Sunday, June 30, 2013

End of Month Report - June

Ahh, the first full month of summer. Of three - that's right, the Dude finished in Oklahoma before Memorial Day and won't go back in Washington until after Labor Day. This is the closest we'll probably ever get to 104 days of summer vacation. We've been finding a good way to spend it. ;)

Family: House is still on the market. In fact, our open house is today. And we will probably offer it to rent soon, as our packers come in two weeks and I'd like to know what's going on before then!

The Dude: already did VBS and two art classes, as well as library crafts and summer reading logs. He's also become an expert at sleeping past 9 am.

Cat: is in REMISSION!!

Adoption: nothing new here. If you're wondering on the limbo we're in, a fairly good explanation is here. We're just waiting for our turn for EP {Exit Permit} and then everything will start rolling.

Running: the Summer of Speedwork. It's interesting how running less than a mile, and for less than eight minutes overall, can hurt as much as an eight mile run. Not to mention it's 100ยบ during these sprints.

Plus, my calves are bruising again. I've narrowed it down to a problem processing lactic acid, or muscle strain from mid-foot striking. Either way, the solution is stretching, foam rolling, ice, and compression. Which means I'm starting a compression sleeve fashion statement.

{Design and photo by Lori Barbely Photography}
Wedding: the invitations for my sister's bridal shower are out, and the Pinterest-y plans are rolling along.

Blog: have you made your switch yet? I prefer Feedly for reading, but I can't figure out the link on the right there. I've also been slowly updating my pages  - I pulled the t-shirt quilts out into their own page, and finally started a 2013 finished page.

Sewing


NewFO: the second Random Quilt is down to three blocks and assembly.

The last Family T-Shirt Quilt is in assembly.

And the RSC was a great leader/ender this month, polishing off all the yellows {okay, one is still on the machine being an ender}, four oranges, and a blue. A few more blues and I'm caught up...which hasn't been the case since, oh, January.

 My other goals for the month were to finish Cat Tails or Saturday Sampler, but since I didn't quite finish the above, I didn't work on my stuff. Boo. I did cut all the remaining pieces for Cat Tails, since I needed the neutral blocks.

 Goals for July:

 1. Finish the last t-shirt quilt and random quilt.

 2. Move.

 3. Stay sane.

 4. Hahahahaha...

 Linked:
Posted by Kate at 8:31 AM 7 comments
Labels: , , ,

Friday, June 28, 2013

Really Quite Random Quilt #1 - Finished!

The gal I did the Runner's T-Shirt Quilt for has a complaint.

...her two boys are CONSTANTLY stealing the quilt.

So she asked me to make them their own quilts.

The first one is Packers, tennis, and OSU fabrics. I had yardage of that, so I went with a simple strip design.

I kind of really like the way the OSU strips offset the others.

It's echoed quilted along the seam lines.

Backing is black minky {of course...I should have a bolt of it just for her!}

Posted by Kate at 3:58 PM 4 comments
Labels:

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Family T-Shirt Quilt - Finished!

Another non-standard t-shirt quilt - this one incorporates the mother's race shirts, the father's coaching shirts, and some kid shirts.


The layout on this one was easy - I used 1/10 graph paper and everything fit neatly into columns with only a tiny bit of extra needed on the bottom right.


Some of the shirts were a pain - I had to remove sweatshirt pockets, take down hems, and include sleeves and necklines in a few places to get it cut right. But I think that adds to the character.


Since a lot of the shirts were technical shirts and/or rubbery screenprinting, I knew quilting over them would be difficult. My machine tends to skip stitches on those kinds of fabric. I decided to outline the inside of each block with a line connecting them. It looks like a series of chains and gives it a nice, loose drape.

The backing is grey minky. The borders and binding are Kona Surf.

70x74"

Linked:
Posted by Kate at 2:32 PM 10 comments
Labels:

Monday, June 24, 2013

Weekly Progress - Deadline Sewing

It's crunch time here. I have four quilts due by the end of Fourth of July weekend...and an open house in between. Oh, and we're supposed to buy a car before we leave. And plan my sister's shower. And find a place to live in Washington? Nah, that can wait...

Luckily, one is almost done!

This family t-shirt quilt is to the binding stage, and the binding is ready to go, so it should be done by the end of today. Whew.

I got the backing for #2 {and #3}, so that's up next on the quilting. Yes, we love minkee around here.

Meanwhile, I'm cutting out the 40 shirts for #4.

#3 is still on the design wall, still only 5 out of 12 blocks.

And there's been lots of progress on the RSC! Finished off two yellow blocks only to realize I never cut more. So I started some orange as leaders/enders. And then I finished cleaning up my dark blue {and some teal} scrap bin and cut those pieces. I may actually catch up by the end of the month!
Linked:
Posted by Kate at 9:11 AM 8 comments
Labels: , ,

Monday, June 17, 2013

Weekly Progress - Slightly Less Grouchy

I'm a bit better about my funk this week, but I'm still a little there. I'm writing this in between a break from cleaning...why does it take hours on Mondays to recover from the weekend when you really don't have that big of a place to clean? {Or any stuff to have laying around?} Sigh...

Anyway, I got a lot more sewing done this past week. Woohoo on that, at least!


Family T-Shirt Quilt - Pieced and awaiting borders

RSC - is it just me, or does yellow photograph badly?

I cut all the remaining neutral pieces for Cat Tails so that I could get more centers for the RSC, and then I was an adult and put Cat Tails away until I finish all my pending projects. Boo for being an adult.

Meanwhile, the kid is off being a kid - he was at painting camp last week and general art camp this week. I need to find a good way to display his canvases - this is serious art!

Linked:
Posted by Kate at 11:54 AM 6 comments
Labels: , ,

Friday, June 14, 2013

Raiders T-Shirt Quilt - Finished!

Almost...through...the pile...of t-shirt quilts...


This one is for a good friend of my husband - he pinned my husband to major while they were both deployed last summer.

Though he may have tested the limits of that friendship when he showed up with 26 t-shirts. Oversize, too - most were 16-18", and my usual t-shirt block is 15". So obviously the standard design was not going to work here.

The only request he had was that the "Real Men Wear Black" was front and center. I printed off some tiny graph paper {the 1/10 size} and worked out a design. 

If you know anything about the Raiders {I don't} you'll know some of the shirts are very old. Apparently, the Raiders have been in Oakland since 1995, and some of the shirts predate that to Los Angeles.

This became a pretty big problem when I started quilting, as the older shirts stretched like crazy despite interfacing. I finally had to give up and take it to a professional.

She quilted pretty footballs over it, and some of the shirts tripped her up, too. Which is good in that I was not just being a quitter - but also bad because I don't want to be on the "brings bad quilts" list!

Posted by Kate at 5:46 PM 8 comments
Labels:

Monday, June 10, 2013

Weekly Progress - In a Funk

Gee, if you spend 6+ weeks working hard to get the house ready for the market, then a week or two happily sewing all the time because you finally can, you'll probably hit a wall. Hard.

So that's why I have very little to show this week.

I spent a lot of time trying to quilt the Raiders T-Shirt Quilt. And it spent a lot of time puckering and pulling and fighting with me. I finally threw in the towel and took it to my local long-arm quilter. After spending a lot more time picking out all the stitching.

But hey - the binding is ready to go when it comes back!

Then I worked on my second of the random themed quilts. This one is OU/Steelers/Angels. It's kind of vaguely based on Kate's OSU quilt {in the block design} and Kati's print gallery quilt {in the slightly more random layout and the negative space in the corners.} There will be blue sashing between each block.
And thanks to the prepwork being done when the color of the month was orange, I have my yellow leaders/enders ready to go. Except for one tiny detail - I'm completely out of neutral scraps. Never thought I'd see the bottom of that box! So I need to cut the remaining pieces of Cat Tails to get some more scraps.

And that's it! This week, the Dude and I are going work on shaking this funk, mainly by coming up with a summer routine, enforcing actual bedtimes, and eating proper meals. And not going to the Snocone stand every day. Hopefully that will carry over to the sewing room, because I have some more t-shirt quilts to churn out.
Linked:
Posted by Kate at 10:57 AM 4 comments
Labels: , ,

Monday, June 3, 2013

Weekly Progress - Finishing Some Tops

I finished THREE tops last week - and one is already basted and in the process of being quilted. It's really amazing what you can get done when there's very little to clean in your house.

I'm also focusing on getting one project done to completion before starting another, so there's less out to clean up if we have a showing. Weird how that helps.

And so...

Raiders T-shirt Quilt - quilting to Arrested Development episodes

OSU/Packers/tennis quilt - top done. Took about 90 minutes...but I think it's a pretty good design given the randomness of the fabrics.

Boardwalk - top done...mostly. I really like the borders of the pattern, but I don't have the necessary fabric. So it's going to marinate in the "finished tops" pile until I decide what's next.

Design Wall - the second random top. This one is OU/Steelers/Angels, which luckily means a lot of dipping into my scrap bags.

RSC - finished off green {April}. 

And woo - June is yellow, which is already an organized bin with a couple blocks cut out! Which means I should probably catch up on May's blues...

School is out, but VBS is in session, so I should get a good bit more checked off the list this week. As long as there's not too many interruptions for showings...

Linked:
Posted by Kate at 8:30 AM 6 comments
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)