To Do List for the Week of 03/05/2024

I was a bit off my game most of the week.  Fitting in physical therapy and some time with an ice pack afterwards has skewed my schedule a bit.  The medication is messing with my sleep schedule a bit and that has definitely taken a toll too.  I made it to the sewing room every day, but just didn't have the energy to focus for long periods of time.  All that to say, I didn't do so hot on last week's to do list. 

To Do List for 02/27/2024

1. 2024 SAHRR: Finish borders 5 and 6 - progress

2. Betty: Finish quilt assembly - progress

3. Meadow Mist Designs: Finish the February Clue - progress

4. Wild and Goosey: Make red and start purple blocks ✔

5. Indigo Way: Continue making blocks as leaders/enders ✔

I guess the week wasn't so bad.  There was a bit of progress on everything.  It just feels like things didn't go as smoothly last week.  It's a new week and I can hope that my energy levels and focus come back.  

To Do List for 03/05/2024

1. Stay at Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail): Finish border 5, work on border 6. 

There are just a few stars left to assemble for border #5.  I've cut the orange fabric for the blocks in border 6, but need to cut the black fabric before assembly can start.  I'll need 36 blocks for the last border. Thankfully I choose a much simpler block for the last border.  I have almost 2 weeks before the final parade.  I should be able to finish up both borders before then.  

2.  Betty (Meadow Mist Designs):  Finish final borders

Cheryl's pattern in the book uses the background fabric as the border, but I want a blue final border. So I changed the background border to the same size as the sashing.  I have several options for the final border, I need to decide which one to use this week and cut the strips.  Betty should be a finished quilt top by the next week (fingers crossed anyway).  I missed the quilt parade dead line, but that's OK. I will still end up with a quilt that helped reduce the scraps in my too full bin.  

3.  Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs):  Finish the February clue.

Just two narrow borders have to be added to finish off the February clue.  The March clue comes out on Thursday.  It would be nice to get the last clue finished before then.  

4. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter):  Continue making purple blocks

I only managed 4 purple blocks last year.  Fingers crossed I can do a lot better than that this year. 

5. Scrappy Butterflies (self designed): Print label, make binding

Trudy sent the quilt back last week, it arrived on Saturday.  I spent some time this weekend designing the label.  A flutter is a group of butterflies and that seems to fit well for this quilt.  The goal is to have a finished quilt by the end of the month. Doing a little each week will help me meet that goal.  

6.  Indigo Way (Bonnie Hunter): Continue making blocks as leaders and enders.

I'm going to need to make a few more components for the blocks. I made half the blocks to start with, but my final layout requires 2 more block A and several more block b and block b setting triangles.  Even so, I've been happy with the progress.  I might actually finish this one before this year's mystery starts up.  

This week's list is a little longer than last week's list.  But I'm almost done with the friendship stars, which take a lot of piecing to finish. Hopefully once those are done, it will be easier to work in more projects this week. Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric for To Do Tuesday.  

2024 Stay at Home Round Robin: Week #6

It wasn't a bad week in the sewing room, but not making it up the sewing room for a couple of days last week really put me behind on my ongoing quilt alongs.  I did make good progress on the 2024 SAHRR, but wasn't able to finish off border #5 this weekend. 

The vertical borders are assembled, the left one is sewn on.  I ran out of steam today after I got the right border cut to size.  The last seven friendship star blocks are over at the sewing machine in various states of assembly. Border #6 has been drafted in EQ, but I haven't yet gotten started on the blocks.  I have till March 18th to finish off borders 5 and 6.  If I don't lose any more sewing days, I should have a finished quilt top by then.  

Linking up with Kathleen McMusing for the SAHHR quilt along.  And with my normal Monday linky parties: Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts.    

Stitching Stuff: Week 9 of 2024

 

This week was much better than last week.  I'm not 100% yet with the leg, but getting there.  Still no root cause for the issue, but at least things seem to be healing up.  At any rate,  it was a good week on the stitching front. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days Feb = 29/29 days
• 15 minute days Mar = 2/2 days
• 15 minute days 2024 = 62/62 days
• Success rate = 100%

I've only maintained 100% success rate through March once, back in 2017.  So it will be a challenge to see if I can do the same this year.  

How are you doing at finding time to stitch each week?  

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

6. Chris in Canada 7. DonnaleeQ 8. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 9. Quilting Gail 10. DawnyK

11. Bonnie in Va 12. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 13. Dreamworthy Quilts

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

Week 104 Photo Challenge: True Love

We took two weeks for this challenge since I couldn't walk much of the week before and I hurt so badly, getting a photo just wasn't one of my priorities.  This last challenge was another one requiring a good deal of interpretation.  

I struggled a bit with this one.  True Love is serious stuff.  My Guy and I had a conversation about love languages a couple of weeks ago.  I don't think we each have just one, but a big one for both of us is acts of service.  When I was working, if I had all day meetings that meant no afternoon coffee, he was well known for walking in at the end of the lunch break with a large latte from our favorite coffee place. Even some of the men I worked with were envious (probably just because I had good coffee to start what was likely going to be a long afternoon).  I returned the favor.  If he had all day meetings, I'd bring him coffee before the end of lunch. For some reason it was more impactful when he brought it to me.  

Kate: True Love like Coffee in the Morning

My Guy makes coffee every morning, heats up my cup in the microwave and then usually brings me my first cup in the morning as I'm writing on the computer.  On the weekends we usually have the second cup of the morning sitting in our recliners talking about the news, what went on at work/home, how the kid is doing, etc. I guess that's our version of true love.  

My Guy's photo this week is more the traditional impression of true love. 

My Guy: True Love is Sailing into the Sunset

 

My Guy always seems to be in the right place at the right time. He is really good at really looking, seeing and capturing wonderful images.  His photo is my favorite this week.  These are wild Mallard ducks that hang out at the local lake. I guess they are going to go cuddle someplace for the evening, it's still really chilly here at night. 

Grad Girl doesn't date much, she's got so much going on right now.  But she does have someone that waits for her to get home and cuddles when she really needs it.

 

Grad Girl: True Love is a Cat

 

Grad Girl has had a couple of really rough weeks in grad school.  Queenie seems to get when it's really bad and gives her extra cuddles at night and in the morning.  

This week's challenge card is much more concrete and much less subject to interpretation. 

The challenge this week will be to get an interesting photo.  

February 2024 PHD Report

February always feels like such a shock after January. The first month of the year always seems to be so long and then you blink and February is over.  As the month is over it's time to review my progress (or lack thereof) on my PHD in 2024 and link up with P Designs USA for the February report.  The report is about where I expected it to be at this point, so no surprise on my part.

No finishes as yet and one new start.  Looks like I'm going in the wrong direction.  Maybe, maybe not.  There has been good progress on a lot of fronts, but not enough to get me to a finish. But I'm close. 

Scrappy Butterflies (self designed) was sent out for quilting early in February. 

  

The quilting is finished, I'm just waiting on it to arrive back from Trudy.  That should mean there is a finish in March.  That will beat last year when my first finish wasn't until September.  

I had hoped 2024 would be much better on the health front than 2023 when my back hindered my stitching time.  This year it's my leg.  Rather than not sew, I pulled out my long term embroidery project and took a few stitches. 

It's hard to see the progress, just a few stitches to finish off one clump of grape leaves and a few stitches to start the next clump.  

There was really good progress on making red blocks for Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) this month. 

Almost half the red blocks are finished now.  Angela at SoScrappy hasn't posted what the color is for March as yet. I'll keep making red blocks until the scrappy color for March is revealed. 

Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) had been my leader and enders project for most of last year.  The last block was finished about mid month.  

The sashing for this quilt is pieced, so I wanted to wait till the design wall was free so I could lay out the pieces as I sew.  There aren't so many errors if the pieces are taken from the design wall to the sewing machine.  For now, the blocks have been put up in the project box.  Not sure when I'll get back to this quilt.  There are several others closer to finished that will probably come back into rotation before I pull this one out again.   

Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) is almost back on track. 

This may be my favorite Meadow Mist mystery to date.  I'm happy with my fabric choices and love the medallion setting she used this year.  I just need to add another round of blue and white sashing and I'll be caught up with the February clue.  

Indigo Way (Bonnie Hunter) has become my new leaders and enders project. 

Back in January, I wasn't thrilled with how this one was coming together. Now that most of the blocks are finished, it's growing on me.  Fingers crossed all the blocks get finished this month.

My time out of the sewing room last week really hit my current quilt along projects hard.  But at least there was good progress on Betty (Meadow Mist Designs) previously in the month.

The first three rows are sewn together, assembly continues on the last two rows. I'm hoping I can get that done today and the borders on it before the deadline ends for the quilt parade. The deadline is tonight, so I'm going to have to hustle to make that.   

Progress on the 2024 Stay at Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail) has been pretty good up till this last week. But I'm not all that far behind. 

Half the blocks for border #5 are finished.  If I work really hard, hopefully I can catch up over the weekend.  

The new project this month is the block of the month for the local guild.  I went back and forth over doing this one, but I liked the setting, so I pulled some fabrics and got started. 

I just caught the error in the corner of the February block. So I'll need to fix that when I get started on the March block.  Both the background and the green on blue have been in the stash for awhile, so I'm glad to finally find a home for them.  

That's 8 projects with progress for this month.  Not shabby at all.  Betty and the SAHRR have been my priorities, but it's good to see that most everything else moved along pretty well too.  Not a lot of new blocks colored in on my progress map, but a few. 

Fingers crossed that the top line is all the way across by the end of the month.  Since the quilt alongs for Betty and the SAHRR end this week, I'll need to decide what's next.  Do I loop back and start in on the quilts that just need backing and prep before they can go out for quilting, or do I keep the focus on the current projects and move those to finished first?  Maybe a little of each?