Projects New and Old

Hard to believe that it's been nearly a month since my last post - this year is really flying by!  The past few weeks have been fairly productive - I've made progress on a couple of old projects and started (or prepared to start) a few new ones.  First, a finish - I finally completed my Vines and Flowers rug from Anita's class last November.

My Tulip Cross rug is keeping my frame occupied until I head to Janice's for a workshop next month. I've hooked a little on it but it is tough getting back into a project after a 5+ year hiatus. I really need to stick with it and finish that rug. It is still one of my favorite projects. If only there wasn't SO much border!

I also finished a few more 6" LeMoyne Stars. I am getting very close to having all of these blocks completed.   I'm thinking I should get on a quilter's list for February to force myself to finish up.  I always do better when I have a deadline!

I attended a local retreat a couple of weekends ago and spent all three days working on my Celtic Solstice.  My goal is to have the top finished before the next one begins Nov 28. I am getting very close - the center is together and I started piecing the borders over the weekend. My plan is take over the family room and get the borders on when the hubby heads to Florida.

I've decided to stick with Bonnie's colors for this year's mystery.  I thought I would go Civil War, but I like the colors she went with and seem to have almost everything I need in my stash.  Here's what I have so far:

I need to add a couple more fat quarters of pink and black.  I didn't have much of either in my stash, but I have all of the other colors well covered.  It's always exciting to be able to use up 10+ yards of stash!

I didn't spend my entire weekend in the sewing room.  On Friday night I drove down to Rolla to see Home Free perform.  It was a fantastic show - so much fun!  They are incredibly talented. I'm completely bummed that they won't be coming anywhere close to St. Louis on their Christmas tour.  I would love to see them again!

And speaking of Christmas (shudder!), I started another new project over the weekend - a block of the month tree skirt in wool. I've been wanting to make a tree skirt for years and this pattern is adorable.  It's wool applique, too - much more "do-able" than the Judy Niemeyer pattern I've been considering for years.  Here's the first prepped section...no sewing done yet:

It didn't occur to me until after I had pressed the fusible onto the wool that I forgot to reverse the pattern.  Oh well... No one will ever know, right???

Making Progress...

May was a crazy month - four trips in four weeks!  I am looking forward to a much more quiet June. All of the travel and work has definitely limited my sewing and hooking time!  The girls are home for the summer now, too, so cooking and general chaos has also been cutting into my "me" time....

I did manage to make a quick stop in Harriet Hargrave's quilt shop when I was in Denver. It was a nice shop with good variety. She had a nice selection of Japanese and Australian magazines and patterns - I resisted the urge to bring any home, but they were tempting! 

I had hoped to get to another shop while visiting Denver but between the insane traffic and crazy weather (daily hail and tornadoes) I decided the best place for my rental car was the hotel garage. I use the term "car" loosely - Avis couldn't come up with anything smaller than an Expedition for me....the perfect car for attending an environmental sustainability conference in a city with horrible traffic, right?!?

I have been making progress on a couple of projects. I decided to stop waiting for a retreat (I need one!!) to get back to working on my Orion's Star blocks from a couple of summers ago.  I have half of the quilt assembled and all of the strips put together for the other half.  Ann is absolutely in love with this one and is pushing me to finish it so she can have it for her room.

I've also made a little progress on my rug from Anita's class last winter.  I actually have more completed now than when I took this picture (I had high hopes of finding time to update the blog last week).

I have hooked the leaves on the left and am close to having the background filled in...then I can move to the other half of the rug not shown in the picture.... Did I mention that I need a retreat?

I had to break away from Orion's Star (much to my daughter's dismay) to work on a new BOM for our quilt guild this past weekend. We will be launching the BOM at our next guild meeting and I needed to get my sample completed. The pattern is an old Kansas City Star series designed by Eveline Folind. I did this one in Japanese taupes and hope to put together a second one in wool. Our guild president has done a version in William Morris fabrics and is working on a blue-work version....we are hoping to inspire lots of members to play along.

I am considering outlining the applique with embroidery a la Suzanne Marshall since I have always wanted to do that on a quilt, but I will focus on getting the wool version finished first.  Of course, that means I will have to resist the temptation to start my summer BOW when it arrives...first one should be here this week and I can't wait!

The Mystery Begins...

It's that time of year again - Bonnie Hunter released the first clue for this year's mystery quilt on Friday!  It took me a while to decide on fabrics this year.  I didn't really have the colors Bonnie is using in my stash so I had to come up with another combination that would work. After trying numerous combinations, I found inspiration in a fat quarter bundle that was given to me by a friend a couple of years ago. I had quite a bit of these colors in my stash, including more than 5 yards of a batik to use for background. I had to order a couple of yards to supplement the mauve colorway - my stash is a bit short on anything that vaguely resembles pink - but I was able to cover the rest (about 18 yards). Probably a good thing since these colors don't seem to be "in" these days!

I spent Black Friday working on wool applique at Nola's, so I didn't get started on cutting for the first clue until Saturday.  Nola's BF event was wonderful!  She helped me come up with a color plan for the new pattern I picked up from Anita.  I am going with a deep red background - I can't wait to get started on it!

I finished my cutting by Saturday afternoon and then sat down to start sewing.  I didn't get very far on Saturday - had to take a break to do a little Christmas shopping - but all was going well.  My finished blocks measured 3.5" square - whew! 

I resumed my position at the sewing machine on Sunday, determined to finish step one.  I felt like I was making fantastic progress when it suddenly occurred to me that the purple "recs" pieces seemed to be disappearing much more rapidly than the mauve and background "tri" counterparts. A quick mental review of my cutting math revealed that I omitted the fact that I needed two "recs" per "tri" in my calculation. Argh!  So I now need to cut 95 more pairs of purple pieces.I decided to save that fun for later in the week and just kept sewing.  I didn't get nearly as far as I hoped, but I made a lot of progress.

Rather than returning to the sewing room after dinner last night, I decided to spend a little more time on my Vines & Flowers rug that I started a couple of weeks ago with Anita White. The background did prove to be a bit of a challenge in color planning, but I am really liking the way it is turning out.  It is actually kind of nice to have a background to hook after spending a year and a half on a geometric!
 

It's such a bummer to have to return to work this week!  I would love to get back to the sewing room to finish up step one...I hate when I fall behind from the very beginning! 

Be sure to check Bonnie's page to see how everyone else is progressing on week one of the Celtic Solstice project!