Kelly

Updates in September

Wow, 5 months without a post! It’s been a whirlwind last 5 months and I just haven’t done a lot of stitching. We finished the school year at home with mommy as the teacher, Cassie did great and Alex just didn’t want to work on anything. Home just isn’t the right place for my kids and school. They just started back this week and we’ve had an eventful first week! Yesterday the phone rang and my heart always drops when it says it’s the school. Yep, Alex threw up at recess and had to come home from school. So I had to run up to school and get him. Let’s hope it’s the only time this year!

It was a busy spring and summer with orders, including one to Germany that took forever to get there! Everyone was shopping online for the end of the school year gifts and it definitely helped me! It’s been a slow start to fall, but that’s ok it will pick up in the next month or so for Xmas. Because I was so busy with orders the sewing machine sat idle for a long time. Plus we were doing a lot of camping and visiting with family in other states. We stayed in the whole time but had so much fun!

Now that I am starting to have some time to myself I’ve been working on Harry Potter SAL blocks. Just finished another one today, I only have 9 more blocks and I can get the top put together. Since our quilt show for 2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19 I have time to get this and maybe a couple more quilts completed before our show in September 2021.

I have a lot of projects to work on when I’m sitting in my chair at night, cross stitch, all the various EPP projects, a new knitting project and I picked up a QAYG Hexagon template at a guild meeting a few months ago and have been hand stitching those and will be machine stitching them together when they are all ready. Hope to be back soon with a new update, hopefully it won’t be 5 months from now!

Mystery Quilt

Wow! I can’t believe that I managed to make 100 blocks in 13 days! Laundry Basket Quilts is doing a mystery quilt that started on March 20th, but I didn’t find out about it until the 23rd when I started working on blocks. This was a wonderful stress reliever since the kids started online learning last week. We spent the mornings doing school work and then the kids had the afternoons to play or do whatever they wanted to do. Some of the colors in the pictures aren’t correct, I used all pinks and blues, similar to the pattern. I did change the first one to purples, just because I had those colors already cut in that size.

In the process of working on all of these blocks, I managed to complete 3 bow tie blocks, 2 blocks for a mini quilt I’m working on and 3 blocks for the hexie temperature quilt! If I can applique the last 2 blocks tonight I can finish them and put together the next 2 rows of the hexie temperature quilt. Hoping to work on the Harry Potter quilt this week too, we’ll see what I can get done this week!

Done!

Oh my goodness it’s been a busy couple of days of cutting. In an effort to start cleaning up the mess in my office and have enough walking space, Sunday I started working on pressing and cutting up all the scraps that accumulated in a basket. It took a long time, but it’s done and now the 2.5″, 2″ and 1.5″ bin are totally full and ready to be used. Cassie has already pulled a number of 1.5″ pieces out, she wants to make a pillow for one of her dolls. We started stitching them together the other night, but she got bored after getting 8 pairs sewn together. Now I have a tub FULL of fabrics that need to be put on the foam core board that has been cut and waiting for months now. I’m hoping to get it done by the end of the month, we’ll see if that can happen!

Finish #1 for 2020

Yeah I know I already posted a finish in February, but I actually finished this one the end of January/beginning of February and took it for Show and Tell at Guild in February. Back in 2013, I posted that someone from guild came over and taught me how to hand quilt. Well I started working on a practice piece and it got put away in a basket and forgotten about, you know how these things happen! So I was looking for something else and found the practice quilt with all the 1/4″ tape all falling off of it. So I took it out of the hoop (to be returned to Sue finally!), pulled all the 1/4″ tape off and just started working on it. Took a few nights and a few poked fingers, but I got it done and found some already made rainbow/scrap binding that I could use on it. It’s not perfect, nothing I ever make is, but it’s done and I hand quilted it all by myself! Now the first hexagon quilt I made is basted and once I get a hexie project finished I will start hand quilting it. Besides I need to figure out how I want to quilt it still!

Hexie Temperature Quilt Update

Wow! I spent the afternoon, minus time for a family walk outside on the bike path, working on pulling fabrics for the hexie temperature quilt. Unfortunately for me, I had to do some cutting into fat quarters for a lot of it because I just didn’t have the colors in my 2.5″ square bin. But that’s ok with me, at least I now have ALL the squares for the hexies I need and I can work on basting and doing the flowers whenever I want. I will most likely start working on them tonight, there are 4 weeks already basted and they just need put together into a flower. Then I’ll have a stack ready for applique and borders.

I’m starting to feel good about progress made so far this year on quilts. I have 2 basted and ready for quilting, 2 have been finished and knocked off the UFO Challenge list and I’m making progress on multiple in progress quilts. Hubby just left to pick up our dinner and I’m going to work on ironing the scrap basket fabrics so they can be cut down and put in the correct tubs when I have time. I need to get this office cleaned up and that’s just phase 1!

Lots of Updates!

Amazingly I haven’t had a lot of things that required me to leave the house the last few days. So I decided that it was time to spend some time sewing! Well I did take a nice long walk the other day it was so nice!

So first item up on my list was to get the border put on the Pokemon quilt. This top has been done for almost 2 years and I don’t know what I was waiting for! Not the best picture, kids had things out and I couldn’t get a better one. But the border is now on this and it’s in the to be quilted pile!

Since the top is now done I decided all the solids leftover from this could go into the Harry Potter quilt, since I need more to make it bigger than the original SAL. I think the SAL was for a twin bed size/throw and I’m making it large enough to fit our king size bed and hang over the sides properly – which I can never do for some reason. 🙂 So everything shown in the basket at the top is from the Pokemon quilt. In fact I used some of it already to make my next Harry Potter block! 9 3/4 is finished and I have 12 more blocks to go!

So with that done I decided to pull out my 2017 Hexie temperature quilt (picture from post in 2018) and see where I was with that. Boy did I leave that project in a mess! Back in 2018 I put the first 2 rows together and then put together the blocks and appliqued all the hexie flowers that were completed. It looks like I have 4 flowers that still need to be put together and I can possibly put the next 2 rows together. However, it looks like I never updated my spreadsheet/trello with what was completed AND it looks like I never got the high temp for the day from August 28th to the end of the year! So it looks like I’ll spend a little time today gathering the rest of my data and maybe even pulling fabrics for more hexies. Since we are going on a mini vacation for Spring Break I’ll need a project (or 2) to take with me!

Cassie wants to do some sewing today, we’ll see if she really makes anything!

February Finishes

I did manage to finish the 2 tasks I wanted to finish this month, I got the doll quilt completely finished AND I completed a block for my Harry Potter quilt. Cassie is thrilled with her new doll quilt, she immediately took it and put it on one of her doll beds. I just did simple loopy quilting in the triangles, I still need to work on my speed with curves, there’s some eyelashing on the back, but Cassie’s doll won’t care!

I picked an easy block from my Harry Potter quilt to do, the Deathly Hallows. With this block done I now only have 13 left to do! I might see if I can get another one done today, we’ll see since we have some rearranging to do in Cassie’s room today.

I was hoping to get my first hexagon quilt basted earlier in the month, and I wasn’t able to do that then, however I was able to start working on it today! i should be able to get it finished tonight while I watch some basketball. This will be hand quilted this year!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts.

February Goals

I’m trying to figure out what I want to work on for my goals this month. I have a lot of tasks I have to do for Valentine’s Day for the kids school, but I certainly don’t want to list those as goals., those are MUST DO’s. 🙂 I think what I really would like to do is put together at least 1 Harry Potter block (not sure which one yet) and quilt the baby doll quilt that I basted last month. I ordered thread for the guild block exchange quilt but I know that won’t get done this month. Maybe if I have time I can get another quilt basted, but I certainly don’t think that will happen!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilt OMG.

January Finishes

January goal: Baste 2 quilts. Shouldn’t be too hard right? Well it wasn’t! Granted one of them was quite small, I still got it done! The small one is going to be a baby doll blanket for Cassie. Just need to figure out how I want to quilt it. Then I picked out a large quilt to baste. Found just the right color backing and basted my 2013 quilt guild challenge quilt! I need to get some Aurifil thread in the right aqua/blue color before I can quilt it, but I’m not sure how I want to quilt it yet anyway. The board basting was easier than I thought it would be, it took me an afternoon when Alex was sick to get it basted. Can’t wait to start quilting it!

Like I said Alex was sick for 3 days last week, then of course this week I get it! So I haven’t had time – or felt like even working – on quilting anything yet. I do have another quilt that is on my UFO list to get a binding on, that will be another post when it’s finished. 🙂 I did pull out another top to baste, but since I was sick it didn’t get anywhere. I want to start hand quilting my first hexagon quilt, just need to pick out a backing first!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts and will have to start thinking about next months goal!

Happy New Year!

Wow! I can’t believe it’s 2020! Seems like just yesterday that we were getting married in 1999, then the kids being born 2010 and 2014 and now here it is 2020. Why does time have to march so fast??

I spent the last week of the year working on getting some things completed, including finishing the top we started at our mystery workshop at guild in December. I bought the fabric back in 2013 I was trying to get folks interested in doing a block exchange with the 2014 Hoffman Challenge fabric. No one was interested but I decided to buy fabric anyway because I liked it so much. So when I decided to do the mystery quilt I remembered this fabric and found that it was just about enough to make the top. I had to order some additional – yes I found some even 5 years later! – so I could finish the top. Not sure when it will be quilted, but it is on my UFO challenge list for this year!

Back in 2016, one of my online groups, the Twilters, did a block exchange based on the book by Frances O’Roarke Dowell called Birds in the Air. It started as a way to help Frances get a quilt completed for the release of the book, and then morphed into a signed block exchange. My blocks sat here for quite some time because I couldn’t decide what to do with them. How did i want to set them? I had a lot of designs done in EQ and just never followed through with any of them. So as I was working on my UFO list for 2020, I decided that these might be a quick finish to completed top – I just needed to make 3-4 blocks to finish the design. Got that all put together New Year’s Day. Now it’s on the UFO list and just needs to be quilted.

Beginning of last year I found out about a SAL for a Harry Potter quilt – and you know how much I love Harry Potter! It was being run by Kelli over at Seriously I think it needs stitches who did the Pokemon quilt I put together a year or so ago. (links are to the pages on Kelli’s site). I bought the kit from Fat Quarter Shop and got started on blocks. I fizzled out during the year, business started picking up and we just weren’t home much over the summer. But at the end of the year I really wanted to be working on something simple, and these blocks are put together pretty simply – just lots of pieces. So I sat and figured out how many I need for the layout that would totally cover our king sized bed and started working to fill in the blocks I needed for the first 2 rows. Got those 3 blocks done and the first 2 rows are now put together. As soon as I can get my year end inventory completed I can work on the next block.

So, I want to rejoin the One Monthly Goal linkup this year in the hopes that I can get something done on my UFO list this year. Last year I completed NOTHING on my list! I’ve created the page at the top and hope to have some finished quilts in it this year! This month I want to get 2 quilts basted and possibly start quilting them. I don’t know which 2 they will be, possibly the ones shown above, maybe one of the many others that just needs to be quilted. I have batting, just need to figure out backings.

Back soon!!