May NewFO

It's the last day of a very busy May.  We celebrated Mother's Day, took Drama Teen on her 8th grade trip and also celebrated her graduation from 8th grade.  I'm still recovering from all the fun stuff that went on this month.  Lots of sewing happened too, well except for last week.  I needed some recovery time after all the end of school activities, so I took a few days off to catch up on sleep and a few chores. By the time the Memorial Day weekend got here, I was ready to get back to sewing something new.  

Back in March, I pushed a few buttons and ordered some yardage from Connecting Threads' Neutral Love line.  

I wasn't sure what I was going to make with it, but not long after it took up residence in my stash, one of my friends from work announced that she would retire this summer.  These fabrics are just so her that they have to end up in her house.  About the same time, I got a copy of Patchwork Palette by Donna Lynn Thomas and found a beautiful pattern called "Gems".  

After mocking up the blocks in EQ and playing around with the fabric placement, I came out with this layout.  

Neutral Gems
Pattern is "Gems" by Donna Lynn Thomas
found in the book Patchwork Palette

After washing, pressing and cutting out all the strips needed, only 2 blocks have been assembled.  

I'm happy with how it's turning out.  Hopefully I can finish this project up before the end of the summer.  So far I'm 5 for 5 in 2013, five starts in five months.  

Not only did I add a NewFO this month, two NewFOs from 2012 were finished off.  The Sofa Quilt was the June 2012 NewFO.

The Sofa Quilt
Pattern by Judy Laquidara of Patchwork Times
Quilted by Trudy Lindemann

Evening Star was the September 2012 NewFO.

Evening Star

Pattern from Calico Carriage

Designed by Debbie Maddy

Quilted by Trudy Lindemann

That leaves 5 NewFOs from 2012, plus the 5 NewFOs from 2013 to make a total of 10 uncompleted projects from the last 2 years.  I have a lot of stitching to do!  

Hop over to Cat Patches to check out more NewFOs from across the globe.   

15 Minute Challenge - Running On Empty

Last week's 15 Minute Challenge post didn't happen.  It was supposed to happen. The post was a victim of too much too do in too short a time.  In hind sight, I should have realized just how much was on my plate last week and just canceled ahead of time.  But I didn't, so my apologies if you were looking for that post and didn't find it.  We'll play catch up this week, you can report how successful you've been with finding time to create neat stuff for the last two weeks.  

I managed to spend 8 days in my sewing room over the last 14 days.  That doesn't really sound too bad, but if you look closely, stitching only happened 3 out of the last seven days.  Monday and Tuesday were very busy days, I had to finish up the slide show for the graduation reception and there were technical problems that slowed that down.  Then Tuesday was Drama Teen's 8th grade graduation, which as the 8th grade parents have to do a lot of the prep and organization, was extra stressful.  I'd been working really hard on finishing up 5 quilts.  All of this added to together to produce a pretty significant crash on Wednesday.  I didn't want to even think about doing anything for the next few days.  I was just simply burned out. 

The fostering creativity theme for May has been "explore other creative interests".  Most of us don't have that problem as I pointed out in the May 7th post.  Last week was representative of the down side of being a multipotentialite (defined in the May 14th post).  It's easy to get overwhelmed by all the commitments we've made to our various creative interests when we have deadlines and then just loose the spark to work on anything.  So I took a break, rested and was then ready to get back to the sewing room last weekend.  I basically followed the strategy proposed over at Accidental Creative.  I admitted to being overloaded, then focused on meeting a significant deadline at work, and pretty much said "no" to any new commitments over the holiday weekend.  By Saturday, I was ready to spend the day in the sewing room.  

How well did your creative mojo work over the last 14 days? 

1. Kate @katiemaequilts 2. Julie in GA

3. Amanda 4. Thea

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Design Wall Monday - May 27th

Monday, already?  It's the last Monday in May. June will bring us to mid year (I know, don't remind you).  Being busy sure makes the time go faster.  

We had so much going on early last week that I didn't have time to write a post for last week's Design Wall.  To be honest, there's not much up on the design wall.  I've been working on binding quilts when we weren't running around with Drama Teen's school stuff. Two of the five quilts that need to be done by the end of the month are bound, my first finishes of 2013.  

Evening Star
Pattern from Calico Carriage
Designed by Debbie Maddy
Quilted by Trudy Lindemann

I really like how this one turned out.  The quilting was done by Trudy Lindemann.

The meander in the white spaces really makes the star stand out.   

The backing is a very pale floral print and the binding is the same dark purple as the last border.  Evening Star was the first finish of 2013. The second finish was The Sofa Quilt.

The Sofa Quilt

Pattern is Nicole's Sofa Quilt by Judy Laquidara (available here)

Quilted by Trudy Lindemann

 I love this pattern.  My only regret is that I didn't make the final border just a bit wider so I could show off more of that print.  Otherwise, it turned out beautifully.  This quilt was also quilted by Trudy, she used a floral motif on this one. 

The quilt is backed with a floral striped print that my sister gave me 12 yards of a few years ago. This is the second back that I've managed to eek out of that gift.  

The binding is a green Andover Dimples. I had wanted to use blue, but I was out of the darker blue used in the blocks and the lighter blue in the blocks didn't look right.  

I'm busy binding the OSU quilt right now.  Don't know that I'm going to finish the last three quilts that I had hoped to have done this month, but I've got 4 more days in the month to make that happen.

That's it for what's going on in my sewing room.  Hop over to Patchwork Times to see what's up else where.  

Stash Report - Week 21

The US is celebrating Memorial Day tomorrow, so it's a three day weekend for many of us.  I'm very grateful to have the extra day as it's been a long and busy week.  Drama Teen's graduated from 8th grade this week.  

Hard to believe my baby will be a high school freshman next year.  Someone once warned me that they grow up fast.  That's an understatement!

I've been off the computer for most of the week.  It's just been too hectic with graduation and work.  Not only was I off the computer, the sewing room hasn't seen much of me this week either and sadly that is greatly reflected in this week's stash report.  It doesn't help that I pushed a few buttons a couple of weeks ago to ensure that these two prints were part of my stash.

I couldn't decide between the black or the cream Autumn Fauna by Benartex, so I ordered both.  These will be added to my extensive stash of butterfly fabrics.  At some point, I'm going to need to figure out what to do with all of those.  But for now I just enjoy looking at them.  The damage to the stash report won't hurt for too long. 

Used last week:  0 yards
Added last week :  8 yards

Used for 2013:  44.54 yards
Added for 2013:  97.25 yards

Net stashed for 2013:  52.71 yards

Not a stellar week.  I still have three quilts to bind and a new project to start this month, so hopefully I'll make some ground in the "used" column this weekend.  

For more stash management posts, check out the links over at Patchwork Times.  

Catching Up

It's been almost a week since I last posted.  Between Drama Teen's graduation from 8th grade and work deadlines, there just hasn't been time to get on the computer.  When I was home, I was sleeping.  We were so busy with graduation that I completely forgot about the 15 Minute Challenge post this week.  I'll do a catch up post next Tuesday.  

Thanks for all the notes checking up on us after the tornado hit Moore, OK last Monday. We live about 150 miles northeast of that community, but most of my immediate family lives just 20 miles to the north of Moore.  They are all just fine.  My heart goes out to those who lost love ones and those who've lost their homes.  The track of the 1999 tornado was visible from the highway until just recently.  It's the cruelest of fates to have a second F5 follow almost the same track and reopen that old scar.  

There was a tornado, a much smaller one, just south of us Monday. It was close enough to have our downtown offices send people to the shelters.  Drama Teen had walked from school to the company recreation center to work out and texted me that she was heading to the building shelter, which in that building is actually a basement.  It's one of the few in town.  The soil here makes it difficult to build basements, so few homes have them.  We do have a storm shelter in the garage, I blogged about it here.  

We have no plans for this holiday weekend other than to just hang out and catch up on a few things around the house.  Drama Teen's had a busy couple of weeks with finals, 8th grade trip, graduation, last day of school swimming, a sleep over and the end of the year dance.  She finally hit the wall yesterday and was not feeling well.  She slept most of yesterday and was asleep on the couch by 9 last night.  Hopefully she will feel better today when she wakes up.  

Enjoy your weekend!