Happy Mother's Day

Hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day!

Another Row

I have another row done!  Row one and row two are sewn together.

When I look at the rows in person, I have a hard time seeing the pattern.  But when I see the picture, it shows up clearly.   

And it took a lot of pins for me to sew them together.  LOL Yes, I am a pinner and here is a picture after the rows were pinned. There are a ton of seams and I wanted to be sure that none of the seams slipped and bunched up.  I am going to machine quilt this.  I can't image trying to quilt something like this by hand, but I'm sure it's been done.

Whoa!

 Whoa!  I didn't realize it has been that long since I posted.  So sorry.   I have been busy, but I felt like I was droning on and on about the baby steps of progress I was making on the Orca Bay Mystery quilt, so I took a little break.  OK, more than a little break.

 I finally finished the rectangle blocks made with all the red string blocks and little winged HST.   Felt like a major accomplishment.

This morning I put the first row together.  This quilt has pushed me beyond anything I have every done before.  So many little pieces.  I'm really rather proud of myself.  It looks very busy, but when all the blocks are together, it will be wonderful.  I'm just hoping I get all the blue string blocks going in the right direction.

I've been cutting hexies for the days that I want to sit and stitch as the day is too hot to do much else.  These are from a line of fabric from Judie Rothermel called "Aunt Grace through the year".  They came out in 2003, almost 10 years old.   It really doesn't seem like 2003 was that long ago.  Most of them have a beige background and I'm only making one of each of those.  The rest of the fabric I'm going to cut into strips to be used in scrap quilts.  I want the flowers to have more color, but I did want to use the fabric.

And last but not least, is my little granddaughter in a tutu I made for her.  We were up to visit after Easter and the tutu and sunglasses were a couple of Easter gifts.

Last weekend was the last day that Prairie Star Quilts was open.  I'm so sad, I feel like I have lost a friend.  The ladies were always so nice, friendly and helpful.  I'll miss you PSQ!  But the weekend was also fun, as my sister Deb came and spent the night.  We sewed Friday night and again Saturday afternoon.  She worked on string blocks for a friend at work.  So I made some string blocks too.  They go together so fast.  It helped to lift the sadness. :-)

Spring Break Is Over

Spring Break is over and tomorrow will be back to the regular schedule.  But I did get some things done and I'm very happy with all that I accomplished.

First, I did finish covering the curtains for the Home Office.  I started with a pair of curtains I bought at Target as the liner.  There is strong sun at these windows and I didn't want to fade the "good" fabric.  Once I got going, it went pretty fast.

I cut out some more hexies.  As you can see, really heavy on the blue and yellows.  So I need to buy some more of the 30's reproduction fabrics in pinks, lavenders and greens.  Also some orange and red would be good.

Much to my relief, I finished sewing all the little winged HST.  One hundred of them have been sewn to a plain white triangle.  

The other 250 are being used to complete a rectangle block using the red string blocks .  I have most of them pinned and just these few are sewn.

All in all, a very productive Spring Break.

Happy Easter!

I hope every one has a wonderful Easter!

Woo Hoo

I think I finished sewing my 350 winged half square triangles.  Only one small problem:

 I had 20 black wings leftover.  Not sure if I missed counted the number of wings or the number of half square triangles.  Time will soon tell.

 We had an out of town funeral visitation to go to last night, so I took all of my winged HST and a tin of pins and pinned winged HST to their companions.  I ran out of travel time before I ran out of HSTs to pin.  SO I pinned for an hour and still didn't get them all done.  I've been thinking about the amount of time I have spent on the making of this quilt. It is truly a labor of love.  Love of quilting.

A Day Late

I know, I'm a day late for Add It Up Wednesday.  But I'm still going to bore you with my results.  :-)



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 -DONE
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) -DONE
Step 8  127 red string triangles combined with the 254 half square winged triangles - 6
            100 half square winged triangles set with 100 light triangles -50
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

I've been trying to do some of the blocks as leaders and enders to help with completing the quilt.  It has given me some hope.

I'm off work this week for Spring Break and I had high hopes for completing this quilt.  But, I needed to work on it and it only.  And I was fickle and did not.  I traced hexies.  I trimmed and sewed string blocks together for quilt day.  (Couldn't finish that project as I was short 2 blocks.  I thought I had all the blocks sewn when I brought them home.  Oh well, what's another UFO.)  I cleaned in my sewing room.  I defrosted my upright freezer so that it's ready for this years harvest.  (Strawberries are already blooming, won't be long before I'm picking them!)  Started curtains for the home office.

As you can see I have all kinds of excuses reasons why I haven't completed this quilt.