July 2024 PHD Report

July wasn't nearly as busy as June, so there was a lot more time for playing in the sewing room.  Enough playing that there is finally an update to the PHD report. 

Just two finishes so far this year, but I'm doing better than last year when my first finish wasn't till September and the second finish wasn't till November.  

The finish for July was the 2023 Stay at Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail).  

I'm really happy with how this one turned out.  My Guy really likes it. That's a good thing because it's his new TV recliner quilt. He won't need it for a few months, but he'll enjoy it once the fall chill settles in sometime in October.  

A finish is always nice, but it takes good progress on the project list to move things in that direction. There was plenty of movement in the current active list. 

The oldest project on my works in progress list is Kate's Choice (previously known as Grandmother's Choice).  

Just two blocks needed to finish the 5 by 6 layout.  I had some thought of doing an inner ring with the lighter blocks. The layout needs a lot of work, but no point in getting serious about that till the last two blocks are finished.  Both are in process, I just didn't quite get the far before the end of the month.  

The teal blocks filled in a lot of holes in the top quarter of Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter).

The upper left quarter of the quilt is filled out, now to make some progress on the upper right quarter.  I'm going to need to be careful with the placement of the darkest blue and purple blocks.  But so far I'm happy with how this project is coming together. 

A new project got added to my works in progress list, The Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter).

The SSSS quilt is the new leaders and enders project.  The mystery started in July of 2019, but I only worked on it for a month.  I've got 50 yellow 4 patches and 90 blue 4 patches.  I need almost 200 of each colorway for the final layout.  I wanted a project that would help empty out some of my scrap bins. Pulling out all the blue 2.5 strips made a big different in that bin. I don't use yellow a lot so not so many strips of it, but I have lots of yellow fat quarters to use for those strips. This will make a good leaders and enders project.  

The completed Rhododendron Mystery quilt top (Bonnie Hunter) has been hanging in the closet since April waiting for it's turn to be finished up.  

The back is pieced and prepped for quilting. The plan is to prep the Rhododendron quilt top this weekend and get it out to the quilter sometime next week. This will likely be my finished project for September.

Grad Girl requested a wedding quilt for a very good grad school friend. They met in undergrad at OSU and are craft buddies (at least they were before both got insanely busy with grad school).  After offering Grad Girl several options off my UFO list, she settled on Diatom (Quilting Jetgirl). 

The blocks were finished just over a year ago.  Diatom is on my quilt plan for this year, but I just hadn't gotten that far. I played around in EQ and decided to add sashing and borders to this project to increase the size a bit so it would be a better couple cuddle quilt.  I got as far as cutting the sashing strips, but that's it. The plan is to get this quilt assembled, a backing made and send it out for quilting in September in hopes Grad Girl will have it by Thanksgiving. We'll see if that works or not.  

Indigo Way (Bonnie Hunter) has moved from being the leaders and enders project to having the blocks sewn together.  

As is typical, I'm not doing the borders the same as Bonnie's version. I had to make 8 more of the triangle in the square blocks plus four corner stones before I could start on the pieced border.  Indigo Way should be a pieced quilt top by the end of the month.  It may not get quilted this year, but I'll be happy just to have the quilt top finished before this year's mystery gets going.  

The 2024 SAHRR (Quilting Gail) came back from the quilter late last month. 

Trudy did a beautiful job with the quilting.  I've got the label designed, but not printed. The label is going to be a surprise, so I won't be posting about that till after Grad Girl has the quilt. I still need to make the binding. The plan is to get going on both those things this weekend.  This will be my August finish.  

I  finally got caught up with the Guild BOM.    

I'm not thrilled with the darker gray that I used for these blocks, but I'm too far along to fix it.  Hopefully it will look OK once all the blocks are made.  

All the progress this month shows up in the bar graph as a bit more color. 

Every category has a bit of progress over this last month. A new category was added to include the SSSS quilt that wasn't part of my original quilt plan for this year.  I expect one more finished quilt and at least two finished tops for August.  So look for longer bars in at least some of the categories next month. 

Linking up with P Designs USA for the July PHD Report.