November Already?

This year is definitely flying by!  I was watching The Chew during lunch yesterday and they were preparing Thanksgiving recipes. I'm not ready for the holidays yet!  But I am ready for this year's Quiltville mystery to start - I started thinking about colors even before Bonnie posted the fabric requirements this week. I found the fabric on the left - the batik print - while I was down in Springfield, MO this past weekend taking a class on the new Statler software.  I decided I would use it as my inspiration piece, and now that we have the final size of the quilt (75" x 90") it may end up being a border.  I pulled a few fabrics from my stash last night to play with color options.  I was thinking dark teal, light teal and coral:

The coral looks really orange in this picture - I don't think I like it.  I may need to go with a shade of pink/magenta or possibly gold?  I will try those combos tonight.

This week's big news is that I finally finished my Disappearing Nine Patch!  I started this quilt in 2007 as a block exchange with my bee friends.  It was the first quilt listed on my quilt projects tab when I started blogging back around 2008.  I am very excited to be able to mark it complete!

I also was able to get last year's mystery, En Provence, quilted this week. After my most recent class I was feeling pretty confident about using my machine and decided I would try another feather pattern (I tried one on the very first "real" quilt I quilted and it was a disaster!). I am very happy with how it turned out. I still need to prepare the binding and get it sewn on. I would like to finish this one before the next one starts if at all possible.

I'm heading off to Shipshewana for a retreat and classes with Di Ford next week.  I am really looking forward to learning from Di and am hoping to actually make a little progress on my Starlite Skies BOW outside of class time. This will be my last "fun" trip for the year.  It's time to start planning for 2018!

Aunt Emma & Other Progress

I'm still working to restore order after a month of crazy travel - nine trips in five weeks!  I have been trying very hard to stay caught up with Triangle Gatherings although it does really seem like Lisa is plotting against me...she seems to post new blocks the minute I think I'm on top of it. Here are blocks 63-74:

Lisa has said that there will be a total of 90 blocks so we are getting pretty close to the end! It will be interesting to see how she sets them. Several of the participants have added star points to them and they look fantastic.  I'm  not thrilled about the idea of adding that much work to a project that is nearing the finish line but I really, really like the look.  It would certainly make for a large quilt!

Baltimore on the Prairie was a lot of fun this year.  We had a great group in the Open Studio.  I spent the entire three days working on one SLAM block and sadly didn't even finish!  I still have a few flowers and leaves to applique and then need to add embroidery.  I love this project but progress is sooooo slow!

The last trip I took was to Janice's. My plan was NOT to start anything new.  I was planning to work on the rug that I started in July. My resolve was very short-lived....it faded as soon as I saw the new pattern Janice had drawn from an antique rug one of my friends found on Pinterest when we were together back in July.  She named it "Aunt Emma's Garden". Here's a really fuzzy picture of the original:

I thought it would be fun to hook the rug in just red and green.  I was able to get a fairly good start on it while I was there and love how it is looking.  My friend is hooking it in soft pinks.  I can't wait to see how they turn out and how different they look.

I was able to make progress on a couple of other UFOs over the past week now that I am finally home.  I finished hooking my cabins - photo to come later after it has been steamed - and quilted my Disappearing Nine Patch.  I tested my newly-learned skill to attach the binding by longarm and loved it!  It was a bit awkward at first but overall worked out really well and was so much easier than man-handling a queen sized quilt through a regular machine.

I have a lot of binding work to catch up on now...not my favorite part.  I plan to quilt my En Provence top next - I need to have that one finished before the new mystery starts at Thanksgiving!

April UFO Update

Wow - April really flew by!  I can't believe it's been a month since I posted. May is promising to be the same with quite a bit of travel so next month's progress report is likely to be a bit weak. I have plenty of progress (complete with terrible photos) to report for April, however!

I really, really hoped to be able to say that my Allietare quilt (Patchwork Times UFO) was completed this month but I finally had to give up and head to bed last night with about 20% of the binding still needing to be stitched down. I hope to have that one completed within the next couple of days, particularly since I have two more queen-sized quilts to bind and put sleeves on before our guild's quilt show in June.

I am happy to report very significant progress on my APQ UFO - my Disappearing Nine Patch.  I finished the top yesterday. This quilt was started as a block exchange with my bee and I added to it to make it larger.  The finished size is about 85" square. I thought about adding a solid border to make it a good queen size but I kind of like it without.  I already have the backing for this one so I hope to get it quilted soon.

Last week was my annual trip to the AQS show in Paducah. I know they are starting a second show this year but I am planning to abstain from that one as a form of silent (and completely unnoticed, I'm sure) protest. I find it really sad that AQS has expanded to so many shows that none are really special anymore. I know it is partly because I just don't need as many things these days...or am at least somewhat facing reality about how many projects I already have...but my stays in Paducah keep getting shorter.  This year I was out of things to do by the end of the day Wednesday and decided to come back a day early. With hotel rates increasing nearly 50% for nest year I may be down to a one nighter!

I did have a lot of fun while I was there, including taking a class with Nancy Mahoney. I fell in love with a pattern she published in the Jul/Aug 2009 Fons and Porter magazine and purchased a bunch of thirties fabrics to make it. When I saw she was teaching the pattern in Paducah this year I had to sign up.  I finally cut into the fabrics and made the first block.  The blocks are 16" finished so there are only 12 in the quilt.

I find using thirties fabrics really challenging for me. They are way outside my comfort zone!  I plan to get rid of them all when this quilt is finished.  I can only see doing this once!

I visited Lisa of Primitive Gatherings a couple of times during the week and was able to get an advance sneak-preview of the Summer BOWs. I absolutely LOVE them!  I can't wait for them to begin - I am definitely signing up! And speaking of Lisa and PG, I spent Friday catching up on my Triangle Gatherings blocks. She's releasing them so quickly that I am almost out of prepped triangles again. Time to starch more squares!

This month's UFOs are Disappearing Nine Patch (Patchwork Times this time) and En Provence (APQ).  If all goes well I may be able to get at least one of them quilted. At a minimum I will make a final decision on whether to add anything more to En Provence. It's an odd size - definitely a small queen. But I really, really hate borders....

Back to Reality

Sadly vacation has come to an end...  I feel like I accomplished a lot over the break, but I really wasn't ready to stop!  I am already anxiously anticipating the weekend so I can get back to the sewing room.

Since I was caught up with the En Provence mystery steps I had to switch over to other projects to fill my time until the next clue and reveal were released. I decided to work on my Disappearing Nine Patch. I finished making and cutting all of the additional nine patch blocks I had planned to make and started assembling the final blocks.

I may either need to re-think the size or make a few more blocks as I am finding a few challenges in the block parts that I swapped with friends for this project back in 2007.  I've found a few that were cut a quarter inch short and had to be discarded and am not completely sure what size I was thinking in the first place when I developed my block counts. I need to decide if I will add borders or not, also. My resolution for 2017 is to put better notes in my project boxes and to stop assuming that I will actually remember where I left off when I eventually get back to working on them!

I finished the applique and added embroidery to my SLAM basked block.  This is my third block and it took forever to complete!  

I will be working on an easier one next so that I can feel like I am making more progress.  This one was definitely a pain. I noticed after I took this photo that one of the basket pieces had popped out from under the bottom band so I had to do surgery on my basket to repair it. I am over woven baskets for a while!

I loaded my Allietare quilt on the frame on New Year's Eve and spent a good portion of New Year's Day quilting it.

I had a couple of glitches - mainly thread breaks - and really set myself up for failure by using a mostly black batik back (so everything shows!) but overall I am very happy with how it turned out. It turns out that lots of seams plus a batik back means you have to slow the speed considerably to avoid thread breaks so it took quite a while to finish.

I used wool batting and the quilt has a wonderful soft feel to it. I am almost looking forward to binding it (my least favorite part of quilting)!

The En Provence reveal happened on New Year's Day, so once I had Allitare off the frame I headed to the sewing room to start work on the final step. I am not finished with the piecing but assembled a few pieces to see how my colors look.

I think I am going to be happy with it. I saw one person's version that used solid squares in place of the last pieced blocks (those green/yellow/neutral blocks in the sashing) and kind of liked that look so I may audition that when I get back to it. I have already pieced about 40 of those blocks but will go with whatever looks best.  I also think I need to add another border as the quilt finishes at 86" square which is a bit too small for use on our beds.

I can't wait to get back to my sewing room - I am so inspired to progress existing projects and to start a few new ones. I'm already longing for the weekend!

En Provence Week Five

I'm a little late with this post - I've been too busy celebrating the holidays and enjoying the heck out of being off work for a week!  I actually had this week's step finished Friday night. I was surprised to see purple again!  When are we going to use those greens and yellows? I am thinking this week's step is going to require a lot of effort considering it in theory will consume 3.5 yards of fabric (assuming green and yellow are the only colors we use). I am looking forward to seeing the reveal.

I couldn't resist including a picture that my daughter took of my little guy at the vet last week. He's been having trouble with one of his back legs so we had him checked out. We learned that the poor little guy has a dislocated patella. It's seriously dislocated - all the way over on the side of his knee! The doctor said we could have it repaired surgically but that it would be pretty tough on him at this age (he's nearly 11) so pain management might be the better option. He seems to be handling it pretty well with only occasional pain so we will have to wait and see if it gets any worse.

Back to sewing... I have been working on my Magic of Christmas blocks and finished two each of two more. I still have quite a few more to finish.  They are pretty tedious with LOTS of pieces so I plan to continue mixing them in between other more mindless projects.

While working on En Provence and the MoC blocks I managed to finish another row of tumblers and then joined the two sections I had assembled thus far.  I still have a very long way to go but I love it!

I decided to get a head start on my 2017 UFOs by working on my Disappearing Nine Patch. I have just completed all of the nine patches and will head to the sewing room now to cut them up and start assembling blocks.  This one has been hanging around for a long time...started in 2007.  I'm thinking it deserves to be finished by its 10th anniversary!

Back to the sewing room for me!  Check out Bonnie's Monday Link-up to see how others fared with this week's nice and easy clue!

Piecing Progress

I'm starting to think that my brilliant idea to move my sewing room was overly ambitious.  I will share before and after pictures eventually to illustrate how truly insane the idea was, but at this point the new sewing room is definitely not in any condition to memorialize on the internet! I still have a very long way to go and have to admit that the sheer volume of stuff is intimidating. There will be a LOT of stuff in the guild yard sale this year!

I did manage to get some sewing done over the past couple of weeks. I have been plugging away at the Allietare mystery and now have 15 of the star blocks completed and one of the alternate blocks completed. I'm not sure if I really like my colors together but it is probably too soon to tell without more of the Pisa blocks.  I still have a bunch more "Santa hats" to make before I can make any more. I absolutely love the pattern and can't bear the thought of having to remake the pieces with the gray in them, but if I get a few more together and still don't like the colors I may consider it.  This pattern is too gorgeous to screw up with bad color choices!

I decided to take a break from the mystery quilt and dig out an old UFO to work on. My bee did an exchange of blue and white nine patches back in 2008 in order to make disappearing nine patch quilts.We exchanged enough blocks to make a lap quilt and most everyone else finished theirs. Not me....I decided that I wanted to make a queen-sized quilt and made a bunch of additional blocks. I thought that I made enough and just needed to cut them up and assemble them. And that's where the project sat for years. When I pulled it out to work on over the weekend I found that I needed about 40 additional nine patches to get the size I want. So I started sewing....

I still have more to make, but at least I made a dent in the deficit. I couldn't resist assembling a couple of blocks to see what the quilt will look like.

This is a very simple quilt but I can already tell that I will love it!  I used my Jackman's coupon to pick up the perfect blue backing for the quilt over the weekend. Now I just need to forge a path to my sewing machine so that I am able to use it again soon!