Christmas in July continues!

Hop on over to Kati Cupcake's blog for a cool kit give-away, complete with delicious Amy Butler fabrics. Too cute!

What's been going on here? BUSY week at work--most of the time, I've been crashing right after dinner. Not much piecing has been occurring. And with my machine in the shop til next weekend at the soonest, my guess is that not much more will happen--at least, not quickly.

But that's ok!!

I went through and sorted my stash--I've now got what I consider "considerable yardage" separated. Basically anything bigger than a half-yard cut. I've finished ironing the last of my freshly washed stash additions:



Because, you see, I took my Singer to a shop that is also a fabric store, so I got to play! A few of those purchases are in this stack (the bright yellow, the black and white print on the bottom, the lime green stripe), and the rest were sale deals from a couple of shops online. Because the nearest LQS (and I use the "local" loosely--it's nearly in the next state...), I tend to do a lot of my fabric shopping online.

Which reminds me--the July Online Fabric Shop Hop is on--if you've never "chased the bunny", it's a really neat way to find new favorite online vendors, great sales, etc. You can find them here. There's a list of shops who are part of the hop, some vendors do special sales and bonuses for "fabshophoppers", and if you visit a certain number of shops, you're entered into give-away drawings for some pretty intense prizes. Hello, 50 yards of Hoffman batiks or Art Gallery fabrics as a grand prize? Um, yeah, I'll throw my hat in that ring.

Also, in the mail this week, I got my first kit of my strip-project of the month club. So cute!!

ETA: I got a comment asking who I'm doing my "Strip of the Month"
with. I signed up for the club run by EverythingQuilts.com. They run several different "of the month" type clubs, but I've always wanted to try strippy quilts, so I chose that one. So far, I'm really glad that I did!



I cannot get a clear picture of the pattern to save myself, but it's called "two by four" and it's blocks of squares and rectangles cut from the Jelly roll strips (the one that came with the pattern this month was Simplicity by 3 Sisters for Moda), finished size of each square being 2" and the rectangles 4". Clever, no?

And since my machine is in the shop, and I don't feel like handpiecing just this second, I've cleared my cutting mat...



...so that I can go ahead and cut for a couple of WHiMMs today. I figured I'd suck it up and bust through the novelty prints in my stash, and cut them up (or at least most of them) for I Spy quilts for Project Linus. I also thought I'd do some cutting for my Oriental flying geese quilt. This is my favorite part of the process, if I'm being honest--the selecting and cutting. It's a great, productive excuse to play with my stash!

More photos to come!

Kicking off my at-home retreat (and giveaway!!)

I was up bright and early this morning. Well, early anyway. It's a cool, damp morning here, and we'll see whether that changes any as the day progresses. We had several rounds of storms yesterday, some of them pretty brutal. Work was amazingly busy, so when I got home, the DH and I had some supper and I lay down for a quick nap. Imagine my surprise when I woke up at 10pm and realized we had no power! J. said there was no power on the street, so I gave up and went back to bed. Slept until the power came back on near midnight, went around and shut lights out (it did NOT wake J.), reset clocks, and went back to bed. I was done sleeping at 6, so now I'm up with my second cup of coffee. However, since I'm "retreating" at home, I AM still in my PJs!!

I got the last of my mailbox goodies yesterday:


I apologize for the blurry pic--I took about a dozen photos of this, and this was STILL the best one. *sigh* It's a Tranquility charm pack from Moda--it was kind of an impulse, and I am SO glad I snagged it. I totally fell in love with these fabrics, and am already planning how I'm going to use it!




A sweet array of solids for some WHIMMs that have been dancing in my brain. A lot of the quilt bloggers I read have been doing a lot with solids as sashing and backgrounds, and I've honestly fallen head-over-heels with the concept. These are Kona solids, and from left to right are Mirengue (2 yards), Robin's Egg (.5 yard), black (1 yard), natural (1 yard), Nightfall (1 yard) and Rich Red (1 yard). Blows my stashbusting to smithereens in the short-term. In the long-term, I think these will be awesome additions.

(By the way, these are all care of FabricShack.com--I love them more than words can express.)

Oddly enough, some new tone-on-tones (.5 yards each) found their way into my box:

Because there is literally no such thing as enough tone-on-tones, in my humble opinion.

And last but not least, a few dots and prints:


They are so sunny, it makes me smile. And are those dots not to DIE for??



Ok, you've been patient. My giveaway, in celebration of my 4-day at-home holiday retreat, is:




A 36-square RJR Bare Essentials charm pack. I've been snapping up charm packs like it's my job lately, and I thought I'd share the wealth! This is full of neat black, white, tan and cream fabrics. Leave me a comment about what you would do with the prize, and make sure I have a way to contact you by email. Link it on your own blog to spread the word! I'll pick a winner using the RNG at the end of my weekend retreat.

Happy quilting!

--Meg

So much inspiration!

Every new quilt blog or site I go to, every Yahoo Group digest I get in my email, it all seems to give me more and more new ideas. I know I need to clean and organize my office/sewing room, and all the talk over on the Stashbusters group is spurring me on. I just need time, and a day that my back isn't killing me, to move some things around, and hopefully unearth my sewing machine. I tend to be a handpiecer, but a lot of that is simply from necessity. I have located a local repair shop, and god knows the poor machine, if not actually broken, is in sore need of a tune-up--it's a 1970's Singer, originally my mom's. If I can get it up and running, it could make some of my projects move along a bit faster. Though I will continue to handpiece things like the stars for the Xmas sampler, because I am a bit obsessive about my points. :D

I also found a pattern, in sorting through photos posted by other Stashbusters group members, of jar-shaped blocks. Hers was done with bug and frog prints, and it immediately made me think of a friend and former roommate, who was a biology major in college. She actually flagged me down on-campus one spring afternoon our sophmore year to warn me not to open the shared mini-fridge in our dorm room, as she had stored some enormous bug in there. Blagh!! Twelve years later, it still gives me the creeps!! But I have some fabrics with frogs, lizards, fish and butterflies, and thought perhaps those might work well in a jar quilt. :) Looks like a quick project, at least, I hope so! Add it to my list of WHIMMs...

--Meg

Sore thumbs...

After a good night's sleep, I was much more productive today. Not every Sunday I'm up ironing batiks before 8am, haha. Before coffee, even! It was a cool day, not too humid, and we even got some sun late in the day. That probably helped with the motivation.

I marked sewing lines on the rest of my HSTs for my pinwheels, and spent a quiet afternoon piecing more of those. I have enough for about a dozen more blocks now, so I will spend part of the evening working on those.

I have a bit of a confession to make. I'm a handpiecer, but I hate thimbles. I mean, HATE them. They never fit comfortably, they make my fingertips sweat, and honestly, I tend to push with my right thumb and catch with the index finger of my left hand--have you tried to find a thimble that fits comfortably on your thumb?? I have callouses. I am inordinately proud of my callouses. I know that most people, especially women, would hate the mere thought of calloused fingertips, but I love them. It's a little bit of my quilting that I carry with me, and when I'm on a hiatus from stitching, I find that I really miss my rough bits. :)

I was supposed to take pictures of my Xmas stars blocks today, and unfortunately, that hasn't happened. I wound up reorganizing my stash instead, sorting by projects, and discovering that I have about triple the amount of Civil War era reproduction fabrics than I had previously thought--enough for a giant bin filled to the brim, just with those. Yikes!! I also found a wee stash of batiks, which means that I don't have to go shopping for my batik WHIMM. I sorted out my 1930s repros for the baby quilt projects, as well as stacked all of my paisleys for the Kashmir Stars.

So, better organized, sans photos. Those should come sometime this week.

Until next time,
--Meg

Woohoo, my first picture post!!

Well, with some help from the hubby (ie, he borrowed it then forgot where he put it), I found my digital camera, and I can now start to add some pictures to my posts!! This post will be my trial run, so bear with me.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon cutting all of the pieces for my chain blocks for my pinwheel chain quilt. Then I spent part of the evening piecing more HSTs to make pinwheels. Today...was not quite as productive. Something about day 7 of gray and cloudy yick weather straight (unless you count 3 hours of sun yesterday afternoon--I really don't) just made me kind of lazy. I read, I pieced another block, this one to see how I like the chain blocks (I very much DO), I watched an NCIS marathon and didn't even stitch. I could give some excuses like my back hurts (it does) or I'm tired (I am), but I was really just very lazy.

BUT. I did find the camera and Jay helped me get set up, and so here we go!


Obviously I was also too lazy to press them both, but you get the general idea. The way everything has been cut, every pinwheel will be different, though there will be some repetition of some fabrics throughout the quilt. Each of the chain blocks will have consistent colors within the block, but each block will be different. I'm really glad that I've been able to bust some of my stash with this project so far, about 4 yards worth after all the cutting was done. At some point I'm going to have to sort through and take inventory to get a better sense of just how enormous my stash really is. It will have to wait for less humid weather, though--it's so sticky, my hair has its own zipcode.

Now that I've got a sense of what I'm doing with this whole picture things, I'll make a concerted effort to post more of my progress.

--Meg

ETA: I have to admit--after all of the cutting yesterday, I wound up with a bunch of strings. And a String Quilt has entered the category of WHIMMS...

WHIMM

I've become an avid reader of quilting blogs these last few weeks (part of the reason I decided to start one of my own). And yesterday, in my reading, I learned a new term: WHIMM. This stands for Work Hidden In My Mind, and basically, this is kind of like a UFO (Unfinished Fabric Object) or PIG (Project in Grocery bag), but it just hasn't gotten started yet. And if I'm counting my WHIMMs as UFOs, BOY are there an awful lot of them!

So, here's the list:

WIP (Works in Progress)

Jay's Xmas Stars Sampler

Pinwheel Chain Wedding quilt


UFOs

Split Nine Patch lap quilt (have one more seam, and border--why do I drop them with so little left to do???)

Red White & Blue Sampler (Finish quilting and binding)

Autumn colors Churn Dash (I have about a half dozen blocks of this, and I'm thinking of turning them into a table runner for the dining room table)

1930s Baby Jane Crib quilt (I am counting this, as I have the layout worked up on the Dear Jane software, the fabric ironed and set aside with all of the patterns printed and ready to go)


WHIMMs

Stars over Kashmir--I have the layout set up on EQ6, and some of the fabrics set aside--it will be a paisley-based star quilt. I am addicted to paisley. Admitting I have a problem is the first step...

Dear Jane--I have an embarassing amount of Civil War era reproduction fabrics, and my friend Wendy sent me more, so it is either piece it or drown in it. I'm still scared of applique, though.

Flying Geese--I KNOW I have too much Civil War fabric. I'm thinking that a scrappy Flying Geese quilt (or two) might be kind of awesome, for what I can't/don't use for the Dear Jane.

Batik Churn Dash & Chain--Ear-marked for a friend. I have most of what I need, fabric-wise. Just need to get on it. Someday...

Feathered Star Medallion--Planned as the beginning of a Round Robin exchange with Wendy. May wait til she moves, though. Cuz I'm nice like that.



Ok, so, that's not overwhelming. Not at all. *chokes*