Stash report Week 1 and UFO number 5

 Well, we just got home from visiting with Noel and Laurie and Avery over New Years, along with Matt and Becca as well.  It was a really good time, but way too rushed. Three days just isn't enough time to fit it all in, but it was all that was available, and I'm so happy we had it. This grammy got to get in lots and lots of Avery snuggles, including one extra.
We were about half an hour away from their place, on our way home, when Scott asked me if I could check to see if the cell phone was turned on, just in case Matt and Becca needed to get in touch with us, as they were on their way home too. I said sure, as soon as I find my purse. Turns out, my purse wasn't in the car, but was back at Noel and Laurie's. in the downstairs hall, behind a box, which is where I had dropped it when we first arrived and were unloading the car. Somehow, it stayed there, and didn't get moved up to the room where we were staying. So, we have the first "oops" of the year. I read somewhere that what you are doing on New Year's day, is what you will do for the rest of the year. Does that mean I'm going to be scatter brained for the rest of the year? LOL. But, there was also lots of Avery snuggles today, and knitting today, and some travelling, and some blog reading, to catch up with all I missed over the crazily busy last couple of weeks. So that's lots of nice stuff to look forward to in the coming year, in addition to being scatter brained.

What I haven't done yet today, is any sewing. And there won't be any until I do something about that endless pit of chaos of my sewing room, beginning tomorrow. There isn't a flat surface that isn't covered with something, and the floor is starting to shrink, as it gets covered with stuff that no longer fits on any of the other flat surfaces. I can stand a lot of mess, as anyone who has seen my house and my sewing room can testify to. But, it has come to the point where I walk in there and immediately become paralysed due to the mess. So, my goal for the first couple of days of the New Year, is to try and at least begin to tame the mess. My UFO #5 might help with that. It is the Endless Chain quilt that I started a couple of years ago. The coloured sections in this quilt are actually string pieced from scraps, and that is one of the main things about my room up there that is so chaotic. I have to find a way to tame them, and the best way would be to use them up. So, I figure, once I get that place to the point where I can breathe, I'll sew a bit, clean a bit and sew some more. Anyway, this was originally supposed to be a stash report, wasn't it? It's an easy one:

Fabric in:              0
Fabric out:            0

I'm linking up to the first stash report linky of the New Year, at Judy's Patchwork Times, where there are others doing the same thing. I haven't looked yet to see what their numbers are like.

Design Wall Monday Dec 26

I just have a couple of  things on my wall. I'm Participating in the Bonnie Hunter Orca Bay mystery. I have a few of the step 6 Ohio stars done, and I took them to my wall, and started playing around with the elements we have so far, and I like what I see.  I don't know if this is what Bonnie has planned, but the elements arranged this way fit together, and I like the way it looks. This is a short post, since I have to work this afternoon, and I want to get a little bit of sewing time in before I have to go. I'm linking up with Judy Laquidara's Design Wall Monday and Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Monday

Sunday Stash Report

The last stash report of the year. Wow. I must say that keeping track like this has been quite fun, and quite educational. I've been wavering back and forth about whether to continue it next year, and I think I will.  I'll have some big added numbers for the first or second report of the new year though, since I took advantage of the end of the year sale at Thousands of Bolts But it isn't likely to show up at my door for a couple of weeks.
I'm sitting here having a bit of a pity party for myself. One of the big downsides to the health care profession is having to work the holidays. And this year, both Scott and I are working over Christmas. He's working 7-3 and I'm working 3-11. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely grateful for our jobs, but It's Christmas day, and I'm sitting here alone with my computer, feeling lonely and very sorry for myself. (sigh) The good news is that we have celebrating with our family still to look forward to over the New Years weekend. Maybe I'll do a Little more on Orca Bay. Anyways, enough of feeling sorry for myself, especially since there are a lot of people in worse situations than this. On to the numbers:

Used this week:                                              2.7 yards
Used this year:                                             154 yards
Purchased this week:                                   0 yards, since it isn't actually at my house yet
Purchased this year:                                    162.5 yards.
Balance:                                                        8.5 more yards in than out.

Close, so close to breaking even. Funny how that wasn't even the idea behind why I started to keep track, but it became something that I was interested in aiming for, over time. I was just curious to see how much I bought, and how much I used over the course of a year. The size of the numbers on both sides surprised me. I had no idea that I bought that much, or used that much in the course of a year.
I'm linking to the weekly stash report at Patchwork Times, and then I'm going to go put a few more pieces together for Orca Bay.

Merry Christmas, everyone

I want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas. I hope you have a blessed and happy time with family and friends, and that, most of all, you celebrate the birth of our Saviour and KIng.

One day when heaven was filled with his praises,
One day when sin was as black as could be,
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin—
Dwelt amongst men, my example is he!

Living, he loved me; dying, he saved me;
Buried, he carried my sins far away;
Rising, he justified freely, for ever:
One day he's coming—O, glorious day!

UFO challenge 2012

Well, I've gone through my lists of UFO's, and thought seriously of what I want to do in the coming year. I think last years list had too many complex, labour intensive quilts on it, and it wasn't anywhere near realistic. So for next year I'm going to change it up a bit. I'm putting in 6 that need to have the actual piecing work finished, and 6 that need to be quilted and bound. But the 6 that I've chosen that need to be quilted aren't simple pantograph, or meandering type quilts. They are samplers, most of them, and need custom work of some sort, which is where the challenge comes in. I've been putting off doing them for that very reason. I'm going to put this list on my side bar as well, so I can have a visual list that I can cross off when they are done.

1. Roll Roll Cotton Boll. This one has all the units ready to go together, But it needs more of the string pieced neutrals made. I think I'm halfway done with them. I was thinking of cutting some light colour plaids and substituting those for half of the string units, but I haven't auditioned it out yet.                                        

2.  Cactus Rose I love this quilt, but it finishes at such an odd size, 67 x 67 which is too big for any of my walls, and too small for a bed. And it wouldn't be very easy to add an extra border because, if memory serves me correctly, the edges are scalloped. or there are curved sections.  I am seriously considering not doing the rest of the borders the pattern calls for, but simply adding a plain border, and let the center of the piece be the star of the show. If I do that, I think it will fit on the wall at the top of the stairs.

 3. Grandmothers Diamond Ring I started putting this one together, and didn't like the quality of the muslin I was using, and never got any further with it. So, I'll have to rip out what is done and start over. I might have to order in some cream or muslin type coloured fabric for it, since I don't think white will work. Of course, I suppose I could get adventurous, and try tea or coffee dying some of the 20 some odd yards of white I have hanging around here. 

 4. Log Cabin Sampler It is a very dark and dreary day today, so the colours in this picture aren't quite accurate, but it's close enough. This one only needs borders, and I have enough of the reds and blues I used in it to do it.

5. Endless Chain. I would really like to get back at this one, if only to get the drawer of odd size bits and pieces and strings to be able to close.

6. Disappearing 9 Patch this pile of blocks needs to be arranged, and then sewn together. There are enough here for a twin sized quilt.

7. Spring swap, which was hosted by Shannon at Pieceful Kwilter a couple of years ago. There is a block in here from Australia, I think. This one needs quilting and binding, but it was waiting for my skills to grow. I think I'm finally ready.

8. Double Duty, needs quilting and binding. It's been waiting because I really don't know how I want to quilt this. I love feathers, but this quilt has a more masculine feel and I don't think feathers would fit it. I would gladly take suggestions on this one, if anyone has an idea......

9. Pieceful Kwilter BOM from 2010 needs quilting and binding. This is another one that was waiting for my skills to grow, and is going to be a huge challenge to do.

10. The Rose Log Cabin that I put together this past year, needs quilting and binding. I'm not sure yet what to do with it, but the might be a feather or 2 involved somewhere.

11. Another Sampler that was sponsored by the Midnight Oil website/blog, that seems to be no longer functioning. Again, it has been sitting waiting for ideas and skills. There will probably be a lot of continuous curves involved with this one.

12. The Round Robin in the Window that was done more years ago than I can count, through the online yahoo group Canadian Quilt Swappers. They used to be really active with lots of swaps and stuff, but it seems to have dropped off in the last couple of years. And again, this one was waiting for me to grow up. I haven't a clue what to do with it. Any ideas.............??

Wow, that is quite the lengthy list, and quite the long post, too. If you stuck with me through the whole thing, I want to thank you, very much. It will be fun to see, come this time next year, (wasn't there a movie by that name with Alan Alda in it? Sorry, I got side tracked), how much of this list is finished. I'm linking up to Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times 2012 UFO Challenge list. There are lots of other lists over there to read, Maybe even some as long as mine LOL!!

UFO challenge results.

So, this is my UFO list from last year


1. Hexagon Baby Quilt ............... finished
2. Double Wedding Ring ............ some work done on it, but not a whole lot.
3. Grandmother's Diamond Ring, from Judy Martin's Creative.... (I can't remember the rest of the title,       off the top of my head, and the book has temporarily gone missing in the disaster zone of my sewing room) I've been working on this as a leader and ender project, and it is ready to start going together................   didn't get touched
4. Freeze Frame ............ top finished, still needs to be quilted and bound.
5. Endless Chain ............... not much done on this one.
6. Card Trick Swap ............. finished
7.Roll Roll Cotton Boll ................ lots of work done on it, but needs lots more.
8. Cactus Rose ........... I haven't touched it. Mostly, I think it is because once it is finished, it is a really weird size, too small for a bed, but too big for any walls we have here. I am seriously thinking of putting some kind of plain border on it and calling it done.
9. Disappearing nine patch .................... half of the blocks have been made into a top, which still needs to be quilted and bound. The other half still need to be sewn together yet.
10. Crazy Curves ............. finished
11. Kitchen Sink .............. hasn't been touched
12. Cosmati Stars, this is only going to end up table topper size. I actually haven't had this one out of its box in quite a few years, so it could probably come in as the oldest of my UFO's.................................... hasn't been touched.



So, out of 12 projects on the list 3 got completely finished,  and 1 1/2 got to the finished flimsy stage. Five of them didn't get touched at all. Yikes!!! The year started out well with the UFO's, but then just kind of fizzled into nothing. I think it had something to do with a little baby boy named Avery, and his HUGE distraction factor. LOL However, I may not have gotten a lot of the UFO's done, but I did get a lot of other stuff done, for a total of 12 quilts completely done, which does add up to one a month, just not the ones I had on my list. *giggle* Now, if I add in the tops that got to flimsy stage  this past year, there are 5 of those. And this is all starting to make me feel better, since I've only added 3 to the UFO list this past year and 2 of those are more accurately works in progress, rather than the longer term UFO.  So, overall, I came out even.

Design Wall Monday Dec 19

I'm late posting this today, but I wanted to get some work done on Orca Bay part 5. I have a selection of the various steps, except for the red string squares, which, at the moment, at least, I am planning on cutting from yardage of some sort. When Bonnie gave the instructions for step 2, which involved 3.5 inch squares made from blue strings, she mentioned that "the direction of the strings adds so much play and motion!"  Well,  I found in my stash some large scale leaf fabric has lots of shades of blue, and lots of motion in it, so I'm planning on using that. I have found in the quilts that I've done lately, that I seem to make, for the most part, feminine, girly quilts, with some exceptions, of course. I am trying in this quilt to stay as gender neutral as I can. I was thinking, originally, that some of the border prints that are out there these days, would work in the place of the paper pieced stripes, but most of them are florally. I'm hoping to be able to find some sort of red stripe, to use in the place of the step 4 red strings. I'm linking this up to Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times design wall Monday linky, and also to Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Monday linky., where there are lots of other people participating in this mystery. And now, I'm going back upstairs to play with some more triangles. I have lots more to do.