A little Under the Weather

Although I have been a little under the weather, I have managed a little bit of sewing. I told my hubby that he can tell I'm not feeling well when I don't have the energy to quilt!

So what have I accomplished?

I got my Milky Way QAL quilt sandwiched and the quilting started! Since there is quite a bit of negative space, I am

quilting a bit more densely than I usually do. 

I also finished 2 more sections of my Regatta quilt. 

It is hanging vertically on my design wall to save space but it will be horizontal with the dark blue section on the top.

I'm excited to see how the rest of my colors look. I'm following along over at Home Sewn By Us. 

I also made a few more blocks for my Temperature quilt. 

Each row will have 18 blocks across the quilt. The 1st row is complete but you can see how different the temperatures were for the 2nd row 

(these are Jan 19-24 temps.)

I'm quilting along with NeedledMom. 

My knitting & crochet club spent January making red baby hats for the "Little Hats/Big Hearts" project. We donated 60 hats for heart health awareness to a local hospital. 

I'm linking up to To Do Tuesday over at Stitch All The Things, FreeMotion by the River for Linky Tuesday, and Oh Scrap! over at Quilting is more fun than Housework.

PROGRESS!

Last Tuesday I showed you my spool quilt sandwiched and ready to be quilted. I also mentioned that I had finished the quilting on my 2 color bear claw quilt.

Here it is...now called Beary Sweet!

I worked backwards on this quilt, starting with and building the quilt around the backing fabric I had in my stash 

(probably inherited from my mom's stash.)

and using the book two-color Quilts my daughter gave me many years ago.

(This is the second quilt I have made using a pattern from it.)

This is my first finish of 2018! It finishes at 40" x 56" and will be donated as a charity quilt. 

My spool quilt is finished! 

This completes my Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2017. The scrappy little spools are all stacked in an organized manner on a shelf! 

The backing is another piece of fabric I inherited from my mom's stash. This is called Mumms the Word by Debbie Mumm. It has all kinds of sewing notions and   sewing needs scattered across the fabric. I also had a extra block I pieced in. I FMQ 'thread' in the color of each spool and woodgrain in the borders. This is my 2nd finish of 2018 and measures 36" x 43".  

I took some time to start piecing my Regatta Quilt (before I sandwich my next flimsy). I am following the QAL over at Home Sewn By Us. I had finally cut all my colored strips and some of my white strips and squares to get started piecing. I was so excited to get started! 

Section A complete!

These are the darkest of my colors and will actually be the first rows 

(not columns but I'm just temporarily saving room on my design wall.)

I also got my delivery (or at least most of it...one backordered 😞) for my Temperature Quilt which I'm following over at NeedledMom. 

Again, I couldn't wait to get started to see what my quilt will look like. One Square in a Square per day. I had made a spreadsheet to keep organized while waiting on my order but I think that I will continue to record daily the temperature high and lows. 

This will actually be the 1st row of the quilt with the darkest (top) square being on the left. January started very cold here, then a bit of a warm up with cooler temperatures following. This will be a fun quilt to track through the year! Head over to Needled Mom to see how different Mary's looks!

 One final update....I finally got around to building (with my hubby's help) a new design wall! It is slightly bigger than my old one. The blocks 'hang on' so much better! We followed this tutorial over at SewKatieDid. 

Here it is being put to good use!

I'm linking up to To Do Tuesday over at Stitch All The Things, FreeMotion by the River for Linky Tuesday, and Oh Scrap! over at Quilting is more fun than Housework.

A quick update

I'm trying to be better at updating my blog on my progress and projects. On my last post, I showed the 4 quilts that were in the flimsy stage with the Bear Claw sandwiched and ready for quilting! Since then, I have finished it. 

(with the exception of a photo shoot and a label)

I also sandwiched my Little Spool Quilt and have done about 1/2 of the quilting. 

I gave myself permission to work a little piecing on the 2018 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. January's color is light blues. I'm doing a Flying Geese block and some Scrappy Plus blocks. 

For this block I'm using this tutorial by Color Girl Quilts. 

For the Plus blocks I cut 3 1/2" squares and 3 1/2" x 9 1/2" rectangle and put it together in the basic 9 patch method. Instead of making the middle row 3 squares since I was using the same fabrics I choose to use a rectangle...saves on seam allowances. 

I don't have a layout in mind yet or how many I will need of each. Once we get in a few more months of colors I will figure that out. 

I finally gathered all the fabrics for the Regatta quilt by Home Sewn By Us. 

Here is my color choices.

I need to label the order and start cutting. I'm a little behind but very excited to start this one!

I am still waiting on my fabric order for the Temperature Quilt by NeedleMom. 

I have made a spread sheet to keep up with the daily highs and lows for my hometown. 

I'm linking up to SoScrappy ~ ScrapHappy Saturday and Stitch All The Things ~ To Do Tuesday. 

Status Report

I'm still working on finishing my 2017 challenge quilts and one charity quilt but I'm happy to say that all of them are now in the flimsy stage! The charity quilt is  sandwiched and ready for quilting!

This 2 color Bear Claw is from a book about 2 color quilts. It is 40" x 56". 

I used a different layout than Pat Sloan for my Grandma's Kitchen Quilt. It was a bit of a challenge to put all the blocks together as there were 2 different size bocks. This quilt will finish at 60" square. 

I added the setting and corner triangles to the Milky Way quilt but I wanted to make it bigger so I first added a scrappy border using more of the scraps in the stars. Then I added an additional gray border. This quilt will finish at 56" square. 

 I'm not a big fan of square quilts yet these 2 quilts just happened to end up with a square layout.

My little spools are all arranged neatly in the thread shelf. I found this fabric that looks like wood and used it to border the spools. I love this Little Rainbow quilt. It will finish at 36" x 43". 

For 2018, I decided to join the Rainbow Scrap Challenge again over at 

So Scrappy. I will also do a temperature quilt following NeedleMom. You can find more information here. 

I will also join in making the Regatta Quilt with Home Sewn By Us. 

Now to get quilting so I can start on piecing for my new challenges! 

Over the last 2 days...

I'm loving the extra time off before school starts again! It has allowed me to catch up on the blocks for Grandma's Kitchen Sew Along with Pat Sloan. 

The last block I made was block 16 out of the 25. I spent the last 2 days sewing the rest of the blocks. 

Block 17

Block 18

Block 19

Block 20

Block 21

Block 22

Block 23

Block 24

Block 25

Pat Sloan released each block weekly and she had a memory or story about her grandmas. You can read about it on her blog. It was fun reminiscing about my grandma and to remember the fond memories I have of her. 

Now to clear off my design wall to make room to put all these blocks up and make the filler blocks. 

Linking up to Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts.

I still have to do some research on QALs in 2018 before I choose where I will put my energy. It is always fun to join in a couple of groups each year! What will you join? I'd love to hear.

What happened while MIA?

For just about the last quarter of 2017, I went MIA from my blog. I keep saying that I'll get better at posting to my blog but I can't seem to find a time that life isn't busy! School has been busier this year from the start. 

I was doing a pretty decent job of keeping up with challenges and QAL's until November, then I was fell behind on all of them. 

However, I did get some quilting and other projects done during this time!

I did finish my 15 minutes of play quilt which is now named 

Thank Your Lucky Stars. 

In my last post, I had started quilting around the 20 different colored blocks and star points. I finished that quilting and started the negative space quilting. 

I quilted a swirl inside each star block and a braid between the blocks. 

The backing is a multi-colored print I found at Joann's. 

The binding is scrappy. The finished size is 54.5" x 68".

This quilt will be gifted to someone special.

I also made a gift for our nephew's baby boy. This traveled to Norway and was well received!

The blanket is fleece with a crocheted edge and the bib is made from a recycled men's shirt. The bowtie used scraps from a previous quilt. The pattern is found here. 

I spent a week in Austin with my daughters and SIL for Thanksgiving. My hubby and our oldest daughter flew down on Wednesday. It was fun to all be together. 

My DD2 has been learning indigo dyeing. Together we did a batch of tea towels and napkins. This is a fun but bit complicated process. I'm thinking of trying to do some fabric dyeing come summer and warmer temperatures.

Here are the folds we used.

My napkins.

My daughter's tea towels.

It was night by the time we finished the dyeing.

Christmas was around the corner and I needed to make my ornaments for the year. Based on a log cabin kit we bought while in Vancouver, I made these from mini wooden logs I found at a thrift store. 

I also made some hoop quilts for 2 special sister friends in my life. 

 The pattern for the gnome was found here. I made a slight adjustment to eliminate the ears. Hand embroidered, God Jul! (Merry Christmas in Norwegian)

I shrunk the pattern and added the tree from here. 

Another quilt that I made and gifted to a good friend was Flight.

This is a wall hanging quilt. Size 13" x 20.5"

The pattern is found on Craftsy.

I quilted around the plane and then I added some night sky constellations.  

And finally, yesterday I worked on my little spools for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and the last stars for the Milky Way QAL.

Blacks and browns!

All the little spools, neat and orderly...arranged by color. 

Acrux star in peach.

Deneb star in gold.

9 Milky Way stars!

I added a scrappy star with fabrics from some of the previous stars. 

I like this a lot however I ran out of the gray background fabric. I need to go and look/shop for a gray that will match. I don't remember if this was a Kona or...? 

I still have a few blocks to finish for Grandma's Kitchen.

Linking up to ScrapHappySaturday over at So Scrappy.

Thanks for reading to the end! I know it was heavy on the pictures and words but that what happens when you go MIA for a couple of months. 

In the next few days, I will be contemplating what projects, QALs, and challenges I will be doing in 2018! 

What will you be joining! I'd love to hear! 

Hope everyone will have a warm and prosperous 2018!