Recent Travels & FNSI Update

The weekend before last I took a little mini-vacation to the Ozarks and Kansas City for some quilting and rug hooking fun. We started the long weekend down at the lake with a stop at Renee Nanneman's open house. Renee's studio is located just a few miles from our lake house but this was the first time I have been able to go there.  We were very surprised when we turned onto the road to her house and ran across three zebras and an emu.  We had to stop for a picture...

We later found out from Renee that there's a camel that lives there too. He must have been hiding as we never saw him.  

Renee's place is absolutely gorgeous!  The photo below of the outside was borrowed from her last newsletter as it never occurred to me to take one.

The studio is beautiful and there were gorgeous fabrics everywhere! I don't seem to have taken many pictures of the actual fabrics, but she had a great selection of fabrics (mostly or all Andover) and some great fat quarter bundles.  There were quilts hanging everywhere.

The windows along the back of the studio overlook the lake - what an inspiring place to work! It would be a wonderful place for a class or retreat but unfortunately fabric and quilt designing keeps Renee too busy to host those kinds of things so we will have to settle for open houses.

I have been admiring Renee's basket and tumbler quilts in her last few newsletters and was very excited to see both in person.  Although I am not a fan of pink there is something about the colors in these that I absolutely love!  I had to have the kits even though I have no plans to make another tumbler quilt.

Everything was staged so beautifully that it was impossible to leave there without a healthy addition to the stash....

After the stop at Renee's we headed over to Blue Springs/Lee's Summit for lunch at the Salty Iguana (the Iguana dip is awesome!) and a visit to Quilter's Station.  I managed to find a few more pieces for my stash there - all intended to become orange peels.

Then it was time to head to Janice's. This is definitely my happy place. The wool is gorgeous and Janice and Jim are incredibly wonderful hosts. 

Every direction you turn there is more beautiful wool!

I had planned to work on one of Janice's designs that I purchased a year or so ago but within minutes of arriving I had changed my mind.  Janice tempted me with an enlarged version of her "April's Floral" design.  It is 50"x 62". Yes, I have lost my mind! 

Janice has fantastic color sense. Here she is working with Betsy on a modified version of her "My World" design in which the cats were replaced with a horse.

Leah was working on a Maggie Bonanomi design.  She hooks really fast - she was even farther along than this when we wrapped things up on Monday.

Jeannette was hooking her "Cat of Many Friends",a fun design that she hooked with wool scraps she had collected from many hooking friends at camps and workshops over the years. He is so cute!

I got a solid start on my rug, even though it doesn't look like much when spread out over a giant pattern. I love the colors we chose! I need to get back to it soon so I can make sure I have sufficient notes to be able to remember what we decided.

I spent the rest of last week in New York after returning from Janice's and was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first BOW shipment from Primitive Gatherings. I was planning to spend the whole weekend playing with the new BOWs. Unfortunately, though, I came home Friday to find it hadn't arrived. It didn't come Saturday either.  I was SO disappointed!  I am hoping it comes today but that likely means I won't really get a chance to play with it all until next weekend.

So, because I didn't have my BOWs to play with I decided I would dip my toe in the water and make one - just one - Panama Pyramid.  I love hand piecing so much! I really don't have time to start this now but I don't think I can stop here. I think I need to prep a few more.

I decided to spend my FNSI and other weekend machine time working on my Allietare blocks. 

Amazingly although I wasn't all that inspired to work on these I managed to finish all the rest of the blocks and the setting triangles.  I'm ready to assemble the top now. Perhaps a good objective for my upcoming retreat?  I would love to check this one off my UFO list!

May Progress Report

I managed to squeeze in quite a bit of sewing time around yard work and cooking over the weekend and made a little bit of progress on several projects. I know it would make a lot more sense to focus my efforts on one project and have more to show for my time, but that's just not how my brain is wired!  It is a lot more fun to mix it up!  I'm pretty sure I have Quilter's ADD if there is such a thing...

I finished a few more stars for my Stars & Sprigs "do over".  This brings the total to 9 complete.  This was my APQ UFO for May (#7) so I can at least claim a little progress. There are 45 stars in the quilt and enough applique to last me 10 years so I've only made the tiniest of dents in the project, but it's a dent nonetheless!

Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Company posted a video on bow ties last week and got me all excited about working on my little ties again. I had lofty goals about how many I might be able to finish in a weekend but these little guys aren't all that fast to sew.  They are lots of fun, though, and I managed to add 30 to my total.  This is the pattern that calls for 3,024 blocks. I now have 72.  

Between the stars and the bow ties I managed to build up quite a pile of little scraps.  Rather than add them to the two draws of scraps waiting to be cut into "scrap saver" sizes I decided I would go ahead and do the cutting.  I cut everything up into 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3.5" squares as Bonnie Hunter recommends. I really need to start working my way through the backlog as it would be nice to have all of these scraps organized so that they could be easily incorporated into projects. If only it was more fun to cut!

May was a pathetic month for orange peels.  I might be able to add a couple to the official May total tonight but as of now the May total is 17, bringing the overall total to 118.  I recalculated the total number I need and depending on whether I want to have borders or not I am under or over 10% of the way to the finish line. I will need 1024 peels if I decide to use a border, 1296 if not.  I will be working on peels for a very long time!

I spent some time prepping more orange peels for June as well as doing a little more prep on my second album block. I decided that I wanted my tulips to be blue instead of red like the original block. 

I managed to get a couple of the flowers stitched last night and am hopeful that I can get this block finished by our June 30 deadline. 

That's pretty much a wrap for May.  Perhaps I will try to focus on something with a few less parts in June so I might actually get a quilt finished this year!

Weekend Sewing

I missed the sign up for the FNSI this month - by the time it was posted I was too busy to remember to look for it. And as it turns out I was completely exhausted Friday and didn't do a bit of sewing that night anyway! I did manage to get some time in the sewing room the rest of the weekend, however, and entertained myself by working on something "new".  Not really a new project, but I had not made any of the stars from my second start on my Stars and Sprigs project. I made nearly all of the stars in Kaffe fabrics before deciding it just wasn't my thing.  My Kaffe collection and my star blocks went in the guild's garage sale and are now part of someone else's stash.   

I suppose it is the effect of cropping photos on my phone, but find it very perplexing that photos posted in their "original size" can be all over the place in size!  Below is the beginning of my next album block.  This one is a little less intricate than the first one but will be tedious nonetheless. We set a target to finish this one by the end of June. Seems like plenty of time, but there are a LOT of little loops to applique!

And then there is the most disproportionate picture of all - the tumblers!  I managed to finish another row while working on my stars and added it to the other three. I was able to add another row after dinner last night so I am up to five rows now.  I still have about 50 rows to go and will not even come close to finishing before Bonnie announces the next one, but I am really loving it.  It is amazing how often I manage to get identical patches adjacent to each other when choosing positions and fabrics randomly but figure it really won't be all that noticeable when I have all 2000+ of them sewn together.

I'm hoping to get a few orange peels done this week.  No way I am making my target this month so my goal is to at least get out of the single digits. I can't believe May is almost over!

April Failures & May Aspirations

I think I can officially consider April an epic fail with respect to progressing projects. I even failed in posting my FNSI follow-up...and I actually made quite a bit of progress that weekend! I finished all of the alternate blocks for Allietare (which also happened to be my APQ UFO for the month).  I still need to go back and finish the other blocks and piece the setting triangles, but I am making progress.

I definitely can't claim nearly as much progress on my orange peel. I was doing so well for the first half of the month but completely dropped the ball the second half.  I can't remember the total now - less than 20 or there would have been another row in the picture - but I clearly did not get to my target of 30.  I will have to count them all again at the end of this month to update my tally.  So far I am behind for May but I am trying very hard to catch up.

And then there is this.  The 365 Challenge. The blocks have gotten more obnoxious difficult, I'm not entirely sure I'm loving the cream/tan and white combination, and I am rapidly losing my motivation. Here are a few blocks I finished a couple of weeks ago, I've only done a couple more since then so I am rapidly falling far behind.  I recognize that this isn't a UFO that I would likely never come back to if I get too far behind, so I will see how it goes the next couple of weeks.  I will give it until June 1 to decide if I am scrapping the whole thing or not.

On a more positive note, I attended a fantastic hand piecing workshop with Mickey Depre last week. She teaches hand piecing the way I originally learned it and it was so much more enjoyable than the method I tried at my last workshop. I am so addicted to hand piecing!  I worked on my class block every spare moment I had and finished it a couple of nights after the workshop. It is killing me not to start another one but I have too many other projects in the works. I love this block!

And here's the project that is consuming all my hand sewing time - my album quilt. I finally finished my first block (except for a little embroider that is still needed - my bird needs an eye!) and started on my second one. We set the target for finishing the second block at the end of June.  It isn't quite as involved as this one was but it will definitely take some time.

My APQ UFO for this month is my Stars & Sprigs. I would so love to get back to that one but may have to pass in favor of continuing to work on something that is a little further along. At the rate I am going I won't have a single finish to show for 2016!

Paducah 2016 (Plus Late FNSI Update)

I completely missed posting after the FNSI even though I made significant progress over the weekend and actually had something to share! I took the pictures and was all ready to post early Monday morning and then that nasty little thing called work got in the way. I worked like a crazed lunatic from very early in the morning to early evening trying to get as much done as possible before heading out to Paducah for Quilt Week (which ended up being more like altered work hours than an actual vacation, but I'm getting used to that...).

Anyway, last weekend I caught up on my 365 blocks (with the exception of the center - that's still on the "to do" list). Since this photo was taken I have completed another week of blocks. The instructions for assembling the center dark border were published last week so now I am motivated to finish the center so I can start assembling some of these little guys!

I also completed a couple more of the alternate blocks for Allietare so I could see it all together.  It's kind of a weird color combination but I think it works.  Gray now seems like an odd choice with everything assembled - but it was a mystery and you never know!  I decided to forge ahead.

So, decision made I decided to go back to finish the steps I missed leading up to the final block assembly.  I finally finished all the Santa hats!

Paducah was lots of fun this year.  I continue to feel that the show is being diluted - not that there weren't some really incredible quits there, but there were a few that you just had to wonder about...and there was really nothing new and exciting for sale by the vendors either.  Part of the problem was that I am still raw from the pain of the sewing room clean-out and was not inclined to purchase anything that required me to find a place for it, but I just didn't see anything I had to have.

I went to a lecture and took two workshops from Carolyn Konig of Australia. Poor Carolyn's luggage didn't all make it to Paducah. One of her suitcases made a grand tour of the US, heading from Dulles to Hawaii and then back to Dulles and then who-knows-where. It was still missing in action when I left on Friday. She had a couple of quilts and some of her supplies in the case that stayed with her but was forced to give her lecture and teach her classes without her notes and visual aids.  She managed to do a great job in spite of the challenges, however, and she did at least have two of her fabulous quilts to share.

One of the workshops I took was "Oh George!", a hand-piecing class based on the above quilt. Carolyn's technique is a little different from the way I learned and I was a bit slow, but I did learn a few valuable tips for working with curves and pieces like this quilt.

I think I managed to get about three of these seams sewn during class.  Those curves are a lot trickier to line up than straight piecing! I don't think I would live long enough to get a quilt full of these completed. I may need to cross this one (and the ones like it) off my list!

Third Friday Already?

Wow - April is definitely flying by!  The Friday Night Sew In sneaked up on me!  I plan to catch up on this week's 365 Challenge blocks but then hope I can get some time to work on something else. My APQ UFO for this month is my Allietare mystery and I really would like to make some progress on it.  I need to get a few more blocks together so I can see if my gray can stay or if I will be starting that half over again. I really, really hope they can stay!

If you would like to join in the FNSI fun, hop on over to the Sugarlane Designs blog and add your name to the list!

Click here to sign up!

I will be back after the weekend with a progress update - and hopefully a decision on Allietare!

March Quilty 365 Count

I was so busy finally finishing the unpacking of the sewing room over the weekend that I completely missed posting my Quilty 365 update! I was so sick of trying to sew amidst the chaos - not to mention that I needed to finish going through all the boxes to get ready for our guild yard sale in a couple of weeks - so I was determined to keep going until I finished.  It took the entire weekend, but I did it!  Five full boxes plus a few over-sized items priced for the sale and everything else put away.

Here's the "before":

And here's the "after" (not much on the walls yet - I'm still trying to decide if I want to hang some of my Cardinals memorabilia or leave them blank):

My room is still bursting at the seams but at least for the moment is a lot better than it was. It's borderline ridiculous - I have enough fabric to last me the rest of my life. I have decided that I need to exercise a lot of self-control in Paducah this year!

Back to the Quilty 365 update.... I was doing SO well - I was ahead a day or two on my orange peels for most of the month.  And then I had to travel.  Usually I at least get a little sewing done while I travel, on the flights if at no other time. Unfortunately both legs of this trip were not only short but extremely turbulent. I wasn't able to sew on either flight and was tied up in the evenings with long dinners the rest of the time. I did get to enjoy dinner at the top of the Hancock building.Our waiter informed us that we needed to go up to the ladies' restroom and see the view - they claim it's the best restroom view in the US.  Given that most restrooms don't have a view, I wasn't really sure that bar was very high....but it was quite a view!  We took photos to share with the men in the group - apparently there were no windows in the men's room.

We had to go back up after dinner to capture a night shot.

So I ended the month with 26 blocks (yes, one is missing from the photo...but including it really messed with my OCD brain).

March 31 was the 91st day of the challenge, and my total stands at 83 blocks. I'm cheating a little counting the blocks I completed last year, but it gives me hope that I might actually make 365 this year. I'm on track so far for April with 5 blocks completed as of last night. I'm determined to hit the target at least once!