Design Wall Monday - 1/17/2011

Bronchitis knocks the wind out of you…really, it feels like you can’t breath and the hacking to get the crap out of your lungs is no fun either so once I got home Friday night and got into my comfy pjs – that’s how I stayed until dinner time on Sunday. I can’t remember the last 2-full-day-weekend that I just did what I want when I wanted: sewing and reading and sleeping in and staying up late. Be sure to check out my other post today to see why I really wanted to do “nothing” all weekend!

Friday night I hit the LQS after work and came home to dinner and time in front of the boob tube. Saturday morning the sewing marathon began. I won’t show pictures of everything so I have some fodder to talk about later this week but this is what I accomplished over the weekend:

1. Remember the pink alert? I finished 6 little treat bags for my tea party that got postponed until next weekend.

2. The center of my t-shirt quilt (UFO #6) is finished but I didn’t have enough border fabric so I’ll have to go back to the LQS. Will post more on Thursday…

3. Remember DWM last week with the experimental windmill runner? I finished the top but I think it leans towards failure. I just don’t care for it although I am sure someone else will. It was a good study to see how a row of all of the same fabric charms works - maybe that is the problem: one row might have worked but not the black and cream rows. It will be a good sample for class but I won’t do another with rows. I like 2 fabrics, but not rows. I am not sure if I will bind it in the brown or the cream color...leaning towards the cream to pull it in more (it does match the wheat fabric).

4. I finished the last 2 green and cream Turning 4-T blocks. This was supposed to be for my b-day so I’ll work on it some more tonight. I am designing this quilt myself and it’s turning into a design as you go kinda thing so I have to decide how I want to proceed. I’ve only changed it 3 or 4 times so far.

5. I also worked on 2 sections of my Roll Roll Cotton Boll blocks…will post more another day….

Retreat!

Tomorrow I am taking a UIOLI Personal Day so I have decided to treat it as my very own in-house retreat. I will spend the day in my fav PJ’s, will not lift a finger to do any housework and sew all.day.looooong. For lack of anything else to photograph, here is my honey do list…

Priority #1 for the day is to turn these FQs into more fireman blocks. When these are done I am pretty sure I will have enough to lay out the quilt and get the top together. It should be 52 blocks if I did the math correctly.

There are a few xmas gifts to finish up and a class sample to finish as well.

Pick my 12 UFO's for Judy's 2011 challenge. Will try to post pictures of my choices next week.

I really ought to work on my Turning 4-T quilt blocks. I started project this back in November 2009 and here it is with only 31 days left to finish it before the big day. Here at CasaGrande we don’t have EQ7 but I am up to PQ2 (Paper quilt 2.0) while I work out the design. I am leaning towards 10 green blocks where the 4 T’s would then total 40 and the remaining small (or very large, as above) blocks would be neutral on neutral. Still working that part out tho. I have 2 more green blocks to make if I decide to stick with this design.

And if all that gets done … which I doubt it will ... I need to work on my RollRollCottonBoll blocks. I still need to do parts III and IV and I'm sure part V will be posted tomorrow.

I'll post a report of what gets accomplished next week.
I'll also try to post the solution to last week's wazzit.

Crazy

Yup, that's me and it has nothing to do with today being Friday the 13th. I'm actually in the process of "starting" THREE new quilts.

The first is going to take me a lifetime and I actually started cutting the fabrics some time ago. The Pattern is Omigosh! by Quakertown Quilts, Inc and after seeing one of the quilts in person at the LQS, the name fits. Most of the blocks are one inch strips made into 9 and 4 patches plus half-square triangles of slightly larger stips. Told you I was crazy, right!? My plan of attack is that whenever I trim scraps into strips, I have a box labled OMG and all the 1" stips go there. I've just started sewing 2 and 3 strips together and then subcutting them into 1 inch pieces. Someday when I have a better mix, I'll sew the subcuts into 9 and 4 patches.
The other quilt I started needs to be done in 429 days. I've decided to copy Tazzie and make a Turning 4-T quilt. It uses the Temperance T block - these were generally done in blue and white but with green one of my fav colors, my blocks will be green with a mix of neutral backgrounds. Not sure how many of these 9" blocks I will make because 10 blocks of 4Ts will be small but 40 blocks would be huge. This picture proves that this isn't my best work - the block isn't square. Uh, I'll have to find something to blame that on but in the meantime I promise the other blocks will come out better once I start assembly line stitching them with the various feet and gadgets that I think will help with this block. The geese are much easier thanks to a quickie method that makes 4 geese at once.

The third quilt about to be started is Carolina Christmas by Bonnie as noted below. I'm still leaning towards patriotic colors since I already have lots of blue and cream 2.5" strips cut.

I have so many UFO's already but sometimes you just have to be crazy enough to "just do it"!