When I first started my blog, I wanted to name it “Sew she Did”.  Remember the old story about the little red hen, she has a lot of work to do, but no one wants to help her?  The story ends with the hen making/baking bread, by herself, and eating it all by herself.  At the time I had three teenage children at home, and I was that hen.  I know it was partly my fault for not instilling some kind of work ethic into that trio, but it was frustrating at times.  The sheer lack of (their) motivation was astounding to me, sewing time was my salvation.  Just me in my studio, making my things, all by myself, with the satisfaction (usually, LOL) of a job well done.  Sorry, I digress, unfortuneatly, the name was already taken by someone else, so I went with Touch of Grey instead.  That’s a story for another time.  Fast forward to now, the teens are adults and moved out,  I still do most of the chores, but they stay done for longer, and there is a lot more sewing time.

This quilt is named “Sew She Did”, I have two more borders to attach, but its 80 percent done.  It is a quilt that I designed, chose fabrics for, cut out, and sewed together, all by myself. 😉

There will be a red coping strip and then a final border of red and white on point squares surrounding it.  I was going to go with a simple border of plain strips, but since it’s a show quilt, I felt I had to push the envelope a bit.  I did the math, figured out the sizes of the squares and triangles to make it work.  There was a 3 3/8 ths measurement involved, but it worked.  I’m hoping to get the borders attached before Sunday, as I want to bring my machine in for a spa treatment.

Linking up today with For the Love of Geese for Put Your Foot Down #8.

This fabric line, Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater/Moda, has become my focus for the next few weeks.  It’s discontinued and there is a 2.0 out there, equally nice.  I think I’ve had this FQ pack for about four years, and looking at the left overs, I’m hoping to be done with it this summer.  The first quilt I made with it, Sewing quilt is on the frame and being quilted with a cute sewing themed panto that has pincushions, scissors, needle and thread and a spool of thread.  Each row takes about 40 minutes to stitch out, only four more to go.  The second quilt I am still piecing, this one is going to be my PIQF entry this year.  I am hoping to finish the blocks, two more to go, this weekend, and get it all together before I go on vacation.

Then I’ll be able to quilt it for the next five weeks, I think that I can do it, even with a bit of procrastination.  I was able to find a yard of the coordinating white on white print on Etsy yesterday.  I am determined to use up the rest of this pile of scraps, maybe do a simple alternating 2 inch square quilt, controlled scrappy quilt to finish the scraps.

After the PIQF quilt, my ‘To Do List’ looks like this:

1.  Finish Minuet Mystery (borders and quilt)
2. Sew Mama act 3 – piece
3. Baby girl quilt for a friend (August Baby)
4. Play Date quilt – quilt it
5. Growing up Odd – quilt it (finally got a 118 wide backing
6. Berties Year – quilt it (got backing and poly batting)
7. Bind Christmas quilt and woven quilt (need bindings made)

Vacation First!  This is a non quilting trip, I think I’m going to bring my current knitting project, The Floating Shawl.  Or I could bring the hand work wreath project Shiny and Brite that I started a few months ago.  I got all the tracing and the coloring in part done, just need to start on the embroidery accents.

Linking up with Judy today at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday today.

 

I feel like I’m making progress this summer, with my quilting that is.  I finished a pile of quilts, photographed them and posted them to my store.  My stack of TBQ’d tops is shrinking, although I’m about to add three to it.  Last summer we were in re-model mode, so getting anything done was difficult.  This summer seems wide open, so far.  I have a week long vacation in Oregon coming up in July, but other than that, open.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my PIQF entry.  I have three ideas that have been expanding in my minds eye.  This one started yesterday.

I have been making blocks up in EQ8 for the past few weeks, in order to use up the last of the ‘Sew Mama’ fat quarter pack I opened to make the Kaleidoscope quilt.  There is a lot left over, and it seems like I’ll be able to make at least twelve different 16 inch blocks.  My idea/reasoning is, one of my quilty pleasures is BOM’s, the Sew Mama fabric is all about quilting, I’ll design and make my own BOM. However, it’ll have to be compressed into 58 days, entry date is 8/28, minus days in OR, equals 58 working days.  Unless I like my two other ideas better, or develop them into more than an idea, it’s a plan.

Linking up with Judy at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts today for Design Wall Monday.

 

This week is more than half done.  My plan for finishing three tops is slowly becoming a reality, however, probably not going to be finished this coming weekend.  I got the Playdate top put together, still needs borders though.  That freed up the design wall for the Minuet blocks.  Once I got them up there though, I realized that they needed to be put on the floor to really see how they work together.  It’s scrappy, but I only used seven fabrics and white, I have to shuffle the blocks around to avoid matching pieces where they join.

Mancuso has announced the theme for this years PIQF, it’s “Quilty Pleasures”.  They are also doing a Mid Century Modern theme again (3rd Year).  Entry info and forms are here PIQF.  QP is a pretty broad category,  my pleasures are lots of pieces, color and currently, triangles.  I recently bought the pattern “Alaska” from Laundry Basket Quilts.  It’s on my list of quilts I want to make, and I have been playing around with it in EQ8.  I want it to be a little bigger, so I added two more rounds of blocks.  This would be a challenge to get done before the August 27th deadline.  More thinking will be done.

 

Last night I was knitting on my Sea Gleam shawl and realized that my stitch count was off by two.  Normally not a big deal, and sort of normal for me, but when it involves lace, it looks bad.  I had to pull out ten rows, about 4000 stitches, sad face. On a bright note, I have memorized the lace motif stitches.  Curious Handmade just released the second shawl in the series, “Floating”, so no rush – eye roll.

Linking up with Denise at For the love of Geese for Put Your Foot Down #6 today.

 

Hmm, DWM, divorced white male?  Nah, Design Wall Monday.

It seems like last week I was pondering starting a new project.  I had just finished binding 5 quilts and feeling pretty productive.  This week I find myself in the middle of finishing up three tops.  The Play Date quilt is on the wall, it needs sashing and borders, but all the blocks are done.  I thought I would put it on the wall and see if there were any matching blocks near each other.  I can’t look at it for too long though, it’s too “crazy on the eyes”  It must be a quilt that one has to step back from in order to really appreciate it.

Then there is Scrap Dance Minuet, a mystery quilt from From My Carolina Home . The final step was released this past week.  I have put together half the blocks so far, I may have to finish them up before the Play Date quilt, as they are taking up my sewing table space.  Only 12 more to go, I’m making the twin size.

Finally, the postman brought me the twelfth month of the Christmas figs BOM.  Fabrics for the sashings and corner blocks.  Lots of sashing, this quilt finishes at 78″ x 96″,  which reminds me, I have to get a backing for it.  Lately I’ve been shopping at Backside Fabrics for my backings.  Good selection and fast shipping, plus their prices are pretty good too.

Oh yeah, I got the extra skien of hand dyed yarn I ordered to finish my Sea Gleam Shawl.  I got lucky and it is from the same dye lot as my first two.  The lace edging is requiring a bit more concentration, plus the rows are quite long at this point, about 400 stitches.  I breath a sigh of relief, when I get to the end and I have the right number of stitches left.  No one likes to un-knit that many stitches and lace too boot.

Linking up with Judy at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday this week.