Weekly Progress - Christmas is Done!

...but it's only done because I decided not to make doll dresses.

...because the one I did make turned out a bit short.

...Vivian would not be allowed at school in this dress!

I decided it was better to clean the house and prep sangria make cookies rather than continuing to fight with dresses that I'm just not very good at. 

Maybe next year I'll start sooner. Maybe next year I'll get to take the class on it. Maybe. But next year!

So, that puts me at done for Christmas sewing and nearly done shopping! Woo!

So, other than fight with doll dresses, last week, I...

Worked on the Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt, including figuring out to how make 32 HST at one time. 

I also finally picked my neutral fabric, so I need to catch up on a few block pieces. {And tucked the first choice into the project bag with my Bonnie and Camille stash. It fit in quite nicely there.}

Bound Nine Patch Snowballs.

And took a big piece of muslin and quilted every pillow cover, wall hanging, and table runner I could find.

That leaves me with plenty to bind over Christmas, when/if I get a chance. My only other goal is to stay somewhat caught up to the mystery quilt. That way I can trim HSTs when I get the chance, and keep the sewing room relatively clean throughout the break.

Wait, keep implies it already is clean, doesn't it?

Linked:

Fifteen Minute Challenge @ Life In Pieces
Design Wall Monday @ Patchwork Times
BOMs Away Monday @ What A Hoot
WiP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced
Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story
Rainbow Scrap Challenge @ SoScrappy

Scrap Basket Sunday @ Kim's Big Quilting Adventure

Celtic Solstice @ Quiltville

Nine Patch Snowballs - Finished!

Here's one with a boring name. 

Nine Patch Snowballs

Very descriptive. Very boring.

It came from a kit from one of my LQSes in Oklahoma. It's a three-yard pattern from Fabric Cafe, which I promptly ignored, because snowballs are much more awesome than plain old blocks.

I finished the top last summer...yeah, 2012. It languished on the to-be-quilted pile for a while. I finally got a backing last month, and plopped it on the long arm a couple weeks ago.

Ooh, pretty loops on a minkee back!

My new bestest blog buddy once said "doing these loopy swirly things is like doing donuts with a Ferrari" - but hey, we're both still learning.

{Look how I got that perfectly fussy cut rose in this shot. Totally planned.}

Fabric is Sew Cherry by Lori Holt.

48" square

Linked:

Whoop Whoop @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict

TGIFF @ Quilt Matters

Finish It Up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts

Link A Finish Friday @ Richard and Tanya Quilts
FMQ Friday @ the Free Motion Quilting Project

Let's Make Baby Quilts @ Michelle's Romantic Tangle

Finish-A-Long @ She Can Quilt {FAL List}

Weekly Progress - Pile o' Finished Quilts

Before you get too used to all this production, my husband was out of town last week, and the Dude doesn't care if we have chicken quesadillas for dinner. Every night.

Oh, and giveaway day post is up.

So, we start with a stack of bound quilts. Squadron T-shirt quilt has already been posted about, and then there's Loopy Ewe and the Nine Patch Snowball. Posts coming soon. Imagine that, I have to play catch up on finished posts!

And then I made the blocks for a baby shower gift, using this pattern and a stack of FQs that I won from Fabric Spot during the Finish-Along last quarter. And the baby shower isn't even until the end of January!

And then I bit the bullet and picked up some yardage to go with my Lovely blue for the Celtic Solstice mystery. I think the neutral is too bright, though.

These are my blocks so far, since I haven't cut into the neutral. Yes, I am doing the second step as HST instead. I calculated it out and there's less waste this way, even with the extra seam.

And in gratuitous kitten pictures, we put up the Christmas tree. It went about as well as you'd expect.

Today I'm prepping my quilting for this week - all the table runners, wall hangings, pillow covers, and potholders I can find, all slapped down on a big piece of muslin and batting scraps.

And then a day of doll dresses and I'll be done for December!

Linked:

Fifteen Minute Challenge @ Life In Pieces
Design Wall Monday @ Patchwork Times
BOMs Away Monday @ What A Hoot
WiP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced
Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story
Rainbow Scrap Challenge @ SoScrappy

Scrap Basket Sunday @ Kim's Big Quilting Adventure

Celtic Solstice @ Quiltville

Stash Report - Week 30

It's a good thing there was no stash report last week - now this week's looks great!

Finishes:

{Nine Patch Snowball}

{Layer Cake Snowball}

Yay for Snowball Fights!

Used this Week: 8.05

Used Year to Date: 73.89

Added this Week: 0

Added Year to Date: 122.20

Net Used for 2012: (48.31) yards

WiP/FMC - Lots of Little Things

So, where to start...?

How about...we accepted a referral for this little guy!

His name is William WooYeong, he's ten months old, and we have about a year to wait until we get to bring him home.

So that's my favorite little thing...but I did do a lot of other little things this week.

Finished:

Nine-Patch Snowball {Well, the top, at least.}

Fifteen Minute Challenge

 I decided to do Big Blue's binding while supervising the Dude's daily homework. {Which is one worksheet page..but also torture. Apparently. And often takes longer than fifteen minutes.}

I've forgotten how nice a hand-stitched binding looks. Need to do it more often. Anyway, I stitched every day but Sunday, and I'm done with 2.5 sides.

In-Progress:

Layer Cake Snowball Fight - all ready to be assembled!

Central Park Sudoku - really doesn't look like it's changing, but all the blocks are in rows, at least.

LQS Saturday Sampler 2012 (12/36 blocks) - despite screwing up my block last week, I could still make this set by switching the green and brown...and then I miscut the green. That's a six-piece 3" square to make into HST on the top of the green pile. Attractive.

Quilting:

Bad Romance - lines all the way in one direction, third of the way in the other. So I unpinned so that I could free up the basting pins for...

Fall-gyle! I'm probably going to need a new category - Quilted Enough So That I Could Baste Another Quilt. Because buying more basting pins would be silly!

Joining:

Picture-Perfect Polaroid Block Swap - searching for a good charm pack, since I don't have access to my scraps!

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Week

Fat Quarter Stars (6/12 blocks)

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Summer

LQS Saturday Sampler 2011 (12/12 & center) 

Chunky Log Cabin (13/20 blocks)

St. Paul's Cross (2/42? blocks)

Adoption:

Application Submitted - 2/12 

Home Study - approved 5/12

USCIS paperwork - mailed 6/12
Home Study to Korea - 6/12
Referral Accepted - 6/12

New Projects: 0

Completed Projects: 1

In Progress: 11

Snowball Fight! {Week Three}

And now, my favorite part of the snowball...combining it with other blocks to make awesome patterns.

Starring my just-finished Nine-Patch-Snowball flimsie!

{Yeah, the picture is a little wonky. I had some help. Small boy help, not cat help.}

This was a three-yard kit, but I decided to snowball the blocks the pattern said to have as squares. Such a simple swap adds so much more movement to the quilt.

Another great example - the combination of the snowball and the "54-40 or Fight" block in the Tennessee Waltz. This is the very first quilt I wanted to make, after seeing how easy it was on Simply Quilts.

Some other good blocks to alternate with a snowball:

{Economy}

{Shoofly}

 {Nine Patch Variation with HST corners}

{Any star block}

{Same star, different coloring in the flying geese}

In all of these, the size of the snowball corner is determined by the other block. In my Nine-Patch-Snowball, the pieces of the nine-patches are 2.5" unfinished, and so are the snowball corners. In the Waltz, the corners match up against a 3.5" unfinished four-patch.

Week Three of the Layer Cake Snowballs

Make 21 snowballs {and the bonus HST} with the other colored corners, just like last week. But press the seams toward the printed fabric {center} this time.

And square them up. The corners should square at 4" and 6" on your ruler.

WiP/FMC - Snowballs in the Summer

I think a new routine every week is just going to be how this summer goes. This week, the Dude is in VBS in the morning and swimming lessons in the afternoon, so my sewing time is once again different. But I'm still sewing, so it's all good.

Oh, and I joined Pinterest. I have no idea how to use it yet. I'm not sure how to find people {all my followers were borrowed from my mother}, but I'm katiemaequilts on there if you know how to find me.

Fifteen Minute Challenge

Poor Big Blue. I went to my in-laws for the weekend...but that's the only time I have an excuse for not touching the binding at all. I really need to find a consistent time to work on this! Bath time or cat feeding time or something.

In-Progress:

Layer Cake Snowball Fight - moving right along

Central Park Sudoku - new pain in the butt cat

Nine-Patch Snowball - center is sewn! Adding borders and full reveal on Saturday.

LQS Saturday Sampler 2012 (12/36 blocks) - this is the Buckeye Beauty. And, um, I made a Buckeye Beauty in April. This is why you do your BOMs on a regular basis! Now I'm struggling to see if I have enough fabric to do the actual three blocks from this set.

Quilting:

Bad Romance - all the lines running one direction are in!

Joining:

Picture-Perfect Polaroid Block Swap - searching for a good charm pack, since I don't have access to my scraps!

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Week

Fat Quarter Stars (6/12 blocks)

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Summer

LQS Saturday Sampler 2011 (12/12 & center) 

Chunky Log Cabin (13/20 blocks)

St. Paul's Cross (2/42? blocks)

Adoption:

Application Submitted - 2/12 

Home Study - approved 5/12

USCIS paperwork - mailed 6/12
Home Study to Korea - 6/12

New Projects: 0

Completed Projects: 0

In Progress: 9

WiP/FMC - New Routines

We are slowly settling into a routine here. It's actually a bit harder, since the only time the Dude is allowed at the pool is the time we avoided the pool in California. So my sewing time has to change, too. And there's a lot more distractions around with family wanting to do things! I'm managing to get some sewing time, though.

Fifteen Minute Challenge

I've been binding Big Blue for fifteen minutes each day...but this week, only Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Tuesday. At a rate of 30ish" per day, I should be done with the binding in 15 days! Ugh...I should probably do more than 15 minutes a day.

Finished:

Blue Bowties

These, by the way, were the runner up layouts. I think the wave would look better with smaller blocks.

 Three In Color Order bags for a friend. Yes, I skipped the colored top. Yes, you can't really tell that the one in the back is long and skinny...about the size of a wine bottle, coincidentally.

In-Progress:

Layer Cake Snowball Fight - corners are cut, layer cake hasn't arrived yet

Central Park Sudoku - slowly piecing the nine patches as leaders/enders

Nine-Patch Snowball - nine-patches are done, snowballs are in the works

Quilting:

Bad Romance

Joining:

Picture-Perfect Polaroid Block Swap - blocks are due immediately after I get back to Oklahoma. Insane? Yes!

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Week

Fat Quarter Stars (6/12 blocks)
LQS Saturday Sampler 2012 (12/36 blocks) 

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Summer

LQS Saturday Sampler 2011 (12/12 & center) 

Chunky Log Cabin (13/20 blocks)

St. Paul's Cross (2/42? blocks)

Adoption:

Application Submitted - 2/12 

Home Study - approved 5/12

USCIS paperwork - mailed 6/12
Home Study to Korea - 6/12

New Projects: 1

Completed Projects: 1

In Progress: 9

Snowball Fight! {Week One}

Having a heat wave? Virginia is... It's probably my fault by bringing the Oklahoma heat out here.

But what better way to beat the heat than by having a Snowball Fight?

On it's own, it's a great way to frame a block. Combined with other blocks, it makes great secondary patterns. 

I'm making both types this month - one from a layer cake with two-color corner squares, and one with alternating nine-patch blocks.

To get you started, here's a couple great tutorials. {I'm not going to re-invent the wheel when these are already out there!}

Cluck Cluck Sew

Sew Many Ways - the inspiration for my Snowball Fight

As you can see, I use elements of both tutorials - painter's tape instead of drawing lines {works for binding strips, too!} and double-sewing the corners for the bonus HST. I don't use a line for my bonus HST - my foot is 3/8ths, so I do a smidge over from the first sewing line.

Alas, my layer cake did not make it in time for this post, but if you'd like to make a two-color-corner one with me, you need a layer cake and one yard of each corner color.

Week One - separate the layer cake into two groups {by color, by value, random, whatever} and cut the yardage into 4" squares. Decide which color is going with which group.

WiP/FMC - And Back to Virginia

It's been a whirlwind week - to Maryland to send my husband off on deployment...

...to New Jersey to see some cousins, missing the storms and power outage in Virginia. When we finally got to Virginia, the Dude plopped down on the floor and declared himself done with hotels. I'm with him.

Now that I'm somewhat settled, I need a new Fifteen Minute Challenge. And I really need to bind Big Blue. And I really hate hand stitching. So I should probably make it a habit to hand stitch for fifteen minutes every day until Big Blue is done.

In other sewing...

My Spongebob blocks are done! I will be piecing a border to continue the QST motif...probably when I get home. I really don't need to buy more of the neutral when I have five yards at home.

A nice pile of nine patches for my Snowball Fight.

Some Blue Bowties. Or rather, white bowties on blue.

Oh, and my sister helped lay out my Sudoku quilt. She'd like everyone to know she upgraded from a cast to a boot.

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Week

Fat Quarter Stars (6/12 blocks)
LQS Saturday Sampler 2012 (12/36 blocks) 

In-Progress-But-Not-This-Summer

LQS Saturday Sampler 2011 (12/12 & center) 

Chunky Log Cabin (13/20 blocks)

St. Paul's Cross (2/42? blocks)

Big Blue (hand stitching binding)

Adoption:

Application Submitted - 2/12 

Home Study - approved 5/12

USCIS paperwork - mailed 6/12
Home Study to Korea - 6/12

New Projects: 1

Completed Projects: 1

In Progress: 9