October goals update

My October goal was pretty light and in hind sight, for good reason! Life just doesn't seem to slow down. My goal was to decide on and start the quilting on my 15 minutes of play blocks quilt. 

Unfortunately, I didn't make the bonus of finishing. 

I did decide on the quilting for my 15 minutes of play orphaned blocks quilt. In the 'made' fabric squares I decided to quilt each on with a matching thread color. I made a twisting log cabin pattern in each. There are 20 different squares so I had 20 different thread color changes. I also decided (about half way through) to stitch in the ditch around each star point in the color of the point. 

There is a lot of negative space in this quilt so I needed to decide what to do. In looking at the whole quilt, I decided to go back and quilt echoing squares around the 'made' fabric squares in the color of the square. Yes, it would have been more efficient to have decided to do this while I had the specific colors threaded but I don't always do things the easy way. 

I am currently working on going back to changing threads 20 times to finish this part of the quilting. 20 thread changes adds a bit of time to the quilting process!

I have a few of them done and I do have a plan for the remaining negative space with white thread! Inside the stars, I am planning a swirl or concentric circles and in the space between the stars, straight line quilting in a chevron pattern. IT"S GETTING THERE!

I did keep up with my RSC blocks and Milky Way QAL blocks and I'm only one block behind on Grandma's Kitchen. 

Also my charity quilt is almost a flimsy! 

I linking up to October Finish Link Up over at Elm Street Quilts. 

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Falling Behind

It is Fall and I find myself falling behind in my quilt alongs and challenges. School has been busy, we took our annual trip up to Door County, and the Chicago Cubs are in the playoffs. All these have contributed to minimal sewing time.  Yesterday I took a day off from school thinking I would have time to catch up but I found that I really needed to get some household duties done first. This  only gave me a couple of hours in my sewing room. 

I was able to complete my pink little spools yesterday 

and this morning I worked on my Milky Way QAL star called Sol. The QAL is sponsored by Blossom Heart Quilts.

These challenges/QAL will soon come to an end. Here are all the little spools together. All arranged neatly in rows with the purple and reds spools stacked. How do you arrange your threads in your sewing room?

Here are all the stars so far in the Milky Way quilt.

Now to get caught up on my Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along blocks and my October goal for OMG. 

I am linking to So Scrappy Saturday Parade of Pink.

October Goals

It is time to set some October goals! Since I finished my Sail Away! quilt, I can now refocus on my quilt using the orphaned 15 min of play blocks that I had finished the flimsy as part of my August goals. 

On Saturday (still officially September) this happened!

I found some time to sandwich this quilt and it is now ready to quilt! I'm not sure how to quilt it yet...should I match the thread colors to the blocks, use a variegated thread, or a neutral? What do I do in all the negative space? 

Decisions to be made! Ideas? 

My goal for October will be to make a final decision on the quilting and get it started. Bonus would be to finish!

I also have been working on a charity 2 color quilt. It is a basic bear claw block with lots of HST pieces. I found this technique that makes 18 2" finished HST and it really speeded up the process. 

Have you ever used this technique? It was new to me!

The papers did not come big enough for the large HST piece so I did these using a traditional technique.

October brings a new color for the Rainbow Scrap challenge and a new star for the Milky Way QAL. This month's color is pink and the star is called Sol. 

I am also keeping up fairly well with the Grandma's Kitchen weekly Sew Along. 

Here is last weeks block.

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal October Link-up over at Elm Creek Quilts.

We are heading up North mid~week to experience the trees showing all their glorious Fall colors! It is such a beautiful time! Hope we have great weather!

September Goals Update

I'm happy to say that I accomplished my goal for September! I needed to finish the quilting and bind this quilt.

I had started the quilting with the little sail boats following the tutorial by Lori Kennedy over at The Inbox Jaunt. I needed to finish those and then add waves to the borders following another tutorial by Lori. 

I bound this quilt with a blue and white fabric I bought last year while vacationing in the Pacific Northwest with this quilt in mind. 

Here is my finished Sail Away! quilt. I made this quilt with different nautical prints and other red, white and blue prints in my stash following the pattern called Nautical News by Busy Hands Quilts. I replaced one of the blocks with a sail boat block. 

I also added a paper pieced anchor block to the back.

It does feel great to use fabrics from my stash which I had collected over the years! 

The finished size for this quilt is 59" x 79"

Even the label is nautical themed!

I also kept up with the quilt alongs that I am following. See my orange blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and The Milky Way QAL here.

The newest finished blocks for the Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along are 

Kitchen Door 

Sunday Dinner

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal September Link-up over at Elm Street Quilts.

Block finishes

September brought a new color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge ~ ORANGE!

I was able to get busy this week and make a few mini orange spool blocks.

Only a few months to go before we put this scrappy quilt together! I will link up to Scrap Happy Saturday over at SoScrappy!

The other monthly QAL that I'm participating this year is the Milky Way QAL. I have been using this same color (for the most part) in this QAL as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. So this month's star is Betelgeuse and here it is in orange!This QAL is by Alyce over at Blossom Heart Quilts.

There are 3 more stars in this QAL before we put it together!

Finally, I'm been doing the Sew Along with Pat Sloan, Grandma's Kitchen. This challenge is weekly so it is a bit more of a challenge to keep up. Here are the last 2 weeks blocks.

This is Recipe Box. For this block, several alternate layouts were suggested. I chose this layout because it reminded me more of a recipe box. My dark fabric forms the box around the mint green fabric which actually has recipes written on it. This is from the fabric line Domestic Diva by Riley Blake. Link up here.

The 11th block is a appliqué block Peppermint Swirls. 

Pat adds stories of her grandmas in each pattern. It is fun to reminisce about my grandma! My grandma didn't have peppermint swirls but she did have candy! Reeses peanut butter cups were her favorites and she always had plenty to share with her grandchildren and great grandchildren! Link up here.

Are you caught up with your QALs?

New Goals

We had a nice Labor Day weekend camping and hiking in Devil's Lake State Park but now it is time to set some goals for September!

After completing my scrappy star top, I set it aside and started the quilting on my Sail Away! quilt that I completed the top for in 2016.  

Sandwiched and with the quilting started, 

my goal for September is to finish the quilting and bind this quilt!

I'm quilting little sail boats in the blocks and waves will be in the borders. I'm following the tutorials by Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt.

Also, the color for September is ORANGE! I will work on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks making little spools in orange. This challenge is sponsored by SoScrappy.

I will also make the monthly star, Betelgeuse, for the Milky Way QAL over at Blossom Heart Quilts. 

And I will catch up and continue the weekly sew along over at Pat Sloan's Grandma's Kitchen. 

I will link up to OMG September goals at Elm Street Quilts. 

Go on over and read other goals and give some encouragement!

Do you set monthly goals?

August Finish

It's that time again when we share our monthly goal finish. My goal was to make something out of the 15 minutes of play blocks that were uncovered in my sewing room. In my last post I showed a pattern that I decided to use. I rewrote the block to fit the size of my blocks. I also needed a few more 15 minutes of play block to make a good sized quilt. 

The pattern for Fat Quarter Shop

I'm happy to share that I was able to finish my goal and now have a flimsy waiting its turn to get sandwiched and quilted!

I really like the scrappy secondary stars that are formed!

My other goals are always to keep up with my monthly QALs. 

My little spools for the Rainbow Scrap challenge in neutrals.

Polaris for the Milky Way QAL. 

And blocks 7 - 9 of the Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along!

Linking to Pat Sloan's Grandma's Kitchen.

 Linking up to OMG August Finish Link Up at Elm Street Quilts. 

It has been a good month for quilting!

It's all Natural!

August brought a new no color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge ~ low volume! My little spools look great in low volume but I've been using the same color for The Milky Way QAL and low volume doesn't speak well with night sky stars! Here are the cute little spools in low volume prints ranging from whites to dark creams. Looks like threads I would have in my sewing room!

Here are all the little spools so far!

 For most of the months, I made 5 spools but I originally was going to alternate the layout from 5 spools to 4 spools. Not sure what it will be in the end. I may need to make one more purple and one more red. They are just too cute!

I'll play with the layout when we get closer to the end of this year's challenge! I'm linking up to Scrap Happy Saturday over at SoScrappy.

So I had this dilemma that I mentioned above...low volume doesn't work well for night sky stars so I needed to pick another color for The Milky Way QAL. Way back in January, the color of the month was purple. The purple I used for my star was a very pinkish purple. 

So I decided I would make another purple star using deep purples. 

Here is Polaris!

The patterns and designs are available from Blossom Heart Quilts. 

The 6th block in Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along is Wash Day! I love this block and how it reminds me of the agitators on my grandma's and my mom's wringer washer.

I linked up to Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along over at Pat Sloan's blog.

Do you remember my 15 Minutes of Play blocks? This is what I decided to do with them. 

Using this pattern I uncovered in my sewing room, I resized it to fit my 'Play' blocks (which are 6" and the pattern called for 4"). I still used 2 1/2" strips to border the  'Play' blocks and make the star points which will result in the center of the secondary stars to be 4". I felt that there would already be plenty of negative space without making the strips larger. My blocks finish at 14". 

Stay tuned to see how my August goal turns out!

Time to set those August goals

It is amazing that it is already August! 

School here starts very soon, August 17th for the students in my district. I'm not ready for summer vacation to be over!

However, it is time to set some goals! 

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are having our kitchen renovated. The contractors are now finished (Monday was their last day) so now it is up to us to finish the little things we didn't contract out. Thankful that my hubby is very handy...it saves a bit of money! It will be my job to put everything back into the cabinets (we have been living out of boxes and the dining room table full of odd sized things since the end of June)..more organized and slimmed down than before! Hehe!

Here are a few picture so far (my kitchen isn't very big so it is hard to get good photos.)

Across from stove

As for my quilting goals, I mentioned that I was organizing my sewing room a bit and uncovered a bunch of 'made-fabrics'. My LQS had Victoria Findlay Wolfe come for a lecture and workshop. I wasn't able to attend the workshop but I did go to the lecture and trunk show! She is quite amazing! If you ever have a chance to see or hear her ~ GO! The lecture was based on her 15 minutes of Play book (before her QuiltCon win and her incredible work on double wedding ring quilts!) 

I made these blocks after I was impressed by her story and work!

So my goal for August is to make something out of these blocks. A month to play with scraps!

I will most likely make more blocks as there are only 8 rainbow colored blocks. I did find one partially completed low volume block and 3 more orphaned low volume blocks (foundation pieced) that my daughter made when she made this quilt. Not sure if I will use them. 

As always, I will keep up with the RSC, the Milky Way QAL, and the Grandma's Kitchen challenge blocks. 

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal for August over at Elm Street Quilts. 

What are your goals!

Check in

It is time to check in and post my goal finishes for July. 

My goal for July was to move my Go Cubs Go! quilt forward and I'm happy to say that it is done! I completed the quilting and binding and just last night added the label. Hopefully we will be able to use it in October this year!

I posted about the details here if you are interested.

 For the label I found a picture of a baseball online and used it as the background. Cute, right? 

I also previously posted about the Rainbow Scrap Challenge block and the Milky Way QAL block for July here. Goal accomplished!

In the beginning of July I mentioned that I joined Pat Sloan's Sew Along. So far there have been 5 blocks released. I'm using some Domestic Diva by Riley Blake that I had in my stash but I needed to get a bit of yardage (I found some online and also bought 2 coordinating prints).

I made this block out of order (it was the 2nd block released) since I was waiting for the brown yardage. You can see the 1st and 3rd blocks here.

The 4th block released. 

The first 4 blocks altogether. 

And today's block...

Proud to say that I'm all caught up! 

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal ~ July finish over at Elm Street Quilts.

and Let's Be Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts.

I'll be back soon with my August goals.