Sneak peak

I'm working on Gail's Swoon quilt. She wanted an all over feather meander. After a few false starts, due to a thread colour change and a bit of ripping, here's what it looks like, so far. She's used a lot of fun and bright fabrics and it is a lot of fun to work on this one. 

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.

A slow relaxing Sunday

Today has been a fabulous day. It started with a wonderful sleep in, although that seems to be something I'm always doing. LOL! Early mornings aren't my favourite thing in the world. Anyway, like I said, a lovely sleep in, and a couple of leisurely cups of coffee, accompanied by facebook and blog reading. Then I decided to make myself a list of things I wanted to get done today. I wanted to bake some bread.
And here it is, a loaf of white bread and a loaf of 12 grain bread. After all, we have all that jam from last week. And there is nothing better with home made jam than home made bread. Each of those loaves are going to be cut in half, since they will go mouldy before Scott and I can eat all of it. The other half of each will go to Matt and Becca.
I wanted to spend some time sitting outside doing some stitching. Once the rain stopped, I was able to go outside and enjoy the warm air and the sounds of the birds, and stitch up this Sunbonnet Baby for my Grandmother's Choice block of the week project. It has been so long since I've done any hand stitching like this. I find I'm missing it. I think I just might have to did out my applique stuff and get back at it.

 I also put on that list that I wanted to do this week's block for Grandmother's Choice, but I haven't started that, just yet.
Then, I got to spend about 20 minutes with Avery on Skype. What a lovely little boy he is. They are at the beginning stages of potty training. Ah yes, there are definitely bonuses to being Grammy, and not having to do the potty training thing is definitely one of them. However, if they could be closer, I'd willingly pitch in with the potty training. But, even without them being here, I love being able to talk to him like that every week, and see him. And they are coming down for a visit in a couple of weeks, which will be so much fun.
Anyway, back to that list, I put on that list that I want to start the next blocks for Meteor Shower as well today. I'm going to do that as soon as I'm finished here. The other thing I need to do is my Stash Report. No change in it, at all. But I suspect that big order will be arriving sometime this week, so I'd better get some more cutting done, to balance off the incoming numbers.

Used this week:                                  0 yards
Used this year:                                  75.4 yards
Added this week:                                 0 yards
Added this year:                             131.25 yards
Balance:                                           55.85 more yards in than out.

I'm linking up to Judy's Stash Report and, for the first time in a long time, Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching

Sneak peak

After all the jam making of the last couple of days, I'm back at working on quilts again. This one is

Micki's disappearing nine patch quilt. She wanted an overall pattern of hearts and loops. It's about half finished and should be completely done by later this afternoon. 

And a good days work it was....

Except that it turned into two days work. But it sure was worth it. There are a total of 3 pints and 17 half pints of jam here. Eight of the half pints are a strawberry/orange combination, and the rest are plain ordinary but yummy strawberry jam. And from doing all this I have found that the way our kitchen is designed is perfect. There was a minimum of steps involved in doing this. All I had to do was turn and I could reach all the work surfaces. I loved our kitchen before, and now I for sure love it, because it works. This was the true test.

I also made a Strawberry Rhubarb Crunch which was a definite hit. Between the 2 of us, and Matt and Becca, there isn't any left. And then, there is a batch of Strawberry ice cream and a batch of strawberry frozen yogurt. There was enough of each of those to divide up into a 1 litre container each for Scott and I and Matt and Becca. It's a good thing we have them to help us eat all this stuff, or Scott and I would be as big as houses. LOL! So, now that all that is done, I can get back to working on quilts, at least until raspberries come into season. And then there's blueberries to do. By the end of the summer the cold room will be full of lots of yummy sweet jams.

Mmmmm...... Strawberries

By this time tomorrow I'm hoping to have  strawberry ice cream, strawberry frozen yogurt, strawberry jam, strawberry-orange jam and strawberry-rhubarb jam. Tonight, after I get them all washed and hulled, I'm looking to do some strawberry muffins and a strawberry-rhubarb crisp. 

A little bit of everything

I can't believe a week has gone by since I wrote anything here. Time has just been going way too. fast. It's not that I haven't been doing anything, but more like I've been doing too much, and haven't been slowing down enough to enjoy it, or write about it. So this is going to be a combination of at least 2 different posts..... stash report and getting it done challenge report. I suppose I could do design wall report too, but since there isn't anything new there, that's an easy one.
So, stash report for week 26:

Used this week:                         2.3 yards
Used this year:                          75.4 yards
Added this week:                        0 yards
Added this year:                      131.25 yards
Balance:                                      55.85 more yards in than out. And that number is about to go up. Thousands of Bolts is having a sale on their fat quarters at the moment. Since I have been doing a fair amount of sewing lately, just not writing about it or taking pictures (bad blogger), I've used up almost all my selection of light neutrals. So, I've ordered a whole pile more. And then, because a Lady of the Lake quilt, done in reds/greys/aquas/yellows is on my want-to-do list, I ordered a whole pile of those, too. And after all, I haven't had any fabric input since week 15, so it's time for a reload. LOL!!

Ok, what's next...... progress report on Getting it Done Challenge. Last month I listed 4 things I wanted to get done.
1. Catch up on Grandmother's Choice blocks. I have the last 4 blocks done, but I'm still 6 behind. I'm supposed to have 44 done, but I only have 38. But, I'll count this as good, because at least some of it was done. Some of the blocks that aren't done need to be printed out, and our printer is out of ink. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
2. Get step 3 of Lazy Sunday Mystery finished. This is really close to being done, so that's another I'll count as almost accomplished, and therefore good.
3. Continue working on Meteor Shower. This one didn't get touched :(
4. Quilt and bind Gratitude. 
This one didn't get done either. But, it did get sent off in a box, along with 6 or 7 other unquilted tops, to a shop in Calgary called My Sewing Room. They are quilting and binding tops for the victims of the flooding in southern Alberta. I had more quilt tops here than I could possibly quilt or use, so I sent them off where they can be finished and used. So I'll count this one as done, since it is no longer here.

Next up..... July's list for Getting it Done Challenge

1. Grandmother's Choice..... keep up and maybe even catch up.
2. I would really like to get some of my own quilts that I have hanging here done, or at least figured out what to do with them. With this in mind, I would like to come up with a quilting plan for my Scrappy Dresden Plates. The first thought that

comes to mind is to do feathers, but I want to challenge myself to try something new and different, I'm just not quite sure what, yet.
3. I'm really being tempted by the Deck-ade the halls quilt along that I'm seeing on various blogs, and I think I might like to do this one.
4. Finish step 3 of the Lazy Sunday Mystery.

There, that doesn't sound too bad, and should be doable. And I will try, really hard from here on in, to keep up with the blogging. I've gotten into a bad habit lately of getting an idea for a post, but then I procrastinate doing it, and then before I know it, a day or 2 pass, and then I get another idea and procrastinate etc......