End of February Update

Well, I sure didn't get all my UFOs done this month - how about you?  I'm OK with February being a short month (a few days less of winter!), but it seemed to fly by.

I did finish one of my projects - this Girl Gang lap quilt started in 2002.  That's the only one of my UFOs that got done, though.

I got distracted by this other UFO:

I came across this in my sewing room and thought I'd better get it together before I lose all the parts and pieces.  I started this a couple winters ago, and the store where I got it has gone out of business, so I'm out of luck if I need more fabric for it.   It was already cut out and fused, so it just needs the stitching finished. (Oh, yeah, and sewn together, and quilted, and bound.)  It's going on the March UFO list!  I've made good progress on it already.

And I've been seeing all those cute row quilts from Bee In My Bonnet on everyone's blogs, so I just had to start that last week.  I'm months behind, but should be able to catch up.  Here's the progress so far:

This is in bright, happy fabrics so it's fun to work on in between my others.  I'm enjoying sewing this one.

So, here's the UFO list to work on for March (looks a lot like the February list)

1.  Finish quilting and binding the Times Three quilt.  The quilting is done, and the binding is made, so a couple hours ought to finish this one.

2.  Finish the applique on my Favorite Things wall hanging (also from last month).  I  did add a couple more things this month, but don't have a new picture of it.

3.  Hand quilt the wall hanging started on the cruise - no progress on this in February.

4.  Finish the Warm Winter Wishes Block a Month shown above.

Also, keep working on the Row Quilt, but that's a new project, not a UFO.

So that's my plan for March!  We have a guild sewing day on Saturday, so I'll no doubt have to start something new for that.  At least I'll never run out of UFOs!

A Great Week!

This was a great week, quilting-wise.  I won a giveaway on Amy Bradley's blog last week, and my prize came in the mail Tuesday.  This box came at the perfect time - we had another snowstorm Tuesday and opening this box was definitely the high point of my week.  Look at all the wonderful things she sent!

 This cute baby panel from her Bundle of Joy line, and...

the pattern for the Babies quilt, along with two fat quarters of each of these wonderful fabrics, also from her Bundle of Joy line from Timeless Treasures.  I just love the stripe, and the dots and babies are great, too.  This quilt is so cute, I think I'm going to have to make the big quilt, as well as make a quilt with the panel. 

Here's a picture of the full quilt.  This pattern is made with fusible web and machine blanket stitching, and the pattern has full size pattern sheets and very detailed instructions - it looks like it will be so much fun.  Thank you so much for this generous giveaway prize, Amy - I can't wait to get started on this.  Be sure to go to her website and look at all the fun patterns she creates.  She has a great sense of humor, and it shows in her patterns.

I bought another pattern by Amy Bradley a few years ago at the Chicago Quilt Show, and jumped into making it right away.  This is called Kitty City.   I had lots of fun collecting bright fabrics for this quilt.  Here's the top half:

  and here's the bottom half.

This is a pretty big quilt, so I couldn't get it all in one picture.  The cats all had cute names.  I think this one was Mona:

and this is Slim:

It's hard to see in the picture, but these are all machine blanket stitched with black thread.  It was so much fun to choose all the different fabrics for this one.  She has a quilt with dogs, too, that is really cute, and is on my someday list, as is a wall hanging of cows in swimming trunks. 

Mother Nature has cooperated fully with my wish to stay inside and quilt lately, with two snowstorms this week.  I'm ready to be done with that now!  Today was sunny and had a hint of spring in the air, despite the foot of snow still on the ground. 

I'm making progress on my February UFOs and will show some of that later this week.  Thanks for stopping by!

Eleven Short Years Later...

And this quilt is done!  Honestly, I don't know why it took so long, except I hand-quilted it and kept putting it away, for years at a time.   I believe this was a Jan Patek Girl Gang project, but I'm not really sure.  It looks like a Jan Patek pattern, though, especially the angel and houses.  I love this quilt now that it's done.  It's mostly flannel, and is very cuddly and soft with the Thermore batting inside (my favorite for hand quilting).  I wanted to bind it in red, but didn't have enough, and doubted I could find a good match after 11 years.  So I used a blue plaid on the binding and it turned out fine.  That red checkerboard you see under the quilt is another quilt, not part of this one!

This was my first February UFO to get finished.  I'm working on the others, but February seems to be flying by. 

On Friday I got to go sew with a friend, and I wanted to sew something that wouldn't require packing up my entire sewing room.  So I made this fun spool table topper by Kansas Troubles.

My friend had given me the kit for this for my birthday last fall, so it was great to be able to make it with her.  It was totally done, start to finish in one morning/afternoon of stitching. 

My sewing room may get cleaned this week.  After Christmas, I purchased some of the thread snips Primitive Gatherings was promoting.  I loved them, and they have disappeared.  They have to be somewhere around, unless the cat knocked them into the trash.  Anyway, I guess I'll have to put everything away to see if I can locate them.  I hate to have to replace them after only 1 1/2 months, but I will if I have to.  They were really nice and a very useful tool.

I must admit I'm getting jealous of people who are starting to enjoy spring!  We still have about a foot of snow on the ground, and pretty cold temperatures predicted for this week, so it's not going anywhere.  Spring will eventually get here, too, but it sure seems to take its time this time of year.  It will be awhile before I'm digging in the flower beds.

Thanks for dropping by!

February Goals

I'm glad to welcome February.  Winter isn't my favorite season, so I'm always happy to see January go.  (And February and March, too, for that matter! LOL)

Posting our goals does seem to help - I got all of January's goals accomplished.  I have plenty of UFOs left, so here are February's goals:

 1.   Quilt and bind this kid's quilt.  This will be a charity quilt from the pattern "Times Three."  The large blocks are about 9", so it was a good place to put some of my fun novelty prints.  I used mostly boy prints in this quilt.    I plan to free-motion quilt this one.  It's already basted, so I just have to quilt and bind.

2.  Finally finish this quilt, 11 years later!  I got it out in September when Bonnie Hunter had her hand-quilting challenge, and I've been working on it since then, off and on.  It's finally quilted, so just needs binding and sleeve.  I love the feel of this quilt - it's mostly flannel, and is very soft and cuddly with the Thermore batting.

 3.  Hand quilt this wall hanging I made on the cruise last year.  I love it, but didn't want to start another hand-quilting project until I had the last one out of the hoop.  This can happen now!

4.  Finish the appliques on my Primitive Gatherings Block of the Week freebie quilt from last summer.  I have all the elements Lisa provided for us fused on, and they just need to be stitiched.  For the open areas, we are supposed to personalize the rest of it with our own "Favorite Things".  This has been a huge challenge for me.  Drawing is not a skill I possess, so we'll see what I come up with.  I think I finally have some ideas, so I'll try to get them drawn out this weekend.  She covered most of my favorite things with the center, so I'm having a hard time with what else to put on here!

So, that's it for February goals!  It's bitter cold here this morning, still below 0 F, and windy, too, so we're inside again this weekend.  Here's Holly, wondering why I'm standing on the sofa to take pictures:

 I'm not going outside to get good pictures today, even if it is sunny and bright.  It looks much warmer than it feels.  Come on, spring!

Design Wall - January 28

Wow, January is almost over!

My Design Wall has something different this week - Little Dresses for Nicaragua.  This is my quilt guild's charity for this year.  We had a work day Jan. 19, which I wasn't able to make it to, but I did make my share of dresses at home.

These little dresses were really pretty quick to make, once I got an assembly line going for myself.  This is the small (2-4) size.  I also made two mediums, two larges and two extra-larges.   The pattern for these is free on the Nancy's Notions website.  There is only fabric, elastic, and double-fold bias tape involved in making these.

These dresses will be donated to a group making a healthcare mission trip to Nicaragua in June.  I hope some little girls there enjoy them.  It's hard to imagine wearing a sundress right now - we had several days below zero last week!

So, this is the fourth item of my four things to do for January.  I can start on my February UFO list a few days early.

Thanks for stopping by!

January Progress Report

I'm excited to make this blog post - I have lots of progress to show on my January UFOs!

My Column Quilt is done, and I love it.  This quilt is made using all scraps, and I used it to practice my Free Motion Quilting.  I'm really happy with the daisies in the purple stripes

and the leaf quilting in the green stripes.  I also love the sunbursts in the yellow stripes

and the Caryl flowers in the red stripes (those could use more practice, but I can live with them).  I don't love the feathers in the blue borders, so I'm not going to show a close-up of those!  I watched Cindy Needham's Craftsy class and got some nice tips, but I obviously need a lot more practice on the feathers.  I did try some different threads on this quilt.  Some of it was quilted with Aurifil cotton and some with Superior polyester.  I stitched in the ditch along all the long lines.  Much as I didn't want to do it, I have to admit it did help a lot, and it looks a lot better as a result.  I guess Cindy was right about that.  I got a sampler pack of threads from Superior, so I'm anxious to try out some of the other threads that came with that.

I've been thinking my machine bindings could use some improvement, so I did the Sharon Schaumber glue thing on this quilt.  The results were better, but still not wonderful.  I think that's something that takes a little practice, too.  I managed to get glue all over everything - this is obviously a technique that will require me to develop some glue skills!

So, anyway, this Column Quilt is done.  It's a very happy looking quilt because of all the bright colors, so I think its name is going to be Happy Go Lucky.  The pattern for this quilt is free here.  I had originally planned to use this as a charity quilt, but I've gotten pretty attached to it with all the hours of quilting (!), so I think I'll make a smaller version to donate.  This one is a twin bed size, which is usually a little big for charity quilts.  A lap size would probably be better, and I still have plenty of these scraps to make another quilt.

Boxy Stars is finished, too; quilted and bound and ready for a new home. 

I did a lot of FMQ practice on this one, too - that same starburst is in the sashing.  I did some loops in the star/box part of the block, and some flowers and leaves in the outer borders.  I'm happy with how this quilt turned out, and it used up a lot of 2 1/2" strips I've had forever.   Our guild is having a scrap workshop on March, and I'm going to show them how to make this quilt and another Bonnie Hunter scrap quilt.  The pattern for this quilt is also free on the Quiltville.com website.  After the workshop, this will be a charity quilt.

Annie decided she wanted to be a pillow with rick rack (thanks for the suggestions!).  I added a double row of baby rickrack, and found four matching red buttons in my grandma's button box, so this has antique buttons in the corners.  She looks right at home on my guest bed with Chatty Kathy (also an antique by now, LOL).  She was my favorite doll when I was little.  She doesn't chat anymore, but she's still in pretty good shape for her age.  This Annie stitchery was really fun to make, and Cleo and Me has an Annie for every month, so I may need to make some more of them.

So, that's my January UFO progress!  I still need to make the little dresses for Nicaragua - that workshop is coming up next Saturday, so I will get going on that then.  One thing about January in Wisconsin - it forces you to stay inside and tackle some quilting.  Our snow mostly melted, but it's pretty cold here now, so it's nice to stay inside and sew.

Thanks for stopping by!

Making Plans

Happy 2013 to everyone.  It started out pretty cold here - only -5 degrees F this morning.  I hope we don't do this all winter!

One thing about all the cold and snow - it makes it easy to stay inside and quilt.  My sewing room is nice and warm (thanks to the 13 lightbulbs in there). 

I'm going to participate in Carrie's UFO Challenge and Judy's Getting It Done Challenge.  Although I don't always get everything done, it does help me stay on task a little better.  With that in mind, here are my UFO/Getting It Done items in January:

1.  Finish quilting and binding Boxy Stars.  This is going to be a charity quilt, and also used up a bunch of older fabric.  A lot of these fabrics I recognize from when I owned a quilt store, which was from 1995-2000, so these fabrics are at least 13 years old, and maybe 18 years old! They still play together nicely, though.  I made a lot of progress on this today.

2.  Turn this cute Valentine redwork Annie into something - pillow, wall hanging, framed picture, Valentine postcard?  Anybody have any great ideas about this?  It's not too big, about 5" or so.  I won this pattern last year in a giveaway from Barbie at Cleo and Me.  I love to do stitchery, but frequently don't get around to finishing the stitchery into a usuable item.  That's going to change in 2013!

3.  Add borders, quilt and bind this Column Quilt.  This is another charity quilt to use up scraps.  My goal is also to practice my free-motion quilting skills on these quilts. 

4.  The fourth item, although not a UFO (yet!) is to make this pile of fabrics and trims into some dresses for Nicaragua using the Little Dresses for Africa pattern (free on the Nancy's Notions website).  A group from our town makes a medical mission trip to Rosita, Nicaragua each year, and our guild is going to make dresses and shorts for them to take with them.  We have a sewing retreat on January 19 to make these, so hopefully this is one item that will get done this month.  There is enough fabric here for at least 8 dresses, depending on the size I  make. 

That's it - that should keep me out of trouble for January!  Thanks for stopping by my blog.