Closer to a Finish

Winter isn't officially here till just before Christmas, but Mother Nature must have decided to get an early start with the winter weather. There is the possibility of freezing rain tonight into tomorrow.  Usually we don't see that kind of weather till after the first of the year. 

On the sewing room front, I finally got the vacuum cleaner upstairs to the sewing room. It definitely needed a good going over.  Actually my sewing room needs a good cleaning and decluttering just like the rest of the house.  Rather than going down that rabbit hole, I finally bit the bullet and prepped Unity's backing for quilting.  The backing has been well pressed and cleaned up. 

Now I just need to clean up the quilt top.  That's on tap for next weekend as it will be a chore. Unity isn't a small quilt top, so that step isn't going to be fun, but I'd really like to get in one more finish for 2022. Hopefully that will motivate me to get the top done rather than let is sit for another 4 weeks like I did the backing.  

Two of the star blocks for Melodic Mystery are up on the design wall. 

Melodic Mystery: Meadow Mist Designs 2022 Mystery Quilt Along

So far I really like my color choices, the deep burgundy is my favorite so far.  The September clue is finished, but October and November clues are still in progress.  October should be finished by the end of the week.  

Sharing my progress over at the Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts linky parties.  

Weekend Stitching: Finally Progress!

Happy New Year!  We made it to midnight last night, barely.  My Guy and I celebrated with a small glass of wine and a toast to the new year, then went to bed.  We are such party people.  

The plan for last week was for lots of  afternoon sewing every day, but alas, life decided it had other plans.  I did finally make it to the sewing room for some weekend sewing late Friday afternoon.  Progress was made, but there's not much to show for it today.  The big priority was to get Geek Chic into a finished flimsy.  Not there yet, but I should get there today.  That project has to come off the design wall before the Scientist in Training gets home on Wednesday.  

Progress was made with On Ringo Lake, but I laid out the pieces for the block after Bonnie's clue on Sunday and didn't like it at all (so much so I'm not willing to share a photo at this point).  Bonnie revealed the final quilt today, I'm going to go play with pieces and see if I like it any better with all the sashing pieces added. If not, then I'll start moving the block pieces around and try some substitutions to see if I can get something else the works for me.  It's not Bonnie's design, my fabric choices didn't work very well. 

After that disappointment, the focus shifted to finishing up the blocks for December's One Monthly goal.  The commitment was only four blocks, but those little blocks have a lot of pieces.  Not quite a midnight hour finish, but it was almost 10 PM before all four were finished. I was the last one to join the December OMG linky.  

Twinkle Stars, Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

That completes all the blocks needed to finish the layout.  All the blocks are back in the project box and will come out to decorate the design wall later this year.  

One of my goals for 2018 is to do something with all my scraps. There is a call out for Perkioman Valley blocks to make quilts for the California Thomas Fire victims from the Ventura Modern Quilt Guild (that link is here).  I pulled my bags of 4.5"  and 5" scrap strips and went to work.  

Perkioman Valley Blocks for Thomas Fire Victims (instructions here)

 I only finished two blocks yesterday, but have plans to put a few more together today.  I'd like to get whatever blocks that are finished in the mail by Friday.  Carole, who blogs at My Carolina Home is also collecting the blocks and donations to make quilts for the victims (that post is here). 

I'm going to spend the rest of my New Year's Day in the sewing room, wrapping up 2017 stuff and resetting things for 2018 after my marathon of sewing yesterday.  I'm linking up with the usual Monday linky parties:

Monday Making
Main Crush Monday
Monday Design Wall
BOMs Away

Wishing everyone a productive and joyful 2018!   

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

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

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.  

Weekend Stitching - Lots of Progress, But It Doesn't Show

It was actually a pretty productive weekend in the sewing room.  But it's the kind of productively that doesn't show up on the design wall.  Back to Square One and it's back are all prepped, pressed, packaged and read to mail to Trudy for quilting.  That doesn't make for a very exciting picture though.  Once that was done, I squared up the Layer Cake Quilt Along quilt and made the label for it.  Next step is to make the binding for it.  Hopefully it will be finished by next weekend.  

There was a one change on the design wall this weekend.  

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

Another two Wonky Stars for Alycia's QOV block drive have joined the constellation that's up on the design wall.  I'm hoping to make another 4 blocks by the end of the week for a total of 10.   

You can see more project progress over at:

Design Board Monday
Main Crush Monday
Monday Design Wall
Monday Making

Weekend Stitching - Progress on Multiple Fronts

It's hard to go back to work after four days off.  Other than the headache on Friday, it was a nice weekend off.  Drama Teen and I had a great time shopping and meeting friends for lunch on Thursday.  The rest of the weekend was spent on household chores and a lot of time in the sewing room.  

So what's up on the design wall?  A couple of Wonky Stars for the QOV block drive going on over at Alycia Quilts.  

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

  
I've got some blue stars cut out but not yet assembled.  I'm hoping to get at least five or six stars out of this set of left over fat quarters.

The big design wall has the progress made on the Midnight Mystery Quilt. 

Midnight Mystery Quilt From Meadow Mist Designs

Since this photo was taken, the blocks have been taken off the wall and the I've starting adding the black framing pieces.  October's clue should be finished up by next weekend.  

You can check out more going sewing room happenings over at Design Board Monday, Main Crush Monday, and Monday Making.

Weekend Stitching - A Finished Flimsy

It was a laid back weekend, even though my mornings were spent writing reports for work.  I'm almost done with the first and hope to finish the second by Wednesday.  This week is fall break and all three of us will have some time off.  DT and I have a shopping day planned.  We'll probably spend the other day off doing something as a family.  What I'm not sure, it will depend a lot on the weather.  

It was a productive weekend in the sewing room.  Back to Square One is a finished flimsy.  

Back to Square One by Judy Laquidara (pattern available here)

I'm really happy with how this one worked out.  It's a big quilt, 92.5" x 92.5".  This one was started in 2013, so it's one of the newer UFOs on my list.  The back is made, which took 7 yards out of the stash.  Now all that is left is to clean up the back of the flimsy, press both the top and back so they can go to Trudy for quilting.  I need to get going on that as this quilt is intended to be a Christmas gift, so it needs to get out the door soon.  

That's it for me this week.  You can see more weekend progress over at Design Wall Monday, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, and Design Board Monday.   

Weekend Stitching - Not Hitting On All Cylinders

It wasn't a horrible weekend, unless you were Drama Teen.  It became apparent Saturday afternoon that the poor girl has a cold.  Miserable is an understatement, she looked really pitiful on Sunday. She's not making it to school today. 

Thankfully, I've missed out on the cold (fingers crossed), but I'm feeling the effects of the fall pollen.  There was no stitching on Saturday, but I did manage some time in the sewing room Sunday afternoon.  Three sides of Back to Square One have the last border attached. 

Back to Square One by Judy Laquidara (pattern available here)

The quilt is too big to show on the design wall.  Here's one of the completed corners.  Just one more border strip and this project will be a finished flimsy.  

I finished the first Wonky Star for Alycia Quilts block drive for Quilts of Valor.  

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

I have a bunch of 3.5" squares left over from a previous project. This is the perfect way to get them into blocks and out of the stash without creating another UFO. Not sure how many blocks will get  made, whatever I can get done by the end of October.  

Hopefully I'll get in more stitching time this week.  It would feel really good to get one more UFO to the finished flimsy stage.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday, Design Board Monday, and Making Monday.

Weekend Stitching - Another Finish in the Works

Did you stay up and watch the lunar eclipse last night?  I watched till totality then gave it up and went to bed.  My Guy was out till about 11 with his camera and tripod.  I tried to take a few photos, but my telephoto lens wasn't really telephoto enough to get any good shots.  

Most of last night was spent out on the drive way, but most of the afternoon was spent in the sewing room.  The next to last border is on Back to Square One. 

Back to Square One by Judy Laquidara (pattern available here)

It's way too big for the design wall, but you still get a good idea of how it's coming along.  The narrow dark purple border is attached.  Just one last border of the darker blue and this one will be a finished flimsy.  I'm hoping I have enough fabric in the stash to make a backing for it. 

So what did you stitch up this weekend?  I'm sharing my progress over at Design Wall Monday, Making Monday and Design Board Monday.