This past weekend I bound until I could bind no more.  Six quilts that needed to be bound and moved on to the finished pile.  I spent most of Saturday sewing and listening to a book, it was going to be a hot day and I decided to stay in.  I did go out in the early morning to water my plants on the deck, but otherwise I stayed in the AC filtered air.

Sunday was still hot, so I went to work sashing and putting together the Christmas Figs BOM.  It took about four hours, I was surprised by how long because it’s just simple straight line sewing.  The blocks are large, 16 inches finished, so I guess when you add up all the sashing strips, 49, and the setting blocks it is a lot of sewing.  It’s a big quilt 😊 and I can’t wait to start quilting it.

 

On the Quilting list, ‘Sew She did’ is still waiting for the wool batting I ordered to come in,  I don’t have the quilt backing loaded yet, because I wanted to get Playdate on to the frame and quilted first.  Unicorns abound!  I found the sparkle minky at The Fat Quarter Shop a few weeks ago, hoping this quilts finds a little girl to love it.

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

I don’t think I ever had to write an essay about my summer vacation while growing up.  We lived at the beach, so from the last day of school to Labor Day, we spent most of our days there.  I once even had a summer job working at a concession stand on the beach. It was an idyllic life for a kid.

This summer I spent my vacation in Oregon with my horse at a ranch in Gold Beach.  Pretty idyllic too.  We went to the beach one day, but it was very windy, so rugged and beautiful.  We also drove down the coast to the town of Brookings.  There is a yarn and fabric store there, called By My Hand.  It’s an open and well lit place with lots of friendly people.  I found yarn for my next shawl in the Curious Handmade series called Tidepool. They even wound it into cakes for me, so kind.  Now if I can just finish the floating shawl, only about 15 more rows to go🙄.

Before I left, I got the borders on my Sew She Did quilt.  There was pinning involved, and NO re-sewing, yay.  Everything fit, the first time around. Ignore the Christmas quilt on the bed in front, it’s there to remind me to bind it and the other two I’ve finished recently

I sewed my backing together yesterday, I had six yards of a gray and black floral print and three yards of a quilty word print. I carefully cut the salvages off and had to cut the words fabric on grain. I used pins and got things together, even ironed it.  But this quilt has to wait until next week for me to start it.  I decided to use a double batting, wool on top of cotton.  I really want the stitching definition to show, if I’m going to spend time quilting this thing to the max, I want it to show up.  Of course I have no wool batting in stash, Amazon to the rescue!  It’ll be here next week, in the meantime I think I’ll throw the playdate quilt the frame and get my unicorns on.

Lastly, I finished up a top this morning, much pink-ness. Great pattern for a charm pack, with the border I used up almost all of it.  It’s for my DH’s associate, I think her baby is due in August.

Linking up with Denise at For the Love of Geese for Put Your Foot Down #10 today.

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.