Stitching Stuff: Week 48 of 2023

Just 3 more weeks left in 2023!  That's really hard to take in.  Have you started crafting your goals for 2024?  I've given mine some thought here and there.  I've made a start on my quilt plan for next year, but that's about it in terms of written commitments.  The 15 minutes to Stitch/Stitching Stuff linky party will continue next year.  Some days I still need encouragement to get into the sewing room.  Though scrap and fabric management will be a bigger part of my Sunday linky party post in 2024. Fingers crossed I can keep that up next year.  

It was a good week on the stitching front. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days 
• 15 minute days/Dec = 9/9 days
• 15 minute days/2023 = 291/343 days
• Success rate = 84.84%

The week of Christmas will probably be the hardest to keep up with my stitching plans.  But even if that week is a complete bust, I've done well on moving a number of projects along.  

My focus on scrap processing and yardage organization continued for another week.  I can tell there's been some progress on cleaning out scrap bag #1. 

You can definitely see more of the white insides of the bag after another round of scrap processing this last week.  Still a long ways to go, but it's nice to actually see there's been progress.  

There was also good progress the fabric pressing this week. 

Four - 4 yard cuts, one yard cut and a half yard cut are all now pressed and neatly folded in the fabric closet.  I'm getting to the bottom of the bin.  Looks like I'll be pressing a lot of red fabrics this next week.  There are more fabrics under those.  Maybe another 2 weeks before this is completely empty?  

How are you doing with your stitching time?  

1. Gretchen 2. maggie f 3. Julie in GA 4. Karen 5. DonnaleeQ

6. katie z. 7. Laurie at Laurie's Place 8. Shasta @ High Road Quilter 9. Frédérique 10. Andrée

11. Bonnie in Va 12. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 13. Jocelyn @CNN 14. Deb in Canada 15. Quilting Gail

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Week 95 Photo Challenge: Ballons

With My Guy out on the road this week, I wasn't sure he'd have the opportunity to get a photo this week.  But he got home a day earlier than planned and so was able to play with his camera a bit.  This week's challenge was on the surface pretty straight foward. 

Since we've not had a little one in quite a while, the blow up ballons just aren't as common in our house as they once were.  So we all decided to be creative this week and prehaps stretch the meaning just a bit.

Kate: Glass Ballons

We'd be more likely to celebrate birthdays now with these ballon shaped wine glasses. It's so hard to get photos of glass without lots of reflections of the light sources, this one worked out pretty well.  

My Guy went with a completely different interpretation of the word ballons. 

My Guy: Emotional Support Ballons

  

Definitely not what I was expecting.  His photo and mine could be the beginning of a theme for this challenge. It's definitely the time of year many of us could use some emotional support for one reason or another.  

Grad Girl's photo doesn't really fit that theme. 

Grad Girl: Bulboons

She's been really busy in the lab the last few weeks trying to get lots done before her holiday break.  For any of you that haven't worked in a lab, these are pipette bulbs, or as she's labeled them bulboons, they are used to transfer liquids in the lab.  You don't blow these up, but controlling the air in the bulbs allows you to draw up and expell liquids from the glass tubes.   

The fun part of running our own challenge is that we can decide what works and what doesn't.  This week, we may not have stuck the challenge as closely as could have, but when we have to improvise, I think we get more interesting pictures.  I pulled the challenge card for this week.  

I'm curious to see what we all come up with this week.  

To Do List for the Week of 12/5/2023

In addition to stitching this week, I finally made a serious start on my Christmas shopping and decorating.  All the wrapping stuff, paper, boxes, bags, tissue paper, has been pulled from it's various storage locations and assembled in Grad Girl's bedroom. The 3 foot tree is up and decorated.  That definitely went faster then the 6 foot tree I normally set up. Hopefully that means it will come down much faster. I ususally enjoy putting up the tree, but getting it down was always a chore (we won't discuss the longest I've ever left the tree up after the holiday).  So good progress there and surprisingly good progress on last week's quilty To Do List too. 

To Do List for 11/28/2023

1. Indigo Way: Start on clues 1 and 2 ✔ 

2. Malted Mystery: Finish clue 5 - progress

3. Scrappy Butterflies: Sew backing together ✔

4. Rhododendron Mystery: Work on pieced borders ✔

5. Wild and Goosey: Finish the orange blocks in process ✔

6. Chilhowie: Leaders and enders project ✔

7. Fabric organization: Cut/sort scraps and press fabrics ✔

To check off 6 of the 7, with progress on the 7th is a much better week than I expected. Last week's list was really too long.  Scrappy Butterflies and Wild & Goosey are going back into project boxes for a few weeks.  That should let me concentrate on the two active mysteries.  

To Do List for 12/05/2023

1. Indigo Way (Bonnie Hunter): Continue working on clues 1 and 2, start clue 3

I've not used my tri-recs rulers in a while, but Bonnie gave really good reminders on how to use those in last week's instructions.  I haven't gotten very far with clue 2. I took it slow at first to be sure I had my seam allowances right.  I'm only making half the blocks for the mystery this year. I'm still working on clue 1 too, just over half the blocks for that clue are finished.  

2. Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish clue 5 and start clue 6

I finally finished the second set of HSTs last week and have moved on to construting the partial blocks.  Hopefully those won't take as long and I'll have that done before clue 6 comes out on Thursday.  

3. Rhododendron Mystery (Bonnie Hunter): Finish the pieced borders

One pieced border is attached, so just three more to finish. The second border needs to be attached before I can measure for the strips needed for the last two. I also need to figure out how to piece the corners. Hopefully that's all doable this week.   

4. Melodic Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Make label, binding, trim quilt

I almost forgot about this project. It's so close to finished, it needs to go back on the list this week. It's not a large quilt, so hopefully it won't take that long to get it completely finished. 

5. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Leaders and enders project

Block 8 is almost finished. All the pieces are cut for block 9, so it will just continue moving along as work on this year's mystery takes priority.

6. Fabric Organization: Cut/sort scraps and press fabrics

Now that I've got some momemtum on this, I really don't want to stop.  I may not do as much this week, but every little bit helps. 

It's still probably too long of a list for good progress on every project, but I'm so close to milestones on several projects, I don't want to stop on those.  We'll see how it goes this week. My Guy is on a business trip this week, so I'll have most of my evenings to stitch.  

Linking up for To Do Tuesday over at The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric.  Good luck with your to do list this week (both the quilty and the holiday).  

What Am I Doing?

Sitting at my machine last night and pinning pieces for the next round of chain piecing, I realized that 4 out of 5 projects getting pinned were Bonnie Hunter projects.  Her mysteries are known for needing lots of piecing. I enjoy the piecing, but to be working on 4 at one time may not be the easiest way to move a few projects to finished. Especially when I am trying really hard to keep up with this year's mystery, Indigo Way. I've finished half of the clue 1 HSTs and have made a start on the clue 2 triangle in a square.  We'll see where I'm at on Friday when clue 3 comes out.

The last few months Bonnie's 2021 mystery, Rhododendron, has been on and off the design wall.  It is one BH mystery that is getting close to being a finished top.  I rarely stick to Bonnie's design, usually because I don't want to make all the blocks for the pieced border.  That's the case for Rhododendron. But I have found a way to use the flying geese in partially pieced borders. 

 

The border on the left is ready to stitch to the top, the other 3 borders are in various stages of construction.  Fingers crossed all four are finished and attached by the end of the week. The plan is for one more narrow white border and a wider final border of purple.  If the pieced borders are all attached by the end of the week I'll be happy. A finished quilt top by the end of the month would be nice.  We'll see how that goes.   

Linking up with Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts.

Stitching Stuff: Week 47 of 2023

 

I'm never ready for December.  I just never seem to get to all things I had planned to finish before the end of the year.  But to put a positive spin on that, it's also the month to start planning for 2024 and theoretically have the chance to make up for where you fell short this year (funny how it rarely works out that way).  One area that has worked out well for me this year is my stitching time, this week was another good one.  

• 15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
• 15 minute days/Nov = 24/30 days
• 15 minute days/Dec = 2/2 days
• 15 minute days/2023 = 284/336 days
• Success rate = 84.52% 

Not a perfect year on the stitching front, but anything over 75% is stellar in my eyes. I've had years where my stitching time is over 90%, but it takes a lot of discipline to maintain that.  I may up my stitching time goal for 2024. We'll see, it worked out well this year.  We used to do stretch goals at work, Thankfully they aren't required at home! 

There was a bit of sewing room clean up this week. 

Scrap bag #1 is just a bit less stuffed. It's hard to tell because when I pull out some of those long strips, it fluffs up the rest of the scraps.  I didn't do much scrap processing this week because the fabric to be pressed bin had another 8 yard cut that needed to be pressed. 

The print on white in the top photo was the 8 yard piece and the floral on white below it was 5 yards. I'm glad to have both pressed and ready to use. But that took almost 2 hours to do both.  That's one reason the fabric bin as been so full for so long. It's hard to take time from stitching to do those chores. But I'm determined to spend my weekend morning sewing room time working on both scraps and getting my yardage organized.  The to be pressed bin is now just half full. I think what's left is all 3 and 4 yard cuts. Not bad progress considering I've missed some weekends due to traveling and the holiday.  

How are you doing at getting in some stitching time and/or doing some end of the year sewing room clean up? 

 

1. Frédérique 2. Gretchen 3. maggie f 4. Karen

5. Another Stitching Nana 6. DonnaleeQ 7. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 8. Jennifer in Indy

9. Bonnie in Va 10. Laurie - Laurie's Place 11. Quilting Gail

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