Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Twinkle Pink

This week was incredibly long, it seemed that the weekend would never get here.  Not that the weekend is going to be any less busy.  Drama Teen has a formal dance tonight, plus has to finish up her Science Fair entry.  I'm on hair and makeup duty for the first, then Photo Shop and science consultant on the second.  I may not get in a lot of stitching time this weekend. 

But thankfully there were  a couple of nights this week where I got in a bit more than 30 minutes in the sewing room.  I finished the first pink Twinkle Star block, 

Twinkle Stars
Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

plus made a good start on the second block. All the fabric combinations are picked out for the other four blocks.  I should be on track to finish all 6 blocks this month.  

Work continues on finishing off the blocks on the 2014 Rainbow Scrap projects.  The Inverted Star and Scrappy Butterfly projects both still need one more block.  The last Inverted Star block is in progress.  

A setting has been worked out for the Butterfly quilt, but I hadn't come up with one for the Inverted Star blocks.  After playing around in EQ some this week,  I figured out the setting for Inverted Star.

Center block is Inverted Star by Jessica Boschem of Common Threads
available from Craftsy as a free download.  Setting is self designed.  

It's another pieced border, so it will take a bit longer to finish this project off, but I really like the Sawtooth Stars.   I don't have anymore of the white fabric I used for the Inverted Stars, so I need to find something else in the stash that will blend with that fabric. It's a scrap quilt so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.  I'll probably add this little 4 x 5 blocks to my list of blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge each month once I find some white fabric.  

That's it for my scrappy endeavors this week.  Check out all the links over at Soscrappy for some great inspiration on how to use up all your scraps.  

Wordless Wednesday - White Out

Tuesday Archives - A Quilting Restart

Do you ever go back to your early blog posts and reread them?  I did that this week as I was trying to find a post for this week's Tuesday Archives.  

I'm still doing a weekly stash report and linking up with Design Wall Monday, so not much has changed in my posts other than when I started bogging Drama Teen was referred to as Kiddo.  I'm not sure if I should to be concerned that little has changed in terms of what I blog about or to be encouraged that I've at least been consistent.  

After a bit of unsuccessful searching for a post that included the 9-patch quilt for this week's archives post, I consulted my digital quilt catalog.  Only to find that the desired subject for this post had never even made it to the blog, it was finished well before the blog came into being.    It always surprises me when I find a quilt that has never had it's shining(?) moment on the blog. So in the interest of fairness to that early quilt here is Spring Snowball. 

This quilt started off my current string of quilt projects. In 2001 My Guy suggested I sign up for a learning to quilt class at the newly opened quilt shop in town. I'd made one quilt top 14 years before, but I hadn't pieced anything since.  The class was so much fun, I enjoyed every minute of the 4 sessions it took us to get to the finished flimsy.  I was hooked and have been piecing since.  

Spring Snowballs  wasn't finished until 2010.  I have always planned to learn how to quilt, but with an active kiddo, a traveling spouse and a full time career of my own I just never found the time. So the flimsy lingered in the closet till I met Trudy, who has quilted all my projects since this one.  

That's it for my trip down memory lane this week.  You can see more quilt archives over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Monday Design Wall - More Grand Illusion(s)?

I'm not sure where the weekend went, other than it went by way too quickly.  I'm definitely not ready for Monday.  Drama Teen has had driver's ed for the last 3 weeks.  Class starts at 6:30 AM.  She has another 3 weeks of class left.  It's amazing how having to get out the door just one hour earlier can throw the entire morning routine off kilter.  

It was a good weekend for sewing.  Sunday was miserably cold and windy, just perfect for hanging out and stitching.  I finished one more row of sashing for Grand Illusion.

Grand Illusion
A Bonnie Hunter Mystery

I'm still undecided about this quilt, but the more pieces of it I get up on the design wall the better I like it.  

Also up on the design wall is part of the pieced border for the 2014 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler. 

I'm almost finished with the teal blocks, which leaves blue, purple, pink and red blocks left to make.  Once I get those done, I can finish piecing the borders. I'm hoping to have this one ready to go out for quilting by the end of the month.

That's it for me this week.  For more design wall inspiration check out all the links over at Patchwork Times.   

Stash Report - Week 5 of 2015

It's the first day of February and I find myself contemplating how well I'm doing on all those goals I set back on January 1st for 2015.  One goal was to do more housework, laundry and sewing during the week rather than spending the entire evening in the recliner.  That one has been mostly successful.  I've been sewing more during the week and the laundry isn't piling up as badly.  So I just need to maintain that one.  

The stash busting goal is also on track.  No fabric in for the month of January.  The last time I went a month with no fabric purchases was mid 2013.  So though my outgoing isn't anything to crow about, I'm at least in the black with more out than in so far for 2015. 

Used last week:  0.37 yards
Used in January:  2.61 yards

The get healthier goal has been a bit rocky.  I've done a good job of taking low calorie snacks to work each day and staying away from the donuts everyone seems to bring in regularly (well at least 75% of the time), but I've not been doing as well on getting in more exercise.  There are a few factors there like the cold and Drama Teen's twice weekly physical therapy that have made it harder to do well there, but both of those should be going away soon.  

The one goal I'm most remorseful about is not finishing up a UFO in January. All the blocks of the 2014 Rainbow Scrap Sampler quilt have been sashed together, but I decided to replace my normal strip borders with a pieced border and that's taking a lot longer.  Finishing a quilt a month is really unrealistic for me, as how much sewing time I can get in is really unpredictable, family and work both have prior claims.  But for some reason, the failure to meet a January deadline is really bothering me.  The plan was to use A Lovely Year of Finishes to help motivate me to work on the UFOs, but the requirement of that quilt along is that you finish the project. Not always a realistic goal for my projects.  So rather than be frustrated because of that quilt along, I'm just going to accept that UFOs will be completed on whatever pace I can manage and just focus on making progress on that list. 

Maybe my motivation ought to be reducing the height of the "in use stash" pile.  

This is just the yardage that's called for in my UFOs and WIPs, not the scraps and fat quarters that have been set aside.  

I wonder how much yardage is in that 18"?  

Linking up with Judy over at Patchwork Times.  Then I hope to start working on shortening that stack some.