but boy did I figure wrong! I actually had to make an extra 28 blocks to have enough for just the shade and cornice cover. The throw will have to wait, though I enjoy these blocks so much that I'm sure very soon another set will be in the works. I still have a lot of strips left, and more scraps to be cut. This project will be on hold for a bit while I get the Christmas quilts going.

Also still in progress is the posy and celtic quilt. This one is my takealong right now as it fits nicely in a bag with the few supplies needed to work on it. The braid pieces are all on, though many of them are only sewn down on one side. The finishing part is really easy since no pinning or thinking are involved, which make it the perfect "keeping my hands" busy project right now. I'm still trying to figure out the border, I don't have enough braid bias left to use that, which was the plan. I'm going to poke around and find something that incorporates most or all of the colors in the quilt, or see if I can get more of the green.

Next up in the hoop is the flying geese quilt. I'll be getting the batting for that with my groceries tomorrow and when my fingers need a break from hand quilting I'll be marking and basting this one.

The Christmas quilts will also be started along the way here. I have triangle paper printed for one niece's quilt, I have to practice with my curved piecing quilt for the other. For my sister-in-law's quilt I need to ready some applique and pull fabric, this will be the project to work on when Ruthie wants to be outside. I probably will need to buy fabric for my brother-in-law's quilt, so that one will be waiting a bit. When I have this many projects in the works, I keep a list of the next thing to do on each one, so I don't have to try to figure it out every time I switch projects. I think I'll make that list today, it really helps me stay on task.

Here is Lucas on Crazy Day at Awanas. He wanted to wear the clothing they wore for the Awana Games the weekend before and we put this gold gluey stuff in his hair to spike it. The ribbon is the first place medal his team won at the games, he was so excited!

And Ruthie! She is doing so well and is so proud! Potty training is well under way and most days she is staying dry. I think we're going to try pullups this week for nighttime and when out. She says new words every day and often is answering questions with words we didn't even know she knew yet. She loves to be outside, though the weather hasn't been too cooperative, yet. She eats well, sleeps well, and we're falling into quite a lovely routine.

So I guess that's it for now, if I'm going to get my big list of things to do actually finished today, I need to get a move on!

Happy Quilting!

Sue

Sewing room changes, quilting goals, and Ruthie update

It's not a clever title, but tells you exactly what you'll get!

Before Christmas, I decided that my sewing room really needed an overhaul. It felt cramped and was very cluttered, as I'd gotten into the habit of placing some storage on the floor in front of existing storage. I also had a stack of bins that looked messy and had a tendency to lean. I was just not happy with it all anymore. I did manage to wait until after the holidays to pull it all apart, I was itching to do it the week before Christmas, but knew I had way too much to do Christmas week to have the room in disarray!

Our bedroom was also getting the same feel, so I tore both rooms apart, moving some storage between them, and revamped both rooms.

In the first picture, the area on the right is the "clutter" spot and tends to gather the bits and baubles that need to be put away. It used to be the cutting area, but I now use my table for that as I can clear it off easily and have plenty of room. The old cutting area tended to be a bit cramped when working with larger pieces of fabric or making larger cuts.

The middle area is a dresser, which contains "office" type supplies, along with some bags and a couple of works in progress. I can put them away out of sight, but have easy access to them. On top of it is a small ironing board, which can also be easily moved to the table if I need more space. For most of the pressing involved in quilt piecing, it will be just fine where it is and be right behind where my sewing machine will be set up, providing easy access.

The second picture shows my table, which has an extra leaf available when needed. I placed it on an angle, which really opened up the room a lot. The shelves full of bins don't look nearly as cluttery in person as in the picture to me, but it is what it is!

The bookshelf is all the way to the right and has a small quilt hanging on it. I plan to make a couple more that size so I can change them out with the seasons. This one says "Let It Snow" much to the chagrin of Rachel (16) who really doesn't like winter once we get past the holidays.

The biggest change is in the third picture. I brought down my chaise/couch (sits like a chaise, looks like a couch) from our bedroom and put it in front of the window. The dresser that was there went to our bedroom. The dresser in the earlier picture was in the corner, but I brought down some storage boxes from our room for that spot. Because of the angle of the boxes, there is a small space between the couch and the boxes that is just perfect for my sewing machine in it's case. It's out of sight, but quite easily accessible. The couch is not only nice for doing handwork on, but will allow me to keep an eye on Lucas and Ruthie when they are outside and I would rather not be. The seat of the couch lifts off and provides a bunch of storage underneath. I took all the basted quilts and finished tops out of the leaning tower of boxes and they ALL fit in this space. Again, easy to access when looking for a project, but totally out of sight.

So now I love this room more than ever. When joined by one or more of the kids, I don't feel like we're all crammed in a small space, and I can't get to what I want/need.

With that big project out of the way, I'm turning my thoughts to my winter quilting. The stained glass quilt, "Joyful", is nearly done. I have 3 1/2 more blocks to quilt and then the small borders. I'm hoping to be binding this by the end of the week. Once it's finished, I'll be taking a couple more pictures and hopefully the colors will be more true. I love the picture, LOL, but the colors are much brighter than the picture shows.

As soon as Joyful is done, the ring block quilt will be next in the hoop. This one will take a long time, it's very large, 98 x 98, and has a lot of quilting on it. I've been looking forward to this one since I finished it and even moreso since I revamped the outer border. I'm hoping to make quite a dent before the weather gets warm and then the small frame might make an appearance again. With my room redone, I should be able to have it out without it being too disruptive to the space.

Also on the agenda is assembling the posy and celtic top. The blocks are finished now and I had planned to put the top together over the weekend but got waylaid so it is still needing to be done. I've decided not to get out the sewing machine until I have to bind Joyful, so this won't be worked on until then. Once out, the machine will stay out for a while as I have a couple of other tops that I want to work on as well.

One is a new strip quilt. This one has background fabric on half of the block and will be set in a zig zag setting once finished. With only half of the piecing of the other quilt, this one should go much faster. There will be a motif quilted in the large triangle and when set together it will nearly look like a continuous design.

I've also pulled out an old project. Many years ago, my first foray into the internet quilting world was an IRC chat line. We did quite a few swaps, and one of them was a flying geese swap. Usually when I did a swap, I made enough blocks to make a whole quilt top, but way too many of these would have been needed. I have several strips of 6 geese from the swap and also traded fabrics with a good friend who designed this paper pieced foundation. We also both received some fabric pieces from other friends, the goal being to have no two geese the same. These were out of sight, so out of mind, but a few months ago I came across them and really want to finish. The blocks are nearly done, will be set into long, vertical rows, and there will be a print strip of fabric between the rows. That's the plan, anyway, I won't know for sure until I lay it all out!

Writing it out makes me even more excited about it all. I've been doing chores while waiting for pictures to upload, so once I'm done posting I should be able to quilt for a good part of the day. It's supposed to snow here again, and I'm hoping it starts while still daylight so I can quilt and watch it fall.

And finally, Ruthie. She's doing so well, and is more verbal every day, it seems. The baby look is totally gone and she's quite the young lady. She looked so adorable dressed for church yesterday so I tried to get some pictures. Of course, getting her to sit still long enough AND look and the camera made things interesting!

At first, she just ran away.

Then she wouldn't look at the camera, though at least she was standing somewhat still.

At right, I coaxed out a smile.

She decided this still displaced storage box (it will soon hold some of the hand-me-downs we've been given for her that are still way too big) was a good place to sit for a picture, though didn't sit there long enough for me to get one!

She's quite the busy girl these days, going from her movies (she sometimes watches two at a time, one on the small TV in their room and one on a portable DVD player that she uses when Lucas is using the TV) to checking out what everyone is doing, playing with her new dolly, and "helping" the kids play games.

With her currently occupied, it's time to fix a quick lunch for me (everyone else has eaten) and get to my sewing! After listing out all the fun things I'm looking forward to, I really want to get to them.

Happy Quilting and Stay Warm!

Sue and Ruthie