A finished quilt and other things

March's UFO Challenge was #1.

1. Y2K quilt started in 1999. needs to be quilted. It's HUGE.

A quilt top that I made too big.
Ridiculous big!  I think it would have dragged on all 4 sides of the floor on our queen sized bed.  I sat with a seam ripper on an Aunt Laurie and Ben Day and took off one row. More needs to go to make it a manageable size. I didn't have the will to quilt this one yet.

Number 9 became # 1.
(Executive decision :)

9. 1.  48 STRING BLOCKS!  Made for the 2010 Bonnie Hunter RRCB mystery.

(Step 5: make 600 half square triangles.)

NO. I would rather poke my eyes out. I'll be using the blocks for an Evelyn Sloppy pattern instead.

I adapted instructions to fit the 8.5" squares - 30 used right away. The extra string blocks were whacked into 5" strips - across the middle for straight edge "piano key" outer border.  I was completely out of most of the colors, but by salvaging the extras, most of the colors are in the border.

I put it onto the sewing machine - turned around so the cutting table would hold the extra as it fed through the machine. Took one inch of machine stitching. Decided I hated it BOTH the look of the stitches and shoving it through the tiny little space of the sewing machine. Ripped it out. (Cleaned my sewing room back up!) And hand quilted it.

Quilting began March 10th. Final stitch of the binding made 8 pm March 31st! All stash fabrics used for this one except the backing.   A finished quilt in just under 4 months!

Sock Madness round 2 socks were completed. Knit March 21-25.  Round 3 should start any day now.
We'll need a cable needle.


On April 1st we got 15 inches of snow. It's snowed a couple of times since, without adding much more. It then rained for days and days, melting most of it away.

I am so ready for some outside gardening.

For now I have a shelf of African violets in various stages of bloom!

She needs her head examined!

(This quilt is finished!)

The Patchwork Times UFO project for February was #10.   It's done. 2 days late.

I hand quilted for hours on end from February 14th to February 27th. The quilting frame took up most of the living room and the final push to get it done was mostly so we could have the room back!

(My wrist aches, but I'm not sure if it's because I quilted too much or because I haven't done any for 2 days and it's missing the activity.)

Ran out of fabric for the binding and an ice storm kept me off the road an extra day. Finally got out of the house Tuesday.  I hand stitched the back of the binding down today.

Used actual bias cut strips and I must say I'm a convert. Straight cuts across the width of fabric may be easier, but I liked the way the bias folded so easy to the back. It's also supposed to hold up better and not wear out at the edge.

UFO quilt top complete!

(As usual there's an OOPS!)

Patchwork Times UFO Challenge for February is to work on #10 from my list:

10. Orphan Blocks quilt. I want to use the Settings Solutions book.

This started out as another foot dragging, I don't know if I want to project.
It's not that I don't have plenty of orphan quilt blocks to choose from. There's too many mismatched blocks.
Overwhelming in their do-not-go-together-ness.

I kept digging and finally settled on 7 + 1/2 Wedding/Crown of Thorn blocks, 4 leftover star blocks from an exchange in 1998 and a Monkey Wrench made from the same fabric.  I managed to come up with a yard or two of each of the leftover matching fabrics as well.

I studied the Setting Solutions book for the first 4 days of February and continued to dither.  What to do?
The "solutions" in the book seemed designed for pointy star blocks and my abandoned Wedding Blocks spoke to me of circles. 
I decided to try a medallion center using Drunkard's Path.

Have never done this curved pieced block, I might add.  I finally settled on using my quarter inch seam foot and the no pin, just sew method.  A Curve Master foot looks like it might be very useful. If I had one!  
My curved pieces were a little wonky, but they trimmed down to 3.5 inches fairly well.  Once I pressed the wonk out of them with the iron!

I wondered if Drunkard Path could be used as a frame for the individual blocks? Turns out my orphan blocks ranged from 8 to 10 inches. It might have been helpful to realize the wedding blocks were not 12 inches when I decided on 3 inch squares for the Drunkard's Path design. I found the pattern for the Wedding Blocks I thought I had used and it "said" blocks were 12 inches. I never doubted.
I also never measured. My blocks were 10 inches.


WELL...some sides were 10 1/2 - 11 inches actually. Apparently I was very careful to keep all the points of this block "pointy"! Not so much concerned for scant quarter inch seams or block sides of equal size. Probably why I quit this project? Blocks are "framed" in an effort to compensate  (oops!)  But by now fabrics were running out, so a new color was added.

The red print fabric selvage dated it as 1994.  It's ALL gone now. Yeah! Drunkard's Path (or whatever this patch is called!) blew through fabric pretty fast.  I bought 2 yards for the outer edge and border and even that is all gone but for a few inches.

No longer a UFO!

AKA #6: Stack-n-Whackier @ "Treasure Boxes" (50" X 54" lap quilt)

Long ago the local quilting group I belonged to hosted an all day workshop. Bethany Reynolds taught the class pre-book release if I remember correctly. Book is dated 2001 - so this PhD has been hiding for awhile.

To be honest it would have been hiding a whole lot longer, had #6 not been drawn for the January Patchwork Times UFO Challenge. I was more or less at peace with stuffing it back on bottom of the pile!

And of course just to make more work out of this project: I noticed the 3rd block from the bottom on the left was UPSIDE DOWN. For a moment I debated the mistake on purpose theory; pretending I meant to do that... because no quilt is supposed to be "perfect".

Yeah RIGHT! This quilt is SO far from perfect it's not funny but I still could not help myself. I got out the seam ripper and fixed it. And by fixing it, I mean the block is now right side up and edge is possibly even wonkier than before.

It had wonky looking issues as a top and it still does now that it's finished. But it should be warm as I decided to go with a thicker than usual bamboo batting and a flannel backing. By adding the wider border that samples fabric each of the 'treasure boxes' were cut from, it at least gives it a bit of novelty of an I SPY quilt. And hopefully distracts from the what-was-I-thinking burnt orange?

It has now been hand quilted and binding is finished as of January 14, 2011. It could easily be used for demonstration purposes What NOT to Do in Quilting. Also discussed was the option of placing it into the nearest drop-off box for charity and walking away as fast as possible.  

Now to get myself to the next meeting so I can return the book!

Quilt(s) under construction...

Progress report:
I'm working on my PhD!
(Projects half Done ;)

Sara got her PhD last May so I found great humor in this quilt plan announcement. Unfortunately my delivery was off and I said 'Projects half Finished' when I told her.  
Ruined the punch line as usual!

Likewise, we were told to get our ducks all in a row before committing and I failed to take into account this UFO mission is for 6 months. I told the organizer I had just listed 12 projects and would work from that list. My lazy duck will finish some half-done Fabric Postcards to keep the count behind my name on her blog-roll from being a big fat liar.

The 2011 Patchwork Times UFO Challenge is off and running. For January #6 was drawn. I'm supposed to work on the project that corresponds with the list I made:

6. Stack & Whack Treasure Box workshop. Needs borders. Preferably something to distract from the hideousness of orange.

Sara lobbied hard to get me to sneak back in and edit my list so that I would be working on one she likes. But this one is small; just needs borders and quilting. Doable in a month.
 
Ugly duckling factor aside. #6 does come with more guilt than most of the others. See that little yellow label on the bottom of the book cover? Evidence this book belongs to my local quilting group. I haven't been to a meeting in years. A couple anyway.

In addition to pulling #6 from it's place at the bottom of the Treasure Box and trying to iron some of the wonky wrinkles out of it, I've added the background strips to either side of my Row Robin. Leaves need to be appliqued down both sides. The next round of instructions are due out January 10th ...so I'm on target with that.

Telling myself what I have to!