Weekend Stitching: Stormy Outlook

It was a fast moving weekend.  It was sunny but very windy on Saturday and we got a nice taste of spring, but Sunday we were back to the chilly temps with a little less wind. We braved the cold temps on Sunday afternoon to set up the annual science demos for the 5th graders in our area.  I mentioned yesterday that My Guy was recognized at a dinner last week for his role in organizing the annual program.  He'll be busy with that this week.  I'm doing demos on Thursday and maybe Wednesday afternoon if we are still short volunteers.  So it will be a busy week.  

While Sunday was spent supporting My Guy's project, I got to spend Saturday doing something for me.  I've been wanting to take a quilt class at our local shop since they opened two years ago, but for one reason or another my schedule just never lined up with any of the offerings I was interested in.  That changed Saturday with class covering making a Storm at Sea quilt with paper piecing. I can paper piece, but I'm always looking for new tips and tricks for the sewing room. 

The email with the fabric requirements came out Wednesday, with the yardages for three different sizes.  I decided on throw size and then played around with color options in Electric Quilt.  My Guy saw one of the settings he really liked and wanted me to make it bigger so it could go on our bed.  I couldn't get the same impact with the number of blocks needed for a queen, so I added borders (including a pieced border) to get the throw sized up to a queen size.  Finally Friday night I was ready to raid the stash for the fabrics.  Here's the final fabric pull.

The white is the background, with the other colors being worked into the blocks so that the colors move across the quilt in bands, like little rivers is what My Guy said.  I managed to get all but the diamond blocks made for both the upper left and lower right corners.  

Storm at Sea, from class taught by Carrie Randall (Quilter's Hideaway)

The set of blocks that are predominately light blue are in the works at the sewing machine. I made some progress on those before we headed out for set up yesterday.  The colors are so bright and look so crisp with the white.  I can't wait to see how the other blocks work out.  

I so did not need another project!  The class was a lot of fun and I'm not sorry about signing up for it. But Storm at Sea is my third new project for 2019. At this rate, I'll never get my PhD.  

I'm not doing so hot on the finishes as yet.  Inverted Star should show up on the finished list by next weekend. I've got just about 20 inches of binding left to stitch down.  

That was my weekend stitching.  You can see more works in progress at these linky parties:  Monday Design Wall, Main Crush Monday and Monday Making.   

Week 10 of 2019: Stitching and De-Stashing

It's been a busy week with not a lot of time to sew in the evenings.  There were a few days where stitching in the morning was the only way to fit in my 15 minutes for the day. 

Gym time, Ash Wednesday and an award dinner took up a lot of my evenings this week.  My Guy won an award for the work he does as the committee chair of a science program for 5 graders in the area and was also nominated for an award for one of his technical projects at work.  Even with the extracurricular activities, it was still a good week on finding time to stitch.

15 minutes days/week = 7/7 days
15 minutes days/Mar = 9/9 days
15 minutes days/2019 = 65/68 days
Success rate = 95.59%

I'm actually doing better at finding time to stitch everyday then I did last year and last year was good.  Projects are moving along, though there are no finishes yet.  Probably because some days it really is only 15 minutes. You can link up at the bottom of the post to share how your stitching week went. 

The stash report looks a bit anemic this week compared to what it has been. 

Fabric out this week = 0.67 yards
Fabric out in 2019 = 16.20 yards
More out than in for 2019

Nothing in, so that helps with the stash reduction part of the equation.  If I can end the year with more out then in, I'll have achieved my goals. Linking up with Quiltpaintcreate for the weekly stash report. 

So how did your stitchy week go? 

1. Chrisknits 2. Meloney F 3. Julie in GA 4. Mary-Kay

5. Marti 6. di 7. Shasta 8. maggie f

9. Deana 10. Amanda

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Daisy Chain Mystery Quilt Along: Stitching with the Accent

It's been so cold, I was definitely ready to be thinking about daisies and spring, not the cold.  I was in luck, today Alison released clue #1 for the Daisy Chain Mystery.

Which meant combining the accent and the neutral into 4 patches.

All the pairs went under the sewing machine needle seam facing the top, so they would all spin the same way on the back.  I'm making the throw sized quilt, so it didn't long to finish off all the 4 patches.

Now I'm ready for step 2 when it comes out in 2 weeks.  There's still plenty of time to get caught up.  Hope you'll decide to stitch along.  

Weekend Stitching: Contemplating the March One Monthly Goal

We ended up with about an inch of snow on the ground yesterday and bitterly cold temps. With the wind chill it feels like -7 F outside this morning.  Schools are out today, not because of bad roads, but because it's too cold to have the kids standing out at the bus stop.  It would be a good day to continue stitching in my warm sewing room, but work is not canceled.  Bummer. 

Hard to believe it's March with the temps being so low, usually we've warmed up by this point.  Warm or not, it's still a new month, so it's time to decide on a new One Monthly Goal.  

The 2019 stitching strategy is to keep working on those quilts closest to being finished rather than moving on to a new UFO each month.  So I've been trying to pick a one monthly goal that's doable, but moves a project closer to finished. There are actually three project closing in on finished, any one of those would be a good choice for this month. 

Inverted Star is in the binding stage.

I've just about to turn corner number three on this project, so it's likely this one will get done even if it's not the one monthly goal.

The Christmas Mystery Quilt is back from the quilter and it needs binding.  I've started evaluating fabric options for that. There's this striped left over from a previous holiday quilt. 

Or this red.

I don't have enough of the red used in the sashing to make a binding with, but this red is pretty close.  The other option would be a dark green, but I didn't get that far into the stash options yesterday. 

The last possibility for the March One Monthly Goal would be to get the Christmas Angels quilt cleaned up, pressed, and sent out for quilting.  The back is pieced, cleaned up, pressed and already packaged for shipment. 

So I just need to get the top ready to go.  Prepping for quilting is the step I tend to stall on.  I don't mind doing the back, but the finished flimsy always takes longer.  

Christmas Angels
Pattern by Kate

If I make it my One Monthly Goal, it's more likely to get done.  The other two will probably get done without any extra prompting. So that's my OMG for March, get Christmas Angels prepped and shipped out for quilting. 

Linking up with the Elm Street Quilts for the March OMG and the other usual Monday linky parties, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday and Monday Design Wall.        

Week 9 of 2019: Stitching and De-Stashing

February is over and we are a few days into March. The forecasted wind chill for today is the coldest we've seen for 2019.  I'm starting to wonder if spring is ever going to show up.  I shouldn't complain too much as this is perfect stitching weather. Are you finding at lest 15 minutes of stitching time in an effort to hide from the cold this week? 

It's been a good week on the stitching front for me. 

15 minutes stitching days/week = 7/7 days
15 minutes stitching days/Feb = 27/28 days
15 minutes stitching days/Mar = 2/2 days
15 minutes stitching days/2019 = 58/61 days
Success rate = 95.08%

So far so good on finding time to stitch most days this year.  Mr. Linky is waiting at the bottom of the post for you to share your efforts at finding time to stitch.

There is a good stash report to go along with the good stitching report. 

Fabric out this week = 5.22 yards
Fabric out in 2019 = 15.53 yards
More out than in for 2019

Most of the fabric out is from the backing for the Christmas Angels quilt.  Finishing quilts really, really helps the stash report.  Now to get the back and finished flimsy prepped for quilting so I can take another project off the UFO list.  Linking up with Quiltpaintcreate for the weekly stash report.  

My 6 year old lap top has been making horrible noises and shutting down suddenly, then taking multiple reboots to get it back up and running. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it won't reboot.  My biggest concern is loosing all of my stitching time and stash metrics.  So I've been backing up my tracking spreadsheet frequently, but that means I have to track down the solid state drive, hook it up and then wait for the download. Something that's just not feasible every night.  The other tool I've been using is Microsoft OneNote. It's a nice place to back up my stats in a tool that is saved to the Cloud.  I'm using pretty simplified tracking tools in that app. 

Just two simple tables.  To track stitching time, I just color in the box on the days with 15 minutes of stitching time. For fabric tracking, I just add in how much fabric that went out (black) came in (- red).  If I were to loose the hard drive, I have enough info here to update the most recent back up copy of the spreadsheet. I can even update OneNote using my phone.  So now I'm less terrified of loosing my stats due to a computer failure.  You can see the other quilting metrics that I keep in OneNote in this post.  

So how did your stitching stats look for the week? 

1. Julie in GA 2. Shasta 3. Meloney 4. Marti

5. Chrisknits 6. MaryR @Urban Quilter 7. maggie f 8. di

9. Amanda 10. Christina's Handicrafts

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