Design Wall Monday - A Finished Flimsy and a UFO

It was another quiet weekend.  My Guy was off on a business trip and Drama Teen ended up spending most of Saturday and Sunday at a friend's house.  School starts on Tuesday, so it was their last "do nothing" weekend.  That left me with an empty house for most of the weekend.  After my household chores were done, I made a beeline for the sewing room.  I did spend some time cleaning up and running the vacuum, it desperately needed it.  Then I got busy on finishing up a couple of projects.  

The final border strip was added to Jigsaw on Saturday, so it's a finished flimsy.

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Drama Teen loves it.  Since it's her quilt, that's all that matters.  The back has been pieced.  A good part of yesterday was spent doing a final pressing and picking off all the loose threads.  Now it's ready to go off to Trudy for quilting.  

Jigsaw has been up on my design wall for months now, so it looked very empty when I took it down.  It didn't take me long to find something else to fill up all that empty space.  

Scrappy Stars

Pattern is Folk Art Christmas Stars

by Robyn Pandolph

Scrappy Stars is my oldest UFO (circa 2003).  The star blocks were my leaders and enders project earlier this year.  I spent yesterday cutting out the 6.5 inch alternating squares and playing in EQ to decide what I wanted to use for the setting triangles.  I need to redistribute some of the star blocks to better spread out the lighter ones.  This one shouldn't take too long to finish up as all that's needed is to cut the setting triangles and sew the rows together.  It will be nice to get this one finished and off the UFO list.  

That's it for my design wall.  You can share your's over at Judy's Patchwork Times.  

Stash Report - Week 32 of 2014

It's been a quiet weekend, which was much needed after a week of rushing around.  My Guy is off on a two week business trip, while Drama Teen spent the night over at a friend's house.  So I had the house to myself for the evening.  Enjoyable, but weird.  It's amazingly quiet when no one else is home.  

Thank you to all who sent well wishes to Drama Teen and prayers for my MIL. We've not heard anything new about my MIL's cancer.  At the moment we're thinking no news is good news.  Drama Teen fell a week ago in volleyball practice.  The MRI results that came back Friday told the very sad tale of a torn ACL.  That means surgery and no sports for up to year.  She was bummed most of Friday, but by yesterday she was researching the kind of surgeries and recovery strategies.  She wants to get the surgery scheduled so she can get on with the recovery.  

It's been a very productive week on the stitching front.  Jigsaw is a finished flimsy.  No pictures yet as it's too big to photograph on the design wall.  The backing came from the stash.

I'm pretty sure this is from Connecting Threads, but I don't remember the fabric line. Drama Teen likes it because it matches the rainbow colors on the front of the quilt.  Now all I need to do is press the front and the back so I can send it off to be quilted. 

It's a good report this week, plenty out and nothing in.

Used last week:  5.04 yards
Added last week:  0 yards

Used in 2014: 17.03 yards 
Added in 2014:  302.3 yard

Net stashed in 2014:  285.27 yards

Now it's time to tackle laundry and a few other household chores. But I'll still find a few minutes here and there to sneak in peaks here and there at what else is going on in the world of stash busting over at Patchwork Times.  

Wordless Wednesday - Summer Color

Design Wall Monday - More Scrappy Stitching

Thankfully, it was a quiet weekend around here.  Drama Teen was pretty much couch bound as doctors orders were to stay off her feet as much as possible.  The knee is still a bit swollen, but it doesn't hurt as badly as it did.  My Guy made it home from his family visit yesterday, but leaves again this morning for a two week business trip. My mother-in-law is now under hospice care as the cancer they discovered last Monday is in-operable.  She's feeling much better and is in good spirits, for which the entire family is very grateful.  

As I was in desperate need of a sanity break, a big chunk of Saturday was spent in my sewing room.  Though I took a lot of breaks to hang out with DT and make sure she had what she needed.  I made good progress on getting the borders on Jigsaw.  Just one more border strip to add and it will be a finished flimsy.   The scrappy butterfly block for July was finished and added to the rest up on the design wall. 

Scrappy Butterflies
Block is available in EQ 7 Block Library

It's going to be a bright quilt when it's all done.  I want 16 of these blocks for the final setting, so a few colors will be duplicated.  Not sure yet how these will be set together, but I've been playing with a few ideas in EQ.  

That's it for my design wall this week.  Hop over to Patchwork Times to see more design wall marvels.  

A Catch up Post

It's been one of those weeks.  If you want to read about the quilty stuff you can skip the rest of this paragraph and the next, if you like the drama, read on.  Two family emergencies and one rush project at work made for a pretty miserable week.  My Guy's wonderful mother was rushed to the emergency room on Monday.  They discovered a mass, which is inoperable and cancerous.  They did surgery to deal with some issues that were immediately life threatening.  She's now feeling a lot more comfortable and is in good spirits. My Guy left Friday morning to go see her.  

The plan was for Drama Teen and I to join My Guy on Saturday as she has volleyball practice and I needed to finish up a rush project at work.  That plan pretty much disintegrated when I picked DT up from volleyball practice on Friday.  DT texted that I needed to come in to talk to coach.  It wasn't the coach I had to talk to, it was the high school trainer.  DT took a bad fall during practice and over-extended her knee.  She was on crutches and hurting pretty badly.  So after an afternoon spent at the doctor's office, she has an MRI scheduled for this Thursday.  We won't know how bad the damage is to her knee until the doctor sees the results from that. She's supposed to stay off her feet and regularly ice the knee until then.  The rush project?  Well that was finally finished at about 8:30 PM on Friday.  

Here's the quilting updates that should have been written this week:

My something old this month is the same as it's been for several months, to finish up Jigsaw.  This month the blocks got finished, the rows sewn together and the borders were started.  

Jigsaw
pattern by Alyssa Clancy for Lehmann Quilting

Jigsaw may actually make it to a finished flimsy in August. I've just started on the the last round of borders.  For my something new, I learned how to work with fussy cuts in EQ.  I'm still working to come up with a quilt that uses a butterfly panel I bought a couple of months ago.  Here's the latest effort. 

Modified from Bird Watching
by Wendy Sheppard
 published in July/August  2014 issue of McCall's Quilting

This layout reminds me of stained glass.  The pattern is modified from a quilt in the July issue of McCall's Quilting magazine, Bird Watching by Wendy Sheppard.  This may well end up being my something new for this month.  I will probably play some with block placement and fabric colors, but I think this quilt needs to be made.

  

July wasn't a good month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I've been playing catch up with the red blocks.  All the blocks for the Scrap Challenge Sampler are in progress, but only 4 are finished. 

 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler
By Angela Feldbush of Soscrappy

The scrappy butterfly block is also done. 

Scrappy Butterflies
Block is available in EQ 7 Block Library

This month's color is light green.  Since I don't have a lot of greens, I used pretty much all my green scraps I had when we were working with dark green. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do for this month.  

Finally, today is stash report day.  I actually have some stash going out with nothing coming in.  

Used last week:  1.36 yards
Added last week:  0 yards

Used in 2014:  11.99 yards
Added in 2014:  302.3 yards

Net stashed in 2014:  290.31 yards 

So for the first time in a long while the net stashed actually went down!  I definitely need a few more weeks of that.  

That catches me up on posts for the week and the month.  I'm linking up with:

Lynn over at Never Too Hot To Stitch
Angela over at Soscrappy
Judy over at Patchwork Times.