Design Wall Monday, July 8, 2013

There is nothing on my wall today. I've taken down the 36 patch quilt, and it is stacked and labeled and ready to sew together. I just haven't gotten that far yet. I've been working this past week on getting the 3rd clue of the Lazy Sunday Mystery quilt finished. I can now happily report that I have all of the rectangle units done, and 5 out of 24 blocks sewn together. I'm getting very curious to see what the final product will look like.

And, my package from Thousands of Bolts arrived this morning with all of its lovely goodness. I have wanted to do a Lady of the Lake quilt for ages and ages. I've been seeing quilts lately with the colours red, yellow and grey together, and really like that combination, although I'm thinking I'll add a bit of aqua as well. So, these are the reds I ordered, some of which have the colours combined in them already.

Here are the greys, with some blacks thrown in. I'm not sure yet, whether I'll use the blacks or not. I'll have to see what develops, once I start it.












And the yellows are here. I have more in my stash to round these out.

 And then finally, for the Lady of the Lake fabrics, that is, I found this fun print with all the colours in it. I might use it in a couple of the blocks, and then also as a border. I thought it was so much fun.

 And then the rest of the box was filled with all kinds of neutral goodness, to replace the ones that have been used up over the past couple of months. You'd think that, since I've used up so many, I'd have quilts to show for it. Unfortunately, they are all languishing in the land of unfinished projects. So, I have promised myself no more starts until I have at least one finish. I wonder if I'll keep that promise? I did spend some time last night cutting more pieces for Meteor Shower. I'd like to say I'll get more cut today, but I have to work 3-11 today and tomorrow at the hospital. Considering it's 1:16 at the moment, and I have yet to have anything to eat today, let alone get my supper ready to take with me, and get changed and ready to go, it's not likely that I'll get much more done after posting this. So, I'll sign this off, and link it up to Judy's Design Wall Monday page.

Stash enrichment

I had to drive Scott to work this afternoon for his 3-11 shift so that I could keep the car this afternoon, since I need to pick Becca up after she gets off the bus and made the mistake of going into Len's Mills Store, looking for some kind of a star border quilting stencil. You know what's coming next, don't you? There was no star quilting stencil there, but, they were having their January clearance of fabrics, for 50% off the lowest price. So, a couple of bolts of fabric went into the cart for backings. And I found a gorgeous sunflower stripe that would make a lovely table runner.Then, I started thinking, always a dangerous thing to do in a fabric store, about the "My Tweets" BOM that I want to do this year. Each block is going to have a peacock-ish type bird in it, with fancy tail feathers, and I thought it would be fun to try and keep the body of the bird the same colour in each block, but have the tails different. So i picked up some purples, and yellows, and aquas, in different shades. Then, I did some more thinking, about a wall hanging that I'm doing for the coming grandson's bedroom, based on these fish since they are doing a tropical Hawaiian idea in his room, and so I picked up some fun fish body fabrics. I checked out of the store 21 yards richer. Such fun. Also today, I got a customer wall hanging done, and yesterday, I finished all the setting triangles for the Card Trick quilt. Woohoo! Tonight I am going to try to get the quilt all sewn together and start to think about borders. UFO #6 just might get done before the end of the month.

Stash report Week 2

At the end of last year Thousands of Bolts had their year end sale. I have 12 unquilted tops sitting upstairs, as well as the coming Ufo's that will be finished, and all will need backings. So, I took advantage of the sale, and ordered eight 6 yard cuts to be designated as backing. There are more coming from equilter as well. Now remember, I did say I'm doing this, not as an attempt to use only stash, but as a curiosity thing to see how much comes and goes, over the course of this year. I've decided that as a portion of a quilt is finished during the week, I will count it. So, this week, I got all the alternate blocks for the Card Trick quilt done. For the 100 block challenge squares, I'm going to figure them as if they used 2 1/2 inch squares, which adds up to 36 per block, for a total of approx. 6 inches  of yardage. So, on to the numbers:

Used this week:        2.6 yards
Used year to date:     3.2 yards
Added this week:      48 yards
Added year to date:  48 yards

And, those added numbers are going to go way up, as I start adding in fabric for all the luscious grandson sewing I plan to do. So much fun. I was playing with some stuff for him on Friday night, and got a couple of tropical fish cut out and fused. I'm going to be doing a wall hanging for his room based on these patterns from Fat Cat Patterns Judy, over at Patchwork Times hosts a weekly stash report linky. So, if you want to see how much other people are adding and using, go on over and take a look.

More fabric in the mail

I love, love, love, getting boxes of fabric in the mail. The website Thousands of bolts had a sale a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't resist. Denise, at Count it All Joy, had been making these hexies and that was my take off point. Most of the fabrics are juvenile, baby related, so I have a good take off point for grandbaby quilts. WooHoo!!! That fabric website has a colour matching tool, so I was able to get a lot of coordinating colours. I think they'll make gorgeous hexies, and lots of other stuff. They are all one yard cuts, so there are 26 yards of fabric sitting here on my living room floor. Yummy! Added to that are 11 yards of cream coloured texture fabric, and 6 yards for a backing, for a grand total of 43 yards of fabric that came to live at my house today. Good thing I'm not participating in the stash reduction challenges. Instead, I've added more to my personal quilting retirement fund. (giggle) I think though, come the new year, I'm going to start keeping track of how much fabric is coming into the house, and how much is getting used, if only for curiosity. But now, I get to try and find a place to put all this lucious fabric, and try to finish Amalia's 97x97 inch quilt.

Fabric in the mail

I have an online fabric store that I really like called Thousands of Bolts, only One Nut . It is a large site, with great selection, and even better prices. Every now and then, twice a year, I think, they have a sale on their fat quarters and short cuts. $1.35 per fat quarter, which, for us in Canada at least, is a fabulous price. In the stores here, a fat quarter starts at $3.00 each. The shipping is really fast. I put the order in on Friday night, and the package arrived today. In it were, backing fabric for Shakespeare in the Park, and 78 fat quarters. I went sort of nuts. Oh, and another thing I like about this store, they label each of their fat quarters with the colour, a serial number, and the manufacturer and the fabric line it comes from. This makes sorting them for putting them away incredibly easy. It seems all the books and patterns I've bought lately are geared towards fat quarters, so, I now have enough to last awhile. (giggle) So, now I can drool over them as I put them away, and make plans for the next to be started. Shakespeare is only a couple of hours away from being done, so that is my goal for today.

It's all Diane's fault

I went over to Len's Mills, a large fabric store and outlet. I went to get some boning to finish off the bridesmaids' dresses. That's all I went in for. But, I've been watching Diane's One block wonder journey

and badly wanting to start one of my own. They look sooooooo pretty, and, after ordering and reading the book, not all that difficult to do. The last few times I've been in Len's Mills, there has been this fabric that I fell in love with, but managed to resist buying. My resistance was weak today, and it talked me into taking it home. Diane's voice was in my ear saying, "this would be a cool fabric for a One Block Wonder", and she talked me into it, so, you see, it's all Diane's fault. (giggle) It is going to be  a challenge when it comes to arranging the whole thing. I probably should have started with an easier fabric. The book recommends fabric with no more than 3 colours, and this one has 4, if you don't count the black. But, it is just sooooo pretty. I bought enough to be able to do a border of it as well as piecing. All the strips are cut, and all the triangles are cut, so now all I have to do is sew. I have to work 3-11 this weekend, so I'm thinking I'll take the hand sewing on the dresses to work with me, and I'll play with this quilt before going in to work. Samantha's dress is 90% done, and would have been completely done, except, when she tries it on a week ago, it needed to be taken in at the sides, so I took it in. Then, she tried it on last night, and it ended up that I had to take out what I took in. I'm not sure how I messed that up. Andrea's is at least 50% done, and is ready for another fitting. Nicole's is 25% done, and I still have 5 weeks left. No problem. (help)

Fabric in the mail

My Mr. Postman brought me a lovely package in the mail. There are 12 lovely fat quarters, in shades of blue and brown. Matched up with more from my stash, they should make up into a lovely Yellow Brick Road. I have been wanting to do one of these for awhile, but didn't quite have the fabrics for it that I wanted. I don't know what it is about this fabric and colour combo that I like so much, but it really speaks to me. I find it very calming. Come to think of it, these are the same colours in my living room area rug. Well, I'm consistent, if nothing else. Andrea is coming this afternoon for her fitting, so I think I'll go and see if I can get a border or 2 sewn onto my freeze frame quilt before she gets here. There has been very little quilty stuff done at my place for at least the past week. I think I'm going into withdrawal. I have sooooo many projects I want to start, and others I want to keep going on, but, I must focus. Six and a half weeks, and 3 dresses. (sigh) So, I'll go play for the next couple of hours, and then, it's dress time.

It just jumped in the cart!

I admit it, I'm an addict. My name is Cathy and I'm a fabriholic. I can't go into a fabric store and not buy fabric. Especially when it is Len's Mills and they are having a 50% off of an already 50% reduced price. I couldn't help myself. the bolts jumped of the shelf and into the cart, got themselves to the cutting table, and somehow found their way into my car. What's a girl to do in a case like that? I couldn't send them back. They'd have been homeless. It's a good thing I haven't been participating in stash reduction reports. I'd be in serious negative, or would that be positive, numbers. It came to a total of 44 yards of fabric, at an average of $4.00 a yard. Gives an idea of what fabric prices are in Canada, when most of the fabric was anywhere from 60% to 75% reduced. This is the time I usually go out and stock up on fabric that would be good to use for backing. Paying for 6-7 yards of fabric for backing at the full price of $10-$15 dollars a yard is mind boggling. There's no way I could afford to indulge my addiction at those prices. So, now to go and get it all refolded so that it fits my shelves, and then maybe work more on the dissappearing 9-patch before I go to work this afternoon

It worked!

My list for yesterday worked. It was all finished, and then some. Got both November, and December's blocks done for the Pieceful kwilter  BOM.  The background in the pic looks black, but it is actually a dark blue. I had a blast a couple of days before Christmas, shopping online at The Thousands of Bolts website. They had a blowout sale, and I bought tons of fabric, none of it more than $3.95 a yard. So, some of it is finding a home in these blocks. Considering, in Canadian Quilt Shops, it is a challenge to find anything cheaper than $7 to $8 dollars a yard, and most of it at more than $12. 00 a yard, those prices are fabulous,and not to be missed.

So, today's tasks, go for walk, then come hame and do something fun until I have to go in for a 3-11 shift at the hospital.