Our Girl's Weekend

My sister and I left Oklahoma for Texas on Thursday and got back home Monday night.  That left us Friday, Saturday and Sunday for lots of crafty stuff.  I found a great rental to use for our retreat.  

 

The dining room table was big enough for 3 sewing machines. Just mine and my sister's are set up in the photo.  We were able to use the center island for cutting and pressing.  It was a very user friendly set up.  

Grad Girl had stuff going on for most of Friday, so she wasn't able to take off as she'd planned. But she joined us by early evening with a new to her sewing machine. 

It's a Singer Start.  It's pretty basic, but that's pretty much what she wanted, basic.  Grad Girl had never wound a bobbin or threaded a machine.  We started with those basics.  Learning to control the speed with the foot pedal was probably the hardest thing for her to get used to.  That's a practice makes perfect thing.  

She really wanted to make a pin cushion. I have a pattern that I really wanted to make, Meadow Mist Design's Cathedral Window Pincushions. So we went to Joann's bought some fabric and made a couple of pin cushions. 

This probably wasn't the easiest pattern to start Grad Girl off with, but she really enjoyed it and liked the challenge. Learning to top stitch while trying to master the foot pedal was challenging, but she got better as we went along.  Neither pin cushion is perfect, but that's OK, we had a blast making them. I had once thought to make a quilt using Cathedral Window blocks. Making one block may be enough to fulfill that need.   

I found a rental that allowed cats, so Queenie came to spend the weekend with us.  

 

She's not had the chance to be a sewing room kitty and decided that anything hanging off the ironing board was a toy.  She especially liked my yellow measuring tape when I was measuring borders for String Lights.  

I delivered Grad Girl's  quilt and she got a photo of both her Shadow Demons. 

Both Grad Girl and Queenie tested out the "nap on the couch" worthiness of the quilt. I think it passed that test.  

That was our girl's weekend. It was a lot of fun and we decided we definitely need to do another one in the next year or two.  Linking up with Monday Design Wall (just a little late). 

Another Mystery Comes to an End

Did you have a family celebration for Easter?  We didn't this year, we mostly just hung out at home for the weekend.  I spent the afternoon in the sewing room working to finish the last border for the Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs).  

 

The dark blue used in the border looks black, it's just hard to photograph it accurately under the lighting conditions in my sewing room.  This is one of my favorite Meadow Mist Designs mystery designs from Cheryl.  It kept me guessing. I wondered where we going to use those blocks in the last border.   

This is my third finished quilt top for the year.  The mystery started in July of last year, with the last clue posted in March.  This may be the first time I've actually finished assembling a mystery quilt the month the clue was issued. Being retired definitely has improved my ability to keep up.  

Malted Mystery is my last "deadline" project. The plan for the next few months is to concentrate on finishing off the five quilt tops that are now hanging in the closet. Several of those will be going out for quilting, but there are two I want to try quilting myself.  I'll be linking up with the Malted Mystery quilt parade. Also linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.   

Just 2 Charm Pack Quilts Blog Hop: String lights

If you've followed, or even just checked in occasionally with my blog over the years, there is a good chance you've seen one of Cheryl Brickey's (Meadow Mist Designs) mystery quilt along projects in progress. It's one of the projects I look forward to each year.  So when Cheryl asked if anyone was willing to make a quilt from her new book Just 2 Charm Pack Quilts, I really wanted to participate. 

 

The first decision was choosing which quilt to make.  There are some really fun quilts in this book.  I'm not the quickest at sewing together a quilt top, so I decided to choose String Lights because it didn't look like it required quite as much piecing as some of my other favorites.  That decided, it was time to pick the fabrics.  I'm not a precut collector, so I didn't have much in the way of charm packs to choose from. So decided to make my own charm pack.  Of course that pretty much opens up the entire fabric collection as fair game, which can be a bit overwhelming. Then I remembered this Timeless Treasures Tonga batiks kit I purchased back in 2013.   

I loved the fabrics, but not so much the pattern.  The smallest pieces are only about an 1/8 of a yard. That's hard to incorporate into a quilt pattern, so it sat because I wasn't sure what to do with it.

 

It made a nice set of 5" squares.  But the number of fabrics in the kit was just a bit short of what I needed to follow Cheryl's advice on how many squares to cut from each fabric to ensure you've got good variety in the quilt.  The kit also included a panel.  

It was excluded from my original set of charms. I thought it might go on the back.  The medallions are about 7" square, so a charm wouldn't capture all of the design.  Then I decided that the centers looked just fine as charms anyway, so those got added to the pile and allowed me to extend the range of fabrics.  Fabric A, the consistent fabric in the quilt, was still missing from my fabric pull. The black in the panel would be a good fabric A.  Thankfully with some careful cutting, those pieces cut be cut from the same panel. So I didn't waste much of the panel.  For the background I used a pale teal batik.  That did require a trip to the quilt shop.  

I made one change from the directions in the book.  The quilt requires hour glass blocks. Rather than using 2 HSTs place face to face, then sewn and making 2 hourglass blocks, I cut all of my HSTs in half and then matched them up because I wanted more control over the placement of the fabrics. 

I'm pretty happy with my version of String Lights, even though it's not quilted yet (remember I said my piecing is really slow, I did good to get the top done). 

Here's a close up that shows the fabrics better.  

It was a fun quilt to make. The instructions are well written and easy to follow.  I'm looking forward to making some of the other quilts in the book once I get my UFO pile tamed a bit. 

If you made it this far, the reward is a giveaway of an digital copy of Cheryl's Just Two Charm Pack Quilts.  I worked from the digital copy to make this quilt.  The digital copy works just fine.  Just leave a comment below. If you don't know what to write, share which quilt you'd make from the book. If you are a follower of Life in Pieces, leave a second comment with  how you follow this blog (email, Feedly, Bloglovin, etc.  Since it's a digital download, the give away is open to those who don't live in the states.  I will choose a winner next Tuesday by random number generator.   

You can check out the rest of the blog hop over on the Just Two Charm Packs page at Meadow Mist Designs.   

To Do List for the Week of 5/9/2023

I wrote in my last To Do Tuesday post that I really needed to get back to moving some of my older quilts to finished.  But that's not going to happen this month.  Before I get to why that is, here's how it went with last week's list.  

To Do List for 5/2/2023

1. SAHRR: Finish 5th spacer border, make windmill blocks ✔

2. Donation blocks for guild: Assemble patriotic blocks ✔

3. Diatom: Finish block 4, cut fabric for block 5 - progress

4. Wild and Goosey: Finish an orange block ✔

5. Chilhowie: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

Check marks on 4 out of the 5, with progress on the 5th, is a really good week.  This week's list is going to be a bit longer.  It's doable if I make good use of my afternoons and actually get in the sewing room. I will admit that with being retired, it's easy to get distracted and just not make the best use of my time. I'm adding another new project to my list this month.  I really need to make this my last unplanned new project and get back to my UFO list.  Here's this week's to do list. 

To Do List for 5/9/2023

1. SAHRR: (Quilting Gail): Make windmill blocks

 

Two more windmills are in progress and the fabric is cut for two more.  I need a total of 12 windmills to finish the planned layout.  With everything else on the list, I doubt I finish all 12 this week, but hopefully I'll whittle down the number needed. 

2. Guild Name Tag: Make

I have a plan for this, I just need to execute it.  The next guild meeting is a week from today, hopefully I can finish it by then. 

3. Diatom (Quilting Jetgirl): Cut fabric for blocks 5&6, make block 5

I finished block 4 but didn't get the fabric cut for block 5.  I think block 9 comes out this week (or maybe it's block 10).  At any rate, I'm hoping to be caught up by the time the last block comes out.

4. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): make 1 orange block, cut orange scraps

These little blocks are really fun to stitch up. They don't take very long, but unfortunately I can't string piece these. I don't have a lot of orange scraps, so there may not be a lot of variety in these blocks.  I need to dig to see what else I have in the stash. 

5. Blog Hop Quilt (Meadow Mist Designs): press and cut fabrics

This project needs to be finished by the end of June, so I'd best get going on it. 

6. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) : Leaders and Enders

I'm making hourglass blocks for block 5.  I've cut fabric to make blocks 5 and 6, so I have lots of pieces to work with for a while.  

That's my list for this week. In order to check off all the items, I'm going to need to be disciplined this week.  Fingers crossed I can manage that.  Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric for this week's To Do Tuesday.  

To Do Tuesday for the Week of 11/29/2022

We had a fun Thanksgiving with Grad Girl.  We were amazingly busy while we were there. We spent one day in Houston hanging out at the Houston Museum of Natural History. One day was dedicated to Christmas shopping.  Even though I didn't have a lot of time for stitching I still managed to check off all the items on my to do list. 

To Do List for 11/22/2022

1. Melodic Mystery: Work on clue 3 ✔

2. Chilhowie Mystery: Start clue 1 ✔

3. Rhododendron Mystery: Work on block 2 as leaders and enders ✔

My sewing time for last week was pretty much limited to yesterday, so I was wise to keep my list for the week simple.  That worked so well that the plan for this week is pretty much the same.  

To Do List for 11/29/2022

1. Melodic Mystery: Work on clues 3 and 4

Melodic Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs 2022 Mystery)

I'm almost to the halfway point on clue 3.  Clue 4 should come out on Thursday.  I'm hopeful of being mostly caught up by then.  

2.  Chilhowie Mystery: Work on clues 1 and 2

Chilhowie Mystery (Bonnie Hunter 2022 Mystery)

Most of the strips for clue 1 are cut but aren't sewn together into sets yet.  I'm only making half the blocks this time. That typically works better as I have a chance of actually completing a clue before the next one comes out.  We'll see how far I get before the next clue comes out on Friday. 

3. Rhododendron Mystery: Make block B as leader and ender

Rhododendron Mystery (Bonnie Hunter 2021 Mystery)

The hourglass blocks take a bit to assemble, but I'm making progress.  Once this set is all assembled, only two more blocks need to be completed.  It's slow but steady progress.  

That's my plan for this week.  Yes I have quilts to prep for quilting, but I'm really just not in the mood to add that to my list. Maybe next week.  

Linking up with Texas Quilt Gal for To Do Tuesday.  Good luck with your to do list this week.