Last Dance with Diatom

We celebrated my mom's and My Guy's birthdays yesterday.  Mom's birthday was this last week and My Guy's was earlier this month.  My mom is big on celebrating birthday's and realized that she'd never done anything special for My Guy on his.  So this year she wanted to be sure we celebrated both.  We had a fun time, but it's the 4th weekend in a row that we've not been home. 

Even though we've been gone a lot, I put the last stitches in the binding for Diatom the day after we got back from vacation.  It took me a few days to get the final photographs. 

Diatom was Quilting Jetgirl's 2023 quilt along. The blocks are 24" finished. It was such fun to make. I fell in love with Yvonne's all blue demo version so stuck with the same color palette.  My version has thin sashing and a final border. It's one of my favorite finishes this year. 

Trudy did her magic with the quilting, a nice flowing vine motif. 

The backing is a dark blue design from Connecting Threads and it's bound in the same dark blue used on the front. 

This quilt is a wedding gift for a couple Grad Girl met at Oklahoma State.  The new wife is a fellow chemistry graduate student and the new husband is an architect, but he's also the Dungeon Master for the Dungeons and Dragons adventurers group that Grad Girl plays with.  The DM title is important as that's where the name of the finished quilt came from. 

Dancing Lights is a spell used in D&D to create torches to provide light. Grad Girl thought it worked pretty well for this quilt. The poem on the label is Dancing Lights by Mary K. Boye. I've only used the first verse, but it seemed very fitting for a newly married couple and still worked nicely with the D&D theme. 

Completion of Dancing Lights brings my UFO list down to 19, which is where I ended last year.  I'm hoping to finish at least one more quilt this year.  We'll see how that goes.  Linking up to Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.     

Stitching Stuff: Week 41 of 2024

It's been busy around here since about mid September.  We've not had a full weekend at home since then.  We were gone for the wedding and then 2 weekends for vacation.  I've done a good job and having things that can be hand stitched when we're on the road, but it does slow down progress in my sewing room. At least I've been able to work in my stitching time each day.

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Oct = 12/12 days
• 15 minute days/2024 = 286/286 days
• Success rate = 100%

It's been such a good year on the stitching time front. I think I can keep the 100% till December, then it gets dicey.  It's been fun to keep my streak going.  I probably won't try for 100% next year.  It's a lot of effort (and requires a bit of understanding from your family) to keep this kind of streak going. But it's been fun. I'm still excited to see where I end up at the end of the year.  

Being away for the weekends has really impacted my scrap and fabric organization activities for September and October. I have nothing to report on either front. 

Did you manage to get in a bit of stitching time this week?  

   

1. Gretchen 2. Julie in GA 3. maggie f 4. Karen

5. DonnaleeQ 6. Quilting Gail 7. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 8. Bonnie in Va

9. Frédérique 10. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 11. Dq at Dreamworthyquilts

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2024 Quilting Ambitions: 3rd Quarter Check In

With the end of September, also comes the end of the third quarter of 2024.  Just three months left in the year!  It's a good time to look over what the plan was for this year to see if there are any goals that need some attention. Quilting Jetgirl has a 2024 3rd Quarter Goal review linky party to encourage us to do just that.   

Progress on my ambitions this year has been a mixed bag.  Here's the progress to date. 

1. Make quilts.  The focus for this year wasn't just on finishes, moving quilts along in the process was also a goal. The plan at the beginning of the year looked like this:

In my original 2024 ambitions post, I stated my goal was to move the bar closer to finished quilt for each project on the list. There was definitely progress on that front so far this year.  

  

Only four projects on my list have bars at the same spot as the original graph. I still have 3 months to move those bars a bit. Probably won't move all of them, but I know there will be progress on at least one more.  Not bad performance for three quarters of the year. 

2. Learn to Quilt:  The plan is to try quilt as you go on a set of blocks to ease my way into the learning process.  I finished all the blocks in  August. 

Diann, who blogs at Little Penguin Quilts, has been working on a quilt as you go project this year.  I can't find the exact posts, but she alerted me to Hobbs 80/20 Fusible batting. I didn't really want to use pins, but don't have any place to safely use the adhesive spray technique.  The fusible batting sounded like a good solution, so that got ordered.  

I've been reading the various books I have on quilting technique, but haven't actually done any quilting yet.  I have some quilt sandwiches made up, the plan is at some point before the end of the year is use those to figure out my machine settings and do a bit of practicing.  So it's been slow progress on this ambition, but at least there's been some progress.  

3.  15 Minutes to Stitch:  The goal is to stitch at least 15 minutes a day, plus host a linky party so others can share how they are doing at finding time to stitch.  My goal was to stitch at least 75% of the days in 2024.  I'm blowing this goal out of the water this year! 

At the end of September, I was still at 100%.  I've spent at least 15 minutes with needle and thread every day so far this year. My best year prior to this was a 92.9% success rate.  I'm on track to beat that. Can I keep 100% for the whole year?  Unlikely, but I'm motivated to try.  

The second part of this goal is to post a linky party every week. So far there's been 39, one of each week from January thru September. Usually I miss posting at least once each year. Hopefully I can keep my 100% metric here too. 

4. Stash Organization:  It's a mixed bag on that front for this quarter.  

Scrap Organization: Almost no progress on this front during the third quarter. There's been no progress on the #2 big scrap bag.  And I've gone backwards on the new scraps in the working scrap bin. I've finished quilts, but haven't done anything with the left overs. 

I really need to get back to the scrap trimming during the 4th quarter.  I've done a bit to empty the scrap bins over the last month or so, so there should be some room for what's in the working scrap bin at least. Any of the 2.5 strips of all those blues from Diatom can go directly onto the pile for the Simply Sensational Summer Scrap quilt that is my current leader and ender project.   

I did better on the fabric pressing and refolding this quarter. 

I'm about 2/3 of the way through the third tub refill.  We were gone for three weekends in September, so I didn't have as much time this last quarter to push towards an empty bin. I've found so many fun fabrics as I've worked through these bins; so many ideas for new quilts.  

The fabric closet has been reorganized a bit.  The addition of the wire cubes on top of the wire rack has give me more space for storing fabric. Though all the extra storage is just about full. 

It's much easier to see what I have now. There is still a bit of space, but that's going to fill up quickly.  Some additional reorganization opened up a bit more space. I didn't use all the wire cubes that I ordered, so I did some reorganizing on the left side of the fabric closet.  

I'm really bad about forgetting to take before photos, so this is a partial before photo on the left. The bins that show on the corner of the wire cabinet were over in the corner of the shelf. The fat quarter boxes got moved to another location in the sewing room and I added some of the left over wire cubes. The fat quarter bundles and any other precuts, were moved to the corner. It's a much more effective use of the space now.  

5. Stretch Goal: Consider if pattern editing/creation is something I want to do?  Rather than go this route, I had the opportunity to utilize my technical skills and decided that was a better fit for me at the moment.  So not a fail, I just decided to go in a different direction.  

This year has been a productive one on several fronts.  I never get to all the things on my lists, but I'm happy with the progress so far.  Fourth quarter is going to be challenging. Lots going on, but hopefully that won't derail me too badly.  

To Do Tuesday for the Week of 10/8/2024

We got home late Saturday afternoon from vacation. So I had Sunday and Monday to work on the non-hand stitching part of my to do list.  With that in mind, I didn't do too badly with on the list for last week. 

To Do list For 10/01/2024

1.  Diatom: Finish hand stitching binding ✔

2.  Guild BOM: Start October block ✔

3.  Marble Mystery: Start October clue ✔

4.  Chocolate Marshmallows: Decide layout, start assembly - progress

5.  Wild and Goosey: Finish orange blocks - progress

6.  Sensational Summery Scrap quilt: Continue as leaders/enders ✔

Considering we were on vacation last week, I'm pretty happy with the progress on the to do list.  Of course, it wasn't a very ambitious list. Though getting in another finish is always exciting.  It's going to be a busy week, lots going on, so I'm going to keep this week's list simple too.  

To Do List for 10/8/2024

1.  String Lights (Meadow Mist Designs): Make backing

  

I finished this quilt top last July as part of the promotions for Cheryl's book "Just Two Charm Packs".  It's on my quilt plan as a to be quilted this year.  I have the backing fabric picked out, so it's just a matter of getting it cut and sewn.  

2.  Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish October clue

I finished stitching the hour glass blocks just before dinner last night. They still need to be pressed and trimmed. There's one more set of blocks to assemble for this month, but those are pretty simple.  It shouldn't be too difficult to finish off this month's clue before next Tuesday. 

3.  Guild BOM: Finish October block

I've got about half the pieces cut for this month's block.  It won't take long to assemble once they are all cut. 

4.  Chocolate Marshmallows (Seabreeze Quilts):  Start assembly.

I'm still playing with the blocks on the design wall. I didn't really think about how all my different backgrounds were going to play with each other, so it's hard to come up something that looks balanced.  

5. Squared Away (So Scrappy): Decide on layout, pick setting fabric

Squared Away was a Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt along back in 2018.  This one is on my to be assembled list for this year.  It's another project that has been sitting on the UFO list because I couldn't figure out how to set it.  But, it's time has come, I'm going to at least have a plan to move forward with. 

6. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Finish the orange blocks

Only three more orange blocks needed for the planned layout. That should be doable this week.

7. Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter): Continue as leader and enders.

So that's the plan for this week. It seems like a long list, but not all of it requires time at the sewing machine.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.

Finish Five

My Guy had lots of vacation time, so he took off last week and we headed to Eureka Springs, AR.  We had much bigger plans for vacation this year, but then a family wedding and a potential refinery project hijacked the dates we had planned to go.  We've been to Eureka Springs several times. We did a lot of shopping, hiking, and eating out.  I took two quilts to bind and finished one of them. 

My version of Rhododendron, the Bonnie Hunter 2021 mystery quilt, is finished.  I've named my version Azaleas since I used purple rather than the suggested pink.  

I used the dark purple, along with a floral print for the backing.

Trudy did a fun floral design for the quilting. 

The binding is the same purple Batik used for the border.  I'm happy with my version. No immediate plans for this quilt, it will probably be given as a gift at some point.   

Five finishes so far for this year, four of which were UFOs.  My list still shows 20 UFOs that need to be finished.  I'm hoping for at least one more finish this year.  There are 5 quilt tops waiting for quilting, hopefully I'll get off to a good start with finishes next year.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.