A finish and 2 new starts

So far this year I’m even. I’ve finished 2 hand stitching projects and started two new ones. This is the latest finish - my East to West compasses. It has jumped the queue for quilting and will go onto the machine as soon as the customer quilt that is on there now is finished. I’m not quite sure how it will get quilted as of yet. I’m hoping inspiration will hit before I get there.
A group of us from the guild have decided to challenge ourselves to doing another Willyne Hammerstein quilt with the goal of finishing before the next quilt show. I’ve actually chosen two which are the new starts I mentioned. I’ve always wanted to do her quilt Good Times Bad Times out of her first book. It is made up entirely of 60 degree triangles in 3 different sizes. I’ve been wanting to get back into the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and this seemed a really good quilt to make that way. I’ve decided to take the colour of the month and pair it with its complement when making the blocks. This month’s colour was red, so I’ve paired it with a light green. I’ve figured out how many of the basic blocks I need and have divided that by 10 since that is usually the number of colours put out in the challenge. I need six of the small triangle blocks per colour and 4 of the large triangle blocks per colour. I’ve mixed up the placement of the main colour and the background colours to increase the visual variety.
And then the other project I started is out of Willyne’s third book and is called Battle of the Stars. I did some fun fussy cutting with this first piece for it. I think this is going to be the centre star and the colours will be variations of what are in this. 
I’m linking up to Angela’s Rainbow Challenge today. And then on Sunday I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Monthly Goals

A few days ago I did a post about setting some goals for finishing off some quilt tops that have aged long enough on shelves in my studio. I think I want to do the same thing for some other areas as well. I have hand stitching projects that I’m working on or want to start that are also going to require some planning and goal setting. Once more, if I don’t write these thoughts down they will wonder off somewhere and get lost so I’ll write them down here. For this month I want to finish my East to West Compass quilt.

That has priority right now and is January’s One Monthly Goal. I have 3 more geese to sew onto the third triangle and then it can be sewn into the background. The other won’t take long. It should be done by this time next week.

Then a group of us from the London Friendship Quilters Guild have decided to work together doing a quilt from one of Willyne Hammerstein’s 3 books. We’ve each chosen a different quilt to do. Our goal is to have them done before the next quilt show. I’ve chosen mine and actually picked out a few fabrics for it as well. I don’t have any pictures as yet. For that matter, the papers aren’t cut yet either. But I did that deliberately so that I wouldn’t be tempted to start it before finishing the Compasses.

Another hand project I want to work on is called Connections. I put out a request earlier this year to guild members asking for 2 inch squares to use in the project. At the time I started it I was trying to decide between light grey or cream coloured hexagons and dark grey or tan coloured triangles. I settled on the greys. It got started and then set aside while I worked exclusively on Friendship Chain. I love hand stitching but it does have the down side of taking a long time to finish one project. This one doesn’t take long to make up the units. It’s the number of them needed that will take the time.

Then I have one more that I started a couple of years ago that is a scrappy sampler type using large pieced hexagons that will be put together into something like a row quilt.  I don’t have a picture of it. I went looking for the box that it is in but it seems to have gone missing for the moment. I’m sure it will turn up at  some point, most likely when I’m looking for something else. It’s probably up in the studio since I usually take it with me when we are vending at quilt shows. It’s a good project for demonstrating the technique.

So that is 4 hand projects I want to work on, although it will be down to 3 very soon. What I’m trying to figure out is how to work on them all at once. Do I assign days to them....... no that won’t work, I think that would be way too confusing. Maybe I can assign weeks to them. Two weeks to the Willyne Hammerstein project, one week to Connections and one week to the sampler. That way each one of them would get some quality time each month. If I make a concerted effort to make sure each one of them has its own container and all the stuff for each one is kept together, it just might work. To keep myself on track with goals I’m going to join up with the One Monthly Goal linky party each month. At the beginning of the month I’ll write a goal post, which is what this one is although the rest will be shorter. And then at the end of the month write a post about what actually got done. Accountability helps and it also helps in motivation for blogging more often which is something else I want to do.
In the meantime, I’m gong to link to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and to One Monthly Goal

Compass quilt

I’m still working on the compasses quilt and making good progress. The decision about the outer curved geese that I thought I could leave till the end wound up being made much sooner than I thought it would. It started out sooner because of trying to fit making the curved geese and sewing them on a couple at a time when doing up that first half compass.



It turned out not to work very well doing it that way because they didn’t line up around the curve as nicely as I wanted. But trying it that way meant that I had to decide on fabric and colour sooner than I thought. I ended up going much darker than I thought I would in the fabric choice and it’s a good thing too. The yellow/gold of the earlier round of curved geese would have gotten lost near the grey of the outer background triangle.



So now all the half compasses are finished and I’m working on the navy curved geese.

It’s a fiddly process, but enjoyable none the less. Once the 16 curved geese are pieced together I will turn under the inner edge of the geese and appliqué them down to the half compass. Then I reverse appliqué the finished half compass unit to the grey triangle. All of this amounts to a lot of very slow stitching by hand. I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.
And since it’s unlikely that I will be posting anything before Christmas day arrives, I want to wish all who read hear a very merry Christmas!

East to West compasses quilt

I met the goal I set last week of finishing up the curved geese units and I also got them sewn onto the centre of the quilt.



Saturday I cut all the papers I need to English Paper Piece the next sections. I’m working on the large points of the half compasses that will go around what is already finished. I’m using the same fabrics for these compass points as what is in the centre compass. Past that point, I don’t know if the final round of curved geese will also be the gold colour or if I will make them brighter. Right now I’m leaning towards not introducing any new fabrics or colours, but I’ll make a final decision once I get there. If they aren’t gold, they would likely be a teal like the medium points. I’ll be linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

Slow Sunday Stitching

I went to a quilt till you wilt day with the guild on Saturday. But I cheated. The day started at 9 am and was to go until 9 pm.  But I didn’t get there until 1:30. We all know my difficulty with mornings. Even so, I got a lot accomplished. I actually finished a quilt top. I started it at the quilt till you wilt day 2 years ago and then it sat untouched for the most part, until today. It’s an I Spy quilt for our grand daughter Abbie. It just might be done in time for her birthday in January. It needs a backing put together for it and quilting and binding.

I also made up 6 Friendship Star blocks for the comfort quilts our guild makes. I don’t have pictures of those. After all that was done, there was still time to do some hand stitching. Two arcs are finished and the third well under way. This is what they look like up against the compass.

 I like it! They are stitching up pretty quickly. The last 2 might be done by next week and then I can start on the outer half compasses which will also have curved geese around the outside which will unify the whole thing. I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I’ve finished Friendship Chain, the top that is. It’s not quilted yet. I still have customer quilts to get done on the long arm before Christmas before I can load one of my own. In the meantime, I’m working on another hand piecing project. Last August I sewed up this Mariner’s Compass. I wanted to do more with this, as the finished compass here is only 16 inches. Not really big enough to do anything with it, besides a pillow, and I don’t need any more of those. So I played around in Electric Quilt 7 and come up with a design that I like. I’ve shared it before.  The colours aren’t the same as what I’m using, and the background fabrics are a bit out of scale, but the layout idea is there. I’ve gotten one of the curved geese arcs almost finished. The pieces are quite small, so they stitch together very quickly. I’m using English Paper Piecing to do these. The arcs will be reverse appliquéd into background triangles. I’ll be linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.