Weekly Review

Another busy week comes to a close! I've been enjoying reading all the comments and answers to my questions from those who have been Beating the Winter Blues Blog Hopping! Once I'm done here, I'm going to sit down and respond to all those who left comments.

Now to report on how I did this week on my goals:

Civil War Doll Quilt--DONE!

This WAS the Apple Core Block, but it's turned into a bit of a disaster! Charles told me it was a good thing I didn't make a whole quilt with these blocks! I traced the edges of the block to try and get pieces that would fit for borders. It just occurred to me that what I SHOULD have traced were the seam lines--then the curves would have been smooth (or at least, smoother!) I cut out some little flower appliques to try and hide some of my mistakes, but I think this little piece is either going in the trash or maybe I'll just give it to Laura to "embroider!"

3rd Row of Winter Wonderland Round Robin--DONE!

Orphans and Scraps Mini Table Runner--DONE!

March Mini Wall Hanging--DONE!

March Lucky Stars Paper-Pieced Block--DONE!

Cosmos Quilt--top is FINISHED and ready for quilting!

Overall, I haven't done too bad this week. One major project that did NOT get done was the quilting and finishing of the Martinsville Rose quilt. You can see it peeking out from behind the Cosmos quilt on the quilt frame! They'll both be on next week's list for quilting.

Here's Laura, right outside the quilt studio (it has an exterior door) with one of the grandkids. They live right next door and had her over to spend the night last night. She was having lots of fun playing with them today while I was busy sewing. It was beautiful outside today--warm and sunny. In fact, Laura ended up with her arms and face sunburned! We never got any of her 4-patches done this week, but I'm planning to do more with her next week.

Today is the birthday of one of my grandsons and he loves music and the colors gold and orange. So today I made him this triple-zip pouch, which I'll be filling with money and some goodies and giving to him tomorrow.

For next week, I hope to accomplish the following:

• Quilt, bind and finish the Martinsville Rose Quilt
• Quilt, bind and finish the Cosmos Quilt
• Finish my embroidery piece for the Blog Hop and make it into a finished project
• Cut out and start sewing the March Small Ugly Quilt
• Make Superman pillow or pillowcase for son-in-law
• Make pillow from hand applique piece
• Help Laura sew more 4-patches
• Write blog post about the evolution of my quilt studio and some tutorial-type pieces
• Decide on Easter/Spring wall hanging and table topper and get started on those

That should be enough to keep me busy for another week! Meanwhile, my sewing machine is cleaned, oiled, and threaded and ready to jump into action first thing on Monday. Until then, have a wonderful weekend--we'll Get More Done--next week!

Goals and a Giveaway

I'm fairly new at blogging, just having started this blog in January and you may guess by the name of my blog (and my personal info) that goals are important to me. And they are! If you take a look at this picture...

you may wonder just what you're seeing! This room, one we called "the workshop" was photographed during the summer of 2012. I looked at this room and envisioned it as my future quilt studio, much to my husband's chagrin! But six months later, it had evolved into this...

my current Quilt Studio! Quite a difference, huh?! (I'll be sharing more about the transition in a future post.) So, along those lines, I intend to have a focus in this blog on quilting goals--what our goals are, (and if we don't have any, how to set some), and how to go about achieving them, whether large or small.

I have a few particular goals for myself this year that I hope to be able to share with you:

• RULERS--learning more about how to use the ones I have, weeding out those I don't need, organizing the rest
• BOOKS and MAGAZINES--organizing them to be able to find what I'm looking for and actually making projects from the ones I already have
• BORDERS and BINDINGS--learning and applying new techniques (I've already made a scalloped border this year and tried making prairie points)
• PAPER PIECING--doing lots of projects on increasing difficulty levels to improve my skills
• FREE-MOTION-QUILTING--practice, practice, practice on both my sewing machine and longarm machine
• CIRCLES and CURVES--trying different blocks and techniques to be able to make smooth curves
• APPLIQUE--continue working on adding applique to projects and using various methods of attaching applique pieces to a foundation

If you might be interested in following along with some of what I'll be doing, feel free to become a follower and I'll do my best to make your visits to my blog worth your time.

I'm participating in the Beat the Winter Blues Quilters Blog Hop Party and the big attraction of this blog hop are all the giveaways. Be sure to visit their web page over the next 7 days (until March 14th) and go to all the blogs that will be sponsoring giveaways!

For my giveaway, I'll be giving away 4 Fat Quarters in the fabric color and style choice of the winner. I'll be selecting 3 winners and it should be fairly easy for you to enter and have a chance of winning. I'll be keeping the giveaway open until Saturday, March 16th at noon. To enter, you just need to do the following:

Leave a comment (only one), and in your comment I would like you to tell me two things:

1) Of the blogs that you have chosen to follow (not the ones you started following to enter a giveaway), what were your reasons to decide to follow them?

2) How often do you read the blogs that you are following?

That's it! So please give your answers in your comment and I'll be choosing 3 of you to be winners!

Meanwhile, the day is still young, so there's plenty of time for me to Get More Done...Today!

Have a great day and enjoy the Hop!

Finished Projects!

Earlier in the week, I showed my little mini block table runner (blocks are 4-inches). I decided that I wanted to try making prairie points to go around it, since I've never made prairie points before. I found a couple of places with fairly general instructions and figured on using 2.5-inch fabric squares to make the points, since this is such a small project. None of the instructions that I read gave clear directions on how to do the corners, so my corners are a bit off and now I have learned how NOT to do corners. This little piece will help me avoid the same mistake in the future!

For the quilting, I figured a simple stitch-in-the-ditch around all the blue strips would be good and then I thought I would stitch a straight line from corner to corner through the middle of each block. In my typical, impatient fashion, I decided to do it without marking first, and fortunately, as you can see in the picture, it came out okay. For around the points, I just used my walking foot as a guide and sewed 1/4-inch around each point. So the quilting was simple, easy and got done fairly quickly.

This seems to be the week for minis! This is the block I made for my March mini wall hanging. I decided to use washable Crayola markers to mark the quilting design. But when I was finished and went to try and remove the markings, they weren't coming off very easily! I had never used them with batiks before and I suspected that something in the fabric treatment might have affected how it reacted to the markers. So I quickly added the binding and threw it in the wash with some laundry. I was so relieved when it came out without the markings!

And now it makes such a lovely addition to my quilt studio!

Be sure to come back later today for my post about the giveaway I'll be having and to see what I have planned for the future of my blog. Until then, it's time to Get More Done...Today!

I'm linking to Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? 

and Find a Friend Friday 

Quiet Quilting Day

Today the sun was shining and even though it wasn't warm, it wasn't too terribly cold. And the next few days are supposed to be cold and wet! So Laura and I went for a 2-mile walk, something we try to do several times a week. We go at her pace, so it takes us about 45 minutes, a fairly big chunk out of the day, but worth it.

                                  

I was finally able to get down to the quilt studio in the afternoon and surprisingly, Laura didn't follow me, so I was able to get some things done. I finished the 3rd row in the Winter Wonderland Round Robin. This row is a Mock Crazy Patch. You cut 8 squares and stack them, then cut, shuffle and sew. The challenging part for me was that I was using flannel, so it became difficult to cut through the seams. I ended up pressing them in opposite directions and that helped a lot. Overall, it was a very quick and easy row to make. And now I'm caught up on this project!

I have a quilting calendar on the wall in my quilt studio (but I'm upstairs right now and can't tell which one it is) and when I saw the calendar quilt for March I immediately fell in love! I decided that a block from that quilt would be my March mini wall hanging. It's a paper-pieced block and I cut the pieces out on Saturday and then sewed them together this afternoon.

The paper-piecing was fairly straightforward, but the directions for putting the sections together was not very clear. I think eventually I might make a small quilt using this pattern, so I made some notes to help me do a little better next time. (Those center points are supposed to meet, but you have to figure that part out on your own!) I still need to quilt and bind the block so I can hang it, but at least I've gotten this far.

So... this has been a quiet quilting day, but I'm planning to Get More Done...Tomorrow!

I'm linking to Fabric Tuesday and Freemotion by the River's Linky Tuesday and Sew Cute Tuesday

Weekly Review

Each Saturday I try to write up a review of what I've accomplished that week and then I make plans for what I want to get done the next week. I figured since I'm blogging about quilting anyway, I'll just keep a review of my quilting successes and my plans here on the blog. With that in mind, this is what got done this week:

• All the blocks for the Orphans and Scraps project are completed, sewn together and bordered
• The first two rows of the Winter Wonderland Round Robin are done and pieces are cut out for the 3rd row
• The Civil War Doll Quilt is quilted, trimmed and ready for binding
• All of Laura's 2.5-inch strips are sewn together and 5 pairs of strips have been sewn into 4-patches (these are in addition to some she had previously done)
• The leader/ender Dresden Plate pieces have all been pressed
• The Apple Core block is bordered and embellished and ready to be quilted
• Cosmos quilt rows are laid out and ready to start sewing together
• A new ironing board cover has been made
• The pieces are cut out and ready to sew for a paper-pieced block for March's mini-quilt

Yesterday I made the last block of my little Orphans and Scraps project. It's so tiny, but I was still able to fussy-cut a little flower for the center piece.

I woke up with a headache this morning and I did NOT need the stress of helping Laura sew more 4-patches. She was quite disappointed and kept signing, "Later!" hoping that sometime today I would let her sew. Then she spread some earlier pieces she had sewn all over the cutting table and told me she wanted to sew them together! Fortunately, she gave up after a while and went up to her room to watch t.v. But I think we'll be working on more 4-patches, come Monday!

This looks a little strange, but this is the 2nd row in the Winter Wonderland Round Robin, that I finished today.

The center section was supposed to have an embroidered snowman, but I just didn't want to take the time to embroider it, so instead I appliqued some fabric to it that had snowmen on it. It actually looks rather cute when you can see what it is! I think later I might add some embroidered snowflakes in all that white background, but this will do for now.

Here's my little Orphans and Scraps table runner. I think the blue really works well with it. I've got an idea for a different border I want to do, but I'll have to try it first.

Now that I've reported on this week's accomplishments, this is what I plan/hope to accomplish next week:

• Add binding to Civil War Doll Quilt
• Quilt and finish Apple Core block as a mug rug
• Make 3rd row of Winter Wonderland quilt
• Quilt, bind and finish Martinsville Rose quilt
• Quilt and bind little Orphans and Scraps table runner
• Make March mini-wall hanging
• Help Laura sew all strip sets into 4-patches
• Sew March Lucky Stars block
• Start putting Cosmos quilt together

As usual, I have a rather ambitious list! Chances are, I won't get everything done on my list, but I like to have lots of ideas to choose from, in case I get bored! And frankly, most of the projects on this list are quite small, so who knows what will happen?

Now it's Saturday night--time to give my sewing machine and quilt studio a rest, along with me and Laura. Then we'll be all ready first thing Monday morning to start Getting More Done!

My Number One Finish for March

For the month of March, I have lots of goals, as I've already posted. However, for A Lovely Year of Finishes, you're only supposed to report on ONE goal.

These are the rows of the Cosmos quilt that my daughter-in-law completed a few years ago. She got six rows finished and there are 12 rows altogether. I THINK all the blocks are done, but I'm not absolutely sure.

My main goal for this month is to finish assembling the top of this quilt and then quilt it and bind it. Think I can do it? You bet!

Goals for March

I'm really big on goals and it seems like I'm always setting goals, reviewing goals, or working on goals.

Here's what my goals were for February and how I did:

1. My mom's Egg Money quilt--completely finished
2. Modern Twist quilt--completely finished
3. Scrappy Bed quilt--completely finished and on my bed (we love it!)
4. Embroidery piece for the blog hop--in progress
5. Martinsville Rose quilt--if I had quilted it this week like I had planned, it would be done, but it's just sitting on the quilt frame, waiting for me to get to it; so it's being added to my March list
6. Bee Block wall hanging--completely finished and hanging on the wall
7. Triple Zip bags--I'd planned to make 2 and made 3 instead
8. Country Charmer Quilt-Along--decided it wasn't my thing and dropped out
9. February mini wall hanging--completely finished

The Get It Done Challenge over at Patchwork Times is supposed to be for 4 goals you want to accomplish during the month. Since I'm a notorious over-achiever, I just try to accomplish as much as I can! So for the month of March, my goals are:

1. Completely finish my Martinsville Rose quilt.

 2. Finish this black Cosmos quilt. This was a quilt featured in a Fons and Porter magazine that I bought the kit for and my daughter-in-law started putting together. But then she got a second job and now she's pregnant, so the project has come back to me. I think all the blocks are already sewn, but the top needs to be assembled and then quilted, etc. Hopefully it won't be too big of a project.

 3. This Breath of Spring wall hanging is almost done. I just need to attach the trims and put it on stretcher bars and hang it.

4. I made this needle-turn applique piece as part of a class I took at Quilt University. I'm not really even sure if I like it, but I thought I might just make it into a pillow.

5. I'm working on the embroidery piece for the Stitch Me Up blog hop later this month, so that HAS to get done!

6. Laura has sewn about 40 pairs of 2.5-inch strips together and then I matched them up with other pairs and cut them into 4-patches for her to sew together. She sewed close to 100 4-patches today before I told her I'd had enough! One of my goals for this month is to help her get a quilt top completely put together. I'm not yet sure how big it will be when we're done, but I know that Laura is more than willing to sew as many pieces as I give her! (She started giggling when I spread her 4-patches over her to take her picture!)

7. Finish my March mini wall hanging for my quilt studio. The main part of it has embroidery, which I've started, but I'm not going to work on it anymore until I'm done with my blog hop project.

8. Start my Nauvoo wall hanging. I've had the pattern for this for YEARS, and I've been collecting fabrics (it uses 15 different whites!) but I've been intimidated to actually begin. It's a paper-pieced project, so it shouldn't be too difficult once I start. I've found that often the most challenging part of any project is the decision-making (choosing fabrics, especially). Once the decisions are made, the actual execution is often a piece of cake. So we'll see how this one goes.

Those are my specific goals for the month of March. However, I would also like to start doing more free-motion quilting and get some practice with that. I've signed up for a couple of Craftsy classes and I'm looking forward to working my way through them.