A little project before the cushions

I am going to get started on the window seat cushions today - a project I have put off long enough. It is one of those that I think is going to be a pain so I put it off and put it off until I just have to do it. Hopefully, like most of those projects it will turn out much easier than anticipated!

I had a little extra time yesterday afternoon so I pulled out a quickie project from the 'to be finished pile' (hereafter to be known as TBFP). It was one of those panels you can get and it had an child's artist smock, a tote and a cat pincushion. Here are the smock and tote......I decided the cat pincushion just wasn't worth the work! I added bias tape to the neck and armholes because just turning under 1/4" and another 1/4" was not working out so well on the curves! The smock will be bib/apron for the grandkids and the tote will go in the toy room - little Clara does like her a good tote!

Well, off to the cushions!

February Tally

I have trouble keeping track of how many projects I get finished in a year so I am going to try to put up a tally at the end of each month to help me out.

February Finishes
Baby Quilts - 2 (Rubber Ducky and Dog House)
LWR - 4 backs and 1 top
Doll/Wall Quilts - 2 (Purple/Green and Christmas Pinwheels)
Quilt Block Exchange Blocks - 4
Quilt Block Round Robin Blocks - 4
Tops - 1 (Crazy Quilt)
Quilts - 1 (Lone Star Retirement Quilt)
Totes - 1

Not bad for one month since I really don't feel like I did that much.

Here is one of my first finishes for March.
I made this (minus the little triangles around the outside) for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap in February 2008 but I wasn't satisfied with it so it got put on the shelf and I made a different and better snowflake quilt for that swap. I had the squares cut to make the HST's for the border and never finished this. It took just a couple hours to get it put together and quilted - it would have been a few minutes less but I kept losing HSTs!

I also finished the two Double 4-Patch quilt tops yesterday but I don't have pictures yet so you will have to wait!

Today I got started on some blocks my daughter started a couple of years ago and I have decided to finish up with her plan and make it big enough for her daughter's big girl quilt for her 2nd birthday in July. I should have that top done within the week. Tomorrow I need to get started on those cushions for my friend's window seat!

The pictures are here!

The weather outside cooperated today so I could get some pictures of the quilts I worked on at the retreat. This first one is the baby quilt I had sandwiched and ready to quilt when I got to the retreat so it was the first project for me. I got it quilted but since I forgot the binding fabric that was as far as I could go. I finished off the binding once I got home and here it is all finished.Well, not quite finished. As I was hand-sewing the binding I noticed that I missed one line of quilting and I forgot about that until I started writing this so I went in and got it back out of the cupboard so I can finish that up tomorrow!

The next quilt is the other baby quilt that I had the center done on before I left for the retreat and, while there, I added the borders, quilted it and got the binding all done.

Both of these baby quilts came from fabric scraps I got from fellow quilters at the last retreat.

Next up is the quilt I put together out of all the 6.5" crazy quilt blocks that I made at the last several retreats. I got the center of the top done last weekend and once I was home I got some border fabric and got the top finished Tuesday.


This next quilt top I got put together today from half of the Double 4-Patch blocks I finished up yesterday.

The alternate blocks are a daisy print fabric I got 6 1/2 years ago at a quilt shop in Pennsylvania. It is nice to have only a few scraps left of that fabric! I have the other half of the blocks put into rows so I should have another top finished tomorrow. I haven't decided yet whether I will add borders to these two or not.

Hopefully I will have a picture of that quilt for you all tomorrow!

I still haven't gotten pictures taken of my retreat projects but I have been busy. I have been working on cleaning and sorting in the sewing room. I had several bags of fabric that were given to me by several different people along with a huge pile of jeans for denim quilts making it almost impossible to move around the room. I sorted all the fabric out and made 1 top and 4 backs for Lutheran World Relief quilts. It has been quite a while since I made any but I have a lot of fabric that I won't use for other quilts so I need to get to work using it up.

I also sorted out that bag of quilting fabric that I brought home from the retreat last week. There were some pieces that were obviously left over from projects and I pulled out some purples and greens and put together this little doll quilt.
I used only scraps from that bag for the front and the back and binding.

Today I continued with the sorting and tidying. I have one laundry basket full of 'projects'. Some are ones I started, others are items I got from others. I pulled out some blocks I started making quite a while ago using 2" squares and 3.5" squares from my scrap drawers. I finished putting together the rest and now I have 130 6.5" blocks. I think I will just sew them together into a top but I might do alternate them with 6.5" squares of some fabric which means I would get two quilts out of the 130 blocks. I will play around with them more tomorrow.

The floor still has some piles but it is improving and I am feeling good about it!

My goal for this week is to get two cushions made for my friends' window seat and maybe a couple of pillows also. I want to have that project out of the house before the weekend of the 13th/14th since I will probably have my two grandkids here for a week at Grammy World without their parents who are going to have a little vacation at home.

Retreat News

I have been home three days and I haven't posted! Pretty lame, I know. The retreat was awesome! I stayed healthy through the whole weekend. A refreshing change from the last two. As a result I got a lot done, I just don't have any pictures yet to show my projects. I did get both of the baby quilts completely finished and got the hand-sewing done on the little Christmas wall hanging/table topper. I did some work on my Lady of the Lake blocks also but didn't get all 56 finished and hope to finish the rest soon and get that project finished.

My two bigger projects at the retreat were a bag and putting together my crazy quilt blocks. I got the bag done on Friday in spite of not paying close attention to the cutting directions (I am so glad I bought more fabric than was called for) and not enough fusible interfacing (had to make an early morning run to JoAnn's) and a visit from my daughter and grandkids at the retreat. And, in spite of everything, it turned out really great! It is from this pattern. One of the scrapbookers at the retreat has asked me to make her one so I might have to make several and see if they sell.

On Saturday I started out making 6 more crazy quilt blocks so I would have 90 for a 9 X 10 layout. Then I just sewed them to the sashing pieces and made up the sashing/setting block rows without any planning and had it together shortly after dinner and in time for our retreat show-n-tell. I got some border fabric yesterday and added 6 inch blue borders and it ended up being about 76" X 84".

I will get some pictures as soon as the clouds lift around here. The one down side of my trip is that I missed 5 of the 6 sunny days here in Western Washington last week. I could have gotten a lot done outside but who would have thought that mid-February would have been so gorgeous here!

Another upside to the trip was seeing all three of my kids and my grandkids over the course of the weekend. On Wednesday I had dinner with my daughter and her hubby and the kids and my son and his girlfriend. It was my first time meeting Peia and she is very cute and sweet. She passed the 'first impression test' easily because she obviously cares about my little boy and she thinks my grandkids are adorable! She even let Layden have a taste of her Thai iced tea and didn't freak when he didn't like it and spit it back in her glass! My second daughter is currently working at the camp where the retreat is held so we had some fun together there. She even did some sewing - making a few 'ditty' bags out of my bag of 'scraps'. This bag was a reusable grocery type bag that was at least half full of fabrics given to me by other quilters who don't save every little scrap like I do. One of them gave me most of it. She cleaned out her stash and included were some fat quarters of fabric that she just didn't want anymore!

Well, off to the sewing room to get thing sorted out more!

Industry

I was quite industrious today. I went back to the fabrics I found in that bag of scraps and pulled out the rubber ducky prints and put together the rest of the aqua and yellow pinwheels and trimmed them down so they would match up with the 6" squares I could get from the duck print to make this center of a baby quilt.
It needs a border but I don't have the right pink or purple that I want to use so I will have to head to JoAnn's tomorrow. All of this fabric came from there originally so I will see if they still have any of it or something that goes with it.

When that was done I still had time before I had any other plans so I pulled out the dog print blocks that were in that bag. I bought the red, blue and brown yesterday since I just didn't have anything of the right size in the right red or blue or brown. The yellow I had on hand. Decided to use all four colors in each of the 4-patch blocks and then had to figure out the edge triangles. Then had to figure out what to do for a border since any one of the 4 colors would have blended in with part of the triangles and I only have two extra squares of the dog print, so I went with one side of each color using the color that wasn't in the triangles on that side.

Sorry the pictures aren't great but I just didn't have the energy to hang them up higher so I pinned them to the edge of the ironing board!

Hope you all had a Happy Valentine's Day! I had fun playing in my sewing room!

Crafty Daughter

Just want to give a shout out to my 2nd daughter, Rebecca, who just set up shop over on Etsy. You might want to take a look at her ceramics. She started her interest in pottery in college at Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, AK where she made at least 50 masks and several other items. This year for Christmas she received time at a pottery studio in Spokane from the family and she made good use of her time making more masks and also some candle holder/screens, vases and other items. Really fun stuff!