Retreat!!!

I think I'm ready!  I've spent as much time as possible over the past several days getting all my projects organized for a retreat.  I'll have 3 whole days to sew my brains out.  It's actually pretty exhausting, as many of you could attest to, but "sew" worth it :) ! 

Here are some of the projects and ephemera I'm taking...the wine and food is already packed in the car.  The laundry is in the dryer but there's only a couple of things I need from that load.  I just wanted it done so there would be less to contend with when I get back.  Are you like that too?  I like to get the house fairly clean and orderly so I don't come home to a mess so, the dusting and vacuuming has been done too. 

I'm looking forward to having lots of progress to report on my Bow Ties, Autumn Leaves and Scrappy Trips blocks.  I've got a couple of new projects to start too-or should I say stashed projects.  I've had fabric for a Twister quilt for a couple of years that I haven't gotten to yet and I found a project I want to make out of some flannels from my stash, too.  So, do those count as new or old projects? At least they aren't UFO's!  We had a great time last year and I got so much done I was amazed.  It was my first retreat like that and I was surprised by how much I accomplished so I packed lots of projects for this year.

In February I spent a couple of weeks out east visiting family.  I happened to be there when Nemo struck so I thought I would share a few pictures from that.   I hadn't seen that much snow in a long time!  I'm glad I was there so I could do the digging out for my 85 year old Dad.  If you caught up with me on Facebook, you already know we had to cancel his birthday party because it was the day after the storm...see the picture from that day...the one with his van totally covered in snow.

This is my Dad's back yard.  Isn't it pretty? Friday morning the snow starting.

By dinnertime it was coming down pretty heavily.

By bedtime we knew we were going to have a lot of work to do the next day!

Dug my way out to the car then took a break.  Cleared off the car, met a couple of neighbors, cleared out a path for fuel delivery and for the dryer vent.  Whew!  Thank goodness the plow guy did the driveway!  I also made a birthday cake for my Dad using his Mom's recipe! I made that while the snow was falling and had the crockpot going too.  We never lost power so we stayed inside comfy and warm....and I sewed and sewed and sewed.

Cake from my Grandma's recipe

Well, I leave you with visions of yummy cake swirling in your head.  Hope you're having a great weekend!  I'll be back next weekend with an update on what I got done on Retreat!



Old Things and New Things-January Report

As I’ve been rummaging through bins of old projects I found a couple that I think I’ll keep out for awhile.  My design walls are covered with several different projects so I took some pictures of them to share with you.  Here's what I've been working on this month:

Nick's T shirt quilt

This young man will get his t-shirt quilt soon.  I just have to add the border and finish piecing the back and then it will go on my long-arm to get meandered.  So, there are 15 of the blocks I've completed this year.

3" finished Bow Ties

I'm up to 103 Bow Tie blocks!  So, only another couple hundred to go.  When I can, I cut for them in groups of 4.  This has been a great Leader/Ender project.  28 of these were done this year.  I'm all out of "Ties" so I have get some more cutting done!



The last 4 Cats



Now I have 80 Cat blocks to put together with sashing.  The sashing will have friendship stars in them.  That would be a good Leader/Ender too, once I get that all cut.


Leaf Blocks

 These Leaf Blocks are my latest "discovery".  I made them with fabric from an exchange eons ago.  It took awhile to find my place in the project again but today I cut some more background and squares for the alternate block and I'm ready to make some more.  It will be at least a lap size quilt but I may have to get creative when I come down the home stretch if I want to make it bigger...I won't have enough background for that.   Not a problem; I'll think on that as I go along and I'm sure I'll have something figured out by that time.  BTW, did you notice that something is missing from these blocks???  There's no stem!  I stopped making them because I didn't know what I wanted to do about it.  Now I know...rip, rip, rip.  I'm going to take out the plain square and make a new pieced square with a "stem".  It won't take much time at all and I'll be very happy with them. 

Here is my favorite project this year:  I LOVE making these blocks.  It's better than eating potato chips!  I can't wait to see how each one looks when put next to the others and I can't wait to see it as an entire quilt.  Just jump onto the bandwagon and you'll have So Much Fun!  Bonnie's pattern is here.

Scrappy Trips!



Finally, here is a project I started so I could use some of the Kaffe's I've been hoarding:

Hidden Stars

The closest I could come to a name for this block is Hidden Star.  I saw a picture in a magazine but couldn't find the pattern or a link any where so I figured out what size I wanted the blocks to be.  These are 9" finished.  It goes together like a nine patch with connector corners to make both the star points and the white background.  So the base pieces are cut at 3 1/2" and the connectors are 2" squares. 

January has started out for me with lots of fun sewing.  How about you?  I hope you've had a good start to the new year too!

Stephanie

Out of Hibernation

Here's a quick look at one of the projects I've brought out of hibernation.  I had started these basket blocks back in 2005, if you can believe; and worked on them once or twice since then.  Then they got placed in a bin and put on a shelf and mostly forgotten.  I don't know what made me think of them now necessarily except I've been doing an inventory of sorts lately.  Mary Huey (www.maryhueyquilts.com) came to speak at our guild last week on the topic of UFQ’s.  She made some good points one of which, if I may paraphrase her, is that in order to Finish Something you need to know what you have. So, it got me thinking about some of those bins put away in the back of the closet; things I really want to work on some day.  Well, today is the day for this little project!



There are (14) 8" blocks and (14) 4" blocks in mostly 30's fabrics.  They are quite cheerful for a wintry day.  I put together kits for another 6 of the larger blocks which I hope to sew tonight.  I like to have things ready like that, don't you?  Since my goal is sew at least 365 blocks this year maybe this project will stand a chance at getting finished!

I hope you are sewing today too!

So Long 2012...and good riddance

Time for some new goals and some insights...

There were a lot of negative happenings in 2012 that make me glad to move on to another year.  The worst of which were the passing of my mother-in-law in April (following the death of my father-in-law the previous November) and a period of job uncertainty this fall with my husband's position.  It made for very sad moments and some uneasy what-ifs.  However, it helped to find some perspective and comfort from those around me.  In the midst of it all, I took on lots of quilting jobs with my long-arm and successfully quilted over 50 quilt tops.  Most of my own projects were just making blocks for various projects and Quilt-a-Longs which were very fun!  Not alot to show for all that sewing time yet but, perhaps soon.

So, that said, let me try to be more cheerful about prospects for 2013. 
1.  I very much enjoy and will continue to quilt the tops that people bring to me; I loaded another one today.  I passed the 100 mark in 2012 and could come very close to 200 by the end of 2013!  That would be AWESOME! 
2.  I want to learn some new freehand designs and would like to regularly allow myself the time to do so ...and to post the results. 
3.  I would like to post more frequently and so, starting with the quilt I loaded today I will post my customer's quilts as I finish them...or perhaps once a month like a mini-quilt show.  That would be fun, wouldn't it?  Could I reach my 100th post this year??
4.  I'm going to keep track of the number of blocks I make this year.  I have several BOM's in progress and I love being able to add another "tick" mark.  For instance, I need 80 Cat Blocks for a quilt in progress and I am really close to having them all done; I've made 66 blocks and only need 14 more.  Would you like to see them?  And, I've made (5) 5" blocks just for fun.  How about those?  Would you like to see them, too?  Maybe I could post them in groups of 10.  I'd like to make at least 365 blocks this year!
5.  USE THOSE SCRAPS!  That's the #1 fabric related goal this year.  I have enough fabric for a lifetime as so many of us do.  I know I can't say I won't buy any fabric this year but it makes me feel good to use what I have so most of the projects I have chosen for 2013 (see sidebar) have been specifically chosen to use what I have.  I want to make the Easy Street Mystery quilt  and I want to base it on what I want to use up but I haven't chosen my focus fabric yet.  So, anything that gets added to the list should come from stash first.  All those BOM's?  They're all patterns or booklets or on blogs I've collected and I'm using my own fabric for each and every one. 

So, what are your goals for 2013?  If I knew how to do a linky thing I'd ask you all to link up but, maybe you can just put it in the comment section....Oh, so I guess I need to add more computer skills to the list, too.  Geez...I better stop now before you regret coming over here!  But, thanks for stopping by and I hope to hear from you!

53 and counting...

Happy Labor Day! And, Happy Birthday to my Dearest!

What did you do today? I caught up on some overdue tasks and had some time for sewing too. I think I need my own personal Labor Day every month to try to keep up with things; wouldn’t that be great?

I started 2 new projects today so, 53 and counting is in reference to the number of projects I have “in progress”, which may not be entirely accurate, could be more…. Maybe I should say "53, but who's counting??"

I had a fantastic time at the AQS Show in Grand Rapids. I liked the set-up and I loved having new territory to uncover…we found several shops in the area that we would happily go back to so, if you went I hope you did some touring also. I came back with lots of ideas and some new patterns but those aren’t the ones I started on today. I’ve been wandering around different blogs and found a project that suits my growing pile of scraps to a T, it’s called Scrap Vomit and was hosted at www.Imagingermonkey.blogspot.com. At this point you would have to go to her tutorials page to find the instructions. There is still a Flickr page for it, too. Here is my first block made up of 49 2 ½” squares; it’s Block A:

The next project I started is a Quilt Block of the Week with Barbara Brackman. Surely I can do 1 block a week, right??? She started a new blog for it and you can read about it here: www.grandmotherschoice.blogspot.com. Here is my first block:

Finally, my most current project is the Great Granny Square Quilt Along:  I completed my 11th block today but I'm only showing 9 of them here.  I haven't decided whether to make more to stop here....

Hope you had a great weekend!

Stephanie

The Closet under the Stairs, part 2

Yahoo!   After a 15 hour day of shuffling, bending, crawling, sorting, and assembling the closet has been reorganized into the Ultimate Storage Area!  I can’t believe how much stuff I was able to get in there.

View down center of closet

Left Side -Note lighting

 Here’s what I ended up purchasing: 2 standard 3-shelf bookcase units; 1 set of tall wire shelves 18” deep (at right) and 2 sets of short wire shelves also 18” deep (at left).  I also bought 8 fabric cubes, (10) 16 qt bins and (3) 28 qt and (2) 66 qt bins.  Total cost:  $253.38.   I reclaimed from other areas of the house a tall bookcase, a couple more magazine file boxes, and a couple of other totes.

Bookcases-Right Side

ALL my magazines and notebooks and ALL of my little plastic drawer units fit in the bookcases with room to spare.  The wire shelves which are rated to hold 150 lbs per shelf hold most of my project bins.  One of my favorite things about the re-do was being able to separate every project into its own container.  No more P-I-G-S, baskets, baggies, piles, trays or stuff otherwise strewn about; they’re all gone.

 The Shelf Project has been dismantled.  I REMOVED that large shelving unit and one bookcase which visually cleaned up the space a lot. All of those projects have their own bin. 


I found a better spot for the ironing board when a plug became available again after removing the bookcase.

Since then I also found out I needed to LABEL every bin!  I used to know where everything was but when it gets moved around to this extent I had a heck of a time finding a couple of things.  I used index cards and a large black marker to label every bin because ya know I really DO want to make these projects some day!

Hope you enjoyed this little show and that it will inspire you to do something with YOUR stash!

Happy Organizing! Next step...SEW!

The Closet Under the Stairs, part 1

Another reorganizing project has begun!  I read something on someone’s blog quite some time ago and although the idea stuck with me I’m sorry to say the blogger’s name did not.  This gal had made a “Batt Cave” for all of her tubs and rolls and packages of batting and it was stored in a small closet.  I thought that was so cute and wished I could do something like that.  Well, many months later, it occurred to me that I actually do have access to a closet but I had kinda forgotten that it was even there because once again, it was a forgotten area.  Who knows what stuff actually lurked in there.  And, did I really want to know, let alone deal with it??  I guess the answer is YES.  I wanted to make better use of that closet and have my very own “Batt Cave”. 

 

The Stuff

 

 

 

So, out came everything from the closet.  Egads!  How did all that stuff fit in there?  Well, it fit because it’s actually quite a good sized space.

More Stuff

The Empty Closet

I measured all its wonky angles and cleaned up the scuffed walls with a Magic Eraser then I made a sketch and started researching my shelving options.  I’ve got all this stuff out in the middle of the floor so I needed to decide on something pretty quickly!  I bought some shelving units today so next time I will show you what it looks like all properly organized!  I can't wait.