What happened while MIA?

For just about the last quarter of 2017, I went MIA from my blog. I keep saying that I'll get better at posting to my blog but I can't seem to find a time that life isn't busy! School has been busier this year from the start. 

I was doing a pretty decent job of keeping up with challenges and QAL's until November, then I was fell behind on all of them. 

However, I did get some quilting and other projects done during this time!

I did finish my 15 minutes of play quilt which is now named 

Thank Your Lucky Stars. 

In my last post, I had started quilting around the 20 different colored blocks and star points. I finished that quilting and started the negative space quilting. 

I quilted a swirl inside each star block and a braid between the blocks. 

The backing is a multi-colored print I found at Joann's. 

The binding is scrappy. The finished size is 54.5" x 68".

This quilt will be gifted to someone special.

I also made a gift for our nephew's baby boy. This traveled to Norway and was well received!

The blanket is fleece with a crocheted edge and the bib is made from a recycled men's shirt. The bowtie used scraps from a previous quilt. The pattern is found here. 

I spent a week in Austin with my daughters and SIL for Thanksgiving. My hubby and our oldest daughter flew down on Wednesday. It was fun to all be together. 

My DD2 has been learning indigo dyeing. Together we did a batch of tea towels and napkins. This is a fun but bit complicated process. I'm thinking of trying to do some fabric dyeing come summer and warmer temperatures.

Here are the folds we used.

My napkins.

My daughter's tea towels.

It was night by the time we finished the dyeing.

Christmas was around the corner and I needed to make my ornaments for the year. Based on a log cabin kit we bought while in Vancouver, I made these from mini wooden logs I found at a thrift store. 

I also made some hoop quilts for 2 special sister friends in my life. 

 The pattern for the gnome was found here. I made a slight adjustment to eliminate the ears. Hand embroidered, God Jul! (Merry Christmas in Norwegian)

I shrunk the pattern and added the tree from here. 

Another quilt that I made and gifted to a good friend was Flight.

This is a wall hanging quilt. Size 13" x 20.5"

The pattern is found on Craftsy.

I quilted around the plane and then I added some night sky constellations.  

And finally, yesterday I worked on my little spools for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and the last stars for the Milky Way QAL.

Blacks and browns!

All the little spools, neat and orderly...arranged by color. 

Acrux star in peach.

Deneb star in gold.

9 Milky Way stars!

I added a scrappy star with fabrics from some of the previous stars. 

I like this a lot however I ran out of the gray background fabric. I need to go and look/shop for a gray that will match. I don't remember if this was a Kona or...? 

I still have a few blocks to finish for Grandma's Kitchen.

Linking up to ScrapHappySaturday over at So Scrappy.

Thanks for reading to the end! I know it was heavy on the pictures and words but that what happens when you go MIA for a couple of months. 

In the next few days, I will be contemplating what projects, QALs, and challenges I will be doing in 2018! 

What will you be joining! I'd love to hear! 

Hope everyone will have a warm and prosperous 2018!

October goals update

My October goal was pretty light and in hind sight, for good reason! Life just doesn't seem to slow down. My goal was to decide on and start the quilting on my 15 minutes of play blocks quilt. 

Unfortunately, I didn't make the bonus of finishing. 

I did decide on the quilting for my 15 minutes of play orphaned blocks quilt. In the 'made' fabric squares I decided to quilt each on with a matching thread color. I made a twisting log cabin pattern in each. There are 20 different squares so I had 20 different thread color changes. I also decided (about half way through) to stitch in the ditch around each star point in the color of the point. 

There is a lot of negative space in this quilt so I needed to decide what to do. In looking at the whole quilt, I decided to go back and quilt echoing squares around the 'made' fabric squares in the color of the square. Yes, it would have been more efficient to have decided to do this while I had the specific colors threaded but I don't always do things the easy way. 

I am currently working on going back to changing threads 20 times to finish this part of the quilting. 20 thread changes adds a bit of time to the quilting process!

I have a few of them done and I do have a plan for the remaining negative space with white thread! Inside the stars, I am planning a swirl or concentric circles and in the space between the stars, straight line quilting in a chevron pattern. IT"S GETTING THERE!

I did keep up with my RSC blocks and Milky Way QAL blocks and I'm only one block behind on Grandma's Kitchen. 

Also my charity quilt is almost a flimsy! 

I linking up to October Finish Link Up over at Elm Street Quilts. 

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October Goals

It is time to set some October goals! Since I finished my Sail Away! quilt, I can now refocus on my quilt using the orphaned 15 min of play blocks that I had finished the flimsy as part of my August goals. 

On Saturday (still officially September) this happened!

I found some time to sandwich this quilt and it is now ready to quilt! I'm not sure how to quilt it yet...should I match the thread colors to the blocks, use a variegated thread, or a neutral? What do I do in all the negative space? 

Decisions to be made! Ideas? 

My goal for October will be to make a final decision on the quilting and get it started. Bonus would be to finish!

I also have been working on a charity 2 color quilt. It is a basic bear claw block with lots of HST pieces. I found this technique that makes 18 2" finished HST and it really speeded up the process. 

Have you ever used this technique? It was new to me!

The papers did not come big enough for the large HST piece so I did these using a traditional technique.

October brings a new color for the Rainbow Scrap challenge and a new star for the Milky Way QAL. This month's color is pink and the star is called Sol. 

I am also keeping up fairly well with the Grandma's Kitchen weekly Sew Along. 

Here is last weeks block.

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal October Link-up over at Elm Creek Quilts.

We are heading up North mid~week to experience the trees showing all their glorious Fall colors! It is such a beautiful time! Hope we have great weather!

August Finish

It's that time again when we share our monthly goal finish. My goal was to make something out of the 15 minutes of play blocks that were uncovered in my sewing room. In my last post I showed a pattern that I decided to use. I rewrote the block to fit the size of my blocks. I also needed a few more 15 minutes of play block to make a good sized quilt. 

The pattern for Fat Quarter Shop

I'm happy to share that I was able to finish my goal and now have a flimsy waiting its turn to get sandwiched and quilted!

I really like the scrappy secondary stars that are formed!

My other goals are always to keep up with my monthly QALs. 

My little spools for the Rainbow Scrap challenge in neutrals.

Polaris for the Milky Way QAL. 

And blocks 7 - 9 of the Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along!

Linking to Pat Sloan's Grandma's Kitchen.

 Linking up to OMG August Finish Link Up at Elm Street Quilts. 

It has been a good month for quilting!

It's all Natural!

August brought a new no color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge ~ low volume! My little spools look great in low volume but I've been using the same color for The Milky Way QAL and low volume doesn't speak well with night sky stars! Here are the cute little spools in low volume prints ranging from whites to dark creams. Looks like threads I would have in my sewing room!

Here are all the little spools so far!

 For most of the months, I made 5 spools but I originally was going to alternate the layout from 5 spools to 4 spools. Not sure what it will be in the end. I may need to make one more purple and one more red. They are just too cute!

I'll play with the layout when we get closer to the end of this year's challenge! I'm linking up to Scrap Happy Saturday over at SoScrappy.

So I had this dilemma that I mentioned above...low volume doesn't work well for night sky stars so I needed to pick another color for The Milky Way QAL. Way back in January, the color of the month was purple. The purple I used for my star was a very pinkish purple. 

So I decided I would make another purple star using deep purples. 

Here is Polaris!

The patterns and designs are available from Blossom Heart Quilts. 

The 6th block in Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along is Wash Day! I love this block and how it reminds me of the agitators on my grandma's and my mom's wringer washer.

I linked up to Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along over at Pat Sloan's blog.

Do you remember my 15 Minutes of Play blocks? This is what I decided to do with them. 

Using this pattern I uncovered in my sewing room, I resized it to fit my 'Play' blocks (which are 6" and the pattern called for 4"). I still used 2 1/2" strips to border the  'Play' blocks and make the star points which will result in the center of the secondary stars to be 4". I felt that there would already be plenty of negative space without making the strips larger. My blocks finish at 14". 

Stay tuned to see how my August goal turns out!

Time to set those August goals

It is amazing that it is already August! 

School here starts very soon, August 17th for the students in my district. I'm not ready for summer vacation to be over!

However, it is time to set some goals! 

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are having our kitchen renovated. The contractors are now finished (Monday was their last day) so now it is up to us to finish the little things we didn't contract out. Thankful that my hubby is very handy...it saves a bit of money! It will be my job to put everything back into the cabinets (we have been living out of boxes and the dining room table full of odd sized things since the end of June)..more organized and slimmed down than before! Hehe!

Here are a few picture so far (my kitchen isn't very big so it is hard to get good photos.)

Across from stove

As for my quilting goals, I mentioned that I was organizing my sewing room a bit and uncovered a bunch of 'made-fabrics'. My LQS had Victoria Findlay Wolfe come for a lecture and workshop. I wasn't able to attend the workshop but I did go to the lecture and trunk show! She is quite amazing! If you ever have a chance to see or hear her ~ GO! The lecture was based on her 15 minutes of Play book (before her QuiltCon win and her incredible work on double wedding ring quilts!) 

I made these blocks after I was impressed by her story and work!

So my goal for August is to make something out of these blocks. A month to play with scraps!

I will most likely make more blocks as there are only 8 rainbow colored blocks. I did find one partially completed low volume block and 3 more orphaned low volume blocks (foundation pieced) that my daughter made when she made this quilt. Not sure if I will use them. 

As always, I will keep up with the RSC, the Milky Way QAL, and the Grandma's Kitchen challenge blocks. 

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal for August over at Elm Street Quilts. 

What are your goals!

Catching UP

My last post was photo heavy of quilt shows pictures so today I will catch you up with what I've been up to in my sewing room. 

Besides sewing 2 quilts tops for my nieces wedding coming up this fall (pictures later), I made this bag for my mom's birthday.

It has 2 side pockets and the ties allows for the bag to open wide if you need extra room.

 Inside it has a large zippered pocket and on the other side, 2 open pockets.

The pattern is from Clover and Violet.

July's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is Teal. Here is my block.

And for creative therapy, I have been spending 15 minutes of play. Made fabric based on Victoria Findlay Wolfe's book. 

Don't they go well with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge?

Now that July is here, my June calendar pages are complete.

What have you been doing?