Love the Weekend

The last two weekends have been devoted to nonstop quilting. Things are a little more balanced this weekend. I got these pictures in an e-mail from El, one of the ladies from the quilt marathon for Haiti last weekend. We were the two die hards who worked all night on Friday and came back again on Saturday. We had a lot of fun and chatted quite a bit through the night.
The one just cracks me up because she cut off the lady who was holding up the other end of the quilt. I can't remember her name for the life of me, but she was a little grumpy and insulted my sewing machine for being too noisy before telling me that I didn't get any extra points for all of my fancy quilting. I didn't know for sure how to respond to that, but I guess El showed how she felt about the terse comments by cropping that woman right out of the picture!
I haven't done much on the quilting front this weekend, but I think I'll spend some time tomorrow seeing if I can get some work done on my January UFO. I finished off Sock Monkey's already, so I won't feel too guilty about swapping the numbers around if I don't get my depression blocks entirely done by the end of the weekend.

Again to the Finish

2nd Finish today!! Woohoooo! OK, so it helps that both of these quilts were almost done and just needed finishing touches, but still, they are done now and I get do do a little happy dance. Imagine what I could have accomplished if I hadn't been busy until noon with ice skating and errands. So here is the Happy Sock Monkey quilt, my model for the Girl Scout charity quilt project. 80 happy blocks quilted in 4 sections and ready to pass on to Miss Sheila, my co-leader, who will hand stitch the binding. Now I'm off to check the list and find out what's next.

Tried Something Different

After a little research into the registry for the baby shower I discovered that the nursery is to be sage and brown, not teal and brown as I had thought. Having already shopped for the fabric, I decided to pull from my stash for sage green to use with the brown. The last pineapple blossom I did had a consistent background, and I'm starting to see the value in that. I tried another version with green and brown on a cream background, but this green on a brown background won the votes around here. I am not fond of the contrast personally, but I'll sleep on it I think before I go back to the drawing board. There is too much variation in both greens and browns to be able to see the pattern clearly. I get so stressed about making gifts for people. Maybe I should have stuck with the nine patches instea? Still, despite the end result, it was lovely to spend a whole day sewing. Most of the morning was spent finishing up Sock Monkeys. It just needs binding to be done completely and then I'll get a picture for posterity.

Odds and Ends

I started the morning piecing a back for Double Delight. I had extra blue from the border, and then started adding in whatever seemed big enough or matched the colors from the front. I cut out the binding as well and then nicely folded it all together for whenever quilting inspiration strikes. After hanging it neatly in the closet, I went to put away some fabric and found a huge piece of pink that I bought to be used for the back -- I hate it when I do that.
Then I spent a good deal of time puttering around the sewing room -- putting things away and organizing a bit. I pulled out Starlight and considered working on the borders, but ended up working on Happy Sock Monkey instead. The four quadrants have been waiting patiently for me to work up the courage to try quilting in sections. I've tried it before with connecting strips on the back, but this time I just trimmed the two back pieces an extra quarter of an inch beyond the edge of the top and turned one side under. I hand stitched that down and then finished the quilting. It seems to have worked out pretty well. It certainly was easier to push the small sections through the machine than an entire top.
I've got two sections done now, so that is half of a twin quilt. I'm not sure if I'm going to layer the next two sections or call it a night. I'm just about out of batting, so anything I do will require some puzzling together of leftovers. I guess I should check the Joann flier on Sunday and see if they are having a big sale right now. Last year they had great prices on batting about this time and I have just come to the end my stash from that.
I hope everyone else had a productive first day of 2010. I'm off now to see what everyone is up to.

What's Next?

I just finished the flimsy for Starlight Starbright. Traditional blocks are much easier to put together, it took a lot of crawling around on the floor to get everything to fit together. It still needs borders, I'm thinking of doing some diagonal string piecing based on a quilt that Rhonda made a while ago. I think it would add some color to offset the white. That brings the flimsy stack in need of borders to two. Perhaps I'll start working on borders next. I also got the last two quadrants of the Sock Monkey quilt put together so when I get the borders done I can switch to sandwiching mode for a while. I see more crawling around in my immediate future. Mom has also asked me to make a "blanket" for her guest bedroom. I think I'll start working on that one next, maybe using Bonnie's Sister's Choice pattern. It feels good to be getting some sewing done for a change. So moving on, what's next?

Stick a Fork in Me.....

......I'm so done. We drove back over to Orlando this morning to get in just one more morning of theme park fun before our cousins go home. Anna was on her sleepover, so it was just three of us today. Then I had to book-it back home to meet the bug guy at 1. We had barely finished lunch before Sydney was off to play with her friend next door. I was a little ragged around the edges by then and puttered about with my puzzle for most of the afternoon. Between kid stuff of course.
I wandered into the sewing room after the kids were in bed again and got the second week of my calendar quilt put together. It is mostly theme park and swimming related to represent how my time was spent last week. I went ahead and cut out a few blocks to prepare for next week. chess fabric for Monday when Ryan starts his camp and ice skating fabric for Anna's lesson in the morning. I don't have any space shuttle fabric, but Endeavor is due to launch at 7:17 in the morning.
I also got some of the sock monkey blocks put together. I decided to try out the "quilting in sections" that Amy has had such good luck with. If I separate the top into quarters it works out to a nice, easy to manage size. l also pulled out the fabric to cut out the last of the Christmas Lights squares. I might finally get those blocks squared up and collected together to await the next step.

Little Bits of Lots of Things

I keep waiting for one of those lazy days of summer where the kids will magically entertain themselves and I can sew the day away in my jammies. I could be waiting for years before such a thing happens. Until then, I'm carving out little bits of time after the kids are asleep to move my projects along one step at a time.
We started today with a free movie. On the way home, we had to stop at Target so that Anna could use a gift card she got for her birthday (thanks Aunt Barb!). We also picked out a puzzle to work on together. We worked on that together after lunch. Before the dishes were done, we started negotiations for a sleepover and tried to get in summer reading and a few chores. By then it was time to drop Anna off for the sleepover. Ryan and Sydney wanted to pick up a movie and then we stopped for an early dinner. I did manage to drag the kids through Books-a-Million in the midst of all of that where I found my very own copy of Quiltmaker with the Christmas Lights mystery quilt! I read through that while the kids did baths and such and then we watched the movie while working on the puzzle some more.
They were nestled all snug in their beds by 8, when I zoomed through blogs and e-mail and got in a little machine time. I got the Sock Monkey blocks finished off! This is going to be the sample for the happy blocks pattern that I am using for the Girl Scout service project. I've got about three quilts worth of blocks cut and kitted up so far. I need to finish writing up the directions to go with those. They are based on the pattern at Mary Quilts (sorry, can't do the link, bloglines seems to be broken). I don't think I mentioned that I got a community service award at the last Girl Scout leader meeting of the year. Myra, the leader of the troop who is organizing the service project, and Ashyln, who runs the service unit, both wrote really nice letters about the service project and the quilts I had donated. It came with a pin and a lovely bunch of fresh flowers. I got the yellow HST blocks done for the Christmas mystery and have the black HST blocks ready to cut out. I still need to square up the split squares, but they do look all bright and cheery together.
We're supposed to head out to the theme parks again in the morning, so I should really get to bed early tonight. The kids have each taken a turn to sleep downstairs one of the nights that Dad is out of town. I've got Sydney tonight so I'll be fighting for the covers for sure. It's amazing how strong she can be from the depths of sleep.