I love productive days

I spent almost all day yesterday in my sewing room. What a wonderful feeling. And got so much accomplished. Crazy Curves is now finished and taking it's place as a snuggle quilt in the living room, for now at least.
      

I quilted sun like points in the square areas, and feathers in the curves. The binding is completely machine done, using a faux piping technique found here It is now my go-to binding for almost all the quilts I do now. 

I used a black multicoloured for the binding, and the same green as the narrow border for the piping. I love it. It looks good finished, and saves the hours it takes to hand stitch them down. It took about 3 hours, start to finish to do this binding, from cutting the strips, to the last thread being cut at the finish. Captain Picard and his crew kept me company while I did it. And that wasn't all I was able to do yesterday. I sewed the main part of Bear Tracks together, after fixing the pieces that were turned the wrong way.  And then I finished up the bear track squares that I need for the borders. Today, I'm going to see if I can get some of the border sections put together, and added on to the quilt. I've found a free clip art graphic of some actual Bear Tracks. I'd like to see if there is a way to somehow make a pantograph out of this graphic. I think it would make a really good quilting design, if I can figure out a way to do it out of continuous lines. Anyway, I'm off to see if I can't get in another productive day.

Stash Report Week 26

I finally have some more fabric use to report. I have caught up on all 5 of the customer quilts I had backlogged. One per day over the past week. Does that ever feel good, to have them done. I'll post pics in a separate post. The really great thing about being caught up is that I get to work on some of my own. I loaded on my Crazy Curves quilt yesterday, and got a really good start on it, before my tension went wonkey, which is my machine's way of telling me that we've had enough for the day. I also used up a small amount prepping June's My Tweets. So, the numbers:

Used this week:                           4.2 yards
Used this year:                            68.7 yards
Purchased this week:                   0
Purchased this year:                 95.5 yards
Balance:                                +26.8

I'm getting close to breaking even, and there have been no quilting fabric purchases since March. Not bad, not bad at all. And since no blog post is complete without a picture, here's one of the progress so far on Crazy Curves:

For more Stash Reports, go on over to Judy's Patchwork Times

UFO challenge

As I posted yesterday, in my design wall Monday post, I finished my UFO for February, Crazy Curves, I decided, after all that work, it deserved its own post to honour it. LOL. The pattern is Crazy Curves, and I really can't say that it is my favourite quilt in the world. All of the batiks were purchased quite a few years ago, when I had a dream of making a New York Beauty quilt.  After doing a couple of the complex squares for it, I realized that it wasn't going to happen in this lifetime. Hmmm, now would not be a good to to realize that I should have put the ones that I did finish into this quilt, would it? Oh well. Judy, at Patchwork Times has pulled this month's number, which is #1. Checking my list, #1 is the Cactus Rose quilt. I really, really want to get that one done this year, but, with the amount of work left on that one, to finish the complex paper pieced borders, it isn't realistic to think that it will happen this month, with grandbaby stuff to finish, and a backlog of customer quilts also to finish. So, I'm going to switch it out for the Hexagon Baby quilt which needs to be finished soon. Good thing the rules for this challenge are flexible.

Design Wall Monday Week 7

I've been working on my UFO challenge which was # 10 on my list of 12, which turned out to be my Crazy Curves. It's a good thing this number was pulled, since it is totally out of my style range, which is, I guess, the reason why I wanted to try it, last year.  I suspect, though, if I hadn't added it onto my list, it would have sat, all cut in pieces, in its box, unfinished, for years. I'm still not sure if I like it or not. I think I'm going to put a fairly bright green 1 1/2 inch border around it, and then a border of smaller crazy curves, aka drunkards path, blocks, that finish at 3 or 3 1/2 inches. I have a bunch of those cut, and ready to sew. There might not be enough of them to go around the whole quilt, in which case, I will put them on opposite sides, or around opposite corners, and finish with plain fabric of some sort. Once these are done, I don't think I'll be doing more. I'm mostly a speed, don't pin things, sort of piecer, and these things need pinning. I know there is a way out there to do it without pinning, and I've watched the video on how to do it, but just can't seem to master it. (sigh). So, I think that's what I'm partly going to do today. I might give myself a daily assignment of 10 or 12, to get them done. I have a customer coming this afternoon, to drop of a quilt, and I need to get working on my 100 block challenge squares, as well. To see more inspirational design walls, go on over to Judy's place at Patchwork Times It's always a great way to spend part of Monday.

Small bites work

Well, after having the last 3 days off, it's back to work for the weekend. I managed to get a fair amount accomplished yesterday, lots of batiks cut up, and a couple of test runs done for the crazy curves. They weren't to bad to sew up. After doing wedding ring arcs, and the curves in Cactus Rose, these were pretty easy. I got 4 more blocks done for the endless chain, and 80 pieces for Kitchen sink. I think I like doing small bits of things for limited times. Maybe I have ADD and don't know it. (giggle) Somehow, it feels like I get more done that way. On a non-quilty note, the wedding invitations are all done, and after they put in the cards that say where they have registered, are ready to go in the mail. That was a huge job. We bought do it yourself kits from Michael's, and, although it was definitely a cost saving, it did take a huge chunk of time, but it was fun too. Nicole comes for her dress fitting tomorrow, so I can get it finished this week, I hope. So far, we are managing to get stuff done with enough time to spare to prevent feeling panicked. Hopefully, it can stay that way. Anyway, time to go play for awhile before going to work.