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.  

A Bit of This and That

This week has been mostly odds and ends in the sewing room.  My focus is still on getting the SAHRR to the finished flimsy stage. 

 

The spacer border between row 5 and 6 is attached. Now I just need to finish the windmill blocks so I can start assembling the last pieced border.  

A lot of the week was spent on the fabric pull for an upcoming blog hop in July to celebrate a book release.  Cheryl Brickey of Meadow Mist Designs has a new book coming out at the end of May, Just Two Charm Pack Quilts.  Cheryl's mystery quilt alongs have been a favorite part of my sewing plans over the last several years.  Grad Girl helped me pick the pattern to make. I decided on the fabrics, they are washed but not pressed. I'm hoping to get all the parts cut out this week. My hope is that Grad Girl will like this quilt more than the SAHRR. She asked for it again this weekend and I reminded her it was for her Dad.  Her response was he could use it for a few months, but it would just disappear on one of her trips home. (Grad Girl reads my blog, so I'm sure she'll let me know her thinking on this strategy).  

The only other project that needed some attention this week is to come up with a design for my guild name tag.  I need to have that made by the 16th, so I put some thought into the design and came up with this. 

This is a rough mock up in EQ.  I'll paper piece the coffee cup and embroider the steam and my name. The steam will come all the way down to the cup in the finished mini quilt, I'm going to leave off that top strip on the cup to reduce the size a bit more and the upper half will probably be cut down an inch or so.  It should finish at 3.5" X 5" or there abouts.  Next step is to raid the scraps for something fun for the coffee cup.  

That's what's up on my design wall and what's been going on in my sewing room.  Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.

Stitching Stuff: Week 17 of 2023

The first week of May is over.  It will be June before we know it.  The summer always seems to move so fast, usually because we've got lots of things going on.  But staying in the moment, the first week of May was a good one on the stitching front. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/April = 29/30 days
• 15 minute days/May = 6/6 days
• 15 minute days/2023 = 105/126 days
• Success rate = 83.33%

April was a much better month for stitching than March was. I'm hoping that May is as good as April.  I have a trip planned to see Grad Girl before the end of the month, so I'll likely miss a couple of days this month just due to travel. So it likely won't be quite as good.  

Is summer the time do you struggle to get into the sewing room?  There are so many things to do when the weather is nice.  

How did you do at finding time to stitch this week? 

1. Julie in GA 2. Gretchen 3. Frederique 4. Andre

5. DonnaleeQ 6. Quilting Gail 7. Jennifer in Indy 8. Amanda

9. Another Stitching Nana 10. Carol Andrews

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Week 69 Photo Challenge: A Nose

In last week's post I suggested that this week's photo challenge was likely to be one of the more difficult weeks, at least for My Guy and I.  

My Guy and I had some of the same ideas for photos, but in the end we went with different approaches and different subjects. 

Kate: China Doll Features

I went for a delicate, close up nose.  

My Guy: Disco Bison

My Guy went wide angle and much less delicate.  Our community has various themed bison statues all over town (This one actually has disco balls in place of the typical Rocky Mountain oysters).  

Grad Girl went the cute route.

Grad Girl: Nosey Kitty

What's not to love about a cute little black nose and those whiskers?  Though My Guy and I agree that Queenie's eyes might look a tad desperate.  We'll chalk that up to the reality she's had to live with Grad Girl through finals week at Texas A&M.  I'm betting Grad Girl doesn't surface till sometime close to lunch today. She's had a heck of a week.  

So what's the challenge for this week?

 

Grad Girl's response to this card was "Ok then".  I feel the same.  Hopefully inspiration hits before Friday on this one.  

Photo Play #14: Just Flowers

At the very end of March, I took a flower arranging class with some friends.  It was a lot of fun and I got a nice centerpiece for the dining room table. 

Of course the next step was to get out the Canon 70D with the Sigma 105 mm macro lens to see what kind of images I could capture. The goal was to photograph from a unique viewpoint and come out with something pretty.  You can judge if I hit the mark with these images. 

There were a lot of good pictures from this shooting session, but these 6 are the best of the bunch. My goal was to show different aspects of the flowers, not just the whole flower. What did I take away from this session? 

1. You can never take too many pictures of flowers. 

2. Lighting can make or break a photograph. It really is the magic wand when photographing flowers.