GET IT DONE 2013 - JUNE GOALS & Status of MAY Goals

GET IT DONE 2013 - JUNE Goals
1) Make June block on Craftsy 2013 BOM (NewFO).  As soon as I complete the June block, I will be current!  It's "Y Seams" this month.

2) Machine quilt/bind 4 quilts from my LA-UFO stack.  And again!  After next week, I am going to shanghai my DH and get PV added to my longarm.  I plan to finish my Gingerbread quilt as my first project (it's started!), and then do 3 more.  It may mean that I won't be piecing for awhile--but that is all right, too.

3) Make 4 blocks on Annual S/P Challenge Quilt (NewFO).  (The S/P stands for Sandi/Pat; Sandi is my long-distance quilting buddy.  We started our sewing/quilting friendship before I moved to "the mountain.")  I need to "just do it" and get this finished.  Sandi said she didn't enjoy doing this quilt (she's quilting her pieced top already!), and I'm not enjoying it either.  I'm enlarging the block size in addition to changing the ones I don't care for--and that seems to be a lot. 

May was a lost month for me--no real stash reduction, no longarming done, hardly any time spent in my sewing/quilting room.  What did I do?!  Well, I worked on our "thicket," pulling grass and raking up dead limbs, etc.  I did a bit of community service.  And that's about all that I did!  I'm hoping that June will be the beginning of the end of my health issues.  The doctor now has me on thyroid medicine--I'm hoping that once it is closer to normal I will have more energy--sometimes I have felt so tired I just wanted to lay down wherever I happened to be at the time.  If it solves the problems, you might even see a "DONE" on 4 quilts from my LA-UFO stack!!  :-)


GET IT DONE 2013 - Status of April Goals
DONE     1) Make 2 blocks on Craftsy 2013 BOM (April & May) (NewFO).  I started on this in April and finished 3 blocks, using purple/lavender scraps.  It is an interesting project with a lot of "teaching" going on.  I would definitely recommend this for beginning quilters--a good way to stretch and grow.

2 DONE     2) Make 4 blocks on Annual S/P Challenge Quilt (NewFO).  (The S/P stands for Sandi/Pat; Sandi is my long-distance quilting buddy.  We started our sewing/quilting friendship before I moved to "the mountain.")  I need to "just do it" and get started on this.  Sandi has all her blocks ready for the blanket stitch around the individual applique parts.  I have ideas on how I want to make the pattern "my own"--I would like to incorporate piecing, applique, and machine embroidery.  It is always interesting to see how different our quilts look even though we use the same patterns!

3) Machine quilt/bind 4 quilts from my LA-UFO stack.  Well, here I go again--how many months has this been added?!  I have so many quilts "in me, just waiting to become reality" that I neglect my growing stack of finished tops.  I will be attending HMQS in May so perhaps I will get motivated to stretch & grow--and feel more secure in my skills or at least more willing to try them!

STASH REPORT - Week 21, 2013

Used this Week: 0 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards

Used year to Date:  107.7 yards
Added Year to Date: 1.5 yards 

Net Stash Decrease for 2013: 106.2 yards

 

My stash report is becoming reminiscent of a broken record--nothing in, nothing out!  This week I will have to make a pillowcase or something just so I'll have something to report!!

What did I do this week--good question!  Went to IF on Sunday and Wednesday, had a friend visit one day, fixed a "dessert party" for another friend who had a birthday this week, did some weeding, helped with a funeral dinner (4 1/2 hours on a concrete floor covered with tile is hard!), went to a estate/moving auction of a friend who is battling a brain tumor--and no sewing or quilting.  It looks like May was a lost month!

STASH REPORT - Week 20, 2013

Used this Week: 0 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards

Used year to Date:  107.7 yards
Added Year to Date: 1.5 yards 

Net Stash Decrease for 2013: 106.2 yards

 

Well, here we go again--nothing that can be counted.  I did make a couple of blocks on the Craftsy 2013 BOM, but those won't be counted until the entire top is pieced.

 

However, this week has been full of trauma excitement.  First we had a hatch/invasion of carpenter ants--all over the mountain.  I don't remember this annual occurrence being this bad in past years; perhaps the mild winter has made it worse this year.  I normally spray the perimeter of the house each spring, and seeing all those ants prodded me to get it done.  Natives of the mountain tell me this is a normal event, but I hate any type of crawly things, especially those that can affect my home!  Anyway, I have found no hills or trails--but do plan on buying some deterrents so I'll be ready when it happens again.

And as if that weren't bad enough, our CA puppy (a Lhasa who is now 10 years old) got skunked!  The skunk was doing her "leave me alone" dance, but Smokey just wanted to play and ignored the dance.  And then we found her den--only about 6 feet from the raspberry bushes on the edge of the yard!  I had a heart-to-heart with Smokey last year when we had several baby skunks playing in our grass (traced back to a nearby neighbor's yard).  I told Smokey that if potential playmates were black-and-white with stripes down their backs, he should NOT play with them.  Obviously, he forgot that advice.  Well, the hydrogen peroxide/baking soda/dish detergent combination does work--sort of!  I kept asking friends to do the "sniff test" on me as I was attending a nutrition class and the JCCW Mass and dinner.  Smokey still has a slight lingering odor but I have passed each sniff test.

The JCCW Mass/dinner was wonderful--uplifting Mass, good friends, good food.  And that signals the start of my summer; we've already had some beautiful summer days on the mountain.  I hope you have had wonderful days, too.

STASH REPORT - Week 19, 2013

Used this Week: 0 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards

Used year to Date:  107.7 yards
Added Year to Date: 1.5 yards 

Net Stash Decrease for 2013: 106.2 yards

 

If my numbers this week look like my numbers last week--that's because they are the same!  Nothing done except sewing the "snowball" blocks to the snowman block--and still pondering about the other block I have almost done.  Plus thinking that I really don't like the snowflake block and wondering if I can just cut my own (didn't we do that in grade school?).  And then I started wondering if the snowball blocks had too much texture to balance with the remainder of the quilt.  Really, I'm not usually so indecisive!  I'll get back to doing a few blocks this next week, I promise (myself!).

 

I had a nice time at HMQS--very informative, very uplifting.  All my classes were good, and I came away from them knowing I can tackle that huge stack of LA-UFOs.  One instructor said there are 2 important things to improve your longarming skills: 1) quilt every day, even if it's only for 10 minutes; 2) don't be afraid to try new things.  She is so right!  I used to be much more "daring" in trying new things.  When I got my first longarm, I had no fear:  trapunto--bring it on; feathers--why not; SID--piece of cake!  My first feathers--well, that's a story in itself!  I had just put together blocks for one of those $5 sampler quilts (you know--if you complete the block each month, you get the next block free of charge), and I thought it was pretty ugly.  The shop owner substituted some pretty cheap ugly inexpensive fabric in a lot of the blocks, and then I made it worse by picking border fabric from my stash that was much too light to make the blocks look better.  I put my first feathers on that quilt, thinking I couldn't make it much worse than it already was--WRONG!  Those feathers were pretty bad!  And they didn't make me love the quilt any more--just increased my dislike for it.  I was taking some items down to the thrift store and decided they would be the recipient of my ugly quilt.  I put it in a plastic bag you couldn't see through just to be safe--no way did I want anyone to associate me with that quilt!  When I realized that I had not taken that bag in with the others, I went back out to get it.  I handed it to the receiving lady and rushed back to the door.  Egads, she opened the bag, looked in, and said "Oh, what a beautiful quilt! Did you make it?"  I should just have kept on walking, but didn't want to be impolite--so I said yes.  She said, "Oh, we'll have to put this in with our special items."  Oh, dear--thankfully I escaped before she could ask my name.  I've wondered for years who got that ugly quilt!  (And, yes, my feathers have improved considerably!)

 

It was a nice show--but it's always nice to get back home!  The grass is "lush" (interpret that as needing mowed), the trees are leafing out, my tulips are about to pop open--yes, it's good to be home again!

STASH REPORT - Week 18, 2013

Used this Week: 0 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards

Used year to Date:  107.7 yards
Added Year to Date: 1.5 yards 

Net Stash Decrease for 2013: 106.2 yards

 

Not a very inspiring report this week--no yardage used!  I read a couple of fiction books from the library, did some laundry, was out-and-about a bit--and I did get some sewing done but nothing I could count.  I finally got started on what I shall call my S/P (Sandi/Pat) annual challenge quilt on which I was doing a lot of thinking but not much sewing.  I still couldn't find any large amount of the blue/silver Christmas fabric, but I did find about 5 squares that are 4.5 inches (enough to use for small areas of applique).  And I found small amounts of a couple of blues that I can use.  And I found almost 4 yards of white with silver sparkly trees scattered around.  And decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to use it on a quilt that will probably only be used during the Christmas season.  Will the sparkles stay through laundering?  I don't know--but if they don't, it will just be a white background.

 

So, finally on Friday I went downstairs to see how my idea for the "snowballs" would work.  I was doing one of the fabric manipulation things to give them some texture--and making them larger as I want a full-size quilt--and now I have 2 strips with 8 "snowballs" each!  I'm still debating whether I want to use some blue "stars" on each to tack them down a bit more (using decorative stitches).  I'll probably decide that when I blanket stitch around some of the blocks (on my Viking Diamond).  On Saturday, I assembled 2 more blocks for machine applique.  Today or tomorrow I will make a couple of the pieced blocks with the blues I pulled last week--I'm finally getting something done!  I can't count any of the fabric yet--but at some point the BOM and this challenge quilt will give my usage numbers a boost.

This will be a very short week as I'm going to HMQS in Salt Lake City--taking a few classes, oohing & aahing over many beautiful quilts, getting inspired!