Making Lists

Do you make lists?  I make a grocery list, and I stick to it--pretty much.  I have learned to make it on my phone....doesn't get lost or left at home when I go to the grocery store. I mentally list chores that need to get done.  I have visual reminders.  A plastic bag by the door for kitty litter for the barn kittens, or plastic bag on the stairs for Lucy' litter box.

I have tried to list my UFO quilts but what exactly does qualify as a UFO?  Is it a quilt that you have bought the fabric and pattern, does a kit qualify?  Is it a quilt that you have cut?  Is it a quilt that you have started to sew blocks?  If it is all of the above I am in deep doodoo!

1.  Winter in Washington has a ton of applique snowflakes that I had been drawing and preparing to cut.

2.  My epic chicken quilt that I have a huge basket of chicken fabric

3.  Pineapple quilt which was a kit.  I think I stalled out on this one because I followed the instructions about cutting the fabric.  At the end it said to keep two 2 1/2 inch squares to finish the last corners.  What?  I had already cut all of my strips.

4. BOM that I was doing on My Quilt Place way back in 2013, 2014? I can't even remember how many blocks I have made.  A lot!  I also have a plan for the border. 

5.  Swoon---other projects came along. 

6. Yellow Brick Road....this one needs a border, then quilting.

7.  Bag Lady BOM from 2016.  I am not even too sure what to do with this one. 

8.  Ginger Rose that needs quilting.  I started quilting it long ago and stalled out due to moving things around for the great aunt and uncle.

9.  Jewel box that stalled out because I wasn't quite sure what to do for a border.  I have an idea finally after all these years.

These are just a few of my projects that stalled out.  I haven't touched these in at least a year or more.

What I have been working on lately.  That is in the past 6 months and there are many that are missing from this list. 

 Tiny tree need a binding.  I just can't decide on a green.  Maybe I should just use the background fabric?

 Spools which is a sew along with the girls from Tuesday sewing.  This will be on and off all year long.

 Charity quilt that I have been working on.  I actually pulled it all of the design wall and resorted the blocks.  I need a day just to lay it out once more.

 Seeing Stars Sew Along I think I stalled on step 4. 

Reflected Harmony BOM.  1 month down but then the Jason Yenter Christmas quilt kicked my behind.

Jason Yenter Christmas Quilt.  OK block look pretty simple correct?  Um yep it took me a couple of weeks to make 5 of these. 

Charity Quilt, this one is quilted at least, but I pick it up occasionally and work on the binding.  Usually at Tuesday sewing.

Halloween Figs just haven't gotten back to this one.

Stars over Bali Skies.  I have the 2nd month packet sitting out, forlornly.

The Bag Lady quilt from the Tuesday sewing group in 2019.  I want to make some chimney blocks and have had a heck of a time sewing them to come out right. I want the signatures of each of the ladies that contributed.

Saw tooth square needs borders.  The borders are even cut out, just need to sew them on.

I really sat and thought about what I wanted to get accomplished this year.

1.  Enter a quilt in the fair in August at least 1.
2.  Have a quilt ready for the  guild show in October
3.  Have 2 quilts for the church quilt auction they are planning in August
4.  Finish 10 charity quilts this year (that includes quilting) for guild.  One of the ladies said if I quilted them she would bind them.  Sound like a win to me.  I have a pile that just need quilting

I will admit I am not too sure which quilts I will finish for objectives 1 and 2.  For the church auction I have a kit that I purchased a while back.  I have actually started cutting it. 

Yep as I cut I laid my strips out on my quilter

The other will be a simple quilt.

It will be like this quilt, which I made and gave to a cousin. I think I have enough fabric from the first one to make this one too. 

I do have a UFO on my quilting machine.  I work on quilting it for 1/2 an hour or so at a time.  

I know barely a row done, but I had a spot where there bobbin thread nested underneath and it was a bear to pick out.

I guess I have some elusive goals to work toward.  Wish me luck!

I Like Thursday #94

Welcome to my I Like Thursday post #94. Thank you LeeAnna for encouraging us to find something and write about things we like during the week.   I will admit, that I don't have a lot to share. It wasn't a bad week, or a good week.  It was a busy week, I stuck around home and worked on cleaning up my scraps, cutting scraps, and a wee bit of sewing.

I like lists...  Sometimes.  I create grocery lists on my phone and stick to it mostly.  I have lists of books I want to read, lists of books I have read, some of them a couple times.  I hate to say I need to create a quilt list. More on that in another post.  I could go on all day regarding this one.

I like memories, and photographs.  The 26th would have been Jeff's and my 7th anniversary.  I thought about the day, and smiled remembering how special it was.

We were married at Multnomah Falls in Oregon, it had been a rainy, snowy day, but my family was there and my brother was the officiant.  I like that I can look back with fewer tears, even though I miss him dearly.

With all the crazy political stuff going on I saw this and had to follow to see what it was about.  Have you heard about the Violet Protest?  Per their website:

 The Violet Protest is a public effort to send 50 hand-made textile squares to each and every member of Congress in support of these core American value:


          ​• Civility and Respect   • Citizenship   • Compromise
•  Country over party and corporate influence
• Courage     • Candor    • Compassion   • Creativity

             
Whether we knit, crochet, quilt, or embroider all 26,750 of these squares — through this social action, and from every corner of America; we as makers of all political persuasions, believe we can employ our willing spirit and our talents to contribute to healing divisions that threaten our country. ​This collection of textile squares will be first displayed at Phoenix Art Museum, Fall 2020, before they are sent to the new 117th Congress in 2021.

Focused on the values we hold dear as Americans, rather than any political beliefs, the color violet symbolizes the literal combination of red and blue, long held as symbols of our nation's differing ideologies. Our common goal is to send a physical message of friendly protest through this colossal visual expression to demonstrate that if we as citizens are ​willing ​to come together, so then must our elected officials.

You can read more about it here in case you would like to participate.  The Violet Protest

I like this little card made by Cosco.  Guild charity had one, and I was sad to see it leave.  I decided that I needed one too.  I used to use the guild one all the time around here.  It is a flat bed, but you can convert it to a hand truck and it folds relatively flat.

I like that we have some roosters.  When I order chicks I order all females, but occasionally the sexer gets it wrong.  Yes there is someone who actually has job sexing baby chicks.  Um you can make up to $60,000 a year. Anyway the kids took over the rooster from my last batch of chicks, and he lives a happy life down at their house.  I was laughing because he escaped today, and he is a mighty fine looking fella really.

Bobbin has been an unhappy girl. She went to the vet last week and we discovered she was up to 13.5 lbs.  I was like I wonder how that happened.  Well come to find out the kids gave her treats every time they came down to let her out to potty on the days I work.  Not only that, but she snags table food.  Because of her history with the bladder stone, she gets a urine culture every 3 months.  This one came back not great.  After x-rays, no stone, but she is on a very strict diet.  Only her prescription food.  This is one hangry little girl.  She has taken to sleeping on the loveseat most of the time, and I get the glare.  She will even share space with Lucy she is so mad at me.

Monday, January 27, 2020 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  I like that there are so many different museums and memorials throughout the world, and the US.  I was fortunate to visit Yad Vashem in Israel when I was a teen.  I will never forget what I learned and saw there, and I challenge everyone if you have an opportunity to visit a local Holocaust Memorial. Here is a list of museums and memorials in the United States.  Holocaust Memorials

I like when I discover, and I use that term loosely, something yummy in my freezer.  I discovered a quart of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in a freezer.  I think it was purchased last summer while my mom and dad were here.

I love this fabric that Dawn of Relaxing Robin  sent me this neat fabric. 

I noticed tiny words in the crest of the wave. 

a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.  How true.

I like surprise packages also from orders placed almost 2 months ago. 

Rainbow embroidery scissors, and a neat thimble tool holder.

I have two reading picks this week.  The first one is Triple Witch by Sarah Graves.  This is the 2nd book in the Home Repair is Homicide Series.  Jacobia Tiptree is a very successful financial advisor 

who has left her brain surgeon husband.  Taking their son to live in a downeast Maine town near Passamaquoddy Bay, and hopefully get him straightened out.  Jacobia purchased a very old house and begins to refurbish the old home.  I have enjoyed this book, and the first book called Dead Cat Bounce.

My second pick for the week is Cheatgrass by Bart Paul.  It is a few years later after the first book. 

Tommy Smith has entered the army for another 2 tours.  Sarah, the woman he has loved since he was a boy, has sent him a message.  Come home, I need you, my dad is missing.  I am still reading this book, and am thoroughly enjoying it. 

Now head over to LeeAnna's at Not Afraid of Color to check out the other I Like posts. 

New Year and Scrap Organization

I decided that I needed to try to get a wee bit more organized.  I will admit it has been helped in part that I now have one empty bedroom on the main floor of the house.  The president at guild announced that now that I am working more, assistance with or someone to take over charity was necessary.  A lady stepped forward, so charity moved out of my house.  Woohoo!

That is 36 bins, copy paper boxes, scavenged boxes full of fabric, irons, battings, and backings that I have had stored in my house the past 3 years. I staged it by the front door to go out and down the wheelchair ramp in the front.

With that in mind, I need to organize the room so that I can set it up so that I can move the sewing machine off of the dinner table.  I still have 2 big bins of scraps from guild that the lady who took over charity didn't want to deal with.   I will cut those up and make charity quilts from them eventually. 

I am embarrassed to admit, that many times after I finish a project I shove the scraps to the side, or dump them into a box or two or.....ok I can think of at least 10 different boxes ranging from shoe box  size to one that is almost 2 feet by 3 feet by 1 1/2 feet tall.  Also there is a pile or two that have been sitting by my cutting table for a couple of months. 

My determination started a few days after Christmas, one of my first non busy days after starting back to work.  I decided I wanted to make a Tiny Tree which was  free quilt along during November/December by Temecula Quilt Company after seeing everyone else's.  I was surprised that I finished all of the tiny blocks in one day.  It was easy.  There was a pile of green scraps sitting on my sewing table which were left over from the Challenge Quilt I finished in October.

I then stalled out because I didn't have something I wanted to use as the background.  I put the parts away with the pattern into a 2 gallon Hefty Zipper Bag until I located a fabric I would like.

The second thing that happened.  Last year in my Tuesday sewing group we exchanged 12 inch Civil War reproduction fabrics.  I missed the meeting when they decided what pattern they were going to make.  They are making the Spool Quilt from Edyta Sitar's book Friendship Strips and Scraps.

I looked in my quilt books, and surprise I own the book.  The first meeting of the new year we were to bring all of our brown fabrics from the exchange to start to make the spools.  Rebel that I am, I decided that I wanted to use my batik scraps instead.  I started digging through boxes grabbing brown batik scraps.  Then had second thoughts and started grabbing all of the batik scraps.  I printed out the pattern so I could make notes and it is a wee more wieldy than a  book.

Once I had a handful I started cutting them into the 1 inch strips.  I then realized I had way too many scraps, and knew I needed to find some way to get rid of these.

But first my brown spools.

A couple of days later Pat Broe at Life in the Scrapatch, shared about a Stashbuster challenge for 2020.  The challenge is sponsored by Border Creek Station.  I checked out the pattern, pretty easy peasy, make one block  week for 52 weeks or at least 52 blocks, with evidence of course,  and at the end you are entered into a drawing.  I joined the Facebook page for inspiration, downloaded the pattern called Square Dance, and started cutting up just the scraps on my table. The pattern calls for 3 1/2 inch squares and 2 x 4 1/4 inch strips, and seriously just the scraps on my table would have made at least one quilt, but I wanted variety.  So I only cut enough for one or two blocks.  Then I started cutting into my much neglected scrap system. 

I haven't even started to sew blocks but my little tray is pretty full.

I cut hexies into a large empty sunflower seed container.

I cut more 2 1/2 inch tumblers.

 I cut 5 inch strips, 2 1/2 inch strips, 2 inch strips, 1 1/2 inch strips and squares.  If I didn't make a hexie from it I would throw it into the string bin. 

Surely I could cut some of these into another easy scrap quilt pattern as I am going? Someone shared a scrap quilt called Three Patch Chain, which I learned was from Kim Brackett's book Scrap-Basket Bounty.  I ordered the book through Amazon and had it the next day. 

That quilt needed just 2 inch squares or 2 inch by 3 1/2 inch rectangle.  Two inch strips it is! I grabbed the 2 inch strips and squares from the scrap saver system and started cutting the parts for that quilt too.

I finished the scraps on the table, all that is left are fat quarters, and larger that need to be put away.  I then tackled a shoe box.

Tamed and emptied that one.

Grabbed another small flat box, and emptied that one too.  I bought some little trays to hold the parts for the scrap quilts I was working on.

 I sewed a few squares and rectangles together for the Three Patch Chain.

Since I chain piece I saw this handy little gadget and ordered it a while back.  It uses an old rotary cutter blade and you can use it to cut those threads between units that you have chain pieced.  

When not in use you can flip it into the base.

I finally found some fabric for my background for the Tiny Tree and ordered it.  I just loved the white with the snowflake of different colors.  But of course I saw the red and had to have some of that too.

Speaking of shopping who doesn't love shopping for a cause?  Sharon at Daisy Cottage Quilting shares her pups on Instagram all the time.  She has a gorgeous Golden Retriever Skylar, and a little white dog, maybe a Maltese? named Daisy.  Anyway Skylar ate something she shouldn't have, and ended up at the emergency vets, and requiring emergency surgery followed by a couple of days she just wasn't doing great so remained at the veterinarian, I can just imagine the vet bill. What better way to help them with their vet bills than buying from her Etsy shop?

A fat quarter pack of Cherry Lemonade, the bee print fabric from My Redwork Garden and the spirals is from the line To Be Jolly.  Sharon announced that they sold so much that they had more than enough to cover Skylar's vet bill.  

Today I had off again, other than a vet visit for Bobbin the day was wide open.  I decided to work on my tiny tree since I had background fabric.

All sewn together and even quilted.  Just a simple stitch in the ditch around all the blocks.  I still have to bind it, and I think it looks a little lopsided, but was fun to kind of finish something, and use up some scraps.    

I think I have some more scraps to tame.