A Finish, A Winner and a New Start

This is the finished quilt for Margaret's Hope Chest. It is the completion of my Boys quilt for the Quilt Along with Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts.

It's due on August 1, I got it in the mail yesterday.

I found a great 100% cotton sheet with little navy dots for the backing.

A bunch of squiggles and a done deal.

Next Up,  Congrats to Bonnie for winning the 2 charm packs in my giveaway.  I sent her an email earlier today and am hoping  to hear from her soon with her mailing address.

And  up next is a spontaneous start to a new quilt.  While I was doing my squiggles on the just finished quilt I was watching U Tube videos of the Missouri Star Tutorials. Up came a quilt called X's and O's.

I was hooked.  I have a load of greens in my stash, close to twice as much as any other color. So I pulled a bunch and started to cut strips

And then squares

and more squares

and then I had a bowl full. 

I now have 20 of the 35 blocks that I need finished. I'll have pictures, hopefully of the whole top by the weekend.

How Old is your Oldest UFO - and a Giveaway

Anyone who has dropped by in the last couple of months has gotten the message that we are cleaning up and out our townhouse preparing for the next step in our lives.

We’re not in a hurry but as a project arises, painting, carpeting etc. etc.  we take the opportunity to clean out a little more.  We had the house painted the second week of July and carpeted the 3^rd week.

It poured the day they laid the carpet.  As they were laying it under my bedroom window the carpeter announced that water was leaking in making quite the mess of the new paint around the window.

People are coming on Friday to assess the problem which is most likely the roof.  We are taking this opportunity to clear out the minimal amount of stuff we have stored in the attic.  Behind the 9 bins of Christmas miscellany there were several dusty old cardboard boxes of craft type stuff.  

Mostly smelly. Temperature extreme’s really bring out the worst odor in all things with a petroleum base.  A bag of wonderful yarn looked to have been a nest for something along the way.  A box marked misc. craft pieces  that didn’t go together and on and on.  I roughly went through each box and found little worth salvaging.  A Needle here a scissor there and then I found the box marked doll parts.

This is my oldest box of UFO’s.  I started and finished making cabbage patch type dolls back in the 80’s.  The box didn't have any holes in it or any bite marks or chewed corners.

 I’ve never been one to make 1 of anything. When I started doing this particular project I had 3 nieces so from the get go I needed to plan for at least 3.  Then of course I had people wanting me to make them for their kids. For some reason I have it in the back of my head that my girlfriend and cohort in this type of thing and I made around 25 of these beings.  

The box didn't have any holes in it or any bite marks or chewed corners.The box contained one finished doll, some clothes, various legs and arms and........

what looks suspiciously like sun flower seed remains.  Nothing in the box was chewed on or nested in just this little mound of left over shell pieces.

So this becomes my oldest UFO.  I know I moved into my house in 1986 and I had been working on them way before that maybe 84.  That would make this a 30 year old UFO sighting.

I do think I'll dump the rest of the box but I can't toss this cutie. 

On to my giveaway.  In cleaning up I found I had an unbelievable collection of charm packs.   I think I will pick one winner from the people who leave a comment on this post.   The winner will receive 2 charm packs. I’ll ship anywhere  in the world.  I’ll pick the winner   Monday evening, July 28.  You don’t have to tell me how old your oldest UFO is to win but I am really curious to know.

Back in the Saddle Again

This post is starting with a reprint of part of my June 14th posting about UFO's which covers the background for the end of the post. 

This is another lettuce container filled with pieces of a would be quilt. I find that these containers are perfect for storing small projects.  They are see through and stack well and are basically free.  

I think that I will be using this container full for a project for Margaret's Hope Chest.  Amanda Jean at  http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/2014/06/scrap-basket-quilt-along-introduction.html

is hosting a QAL for this great organization.  

They are in need of boys quilts and this should be perfect.  I have no recollection of what these are 

leftovers from but they will be fun to  play with this week.  Hopefully I will have another completed UFO to show off next week.

 

Start of today's posting. not quite a week later but completed is completed.

If you have been reading along you know that I have not been doing much in the way of sewing in the last couple of weeks.  Well I started up again with gusto on Thursday evening.

I was so excited to be sewing I never actually thought through what it was that I was doing. I spent Thursday evening adding sashing to both sides of all 20 blocks.  Then I went into a full blown funk when I discovered I didn't have enough of the bright yellow strips to sash the bottom and top of the blocks.

Stuck a couple of the blocks on the wall and realized that I was only supposed to add the strip to one side of the block.  I went to bed a very unhappy quilter.

Friday evening I calmly ripped off the additionsl sides and low and behold I had enough to sash all the way around. DUH !

Saturday was a much better quilting day.  Got the top totally finished. I'm hoping that I will get it sandwiched and quilted this week.

Right on track for my August 1st commitment and another UFO brought to a happy completion.  All of the blocks and sashing fabric was in the lettuce container that I unearthed in my quilt room in May. I only nneded to add the cornerstones and border from my stash.  The HST were already done, they just needed to be trimmed to a uniform size.

from country to traditional

It’s done, it’s done, it’s all done.  Whoop, whoop. This is really not a quilty posting but more of a why it’s not a quilty posting. Here are before and after shots of some of the work we’ve had done in the past 2 weeks to our townhouse.

The walls were blue and the carpet was grey.  The walls are now cream and the carpet is beige.  And the banister is just beautiful.

We had the banister replaced on July 1^st and 2^nd.  The entire house painted upstairs and down July 7^th, 8^th and 9^th and the carpeting replaced on the stairs and the entire second floor on the 15^th .  Things are starting to go back where they belong.

I relocated my sewing room from a bright and sunny second bedroom to the basement 3 weeks ago.  It works, it’s just not very cheery.  I had to get all of my stuff out of the room so that it could be painted and the carpeting replaced.   Since all of the upstairs was being repainted and recarpeted it made sense to relocate my stuff.  My sewing will stay in the basement until we move sometime next year. The problem with doing so much of the house at one time became that lots of stuff needed to be relocated to the basement for the short term and it ended up boxing in my machine and fabric.

In all that time I managed to finished my sisters quilt and pillows(by July 3), 3 quilt blocks and a tiny bit of knitting.  Most nights I have come home from work and carried boxes up or down stairs.  Lots of shredding and trashing too.  But it’s all done. I hope to get some sewing in tonight.  I asked MJ to clear a path to my machine today and I have great faith that he will have done that before I get home.

I started this post on my lunch hour and we had a power failure before I could finish it. I'm home now and yes I can sew and iron and cut fabric tonight. He is so good to me. I'm off to the basement, I have a lot of catching up to do.

Sissy's Birthday

Yes, I did get the quilt top that I made for my sister quilted and bound in time for her birthday, yesterday. Since I wasn't going to get it to her until today I sent her proof pictures that it was actually finished. It only took me about 2 years since she asked for it and I gathered all of the fabric strips from a friend, to make it.

  We have very little in common. The day we went to pick out the backing I found great multi colored polka dots and she found this. She picked the very calm backing.

I did a lot of straight line quilting and was very pleased with the outcome.  

Since she knew about the quilt I had to do something as a surprise.  She said she wanted to get a new, white bedspread and she plans on using this quilt at the foot of the bed to give the room a shot of color.

I decided that some throw pillows (16 inch) would be perfect.

I had left over black and white strips from the top and several of the PoP's of color still hanging around. They worked up perfectly. I dropped all of the above off at her house this morning.  I know she was thrilled with the quilt and i think she was just as thrilled with the pillows. Happy Birthday Baby Sister!

Last but not least,

To All of my American visitors have a safe and happy 4th.