March One Monthly Goal: Completed

There's just a few more hours left in March. Thankfully there was enough time today to finish up the month's One Monthly Goal.

The plan for this month was to get the Christmas Angels quilt prepped and packaged so it could be sent off to be quilted.  I just barely managed to get the finished flimsy pressed and de-threaded before dinner tonight.

The green fabric frayed pretty easily.  It took a bit of fussing to get rid of the green strings and the other loose threads from the back.  There was a box in the attic stash that would fit the flimsy, backing and batting.  All that's left is to tape up the box and write up a label.  

Prepping a quilt to go out for quilting is my least favorite sewing room activity.  I tend to put it off for as long as possible. Making it a monthly goal is usually the driver I need to make that happen. I didn't quite take it up to the 11th hour, but it's close this month.  

Linking up with Elm Street Quilts' March One Monthly Goal Finish Linkly party.

Life in Pieces Week 13 of 2019: Stitching and Destashing

It's been a long week. There's a few changes going on at work that have been uncomfortable, consequently there's been a bit of drama.  Getting in my 15 minutes to stitch each day has been very necessary to maintaining my sanity this week.  

Consequently my stats look pretty good on that front this week. 

15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
15 minute days/March = 29/30 days
15 minute days/2019 = 85/89 days
Success rate = 95.51%

I'm really happy with my success rate for the year.  I'm only missing 4 days of stitching. Not bad for the first quarter.  You can share how your efforts at finding time to play with fabric and thread  are going by linking up below.

The stash report looks pretty sad in comparison.

Fabric out this week = 0.03 yards
Fabric out in 2019 = 17.48 yards
More out than in for 2019

The only fabric out for the week was a Wild and Goosey block.  Those little blocks don't use a lot of fabric.  But I'm ending the quarter with more fabric out than in, so that's looking good too.  Linking up with Quiltpaintcreate for the weekly stash report.  

The focus this week has been on my One Monthly Goal, getting Christmas Angels ready for  quilting.  It's been a good project for my 15 minutes a night.  

The dark green frayed badly, so there are a lot of very dark threads that need to be removed from the back so they don't show through after quilting.  I've got two of the five rows cleaned up.  Hopefully I can finish that today to meet my OMG.  

Did you have a great, good or dismal week on the stitching front?

1. Julie in GA 2. Chrisknits 3. Meloney F 4. maggie f

5. di 6. Shasta 7. Angie in SoCal 8. Deana

9. Amanda 10. Christina's Handicrafts

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Rainbow Scrap Challenge: Slow Progress

It's been slow going on this year's scrappy project.  I've wanted to make a version of Bonnie Hunter's Wild and Goosey since I first saw it.  It seemed like a good scrappy project.  It is, but those little blocks aren't a quick assembly.  So my progress on each month's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge has been pretty underwhelming.  But as it's the last Saturday in the first quarter of 2019, it seemed like a good time to report on the progress so far.  

For March, there's one green block finished.

The darker greens look much brighter up on the design wall.  I've done a bit better with January's red and February's yellow blocks.

Seven red blocks, 2 yellow and 1 green is the sum total of scrappy stitching so far.  I'm still trying to decide on a final layout of the blocks. That's needed to determine how many of each color to make.  Here's the two front runners. 

This is My Guy's favorite.  He likes the warmer colors in the middle.  My favorite has the warmer colors at the edges. 

Either layout needs at least 16 blocks of each color, so I can keep making blocks till I get to that point. At that point, I will have to pick a final layout. Looking at what's been made to date, it will be a few more months before I have to decide between these two or come up with something else completely.  

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and with Oh Scrap.  Happy scrappy stitching this weekend.  

Weekend Stitching: Rainy Days and Storms At Sea

Saturday was stormy and cold.  The Scientist in Training and I headed out for a necessary shopping expedition anyway.  The SIT has a poster presentation over her undergraduate research at a regional chemistry conference in a couple of weeks and needed to add some professional attire to her college wardrobe of jeans and graphic tees.  Plus we have a family wedding coming up at the end of April, so both of us needed dresses for that.  We found slacks, shirt and a jacket for the SIT, plus wedding appropriate dresses for both of us.  That accomplished we had lunch in Tulsa and then drove home in very heavy rain.  

Once we got home, she started on some organic chemistry homework, so I spent the rest of the rainy afternoon up in my sewing room finishing off a few more blocks for the Storm at Sea quilt. 

Storm at Sea
Paper Piecing Class by Carrie Randell (Quilter's Hideaway)

I really love the bright colors in this project.  On Sunday, I finished cutting all the dark blue pieces and started assembling those blocks.  The large diamonds are paper pieced, the other blocks are not.  I still need to cut the fabric to make the purple blocks.  Once I do that I can easily finish off a few more economy blocks that go in the bottom corner.  

Between starting the Storm at Sea and the Daisy Chain Mystery this month, I've lost a bit of momentum on my quilt plan.  Inverted Star was finished last week, next on the 2019 list is the Christmas Mystery quilt.  It's quilted, but needed to be trimmed up for binding.  The trimming got done, as did stitching together the binding strips. I was getting ready to sew the binding on to the front of the quilt, then remembered the label wasn't ready. 

The label was finished, printed, soaked, rinsed per the instructions, and dried.  It's sitting by the sewing machine ready for the framing strips.  The label says this will be finished in March 2019, that may be a bit optimistic. We'll see. 

It's Monday, so there are lots of fun linky parties to check out.  My favorites are Main Crush Monday, Monday Design Wall, and Monday Making.

Week 12 of 2019: Stitching and Stashing

This is the last day of spring break.  We took a few days off early in the week and headed over to Eureka Springs, AR.  Our little rental cottage was within walking distance of downtown, so we walked a lot, ate some excellent meals and did our share of shopping. It was a fun and relaxing trip for all of us.  The Scientist in Training heads back to school this afternoon. We are all a little sad to see her week off come to an end.  

It's always a challenge to fit in 15 minutes of stitching time each day when we are on the road. 

That's why I keep a road ready hand stitching project prepped and ready to go.  

I was able to finish off the middle "body" and then make a good start on the upper wing while we were gone.  At some point I really need to work on this project when I'm home, at the rate I'm going it's going to take forever to finish up.  You can check out some other handy work over at Slow Stitching Sunday. 

Even with a portable hand project, I didn't quite manage to stitch every day this week.  

15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
15 minute days/Mar = 22/23 days
15 minute days/2019 = 78/82 days
Success rate = 95.12%

Still not a bad week.  My goal is to stitch at least 90% of the time.  So far, so good on that front.  Mr. Linky is waiting at the end of the post for you to link up and share how your stitching time worked out this week.   

Being on the road means there's an opportunity to check out a few quilt shops.  We stopped on the way home from Eureka Springs so we could stretch our legs and I found a place where I could pet some fabric. There were just a couple of pieces that had to come home with. 

I loved this butterfly panel. There are some rainbow scrap challenge butterfly blocks that need a setting. This might be one option to do something a bit different with those blocks. 

This floral border print was also irresistible.  Not sure where I'm going to use this, but I'm sure something will come along at some point. It's too pretty to just let it set in the stash.  

The stash report took a bit of a hit, but there is still more going out of than coming into the stash.     

Fabric out this week = 0.54 yards
Fabric out in 2019 = 17. 45 yards
More out than in for 2019

Linking up with Quiltpaintcreate for the weekly stash report. 

So overall not a bad week on the stitching front.  How did your week go?  

1. Meloney F 2. maggie f 3. Chrisknits 4. Marti

5. di 6. Mary-Kay 7. Angie in SoCal 8. amanda

9. Deana 10. Shasta 11. Christina's Handicrafts

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