Yesterday I did a post all about what I managed to get accomplished in 2014. Today is the fun part, making plans for this coming year. I've up-dated a couple of the lists on my right hand side bar. The UFO list has been modified to show WIPs as well. The list is much shorter this year than last, which is a good thing. Of course there could be a project, or two, or three. that I've forgotten about, that I'll add as I come across them. But the really fun part is thinking about all the wonderful projects and things I want to do in the coming year, including starting new things. I'm still working on the plus sign quilt, which should be done very shortly. That will use up a large number of 2 1/2 inch squares that I had sorted into sets of five. I also want to do a puzzle quilt, that uses sets of nine 2 1/2 inch squares, currently sitting in a bag in a drawer of my sewing desk.
I have been wanting to do a Lady of the Lake quilt, using reds and yellows and greys. This might be the year. And there are at least two quilts by Judy Martin that I'm itching to do, which will go towards using up some jelly roles I have.
There are two long term hand projects that are in the works, both of which are going to be done with a buddy..... Charlene. It seems that I inadvertently infected her with the desire to do a couple of English Paper piecing quilts. As I came across fun things in my blog surfing, that I thought she would enjoy seeing, I'd email the links to her. This passing of emails caused the infection, and since I caused it, I have to do them with her. Actually, I think I've told this story already..... anyway..... there are two EPP projects in my list for this year, and I don't think doing them is going to be much of a hardship...... I hope. One of them, at least, will go to reducing scraps.
And then there are the quilts I've been playing with in EQ7, all of them scrappy, using different sizes, parts of which can be used as leaders/enders. This first one uses 2 inch squares, and I think the colours around each of the sets of five squares will be a different coloured solid or read as solid fabric of some sort. The majority of this is grey, simply because I was to lazy to click on each of the individual grey areas to re-colour them. I've actually started doing up the sets of five squares as my current leader/ender project.
This next one will be scrappy. It's a free pattern found
here. I have a drawer full of trimmings from quilt backings that are 6 1/2 inch strips. Each of the triangles in this quilt are 6 inch finished, so it would go pretty quickly.
This next one would use up 2 1/2 inch squares and 4 1/2 inch strips for the triangles. I have eight yards of a Kona light yellow solid that would be
perfect for the backgrounds in this quilt. I could do the four patches as leader/ender. I love the faux curved lines on this one.
And then I have one more planned out, that would use up more 2 1/2 inch strips and 4 1/2 inch strips, of children's prints, this time, since I seem to have an over abundance of those. I had so much fun doing the Blooming Nine Patch, that I thought it would be fun to try the same effect on this quilt, but with triangles instead of squares. The blocks in this one are four inches finished.
And that's it, so far, for all the fun things I want to do in the coming year. And, I'm not sure that it's a best of all thing, but all four of those quilts can be done from stash and scraps I already have on hand, as can the two Judy Martin ones I want to do. Will I be able to resist buying fabric....... not likely, but I can get started on lots of fun stuff right away, without having to buy anything.
I'm going to enjoy this..........
I was up early today for a Doctor's appointment, and then Scott and I went to the downtown market for a little bit of shopping. We picked up some meats and vegetables.... from local growers, rather than the large grocery chains. I like the idea of supporting the farms and growers in our area. But the early morning has meant an afternoon slump. I did get some of my blues done for the Scrap Happy colour challenge. I have more blues ready to do more of the nine patches, and more triangle and hexagon shapes ready for hand sewing. The nine patches are getting done as leader/enders while I'm sewing the 32 rows left on my plus sign quilt. It's not quite half done yet. There are more rows than nine patches, so I'll have to pull out some other leader/ender to finish it off.
I'm still slowly working away at the cowl pattern from the magazine Love of Knitting. It's called Cinched rib Cowl, designed by Phyll Lagerman, and can be found on Ravelry here. It's a fun and easy knit, and will probably be given to our daughter once it is done. I think I'm at the 2/3 rd done point on it. I've found several sweaters that I'm itching to do, but I'm holding off until I get this done. I also had some sock yarn come in the mail the other day, which I'm also wanting to get started on, although maybe not for socks. I bought 2 balls of each, so that, if I do decide to make socks, I can get the stripes to match. But they also might get made up into shawls or something like that. There isn't much else happening here. It's too cold and snowy to head outside for anything. I missed the guild meeting last night, and a workshop today. The sleep issues part of my fibromyalgia are acting up really badly right now so, even if the weather had been a bit better, I probably wouldn't have made it out to the morning start of the workshop. I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow to see if there is anything that can be changed or increased in medications for it. It impacts on so much that I enjoy doing. Since it isn't a good idea to handle sharp cutting tools, or fast moving sharp pointy things while in the fog state of not enough sleep, there hasn't been a lot of quilting or sewing going on here, either. Anyway..... enough about that.....
I am hoping this year, to have a hand stitching report every week on Sundays, combined in with the stash report. I have several large hand stitching projects on tap for the coming years..... notice the plural on years..... and the only way to get them done will be slow and steady hand stitching. However.... why is there always an however?.... today's hand stitching is to sew down the binding on a bag I've made myself. I have been wanting a new small bag that acts as a self contained wallet for a long time. I bought a pattern for one several months ago, and found it not to be what I wanted, so I scrapped that project, and started this on Friday. I kinda made it up out of my head, taking the good parts of various bags, and adapting it to what I wanted. It measures about 9 inches wide by 6 inches tall. It has space inside for a card holder, and a change and bill holder. It was a challenge, and there are a few things I'd do differently the next time, but overall, I like it. There are two outside pockets, which gap when anything is put into them. so I bought a couple of blingy button to hold them closed. I'll probably not actually get to the hand sewing until later this evening, during the first episode of the season of Downton Abbey.
The first Saturday of the year, and the first linkup for our Rainbow Scrappy projects for the year. What I have here may not look like much, but those 3/4 inch hexies and 60 degree stars took a long time to prepare. I started out thread basting them....... took too long and too fiddly, so I've gone back to glue basting again. I find I don't mind the little tags on the stars hanging out. One of the tags will be hidden in the centre of the star, and the other one at the point I'll tuck in as I stitch. The centres lay flatter without the points tucked in. These are for the Giant Monstrosity Quilt that Charlene and I are doing. I figure the easiest way to work on this is small bits at a time. There are 81 stars and hexies in the centre section of the quilt. If I do the full 11 months of the rainbow challenge in hexies and stars, I'll need 7 or 8 of each colour, so I still need to do up one or two more blues. I'll be doing the centre of the hexies in the complementary colour to the one that's chosen for the month. So these will be getting yellow in the centres.
And then I have my stack of 12 different blues on my sewing machine, waiting to be sewn up into little nine patches. I have all of the white cut for these that I need. The quilt needs 125 nine patches. So, again assuming that I do these over the full 11 months of the challenge, I need 11 or 12 of each colour. And actually, I'm ahead on this one, because I have some yellows already sewn up from last year. Hopefully, come next Saturday. It will look better than a couple of piles. I'm linking up to Scrap happy Saturday
