Bloom Progress

I decided to work on one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects today. These Bloom quilt blocks were designed by Kim Brackett, from her Scrap Basket Beauties book. I've decided to add sashing in my final assembly so it will be easier to assemble them. This is my current plan.

I needed 8 more blocks to finish my design so I built them all today, in assembly-line fashion. I didn't put a lot of thought into what colors I used; I just used scraps kicking around on my tables.

It would be lovely to get this flimsy assembled by the end of the week.

I'm linking up with Midweek Makers.

Dunrobin Quilt Finished!

Jeff decided to name his mother's quilt Dunrobin, after her family's castle in Scotland. Back in around 1997, Jeff and I went on a trip to Scotland with her and were able to see it. It is a special memory for us.

I designed and pieced the quilt. Jeff quilted it. We made this quilt for her 92nd Birthday and it will be sent off to her in the next few days.

Excuse the poor photo, we're having rain today. I will
try to get a better photo before it gets mailed.

Jeff decided to quilt it in blue glide thread with three different pantographs on the blocks that were specially designed for the Irish chain block. And he quilted the small blue squares in a contrasting yellow thread. It is a pretty fun quilt. Though, this was the first time we've used glide thread. It is beautiful thread, but oh my gosh it is slippery and stitches come out very easily. I definitely will need to start editing pantographs so there is overlap at the beginnings and endings to help lock down the stitching.

This completes my November One Monthly Goal. I am surprised, and pleased, I managed to finish this project despite losing more than two weeks to a severe cold. Thanks to Patty at Elm Street Quilts for hosting the monthly link-up.

Rather than dive into Bonnie Hunter's Chilhowie Mystery quilt, as I am eager to do, I have decided to spend the rest of the year finishing projects and cleaning up my sewing room. I have too many piles of unsorted fabrics and unfinished projects languishing on the tables and floor in the sewing room.

My list for the rest of the year includes:

• Finish the 3 quilts I've quilted, but not sewn on the binding. 
• I've got four sets of blocks I made during the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I would like to see if any of those have enough blocks to finish into quilts.
• Quilt the Paducah log cabin flimsy.
• I still have quite a few flimsies that are all prepped, along with backings, I could quilt....

I'm linking up with

One Monthy Goal finish

Tuesday ToDo

Attempting Quilt Labels

As Jeff approaches the end of the long arm quilting his mother's quilt (we decided to name it Dunrobin), I figure I'd better get cracking on the quilt label. Eventually, it would be nice to figure out something more permanent, like embroidery, but at the moment I have to use what I have.

I found a really good video by Lisa Capen where she compares all her different methods of affixing laser printing on fabric so I decided to give her method a try. 

First, I did a couple trial printouts on paper to see if I liked the size and style of the fonts. Then I attached muslin to a full-sheet label and printed them as she suggested.

One of the labels smudged when I attempted to remove it from the label before heat-setting the toner so I didn't do that again. 

Then I soaked all the labels in Retayne for 20 minutes and ironed them dry. I'm not convinced these will last a long time with regular washing, but hopefully, they will last a few years and maybe I'll be able to eventually replace them with something more durable.

I am prepped and ready to start sewing on bindings and I'm pushing to finish the Dunrobin quilt before the end of the month. Really, though, it would be nice to finish before Tuesday so I can report the finish on my recurring ToDo list blog post.

Tuesday ToDo #56

I made more progress on my current quilt over the weekend. I was happy to get all the larger filler triangles finished. Now, I only have the 4 small ones for the corners left, but I can add those after I've assembled all the rest of the blocks.

As I was assembling the filler triangles, I ran out of the pre-cut blue triangles
so I started using leftover squares. I'll trim off the excess at the end.

Also on my list for last week, I started loading the Paducah quilt on my long arm, but I realized the 108"-wide backing had shrunk so much, it was barely wider than the 98" quilt itself. (Do any of you know of brands of extra-wide quilt backs that don't shrink so much?) So I added muslin pieces to the edges, but I actually made them too wide, and then it was about 2"-wider than my 10'-frame and I needed to fold over an edge. So it was a struggle to get it loaded straight enough. While I did eventually get the backing on my frame, I think I'll probably end up taking it off and cutting down the muslin strips so they aren't wider than my frame. I am not confident I got it loaded straight enough and I'd rather try again after I remove a couple of inches. I'll get back to this quilt in December.

And now that Marianne's quilt is close enough to be ready to quilt, I'll just let it jump the queue and get quilted next. If I can get this quilt assembled by Thursday, there should be time to quilt it. Since it's a gift for his mother, my husband Jeff is actually going to quilt this one and he'll likely have time off work over the Thanksgiving holiday. 

I will be very pleased if I still manage to finish my One Monthly Goal, despite being sick for more than two weeks.

With that in mind, my list for the coming week:

• Finish Assembling Marianne's quilt and add the borders
• Assemble the backing
• Get it on the Long Arm frame
• Make the Binding
• Try Making a Quilt Label (this will be my first time)

I'm linking up with Design Wall Monday and Tuesday ToDo.

Nov Friday Night Sew In

I was finally feeling well enough to get back to sewing so I joined this month's Friday Night Sew-In. I worked on the last 8 Providence blocks for my current project, sewing them all at once, assembly-line fashion. Around 9:30PM I got tired. Usually, I would power through until I finished, but not this month. I've been sick for more than 2 weeks so I'm trying to not be stupid about my health.

Anyway, I had to spend a couple of hours on Saturday finishing up the square blocks.

I'll still need to finish up all 18 of the filler triangles, but that will wait for another day.

Thank you Wendy for hosting the monthly link-up. It's fun to go see what everyone else was working on.

Tuesday ToDo #55

I thought I was going to get tons done during the past couple of weeks. I was wrong. On the night of FNWF, I started to feel sick. I shouldn't have stayed up so late. And I stayed up too late on Saturday too. By Sunday, I was wiped out with a severe cold/flu. I don't think it was COVID because my home test came up negative, but they've been known to be wrong. But it has been pretty bad and I haven't been able to do much of anything.

A few days ago I thought I was better and spent most of the day sewing and making 12 of my Providence blocks, but then I clearly overdid it and felt crummy the next day so there wasn't any more progress.

I think I am finally better enough that I can start expecting to have the energy to sew again. Today I had to spend catching up on errands, like grocery shopping, but I think I'm mostly done now. I hope to finish up the rest of the 8 Providence blocks and then I can get started making all the filler triangles.

I am still hopeful to be able to finish this quilt by the end of the month, but if this cold doesn't go away the finish will be delayed.

My list for the rest of the month:

• Finish 8 more Providence Blocks
• Finish the 18 Filler Triangles
• Assemble the quilt!
• Load the Paducah Quilt on the Long Arm so I can work on that while I sew the blocks.

Thanks to Linda for hosting the Tuesday ToDo linkup.

Nov Friday Night w/Friends

I can't believe it's already November. It was time again for Friday Night With Friends. This month, I got started on yet another quilt. This one is for my husband's mother's 92nd birthday. I kept changing the plan for this quilt; this was at least my third. Since I'd already cut out a whole lot of 2½" squares for an earlier design, I wanted to come up with a new design that would use many of them.

This is the design I finally came up with in Electric Quilt. This is the Providence block and Double Irish Chain block in an on-point alignment. And it uses a lot of the 2½" squares. Not all of them, but more than half.

I had originally planned to cut Marianne's quilt all out of scraps, but then when I settled on this design, I decided to cut it out with my Cricut. It's just so much faster. I merged together some of the small pieces so I wouldn't have to make all those small hourglass blocks. I still cut out all the 2½" squares by hand.

By 2AM on Saturday morning, I had finished assembling all twelve of the Double Irish Chain blocks.

And I've started assembling the setting triangles.

I won't be surprised to have this quilt finished by the end of next week. And because I would like to get this quilt finished as quickly as possible so it can be mailed to my mother-in-law as a belated Birthday gift, I am going to make this my November One Monthly Goal.

Tuesday ToDo #54

I've finished quilting both the Snake River log cabin quilt and the Unbeweavable lap quilt. Once they're totally finished, I'll write a post with more details.

I'm having a hard time prioritizing my projects for the coming week because I want to work on everything at once, obviously. So, I think I'll just make my list, in no particular order, and work on what I feel like working on.

• Bind the Broken Bricks lap quilt.
• Bind the Unbeweavable lap quilt.
• Bind the Snake River log cabin quilt.
• Figure out the plan for Marianne's bed quilt. (I'm not happy with the current plan so I'm reworking it.)
• Quilt the Paducah log cabin quilt after the wide backing comes.
• Figure out where I'm at on the RSC blocks. If I have enough, start putting them together.

I'm linking up with TuesdayToDo.