sticking to my action plan

Since my Friday "kick myself in the rear" post, I have managed to complete the remaining hand work on the August watermelon Button Up AKA Paint Chip Challenge and I pinned it that evening.  I also through my ancient Country Thread inspired aCQB row quilt on the table and pinned it up as well.

Both went to the stack and my current plan is to do a couple more donation quilts and then squeeze a personal project in the mix.  Still a bit of a reward even though it is STILL quilting.

Moving on to Saturday:
I had about half of the vertical lines to go on this Positive-Negative Puss in the Corner last seen in early June.   The quilting is finished and the binding/label applied.  One of the Belles had volunteered to do some of the binding and she will get Judy's two quilts along with this one.

No sooner did I finish the PIC when I grabbed another one.  Well, I had to admit that I had to look through the pile to find t he one I wanted to work on.  Since I told them with the backing OUT to keep the cat hair from sticking to the interior. I needed to review what was pinned.

I stared the horizontal and vertical locking lines on a group project Pineapple Blossom (one of the sew-in's last year) while I watched the Cardinal-Cub game.  Wow, 12 runs in one inning and 4 of those came with two outs.  That has not happened since clear back in 1926, for Pete's sake.  They also tied a record that dated back to 1936 with 7 or 8 doubles that inning.  It may have also been the game where Matt Holiday hit the longest home run in Busch III history at a estimated 469 feet.  If not, that was the night before.  Yesterday he hit another and Beltran had one right after that as part of a 7-0 Cardinal victory!   Go Cards.  They need this after a horrible road trip recently.

Sunday arrived and I had gotten as far as only two vertical locking lines to go.  By the time I closed up shop last night I had 14 of the 24 blocks done, leaving 10 for today.  Actually the blocks are going fairly quickly since I am just stitching in the ditch around the center square and flippy triangles.  It takes a bit of zig zagging and pivoting but I'm used to that.  One corner requires some double stitching but that is okay too.




Tomorrow is Bama Belles again.  I know that one of the girls wants me to show her how you do the join on the binding to close it off on the quilt itself.  The Pineapple Blossom can be the example one.  Beyond that, I am going to take one top from the 6 in the closet (Faux Log Cabin I am thinking) to pin. I can use one of those larger batts that Judy and I had pieced  together from the batting leftovers she donated.  I will also pin one of Linda C's that is in the church closet.  That will leave 4 personal projects and 4 pro bono projects to go in my OWN closet.

I am taking my machine though so I can piece a bit on the Prairie Stroll  I started at the sew-in.  The link shows what half the blocks would look like when sewn. You reverse the position of the not strip pieced sections for half the blocks.   I need to add the light strip to all 48 blocks and then the larger strip across the top and they will be done.  Easy chain piecing, really.

I think I'll go load up the car with most of what I will need.  Soon enough it will be lunch time. Good leftovers on hand too.   Yesterday was "spoil your husband day" as DJ got his all time favorite meal of turkey and trimmings though the only thing I used the oven for was heating up some Sister Shubert IQF yeast rolls.  Stop top, microwave and crockpot to the rescue.  Even the pumpkin pie was no-bake though my recipe calls for one egg, not two. Of course, now DJ thinks spoil your husband days should occur more often.  He can take it, LOL but I told him he does all right for himself.  I got two meal compliments two nights in a row----he doesn't tell me that often!   I think I'll go track down some ciabatta rolls though so we can have a turkey sandwich for one of today's meals.  No cooking tonight!

Lastly, here is Skyler keeping me company this morning and looking out the recently mowed yard.  DJ had discovered the fire ants making a mound under the splash pad by the downspout and had treated them to some ant stuff.  That is why it is sitting out in the middle of no where.  Well, I had some ants in here too on the pressing table.  Maybe after the scent of the homemade pressing spray--one recipe has a bit of liquid starch in it.  I have also seen them in the iron in years past.  Man, I hate those things!  With that dark green carpet in here, Skyler usually spots them moving long before we do.  I was whopping them pretty good with the checkbook when I saw them.

And sew it goes 'round here----hope you have a great day in whatever you chose to do.

donation flimsy

Thanks to the Bama Belles' group sewing date in October----and a pile of leftover 2 inch strips this made for a fairly quick "finish to flimsy".  You never know when you are working on a group project as there can be a bit of variance in one's machines 1/4 inch seam allowance.

I made sure to square the blocks up which I don't normally do on my own, "all me" generated on the same machine blocks.  Also if the cornerstones did not fit the strip I verified and/or slivered trimmed the sashing strips.  If I knew the sashing was correctly length and width and found the block was a tad undersized, I could fudge it in a bit.

This should be a fun quilt for a youngster.  There are enough novelty bits in there to make it be a treasure hunt, or use it for a matching game.  I have one block leftover which happens to be one that I made.  I pulled them out of the bag just as I had picked them up and tried not to get too "matchy-matchy" with the sashing.  I also did NOT look at the row ahead of it to make sure two of the same colors were near each other.  IIWII, no fussing allowed.

It is early in the day---earlier than I usually find myself at the machine.  I've been awake since about 5 a.m. and up since 545, thanks to a little black and white kitty boy.  I only had one row to assemble this morning.  I had done one on New Year's Day and the middle 4 rows yesterday.  What's next??  It is Friday and I just met my week's sewing goals, after all.  

I  left off with this half finished 3-D bowtie quilt in mid November as the last of the Belles Scrappy Challenge.  My notes got cold, LOL.  Where was I headed with it?
I am guessing  I need 35 more bowties if I don't want to do borders on it.  It would finish up at 42 x 60 and right in WTIL range.  OR 6 x 9 with 3 inch borders would accomplish the same thing.   HMMMMM -- 19 more or 35 more blocks minus the two on the design wall.  Stay tuned for this momentous decision, LOL.  I may get lucky and find that I left a pile in the project tote that just need to be seamed in the middle. 

ED. NOTE:  no such luck on a pile of blocks but what I did find was a pile of 33 blocks worth of groups of three and a big stack of 3.5 inch muslin squares.  Yep,  7 x 10 set after all.   I must have been thinking of the pile I have started for a QOV quilt, with that "only need to be seamed" thing.  I do love 3-D bowties and often consider them an on-going project. 

WIP Weds/ sew-in notes

Yesterday was the Bama Belles extended meeting, sew-in day. Jane and I were there early and found the room set up for an upcoming (or just finished?) holiday event. My guess is that they had some of the kids from the cottage they sponsor up from the Talladega Presbyterian Home---- or will have. There was a line of skirted tables right up against the wall where all the plugs are. That will NOT do for sewing day! I don't think we got those tablecloths back on exactly like they had come leaving time but we did our best to leave no traces of our being there. I appreciate everyone pitching in to get it that way.

I had encouraged the girls to work on their own project if they wished but we asked them to make a couple blocks using the Pineapple Blossom pattern. This bunch met and exceeded expectations, LOL. Since we were mostly sewing at individual tables I spread them out so the girls would get an idea of what it might look like minus the sashing and cornerstones. We are using a 4 x 6 set and the table is not wide enough but we got the idea....... and so will you, LOL.

I had scaled down the tutorial to 3 pages of print instead of Bonnie's 13 and passed those out a couple weeks back so the girls could cut the strips to size if they wanted or pull fabrics. I cut a pile of 3.5 inch muslin squares from the group's bolt of muslin so that part would be the same throughout the project. The only other instruction was keep them scrappy or a different fabric in each area of the block. Lois and I brought our pretty packed strip boxes. Aline shared some of hers as well. Bev cut strips to size and had them all separated out into 3 baskets. Wanna guess which ones we tore into first?

Lois insisted that she wanted to go home with an empty 2 inch strip box and she darned near succeeded, LOL. Even though I have a whole box of my own strips to use, I took a handful to use for sashing the top. By the time we were all ready to pack it in, we had 48 blocks done or enough for two tops. I have a stack of blocks to assemble as does Lois. In addition she had made a top at home but will add another vertical row, she said. Some of the girls took muslin and strips home with them to make more--homework. We'll just collect them as they show up till we hit 24 for another. Or the one after that, LOL.

We got Bev set up to quilt her Alabama quilt we helped her pin recently but mostly the 8 of us did blocks but she was really getting in the hang of those blocks too. Brenda helped by cutting in addition to cranking out blocks. That really helped especially when we ran out of muslin squares. I had thought I had cut plenty before hand!

Of course no sew-in is complete without good food and fellowship. That we have in spades!

Mostly I finished up the 7 blocks I had partially done from the last time I made any Pineapple Blossom Blocks but I made a couple more too. Then I got back to my Faux Log Cabin blocks from Pat's FAB par-tay. Monday I had done the chain piecing on the 1st and 2nd column of the blocks. Yesterday I was the last one to put my machine up because I had just a few more of that stack of 35 to seam! I just tossed them in the project box so I wouldn't hold up the clean up detail. They still need to be pressed and then joined.

I have an uneven number so will probably go with the Straight Furrows set. That version is easier to quilt too for a stitch in the ditcher like me. Of course I still have bunch of strips cut to size so the question will be: do I stash those strips BACK into the appropriate strip containers? Or do I make a few Picket blocks (not that I would use THOSE piecing techniques!) or Star Struck Or how about Strip Joint ( ctrl+F GE134) or Buzz Saw blocks which are pretty similar.

Obviously we need to come up with some ideas of how to use our cut strips for the next sew-in day we have in the spring! Bright Hopes maybe??

My car had to go into the shop today---the heat stays on no matter where you set the dials, even on vent. Apparently an intermittent problem because something shut in there and the vent was shooting cool air just as we approached the shop but it did that the other day when DJ checked it too. Anyway, the guys just called and said it could one of two things, about 400 bucks in labor and maybe Friday before we can pick it up. Thankfully, next week is the crazy busy week for me and I will need my wheels! Plenty of time to sew, right? Well, right after I do a little job that DJ normally does for me, that is.

Hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping by------