Weekend Stitching - Part 1 of Allietare

The crud that Drama Teen passed to My Guy landed firmly in my chest by Sunday afternoon.  I spent most of the afternoon sacked out in the recliner hoping that if I rested enough maybe I wouldn't get as sick as they did. I'm doing better this morning, but that may be due to the Tylenol cold medicine.   

I did make a start on the new Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Allietare.  We had family here till early afternoon on Friday, so I didn't get to start cutting into my fabrics for the HSTs described in Part 1 till Friday evening.  I've had the fabrics selected since last weekend.  I just don't have gold in my stash, so I decided to mix up the color scheme a bit for my version.  

I kept the white (neutrals) and black, but the dark blue is my red, the light blue is my grey and the red is my gold.  I'm going to make about 3/4 of the blocks, which should get me into a good size for a QOV.  

I didn't get a good start on the HSTs till Saturday evening and then as noted above, pretty much crashed in the recliner on Sunday.  So there are only 30 HSTs up on the design wall.  

Hopefully, this crud will pass quickly and I'll have a chance stitch a few more HSTs before the next clue comes out on Friday. I'm also hoping to have some time this evening to check out the progress at other blogs.

Linking up with
Monday Design Wall at Patchwork Times
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Mystery Monday Link Up at Quiltville's Quips and Snips

Stash Report - Week 48 of 2015

It's been a slow weekend. We've been munching on left overs from Thanksgiving.  It's been too cold and wet to venture out much, so we haven't.  One problem with not venturing out is then it's easy to spend more time on the computer where all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales keep popping up in my email.

Someone trying hard to stay on a fabric diet doesn't need the temptation. And sure enough I did give into the temptation and ordered some fabric from the 25% sale at The Fat Quarter Shop.  Though I don't feel too badly about that purchase because it's the background fabric for one of the graduation quilts that's in the plans for next year.  I was going to need to purchase it anyway, so why not get it on sale.  

The damage done by my Black Friday weakness won't hit the stash report until next week at the earliest, so for now the report looks pretty good.  

Used last week:  0.55 yards
Used in November:  4.86 yards
Used year to date:  43.65 yards
Purchased year to date:  24.25 yards
Net Used for 2015:  19.40 yards

I'm still in the black.  I'm hoping to get one more backing made this year, so that should make up for the purchase of the background fabric.  As long as I end using more than I've bought, it will be a good year.  

For more stash management strategies, check out Patchwork Times.

Let's Book It Progress for November 2015

Sharon over at Vrooman's Quilts has been sponsoring the Let's Book It Challenge the last couple of years as one way to encourage quilters to use all those wonderful books and magazines we buy, drool over, but somehow never manage to actually make something from them.  

Sharon was going to stop the challenge after this year due to poor participation in the linky party, but then decided earlier this month to keep it going next year. I've been playing along with the Let's Book It Challenge, but the project I've been making has been my leaders and enders project so progress has been slow and I don't often link up, so one of my 2016 goals is to do better on having some type of progress to post each month.  

Thankfully, there is good progress to post this month on Poinsettias, my year long Let's Book It project.  I finished off all the block and sashing parts earlier this month. 

  

Now that all the pieces are made, I can start putting the blocks together.  

Poinsettias By Judy Blok for the December 2013 issue of
American Patchwork and Quilting Magazine

This is the top three rows of one quilt block.  The last two rows are over at the sewing machine waiting to be sewn together.  There are 25 - 4.5" blocks that go into each Poinsettia block. That makes for a lot of seam matching, so block assembly has been slow going, especially as I'm still using this project as my leader and ender project.  As soon as I clear out a couple of other projects it may get elevated to the main project on the design wall and my number one priority in terms of getting it finished.  For now, it's still progressing slowly which is better than not at all.  I have another leaders and enders project lined up, but I don't want to start something new till I finish off a couple more quilts.

Check out Vrooman's Quilts for more quilts by the book.    

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - The Final Six

It's raining for the third straight day.  However as the temps are now at 33 F, I'll take the rain and be thankful it's not ice.  We have no where we have to be today.  It's looking like a great day to stay home and stitch.  We had family here for Thanksgiving, so the house is actually pretty clean, though I still need to do some laundry.  The only downer for the holiday was the rain, every thing else went well.  Drama Teen showed how much she's learned from watching the Food Network.

She really helped a lot and it made getting it all on the table at the same time a lot easier.  

Most of last week was spent on cleaning up the house for company. But there was some stitching tossed in here and there.  I finished off all the red violet Twinkle Stars.  

Twinkle Stars
Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

There's another quilt up on the design wall at the moment, so I've not had a chance to get all the Twinkle Stars out and play with them.  I know there was a miscalculation and I'll need to add a few more blocks before I can sew up the flimsy.  I want to check the light versus dark balance before I choose the colors for those last few blocks.  But even with that I should be on track to get this one mostly assembled by the end of December.  

Have you decided on your RSC project for  2016?  There are so many choices I'm having a hard time picking just one.  It's a good thing there is still a month left in 2015. 

Now it's time for a second cup of coffee and a visit to Soscrappy to see how all the 2015 RSC projects are wrapping up.  

Happy Thanksgiving 2015

WIPS - Other Uses for Rotary Cutters and Cutting Tables

It's been a couple of weeks since I've written a progress report on my WIPs.  It's been harder the last few weeks to find time to sew during the week.  With the holidays coming up, other things have required more attention.  This week especially.  We are hosting Thanksgiving this year with My Guy's family.  That's meant spending some time doing deep cleaning in a few areas of the house.  So there hasn't been much stitching going on this week.  

Even though there's been no stitching, I did use the rotary cutter and my cutting table last night.  Our dining room set is almost 30 years old and the chairs are starting to show it. 

We use these chairs pretty much every day so it's not a big surprise that they are starting to show some wear. I've been wanting to recover them for a few months now, but My Guy and I couldn't agree on a fabric. But with family coming, we really needed to do something about the cushions that were ripping at the front. So last night Drama Teen and I went to Hobby Lobby to look.  Before we left, I was suggesting we look for brown or dark blue.  My Guy said he wanted beige again, as close as possible to what's on the chairs now. That's not what we came home with. 

We started out looking at the beige offerings, but they were either not the right weight or not in the right price range (I thought quilting fabric was expensive, it's been a while since I've had to buy home decorating fabric.)  Drama Teen picked out this gray with silver and gold.  It's a good neutral, it's not beige, it fits in with the rest of the house pretty well and it was on the lower end of the price scale, so it wasn't hard to convince me.  My Guy didn't like the fabric when I pulled it out of the bag once we got it home.  I talked him into letting me recover just one of the cushions.  I've learned over the years through discussing my quilt ideas with him that he cannot visualize how a fabric will look in the finished project.  After looking at the first finished chair he decided he liked it well enough to let me do the rest.  So though the chairs don't look brand new, they no longer look like thrift store finds.  

I did get in a few minutes in the sewing room earlier in the week.  All the pieces of the McCall's Mystery quilt got laid out on the design wall and I started sewing together the first couple of rows.  

This one may just make it to the finished flimsy stage before the end of the year and will likely be my first finish for 2016. My last finish for 2015 will be Back to Square One.  The binding is all made. Now I need to come up with a name for that one and make the label before I can start stitching down the binding.  

That's my progress for the week.  I'm linking up with

WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced

WOW:  WIPS on Wednesday over at Esther's Quilt Blog

Wishing everyone in the United States a very happy Thanksgiving.

Weekend Stitching - Salvaging an Ugly Quilt

It was a busy weekend.  Since we have family coming for the Thanksgiving holiday, we did a lot of deep cleaning yesterday.  All three of us are off work/school this week, so we'll be back at that today.  By mid afternoon yesterday we were all pretty worn out and decided it to give ourselves a break, so I did get in a nice afternoon of stitching.  

First up, all the snowball blocks for the McCall's Mystery Quilt are now done and up on the design wall.  

McCall's Mystery Quilt, From McCall's Quilting Magazine
Jan/Feb, April/May, June/July 2012 issues

The next step in the mystery is assembly into a flimsy.  I've got all the blocks laid out on the design wall.  No pictures because my camera decided to flake out when I tried to take one.  I might just get this flimsy finished before Christmas.  

The binding was finished on the Layer Cake Quilt Along project (aka Experiments in Paisley) last weekend, but I didn't get pictures till yesterday.  

Moose on the Porch Layer Cake Quilt Along by Konda Luckau
(Experiments in Paisley)  

Sometimes experiments in the lab don't come out as you'd like, but you still learn something from the process.  That's the case with this quilt.  I've never been thrilled with how this one turned out.  The rules of the quilt along were to use very minimal background fabric and use just the layer cakes.  I wished I'd broken that rule, the blocks might have come out better. The real problem I think is that there were two colorways in the layer cake and I don't think they play real well with each other.  

In finishing up this quilt, I made it a goal to use up the the rest of the layer cake.  I did that on the back. 

The back also used up a brown black tone on tone fabric that I'd had problems finding a use for.  It works great with these fabrics.  Truth be told, I like the back much better than I do the front.  This quilt will probably end up in one of the vehicles over the winter. It does get cold enough and icy enough here that it's not a bad idea to keep extra clothes or a blanket in the car during the winter months. So this will be a great utility quilt.  With my luck this will be the only one of my quilts to survive into the next century.  I hate to think what some historian would make of this one.  

That's it for me this week.  There's more stitching stuff to see over at: 

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Monday Design Wall at Patchwork Times
Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts
Design Board Monday at Bits'n Bobs

Stash Report - Week 47 of 2015

Winter arrived in my part of the world this weekend. It's blustery winds heralding it's arrival.  It even snowed a bit yesterday, a definite warning that the winter coats need to come out of the closet.  Perfect stitching weather, except I spent Saturday running from the car to a store as Drama Teen had begged to start her Thanksgiving holiday with a shopping expedition.  The rest of the week wasn't any more conductive to stitching.  We have family coming for Thanksgiving and that's forced us to finally address a few things around the house that need to be repaired or replaced.  

I spent a couple of evenings running errands to get ready for the holiday this last week and that didn't leave time for a lot of stitching. But enough happened to actually have some outage to report for the week. 

Used last week:  1.04 yards
Used in November:  4.31 yards
Used year to date:  43.1 yards
Purchased year to date:  24.25 yards
Net used for 2015:  18.85 yards  

A bit out with nothing in is always a good week. I'm hoping to have the need to make one more back this year to bump up the outage to 50 yards for the year.  It just depends on how much sewing time I get in between all the Christmas preparations.  Even if not much more goes out, this will still have been a great year on the stash management front if I manage to stay in the black. 

That's it for me this week.  You can check out more stash reports over at Patchwork Times.  

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Pretty Plums and Wonderful Wines

It's been one of those weeks.  There's not been much time at home which translates to not much time on the computer or in the sewing room.  The email folder is overflowing.  I've not looked at Feedly yet to see just how far behind I am on reading blog posts.  There won't be much time for catch up today as Drama Teen has made shopping plans for us.  I'm not looking forward to getting out and about, it's cold and really windy.  We actually had a bit of snow this morning.  Winter is definitely on it's way. 

Sunday was the last time I was in the sewing room.  But I made a lot of progress that day and added three more red-violet Twinkle Star blocks to the design wall.  

Twinkle Stars
Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

The last two are over at the sewing machine.  I'm hoping to get in some stitching time this evening so I can finish off those two.  The plan then is to put all the blocks up on the design wall and figure out what blocks are needed to finish this one off.  I'm looking forward to seeing this one finished.  

That's it for me today.  There are more scrappy rainbows over at Soscrappy.  

Stash Report - Week 46 of 2015

It's cold, windy and rainy this morning.  It's nice to know we have no place we have to be today.  It's a good day to stay home and play in the sewing room.  

I had last Monday off, that was the end of my 4 day weekend to celebrate the wrap up of the big project at work.  But having having most of the day to stitch certainly helped the stash report for this week.

Used last week:  2.11 yards
Used in November:  3.27 yards
Used year to date:  42.06 yards
Purchased year to date:  24.25 yards
Net used for 2015:  17.81 yards

I've used more fabric year to date than I did all of last year.  I doubt it will be a record year for fabric usage, but I'm trying hard to end 2015 with more out than in.  Finishing up some of my older UFOs is definitely helping to move some of the older yardage out of the stash.  Part of the fabric added this year was vacation fabric, the rest has been purchased to use in four graduation quilts Drama Teen has asked me to make for her best friends.  

I've been having fun deciding on themes and patterns for the graduation quilts.  Drama Teen has blessed the three patterns I've selected so far.  Yesterday I started mocking up two of the quilts in EQ.  The first pattern needed to be made a bit bigger so it could be used on a dorm bed.  The pattern is from the December 2015 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting.  

Bird's-Eye View, designed by Jackie Robinson of AnimasQuilts.com
Published in the December 2015 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting

Here's the fabrics DT has blessed so far. 

I have no idea which fabric lines these are from, other than the gray with white star, it's from Connecting Threads' Candy Basics line. Here's how the EQ mock up looks.

This probably isn't the final version, I'll probably make some of the inset squares a bit bigger and add a bit more of the pink fabric so it's better balanced visually.  I need to shop my stash for a light and a dark purple fabric. What's in the mock up comes from the EQ palette.   The black frames will be the same dark purple that gets used for the border.  This is good enough to give me a good estimate of how much fabric is needed.  The working title for this project is "Zombies In Paris".  Drama Teen requested purple as the main theme color as it's the recipient's favorite color.   It's nice to have one of the graduation quilts pretty much scoped out.  Not sure if this will get started this year.  If it does, it's not likely to happen till after Christmas.  

That's it for me today.  You can find more stash reports posted over at Patchwork Times.  

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Red-Violets

Hard to believe the middle of November is tomorrow.  Where did the first half of the month go?  I really don't want to contemplate just how close it is to Thanksgiving.  I'm not mentioning the next holiday, I'm trying to stay in denial about it's impending approach as long as possible.  

With the end of November rapidly approaching, there will need to be some decisions made about setting together this year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  First I have to finish up the blocks.  Since I used up my greens back in May, I decided to make red-violet the scrap color for November.  I've got two of the six planned up on the design wall.

Twinkle Stars
Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

The  next two are sitting over by the sewing machine in varying states of assembly and the last two still need the pieces cut.  

I went back to my EQ files to look at the settings that had been worked up at the beginning of the year.  My block count was off, I'm going to be four blocks short for the planned 7 x 9 setting.  No problem, I can just pull a few scraps and finish those off pretty quickly.  Then comes the final decision on to sashing and borders.  I'm really looking forward to seeing this quilt come together.   

That's it for me this week.  You can find more scrappy fun over at Soscrappy.  

An Online Quilt Trunk Show

There's a fun linky party going on over at Whims and Fancies.  I wasn't going to link up, there just hasn't been time to write a post.  But after reading a few of the posts, I got to wondering what my trunk show would look like.  So it's time to write the post to figure that out.  So here's my entry to:

I've been quilting regularly since about 2001, so where to start? Definitely not at the beginning.  The blog started in 2010 and that seems like a much better place to start the show.  

1.  Seeing Stars

Pattern by Amy Heaton, pattern available here

This is the result of my first online quilt along. It was such a fun experience that I've done many more since.  The pattern is available on Electric Quilt My EQ Boutique and if you look close at the catalog page you'll see this quilt in the inspiration section.  More details here.    

2.  And Kiss Me Jack

Pattern by Judy Turner and Margaret Rolf
From the Book "Successful Scrap Quilts"

This is my quilt that almost wasn't.  I hated the first 3 blocks so much they put it way for a few years and then I decided to finish it. I'm so glad I did. There's a purple and yellow flower known as Johnny Junp Ups, which includes a variety called Kiss Me Jack.  That's where the name comes from.  You can find a more detailed post here.  

3. Elements

                               Elements (aka Sweet Treats), Pattern by Judy Laquidara

This was one of those serendipity quilts.  Judy posted the pattern and while I was cleaning up the stash closet I found a pile of 1930's fabrics. The temptation was just too great.  More details here.  

4.  Pieces of a Rainbow

          Pieces of a Rainbow, Pattern is Jigsaw by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Of all the quilts I've made, this is my favorite.  It was made for Drama Teen.  The color placement isn't perfect, but she doesn't care.  More about this one here.  

And last but not least:

5.  Flame Test

                 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler, By Angela Feldbush of Soscrappy

Of all the Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts I've started over the years, this is the first one that's made it to the finish line. It's another of Drama Teen's favorites. More about it here.  

That's it for my trunk show. I've made a lot of other quilts, but it appears my bright scrappy ones are the favorites from the lot.  Hope you enjoyed this trunk show.  You can see many more over at Whims and Fancies.  

WIPS - Midweek Progress on Midnight Mystery

Between having nothing really worth while to post about midweek and not having the time to write a post midweek, it's been three weeks since my last WIPs report.  Since Monday was a stay home and sew day, there's been some good progress on the Midnight Mystery quilt, so there is actually something to write about this week.   All the log cabin squares were finished up before the end of October. 

Midnight Mystery Quilt, From Meadow Mist Designs

Last night I finished up all the step 2 strips from the November clue.  

Now I just need to finish off step 3 and I'll be done with the November clue.  How all these pieces are going to fit together?  We still have 4 months left before we finish all the clues.  I wonder what's next? 

That's it for my midweek WIP progress.  I'm linking up with WIPs on Wednesday and WIP Wednesday, along with Needle and Thread Thursday.

Weekend Stitching - A Day Off Makes a Difference

It was a beautiful weekend.  A bit cool in the mornings, but warm enough to go out without a coat by lunch time.  The fall foliage is at it's height.  

My Guy and I got in a walk and some photography yesterday morning.  It was cold enough for gloves, but the spectacular effect of the early morning sun on leaves was worth the cool start.  

It's also been a productive weekend in the sewing room.  It's amazing how much progress can be made with just one extra day off.  Last month's brown Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks were finished.  I showed those off on Saturday's post.  The next clue in the Midnight Mystery quilt was out on Thursday and that was next on my to do list. 

Midnight Mystery Quilt From Meadow Mist Designs

This is how it looks midway through step 2.  Hopefully I'll finish up step 2 today.  

Since Back to Square One is out for quilting and The Layer Cake Quilt Along project is just about bound, it was time to select another UFO from the 2015 Quilt Plan.  The McCall's Mystery quilt just seemed to be begging to be next, so I pulled that project box off the stack.  I had finished clues 1 and 2 back in January of 2012. 

 McCall's Mystery Quilt, From McCall's Quilting Magazine
Jan/Feb, April/May, June/July 2012 issues

So I got started on the final step, clue 3.  

There are 16 of these snowball blocks total in the quilt.  The sunny yellow floral has been in the stash for years and I've got 6 yards of it. What's left over after making the top will be used for the backing.  After the snowball blocks are all finished it will be time to assemble the quilt, so it's possible that I'll have another finished flimsy before the end of the year. 

It was definitely a good week.  You can check out more weekly progress updates at:

Design Board Monday at Bits'n Bobs
Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Monday Design Wall at Patchwork Times

The Stash Report and Some Slow Stitching

It's been a low key weekend so far. This is day three of my four day celebratory weekend for finishing off my big work project this year.   My Guy has proposed that we go photograph the fall foliage as it's not likely to last long now that we've had our first freeze.  So once the sun is up, we'll probably head out with the cameras for a bit.

Spending day one and two of my four day weekend in the sewing room really boosted this week's stash report.  

Used last week:  1.16 yards
Used in November:  1.16 yards
Used year to date:  39.95 yards
Purchased year to date:  24.25 yards
Net used for 2015:  15.17 yards

Fabric going out should increase for a bit as I've finished all the block parts for Poinsettias and am now making the blocks.  I'll count that fabric as out as I finish each block and sashing piece.  Plus November's Midnight Mystery clue has us assembling the pieces into strips, so that fabric will be counted as each strip is finished.  Added to the mix are the 11.5 x 11.5 snow ball blocks for the next UFO on my list, the McCall's Mystery quilt from 2012.  

Part of the yardage out this week was the binding for the Layer Cake Quilt Along project. I've been taking a few minutes each day to work on hand stitching the binding to the back. 

  
I'm just about ready to finish off corner number two.  I doubt I finish stitching it all down today, but hopefully it will be done by the end of Monday. 

It's getting lighter out, so I need to go get some warm clothes on so we can catch the first light on some of the more brilliantly colored trees and maybe catch a bit of frost as well.  

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday and with Patchwork Times for this week's stash report.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Ready to Banish Browns

My weekend started yesterday.  After finishing up the 6th and final report on this year's big project, I celebrated by giving myself a 4 day weekend.  My Guy decided to take a day off yesterday as well, which hadn't been part of my plans.  But it worked out pretty well, he dealt with the heating and air guy who came to do the furnace check while I got to sew.  Then he went for a long bike ride in the afternoon, so I still got to spend a lot of time in the sewing room.  Both of us have vacation that we have to use or we loose it.  So at some point I'd have had to taken these two days off, but it was certainly added incentive to get the last report done.  I hated writing research papers when I was in high school.  I'm not any fonder of them now.  

I didn't spend the whole day sewing.  The morning was spent doing some much needed sewing room maintenance.  Plus I started the prep work for three of the four graduation quilts that have been requested for 2017.  I'm slow enough that I need to start that now.  The afternoon was spent at the sewing machine and I have four more Twinkle Stars to show for it. 

Twinkle Stars, Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

And that finishes the six planned for October. So now I'm ready to banish the browns and move on to this month's color.  I made all my green stars back in May, so I decided to use red-violet as my rainbow scrap challenge color for November.  I've got a start on three of those, but no pictures as yet.  But I have Monday off as well, so I should make a lot of progress on those.  

Linking up with Soscrappy, then I'm grabbing my second cup of coffee and will spend some time trying to catch up with blog reading before tackling a few household chores.   

Weekend Stitching - More Invisible Progress

Last week was almost a complete bust on the sewing front, except for Sunday afternoon.  It was as a productive afternoon, but not the kind of progress that shows up on the design wall.  The binding and label are all done for the Layer Cake Quilt Along quilt.  Hopefully I'll get the binding stitched down sometime this week.  All the brown twinkle stars are cut out and the fabrics for the red violet stars are all selected. Bonnie Hunter published the fabric requirements for this year's mystery quilt, Allietare,  so of course I had to spend some time digging in the stash to see what might work in that project.  I'm going to use yardage rather than scraps so I can use what's in the stash.  The black and background fabrics were easily found.  Gold is almost completely absent from my stash and red is another color I don't have much of.  So it's likely I'll do a couple of color substitutions for those and probably the gray as well.  

There were a few additions to the design wall Sunday evening; four Wonky Stars for Alcyia's quilts of valor block drive joined the six that were up there last weekend.  

Wonky Star Block:  QOV Block Drive sponsored by Alycia Quilts (tutorial is here) 

These were fun and easy to make.  Plus they were a great way to use up some left over 3.5 squares from Mon Ami and some scraps left over from other projects.  I'll get these into the mail tomorrow.  Alycia has set a November 11th deadline for receipt of the blocks.  

That's it for my weekend progress.  The next clue for the Midnight Mystery quilt comes out on Thursday, so  there will be more progress to show on that project next week.  I should have more time to sew this week as I'm taking a couple of days of vacation to celebrate the finish of this year's big project.  Of course it doesn't hurt that I'll be home so we can get the furnaces checked before cold weather settles in.  Hopefully I can keep My Guy from adding any other "to do" items to my list so I can spend most of my time off stitching. 

Linking up with Design Board Monday, Main Crush Monday, Monday Making and Monday Design Wall.  There's lots of fun and gorgeous eye candy posted on all four sites.  

Stash Report - Week 44 of 2015

We had lots of trick or treaters last night.  My Guy and Drama Teen spent the afternoon carving the pumpkins, which as usual were a big hit with the little ones. 

They went with the Jack of Hearts.  Drama Teen's reasoning was that it was a Jack o' lantern, so why not?  At any rate, they both had a great time with it and the kids loved it.   

Did you set your clock back this morning?  The one in our bedroom does that automatically, but we need to fix the other clocks in the house.  I'm looking forward to the earlier sunrise, but dreading the earlier sunset.  It will be dark leaving work, which is a bit of a downer.  

Speaking of downers, this weeks stash report is a bit dismal.  Not much stitching going on.  Between napping and the trick or treaters, I've not managed to make it into the sewing room this weekend. So here's the numbers:

Used last week:  0.11 yards
Used in October:  8.81 yards
Used year to date:  38.79 yards
Purchased year to date:  24.25 yards
Net used for 2015: 38.79 yards  

Even though the report doesn't look great this week, it's not bad for the year.  I've used more fabric then I did last year and  have bought a lot less than the previous five years.  For the first time in six years, there is a net loss from the stash.  So 2015 has been a good stash management year.  Hopefully I can maintain that till the end of the year.

You can check out more stash tales over at Patchwork Times.