Bitter cold but a finish warms my heart

There is no doubt about it...IT IS COLD here in Chicagoland! 

This morning we woke to -22ºF temperature with windchills -50ºF. 

Schools are closed for the 2nd time this week  

and will be closed tomorrow also. 

(Monday for snow, Wednesday and Thursday for cold)

Tomorrow's temperatures are expected to be as cold or colder than today!

It does allow for some extra time to spend in my sewing room with projects. 

For me, 2019 began with 5 WIP left over from 2018. I'm happy to report that I completed my 3rd finish. All 3 were from my WIP pile! 

I do have 2019 WIP almost ready! Gotta get 2018 cleared out first!

This is one of my RSC quilts from 2018. You can see the other one here. I'm calling this quilt Heading North. 

Living in Chicagoland, we often are 'heading north' to WI for excursions, trips, vacations, & camping.

The backing is from my stash and the binding was left over from another project. Love using up stash!

I quilted in a chevron pattern following the outline of the geese. I also quilting the border in the ditch following the HST. 

The quilt finishes at 38.5" x 51"

Today, besides working a bit in my sewing room on my medallion quilt, I sandwiched this 2018 WIP.

I'm linking to Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabication, Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River, and To Do Tuesday at Stitch All the Things.

This will be the 4th 2018 WIP. This churn dash has been finished and waiting some attention since September. The pattern is called churn link. I found it on pinterest.  Now to decide how to quilt it!

I whipped up this cute fabric ball for my new grandson. 

He looks so cute under his Foxy Baby quilt I made for him. 

Second Finish in 2019 and more!

I finished my second WIP from 2018!  Last post, I reported that I found time to sandwich my Save the Bees quilt, renamed The Plight of Bees. I have been diligently working on completing the 2018 WIPs and I was able to quilt and bind this quilt this week! I used a FMQ meandering loop to mimic the flight of bees. 

All the fabrics used in this quilt were from my stash! The bee fabric was gifted to me from a friend. It was used for table linens for a baby shower.  

The pattern is Pinwheel Puzzle from McCall's Quilting March/April 2018 issue. 

I added the words 'Save The Bees' using letters from the Spelling Bee book by Lori Holt.

The quilt finishes at 58" x 68.5".

I'm linking up to Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts.

I finally pulled fabrics from my stash for the Optical Illusion quilt. 

Here are my blues.

4 of the 5 fabrics were wrapped in my mini bolts I recently made to organize my out of control fabric stash. The one 2nd from the right, I pulled from my stash that was previously organized and folded to size around a ruler then piled by color in an old dresser. How do you organize your stash?

I made 2 more charity blocks for the Covered in Love charity sponsored by 

Kat & Cat Quilts. Now I have 4 to send off in the mail soon. 

Finally, I got The Quilter's Paper-Pieced Workbook out from the library.

I found several block that I really liked. I decided to do one of the easy ones as a second RSC block. January is red month so...

I will be using low volume fabric with the color of the month in the center and fabric scraps for the starburst. 

I will Link up to Scrappy Saturday over at So Scrappy. 

This has been a productive week with Monday being a day off of school to recognize the holiday celebrating MLK, Jr. 

What have you been working on?

Progress Update

The Quiet Play Pattern Club blocks for January were released a bit early!

I was excited to get started! 

I had already sorted through and organized by color all my solids (mostly Kona) so I was able to get started. I downloaded the patterns and printed off 2 of the paper pieced blocks. I will be making the background of the word blocks in a color with the letters Kona Snow. The object blocks will have a Kona Snow background and a rainbow of colors in the block. Here are my January blocks!

The background is Kona Hibiscus.

There are 17 colors (besides Kona Snow) for the rainbow spool of thread!

I still haven't completely finalized my fabric pull for the Block of the Month Optical Illusion blocks. This will be as much as possible from my stash. 

I'm rethinking the Scandinavian Flowers as I don't think I am ready for this level of applique and it would require a fabric purchase.  I will still download the monthly patterns for later. 

Instead, I will try reverse applique using the book, Dutch Treat, that I purchased many years ago. 

I also previously bought fabric for this project. Must use what I got! I won't do all the blocks (some are very complicated) but will pick some of the easier blocks. I will prepare this project for my trip in February. 

Here is a peek at the start of my medallion quilt. 

So many HSTs! 276 to be exact!

This week, I carved out some time to sandwich my Save the Bees quilt, a leftover from 2018. I plan to do meandering loops over the top of the quilt to mimic the flight of the bees. I am thinking of naming this quilt, 

The Plight of Bees. 

Lastly, I will leave you with a sweet picture of my cute grandson! The hat he is wearing is one that I knitted from a vintage pattern. It is a bit big but ties to stay on! It is very soft as it is knitted with bamboo yarn. 

2019 is under way!

With the New Year comes new goals, quilt alongs, BOM and projects. I have set some goals this year and joined some quilt alongs and BOM. Hopefully I didn't do too much! 

It is so hard to resist! 

One of my goals is to make charity blocks for Covered in Love. You can read more about this charity at Kat & Cat Quilts. Every 2 months, the block changes. For January and February the block is a variation of a string block. 

Here are my blocks that I will send to Covered in Love.

I will continue the monthly Rainbow Scrap Challenge hosted by So Scrappy. January's color is red. This year I will make the reverse rainbow starburst block.

You can find the tutorial here.

I will link up to Scrappy Saturday.

I also joined the Quiet Play Pattern Club. Each month, around the 15th, 3 patterns will be released and emailed. One word block, one picture block and a bonus block from her favorites. Quiet Play is known for her foundation pieced, rainbow, geometric blocks. I'm excited to get started!

I was intrigued by the Bitty Block Follow-A-Long over at Quilt Art Designs. I love the challenge of working with tiny pieces (and it was a challenge!) This is another paper pieced block project. 

This month the Bitty Block is a Tiny Bee.

I will also be doing the Block of the Month Optical illusion with Nine Patch blocks over at Heleen Pinkster Quilt Design. It appears that you just make this at your leisure as I don't see a link up for it. I haven't pulled fabrics for this yet. 

I like the optical illusion challenge of this quilt!

The last BOM I'm interested in is Scandinavian Flowers over at Angie's Bits and Pieces. This is an applique BOM which is not usually my thing but I will be away from my sewing room for 2+ weeks in February and I thought that I could practice this skill. I will get January and February blocks ready before I leave to bring with me. Time to perfect this skill!

I also started a medallion quilt. I don't have pictures yet. This is a quilt that I have had in my head for a while. Materials were purchased back in late summer/fall. Stay tuned. 

 Of coarse, I need to catch up on quilting the quilts left from 2018. 

I did finish Dog 'n Quilt, one of my Rainbow Scrap quilts. 

In this picture you can see the stand that my hubby got me for Christmas. I can hang my quilts to make taking photos easier!

The quilting is a simple straight line, 1" apart and stitched in the ditch around the dog. 

The back is a purple floral from my stash.

This quilt was made entirely from scraps and stash. Yay! 

It finished at 43" x 53" and will be donated to charity. 

Exciting news!

The New Year came in the most exciting way this year! 

On New Year's Day morning, we got a call from my daughter around 7:30am with the news that they (daughter and son-in-law) were heading to the hospital to have our first grandchild! 

What! She wasn't due until the 19th. 

Her water bag broke around 4:30am and contractions were strong and regular. 

OK we wait....

(they live in Austin and we live near Chicago)

A little after 10am, our grandson was born. He is small (5lbs 15 oz) but everyone is doing fine! 

My hubby made them a bedside cradle and we were planning on delivering it the following weekend. So as planned, we headed down for a quick trip. 

We were able to get in some snuggles

and enjoy meeting this new addition to our family. 

He is so precious!

He fits into the little hat that I knitted.

Proud and happy Tante (aunt)

Before heading back home :(  

We will be heading back in February for an extended stay! 

I miss him already 😍

Happy New Year!

In 2018, I started the daily recording and making of blocks for My Temperature quilt. It is hard to believe that I actually made it for the whole year! Even though I fell behind in making the blocks daily and even sometimes weekly and monthly, I always recorded the high and low temperatures and then caught up as time allowed! 

I periodically showed my progress on my posts. 

Now that 2018 is over, I made my final block today 

and put together the quilt top! 

It is interesting to see how the colors changed throughout the year. 

We started off 2018 very cold! The deepest blues were mostly from the first week in January 2018 and were briefly repeated in early February. 

The rest of the winter, early spring, and late fall the weather was mostly in the 30℉ - 50℉ range (light blues-greens-yellows). 

In early May, we saw warmer temperatures (reds) that stayed around (for the most part) all summer and into early fall. 

I would say that 2018 was probably warmer than normal for a longer period of time and we had some colder weather earlier in the fall then normal.

It will be a while before I do the quilting as right now I'm quite behind in the quilting process. 

Making this quilt was an interesting project and a lesson in perseverance!

Linking up to Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River and To DO Tuesday at Stitch All the Things.