Week 29 of 2019: Stitching and De-Stashing

With all the heat advisories, this was a perfect weekend to just stay in and stitch.  Unfortunately, that hasn't been my plan for the weekend, well really not for the whole week.  It's been another challenging one on the finding 15 minutes to stitch most days.  Hopefully it's been easier to find time to play in your sewing room this week.

Work took up several evenings this week.  It was hard to make the trek up the stairs to the sewing room a couple of nights, but I did manage to eek out 15 minutes each night. 

15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
15 minute days/July = 19/20 days
15 minute days/2019 = 177/201 days
Success rate = 88.06%

Lack of sewing machine time makes for an anemic stash report. 

Fabric out this week = 0.38 yards
Fabric out for 2019 = 29.54 yards
More fabric in than out

At least there is a bit out, that beats the nothing out from last week. 

There's a new mystery quilt along starting up this month, the Mosaic Mystery Quilt along over at Meadow Mist Designs.

This will be the 4th Meadow Mist Designs mystery quilt along I've done.  It's one clue a month, so that works in my schedule.  Cheryl's directions are always so clear and she makes it easy to pick a good fabric combination.  Here's my fabric selection for the quilt along.

The neutral on the left is the background and the purple will be the border (unless I have enough of the butterfly fabric).  The gold at the top is a left over from a previous project. The butterfly print and the dark purple are from the stash.  I have no idea how old either is. It will be good to get both out of the stash and into a project. If Cheryl follows past practice, August's clue will be the cutting instructions. So there's plenty of time to play along if you are looking for a project to use up some stash.    

I'm off on a business trip this week, thankfully it's only two days. That should be it for work related travel this year.  I'm ready for things to slow down a bit. I'm hoping for a nothing but sewing day next Sunday.  We'll see how that goes. 

So how well did you manage your stitching time this week? 

Odds and Ends Stitching

Not ready for it to be Monday.  We've been gone at least part of the last two weekends, so mount laundry needed to be worked down to hill size this weekend.  Plus a few household chores really needed to get done.  I did get in a fairly solid afternoon of stitching on Sunday.  

I've found the backing for Vintage Dresses, but it needs to be pressed.  I just wasn't up for that.  The sewing room is on the northwest corner of the house, so it gets pretty warm in there in the afternoons and spending much time with the iron just isn't pleasant.  Sitting at the sewing machine was a much cooler option. 

So I made progress on three other projects.  The green and dark blue blocks are for the pieced border on Storm at Sea.  There are three "sizing" borders before the pieced one and I've gotten a good start on adding border number two. 

Storm at Sea
Paper Piecing Class by Carrie Randell (Quilter's Hideaway)

The first border is white, the second is the dark blue. There will be one more skinny white border before the pieced border goes on.  Hopefully by the time I get to that point, I'll have all the blocks ready to go.  

Strip sets and 4-patches for the Simply Sensational Scrappy Summer Quilt were also in the works.  I'm up to about 20 blocks there. 

 Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt
Designed by Kevin the Quilter 

The mystery calls for 240, so I've got a ways to go.  This project is definitely making a dent in my blue strips. It seems I have a lot of blue scraps in terms of yardage, but not in diversity.  I've not raided the fat quarter drawer yet. That's probably on tap this week when I don't have as much time to stitch in the evenings, then I'll be ready to stitch up a few more next weekend.   

The third set of blocks are for my rainbow version of Wild and Goosey.  Each block has 13 pieces, so that's been slow going, so no new pictures of that project.  

Linking up with Main Crush Monday, Monday Making, and the Monday Design Wall. I hope to check in on what's up on everyone else's design wall this evening.

Week 28 of 2019: Stitching Stuff

It's been a busy week that went incredibly fast.  Unfortunately there was enough going on that getting into my sewing room didn't go so smoothly.  Finding 15 minutes to stitch each day was definitely a challenge. Hopefully your week was more productive on that front. 

Work came home one night, so it was hard to work in some stitching time while working to meet a deadline.  Consequently, it wasn't a perfect week on the sewing front. 

15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
15 minute days/July = 12/13 days
15 minute days/2019 = 170/194 days
Success rate = 87.63%

Not a bad week, but not a stellar one either.  There was no fabric usage this week, I did lots of cutting and playing in the stash closet, but nothing made it into a finished block, so I'm passing on the stash report this week.  I promised a photo of the fabrics that came home with me last week, so here's that:  

Really cool and pretty fabrics for a chemistry person don't you think?  I love the periodic table fabric, but the colorful beakers and flasks are a really close second. When the Scientist in Training got a glimpse, her response was, "So when do I get this quilt?".  I didn't even think to look which fabric line(s) these were from , so if you want to know the source, leave a comment and I'll email you that info.  

One other reason for the poor showing on the fabric usage front is that this week was our 27th wedding anniversary.  My Guy and I took each other out for a 7 course dinner on Friday coupled with an overnight stay in a new hotel that's opened in downtown Tulsa.  (The dinner featured wine pairings with each course, needless to say that hour drive home just wasn't wise).  To top that off, I got flowers.  Which of course meant that I had to play with the new macro lens.  

Here's a better view of the bouquet. 

Yellow roses are my favorite and were in my bridal bouquet. My Guy did well didn't he?  

That was how my 28th week of 2019 went. How did your stitchy week go?  You can link up below and share adventures with needle, thread and fabric.

1. Chrisknits 2. Pack Rat With a Plan 3. karen

4. Meloney 5. Shasta 6. Amanda

7. Christina's Handicrafts 8. Deana

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2019 Finish Along: Third Quarter Ambitions

Monday will mark the half way point in July.  Seems this month is going just as fast as the rest of the year has gone.  So fast that it's hard to believe it's time to select a set a few projects that might just get finished before the end of the September as part of the 2019 Finish Along. 

I have a quilt plan for the year.  The three quilts for first quarter are done, but none of the quilts planed for second quarter finishes are off the list yet.  So those are a good place to start for third quarter. 

1.  Vintage Dresses

 Vintage Dresses
by Charise Randell

The borders are on, so the next step is to piece the back and get it ready for quilting.  This quilt is likely to get done before September. 

2.  Red, White and Blue Stars

 Red, White and Blue Stars

This quilt needs to have the setting strips cut and pieced, plus add the borders. I'm not sure this one will be done, but I hope to at least make progress on it sometime this quarter. 

3.  Twinkle Stars

Twinkle Stars

Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

This quilt just needs the blocks sewn together.  I'm not sure yet if there will be borders or not. Actually this one probably needs to put ahead of the RWB stars as this one is supposed to be a Christmas gift for one of the Scientist's in Training's friends. So it needs to get done before December. 

I've not been faithfully following my quilt plan and have a couple of unplanned starts that just need borders, so they might actually get finished before number two and number three above. 

The first of those is Storm at Sea.

 Storm at Sea
Paper Piecing Class by Carrie Randell (Quilter's Hideaway)

The borders are already in progress for this one, so it's likely to get done before the end of the quarter. 

Another "off plan" project is the Daisy Chain Mystery quilt.

Daisy Chain Mystery
2019 Little Bunny Quilts Mystery
by Alison of Honey, Bunny & Doll Designs

This project also just needs borders before making a back and sending it out for quilting.  

That would be five finishes for the third quarter.  Three finishes is more probable.  I'd be thrilled with that.  

Linking up with She Can Quilt for the third quarter session of the 2019 Finish Along.  

Finishes and Starts

We had a great weekend visiting with family for the July 4th holiday, but I was ready to be home yesterday.   Since we were on the road visiting family, there wasn't much going on in the sewing room over the weekend. I did get in a good half day of sewing last Wednesday before we headed out.  The last of the borders was added to Vintage Dresses, so it is finally a finished flimsy. 

 Vintage Dresses by Charise Randell

I didn't have a lot of time with all the holiday stuff to get my normal staged photo, so I used the Scientist in Training's empty bed to see how it would look.  The side view shows off the border better. 

The binding will be a darker blue to end the theme of successive darker blues in the border.  I'm really happy with how this project turned out.  Now to get the backing made and prep the quilt to go out for quilting. I dread the prepping part. There will be lots of clean up on the back to be sure no threads show through to the front.

That's the finish for last week.  I gave into temptation and started a new project last Wednesday.  Kevin The Quilter started a scrappy mystery quilt along.  

The quilt along uses two colors of scraps. After looking at my bulging bag of 2.5" strips, it was pretty obvious that getting some of those strips into a quilt would help my storage situation.  Brown and blue were two of the biggest piles. So that's what I started with. 

It didn't long to whip up a few 4 patches from these strips. 

These 4 patches work up pretty quickly.  The next clue doesn't come out till the end of July, so I should be able to finish off most of this clue before the next one comes out.  

Linking up with the usual Monday show and tell posts. 

Monday Making
Monday Design Wall
Main Crush Monday