Design Wall Monday - January 10th

Is it Monday already?  A lot of running this weekend.  I decided at some point on Saturday that I've sat on more bleachers as a parent then I ever did as a student!  Unfortunately this weekend isn't an isolated event, we're pretty booked until about the middle of February.  Consequently, not much time is being spent in the sewing room.  I did get started on the HSTs for the Seeing Stars BOM border this weekend.  

I like how this quilt is coming together even though I've had to make a lot of changes to the proposed final design.  This quilt was intended to be made completely from scraps.  The first proposed finished version used the dark blue in the border. 

But there isn't enough of that dark blue to make the pieced border.  Plus, I want to make the quilt a bit bigger, so a couple more borders have been added.  This is the proposed final version (at least for now). 

I have verified that there is enough fabric to finish the quilt as proposed (assuming that one can trust EQ7's fabric estimates). The goal is to finish piecing the top by the end of the month. 

What's up on your design wall?  Check out Judy's Patchwork Times to see what's up else where. 

Stash Report - January 9th

The second week of January was a busy one.  It was back to work for me.  Boy was it hard to get back in the groove after 2 weeks off.  Monday was a company holiday, so I was still lounging at home.  I did get some sewing done Monday afternoon, but that was about it for the week.  Yesterday, kiddo had two basketball games, plus it was her birthday.  Not much time to get up to the sewing room.  So here's the stash status for week 2:

Used this week: 0.28 yards
Added this week:  0 yards

Used year to date: 1.06 yards
Added year to date: 0 yards

Net used for 2011:  1.06 yards

Fabric Budget: 10 yards
Bought/Budget: 0/10 yards

One of my 2011 quilting goals was to set up and stick to a fabric budget.  My budget is 10 yards per quarter.  I'm going to add that to my stash report each week.  It took weekly reporting of the yardage purchased to make me really notice how much I had bought.  It's easy to just type the numbers in the spreadsheet, having to report those numbers on the blog made me much more conscious of my habits.  Maybe weekly reporting will help me stick to the fabric budget. 

So at the end of week 2, I'm still in the black.  I doubt I get much sewing done this week.  Kiddo has a swim meet today, basketball games on Monday, Thursday and Saturday.  However, we are supposed to get snow starting this afternoon.  That may change the schedule somewhat. 

Hope your stash management for 2011 is on track.  To check out how week 2 went, hop over to Judy's Patchwork Times. 

Foto Finish Saturday - January 7th 2011

Today's a special day at our house.  Kiddo turns 12!  Hard to believe we are one year away from having a teenager in the house.  I was looking at vacations shots searching for this weeks Foto Finish and even going back just 2 years, you see a little girl in those photographs.  In last month's Christmas shots, you don't see too much little girl, but more of the young adult she's growing towards.  I like the person she's becoming, but sometimes I miss the little girl who'd snuggle with mom in the recliner on Sunday mornings.   OK, I'm done being a mushy mom.  On to this week's Foto Finish. 

I'm not a great lover of scenic shots, I prefer taking close ups.  I think in part because it's so hard for me to fully capture the awe inspiring and beautiful natural settings that inspire us so much when we are traveling (probably means, I need to work on my skills in that area). My shots always seem to be lacking, so I don't take many scenic shots.   For this week, I went back two years to a vacation trip we made to Washington State.  

I've lived my entire life in the Midwest, so the mountains in Washington just astound me.  The whole state is beautiful.  This photo was taken on Lake Chelan from the boat that runs from town of Lake Chelan to Stehekin which is in the North Cascades National Park.  The only way to get to Stehekin is to hike in or via plane or boat.  We enjoyed this area so much we ended up staying the whole week in the Lake Chelan and skipping the two days we'd planned to be in Seattle.  Not only were we really enjoying the area, this was the summer of 2009 when Seattle was experiencing temperatures in the 100's.  We decided to stay cool up in the mountains.  It was a bit ironic, Oklahoma is really hot in the summer, especially late July and early August, with temperatures typically in the 100's.   The week we went to Washington State to escape the heat at home, Oklahoma had an unusual cool front come through and it was in the upper 80's low 90's that week here.  

I'm going to grab a second cup of coffee and go check out all the other scenic eye candy posted over at Cat Patches. 

Favorite Things Friday - 1/7/2011

It's not quite Friday here, but it's coming (thank goodness!!!!).  My first week back at work after the Christmas holiday hasn't been bad, but kiddo's first week back at school after the break has been one drama filled evening after another.  Though I think we've reached a calm interlude this evening.  I'll savor the sanity while it lasts, which probably won't be long. 

OK, back to Friday and favorite things.  I collect a lot of fabric (as my stash reports for 2010 often attest).  There are a lot of different fabrics in the stash, but one of my favorite motifs is butterflies.  So over the last several years, I've collected quite a number of fabric prints with butterflies and/or or butterfly wings.  Here's a few of my favorites:

 

 

 



This isn't all my butterfly fabrics, but it's all I had scans of on the computer. Do you collect a certain kind of fabric or fabric motif?  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of my faves, but they'll find a home in some project at some point I'm sure. 

Hop over to Quilting in my Pyjamas to see other cool favorite things. 

Quilting ABCs: PIGS, UFOs (PhDs) and WIPs

Jill over at Ramblings of a Fabric and Yarn Obsessor, has proposed a Year of the PIGS support group. All you have to do is answer a question twice a month and share your deepest, darkest secrets about your PIGS and UFOs.  Well maybe not those kinds of secrets, but tips and techniques you've found to tame all those PIGS which are hogging shelf space in your closet.   (PIGS are Projects in Grocery Sacks.  Those projects you have the pattern and the fabric, but stalled on start up). 

Jill's question for this week is "How do you store your UFOs and PIGS separate from your fabric stash?"  

I use various storage containers for PIGS, UFOs and WIPs.



The top bin with the vinyl window contains all the purple and yellow fat quarters that are being used for the purple and yellow scrap quilt (a WIP/UFO).  The little yellow sticky note tells me what project the fat quarters are associated with. The bottom gray container has the patterns and fabric for 5 or 6 PIGS.  Both of these containers reside at the back of my sewing room closet.  I use the same gray containers for some of my fabric stash. 

These "Super Satchels" are stored on a shelf in the sewing room closet. They contain UFOs and PIGS.  You know, out of sight, out of mind?  All the fabric associated with a project is in these satchels. One of the UFOs has more than one satchel for that reason.   

Here is the one PIGS that is actually in a sack of sorts.  It's one of those Minky strip quilts and it stays in the bag so as not to shed all over the other projects. 

I have more satchels which sit on the chest in the sewing room.  These are the WIPs and UFOs that I'm actively working on.  Once I finish sewing the binding on a quilt, I empty out the satchel.  Extra yardage gets rolled back into the stash.  Scraps go into my scrap bin.  I don't do any preparation of the scraps, but I'm going to start cutting the smaller scraps into squares, strips and bricks for scrap projects this year.  The recently vacated satchel usually has a new project in it within a day or too, so they don't stay empty for long. 

So that's how I store all my past, present and future projects.  Check out Jill's post to see other storage solutions.