Spring!

I love lilacs and ours are in full bloom!

You can hardly see the shed behind the bushes.

I finished ironing my fabrics for hexies and my cutting table looks much better.  However, I still have the hexies to trace, so it's not put away yet.  But it's getting there.  I also worked on my winged HST.  I have 120 left to go!  Then I can finish the blocks they are a part of and put the quilt together.  I can hardly wait.

I also started some curtains for my husband's home office.  (We share it, but it's decorated the way he wanted.)  I'm not sure why I said I would make the curtains, but I have decided I'm done doing that.  It's feels like it's taking away valuable quilting time.  LOL  It's a lot of work and I didn't have much luck with the last set of curtains I tried to make.  And I'm not really making them, I'm covering a pair of curtains as I needed a lining and I had way to much trouble with doing that last time.  Either way,  they will end up OK and we'll use them, or worse case, we're buying curtains.  And I'm going to let him do it!

Weekend Fun

It's been a busy weekend.  The weather has been so beautiful and warm that everything that we normally do in the Spring has been pushed up to now.  Chores that I do in April and May are needing done now.  But that's OK, I'm loving the weather.  Saturday we went to a Master Gardener Conference and we always come away inspired and full of ideas of things we want to try and do.  Went to a lecture by one of the owners of Loess Hills Lavender Farm.  We're thinking of adding lavender to the butterfly garden as they seem to love the plants. I currently have it in my herb garden.

Today I've been working on winged triangles for the Orca Bay Mystery quilt and tracing and cutting out hexies.  Not sure why I was in the mood to press fabric and get the hexies ready, but it was very relaxing.

I love 1930's reproduction fabrics.

I bought this case at Joann Fabrics years ago.  

The top of the case is vinyl and it's great to see all of your fabrics.  I'm putting what's leftover of the fat quarters in here and the bigger pieces are being wrapped on the comic boards and going on the shelf.  I think the desire to cut hexies may have been related to organizing my quilting room.  It's still a big mess of fabric everywhere.    

Part Two Of Busy Weekends

So...this past weekend my friend Patti and I had a mini retreat at her cabin like we did last year.  I don't have as many pictures as last year, but I do have a few.  First:

 Patti worked on a new quilt.  One block done.  It's a pattern she bought from Red Pepper Quilts.  The pattern is called Labyrinth and I love Patti's grey and yellow fabrics.

And this is what I got done.  One hundred wing blocks for the Orca Bay Mystery quilt.  I also trimmed my red string blocks and removed all of the paper. (Removing all the paper was a job.)

Most of our sewing was done on Sunday as on Saturday we did a Shop Hop of these five stores:
Adel Quilting & Dry Goods Co.
Creekside Quilting
The Quilt Block
Quilter's Cupboard
Quilt Connection

Patti had never been on a Shop Hop, so I had to go with her.  What a great weekend!  Thanks Patti!!

I'll Bring You Up-to-date

I have so much to tell you, it's been a little busy around here.  First, the weekend of March 17 & 18, the grandkids and their parents were here for a visit.  It was Sophie's 2nd birthday.  So much fun!

Singing Happy Birthday. (Yes, she had a taste of the frosting.)

On a tractor ride with Grandpa.

All in all, it was a great weekend.  We went to the train museum, took walks and played. What a joy these little ones are! 

Add It Up and Box Number Three

Here it is, Wednesday!  Time for add it up.  Loving the progress I'm making.


Step 1  228 quarter square triangles - DONE
Step 2   72 blue string blocks - DONE
Step 3  350 half square triangles - DONE
Step 4    64 red string blocks -DONE
Step 5  700 black triangles -600 are cut out
Step 6  112  2.5 inch black squares -DONE
            112  2.5 inch light squares - DONE
              52 2.5 inch red squares - DONE
              26 light Ohio Star blocks - DONE
              26 dark Ohio Star blocks - DONE
Step 7  sew the 700 black triangles to the 350 half square triangles (2 on each side) - zero
Step 8  127 red string triangles combined with the 254 half square winged triangles - zero
            100 half square winged triangles set with 100 light triangles - zero
Step 9  The big finish  put all of the blocks together in rows and sew rows together. -zero
Step 10  Make borders using 100 blocks made in Step 8. - zero

 Now for box number 3.

These are leftover from the Craft Fair days.  I have 7 half towels and the tops are made for all of them.  The paper pattern in the upper left belonged to my mother.  I made a plastic template to use when I made them. I'm going to finish these off and keep them.  They need to be sewn together, a button hole made and a button sewn on.  May take a while, as I'm going to squeeze it in while working on Orca Bay.

Box Number Two

Box number 2 has come off the shelf to reveal it's contents.  Here it is:

The date on the back of the pattern is 1989.  The 2 yards of beige cotton and the seed packet fabric is going into the stash and the pattern will be given away.  We moved into our house in 1997, so this was almost 10 years old at the time of the move.  Time for it to move off the shelf.  How bad is that????

I also spent time cutting out triangles for the Orca Bay Mystery quilt.  It's still moving forward, I haven't stalled out yet. :-)

Multitude

I have a multitude of projects, like any good quilter has.  I was looking for something in my quilt room closet and thought differently about this:

I have all these nice little white boxes of projects on the shelf.  The problem is they have become a "decoration" in my closet. (Read I haven't touch them since I placed them there when we moved into the house 13 years ago.)  I decided that I'm going to start taking one project box at a time and decide if I'm truly going to finish it or should I just put the fabric back in the stash.  If I'm going to finish it, I need to work on it NOW.  My goal is to clean those off so I can put fabric there. I want it to look like this.

The first box held this:

 Which were made into these pins.
I took them to Quilt Day for Quilts From The Bluffs and we will use them for extra name tags.  A silver sharpie works great for writing your name.  So I got a UFO done, 1st one for the year!!  WOO WHOO!  And I decluttered another item!