WIP Wednesday and January UFO Check-In

Judy L. at Patchwork Times is having a challenge to finish up 12 languishing UFOs in 2012; January's number was 5, which on my list was to prepare half of the applique pieces for the setting blocks of the 1996 Piecemakers' Calendar quilt.  And I prepared all of them and have started the long applique handwork process which will probably take another year, so I'm declaring victory for January.  The other "half", when it's chosen, will be to go back and prepare applique or embroidery to complete the actual main blocks.  Number 1 is the pick for February; on my list that means I will have to machine quilt and bind my Aunt Maggie's quilt top, which I don't have a picture of yet... it predates my blog, but it's not nearly as old and neglected as the Piecemaker's quilt.  It feels so good to get working on something that has sat around for so long.  Seriously... 3 kids have been born since then, and one is in High School!

It's WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced, and I do have a few progress photos of my more current projects.

Orca Bay: a tiny bit of progress, but it's now hanging out on a new, more spacious design wall!

Crumbs: signed by all the school students, quilted, binding machine-stitched on and now being hand stitched to the back.  ALMOST done and ready to be signed over to Cedar Tree for the auction.  This is just a teaser photo; hopefully tomorrow will be the big reveal.

My other auction quilt, working title "Play Ball!": top finished this week.  It's about 65"x85" and will go onto the Megaquilter next, as soon as I piece a back for it.  I like how Bilbo acts casual, as if he's not plotting how to jump up on the quilt as I take the picture!

In knitting, I finished my Nautilina shawl, the second shawl of my 12-shawl challenge, this morning but still need to weave in the yarn ends and block it, so here's another teaser photo.  I really loved working with this yarn and used every last inch.  It's my handspun from a batt by Butterfly Girl Designs.

No progress this week on Farmer's Wife blocks, or cleaning my sewing area.  A tiny bit of spinning went on yesterday.  But mostly this week it's been grading, grading, grading.  And I have laryngitis, so teaching was real interesting today!

WIP Wednesday: Progress photos across the spectrum

Seriously.  I have way too many irons in the fire.  But I think I like it that way.  So this Wednesday I took photos of everything that I worked on, even if just a few stitches, in the past week.  Here goes.

Knitting: Nautilina shawl, my second in the 12 in 2012 challenge: about 75% done.

Knitting: Argylefest 2012: about 25% done with one sock.

Spinning: 4 oz. Blue-Faced Leicester, dyed and mostly spun last summer; I wound off the second skein and measured the total yardage at about 492 yards of heavy laceweight/ light fingering.  That will have to be added to my stash totals next week, but it doesn't count as buying new yarn!  And I began spinning some Wensleydale last night, also dyed blue.

Machine quilting: The Crumbs quilt, the one with signatures from all the Cedar Tree kids and staff, is on the Megaquilter; about 25% done.

Farmer's Wife quilt block #85, Square Dance.  Yes, I used some of the scraps of the vintage donated fabric that I used in the backing for Crumbs.

Block #86, Squash Blossom.  Kinda busy, isn't it?

Piecemaker's 1996 calendar quilt: half done with the applique on the 2nd of the setting blocks.  It's so satisfying to take out those little applique pins and put them away!

Another quilt for the Cedar Tree auction: I'm sashing it and sewing the rows together: 85% done.

Not pictured because I haven't done any more since the last photo: Orca Bay quilt top, about 25% done.

Now I'm tired, it's Finals week, and I still don't have any projects finished.  Linking up to Freshly Pieced so you can see what others are up to.

Design Wall Monday and Stash Report

Full disclosure: my design "wall" is too small.  I tend to use it as a staging area for whatever project(s) I'm working on at the moment.  It's right behind my ironing board and the clutter is really bad, even after my marathon ironing session Saturday night.  This is exactly how it looks right now.  At the top is 1 1/2 strips of the sports-themed quilt I'm trying to throw together for the Cedar Tree auction.  Top right peeking out from under that is one of the Farmer's Wife blocks (they stay on the design wall until they're blogged, then they go into the pile).  In the center and partially covered by the sports are two of my Piecemaker's blocks, with applique complete on one and partial on another.  Draped over the ironing board is Orca Bay, which is about 1/4 sewn together.  I can't really use the design wall for it because it's too wide, so I'll really have to vacuum the carpet and use the floor for layout.  Behind and under the ironing board is pinned a Jack's Chain block, one of my long-term UFOs.  Just so I won't forget about it! 

To make my design wall more usable for the size quilts I tend to make, I've decided I need to get a 72" dowel rod to stretch between the two window frames on either side (which are 68" apart) and add a few more strips of batting to increase the width of what I've got now.  It would be fine if I only made baby quilts, but most things I make are at least twin size.  Right now the batting is supported by a "clothesline" strung between two nails, and it's not terribly sturdy.

The Crumbs quilt is on the Megaquilter frame!  I chased down every last kid at school and almost all the staff to get their signatures.  I did a test swatch with green variegated thread and it's looking okay... no thread nests so far.  I'll start quilting as soon as I stop blogging today.  I'd like to get this finished and off to the school.

Stash report:

Fabric used this week: 3.25 yards (pieced backing for Crumbs quilt)

Fabric used year to date: 3.25 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 0 yards

Net used for 2012: 3.25 yards
Yarn used this week: 0 yards
Yarn used year to date: 414 yards
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 0 yards
Net used for 2012: 414 yards

I'm linking up to Judy L's Stash Report and Design Wall Monday.  I hope it's okay to link to both.

Design Wall Monday - 1996 Piecemaker's UFO

Well, this is something different on the design wall!  I'm so excited to be able to share this.  Judy L. at Patchwork Times is sponsoring a UFO challenge this year, and I'm participating.  This month my challenge was to prepare half of the applique pieces for the setting blocks for my ANCIENT project, the 1996 Piecemaker's calendar quilt... and I got on a roll once I set up my system, and prepared them all!  Then I used tiny little sequin pins to position them on their triangle or rectangle backings.  They are all ready to do the actual applique.  And, in fact, I'm working on the applique for the first one when I have time for handwork.  The hard part's all done.

Now, it's not all good news, because in looking over the actual calendar blocks, I could see that most of them still require some additional handwork, either applique or embroidery, to finish them.  I'll let that be my challenge for the next time this comes up in the UFO challenge.  But I didn't think I'd ever get back to this project, and it's really quite pretty.  I'd forgotten how fun applique is.

I am linking up to Design Wall Monday at Judy L.'s blog, so you can see what other quilters are up to!

WIP Wednesday: a little progress on many projects

We had a beautiful sunrise today.  Heavy frost made the ground look almost like it had snowed, but I had to dash my daughter's hopes for a snow day.

Some of the same colors are in my Farmer's Wife quilt, block #81, Snowball (and I didn't even plan it that way).

I also did block #82, Spider Legs.  This one was a pain: drew it on graph paper and paper-pieced it, and it's still on the small side.  I purposely chose colors that do NOT remind me of spiders.

I'm still working on the Orca Bay mystery: about halfway done with making the units that will be used in the border.  If I wanted I could start piecing the body, but I like to do the steps in order.  I'm hoping to get several hours at a time this weekend to piece: for the last few weeks I've just grabbed 10 or 20 minutes here and there, in the cracks and crevices of the day.

I've made a little progress on my UFO project of the month, preparing half of the applique pieces for the 1996 Piecemaker's calendar quilt.  This is the quilt I began when I was pregnant with Secundus, and figured that if he was a girl, it might be done by the time "she" was in a big girl bed.  Tertia and Quarta came along, and moved to big girl beds, and the quilt is still not done.  It's time to git 'er done.  I have all the stems for the floral setting blocks, all the leaves, and maybe 10% of the flower petals and flower centers.  It's fiddly work, lots of standing at the ironing board with a paintbrush and spray starch, but it's been progressing, and that's something.  I'd like to get all the pieces prepared now that I've started, and that would leave the actual applique for another month's challenge.

I have my finished crumb-along quilt top in at school, where I'm almost finished collecting signatures from all the students and staff.  I still have Kindergarten and 2nd grade to collect, and a few absentees from other grades.  Yesterday, two 1st graders asked me how to spell their last names.  I told them to just use the last initial.  I hope to have all the signatures collected so I can begin quilting soon, maybe even this weekend, but I'll need to piece a back first!

I did some spinning last night and plied a bobbin full of this Blue-Faced Leicester that I dyed and spun last summer.  I'll have two skeins of light fingering/ heavy laceweight, but still need to skein the bobbin I spun last night, wash both skeins and count the yardage.  I should have enough for one of the shawls I'm planning on knitting this year.

My two shawls are progressing nicely, even though I don't have new pictures.  I'm in the last section of the Age of Brass and Steam, past the part involved in the yarn barf incident.  I'm planning on making it a 5 section shawl instead of a 3-section kerchief.  Might even finish it this weekend.

Okay, one thing did get finished last week: this photomosaic Charlie Brown puzzle we picked up at Goodwill.  None of the 1000 pieces missing: it's a keeper!

Once again I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced, where you can see lots of other progress from lots of other bloggers.

WIP Wednesday

Since school just started back up again I'm not really much farther along than when I last posted about the Orca Bay mystery.  I may have sewn a few more units, but that's it.  One of my projects this year is Judy L's UFO challenge: she drew number 5 for this month.  #5 on my list was the 1996 Piecemaker's Calendar quilt: I broke it down into 2 months' worth, each of them being to prepare half of the pieces for the applique in the setting rectangles and triangles.  I brought out my Piecemakers' Calendar quilt so I could assess the amount of work I'll need to do this month.  I am making a twin-sized quilt with fewer blocks: so I will need a total of 6 rectangles and 4 triangles.  The rectangles will need 3 stems, 5 leaves, 3 flower centers, and 12 petals each.  The triangles will need 1 stem, 2 leaves, 1 center and 4 petals each.  So I will need a total of 22 stems, 38 leaves, 22 centers, and 88 petals.  I have some leaves prepared, plus what you can see on my sample block.  I will declare victory if I can make all the stems, and half of the remaining pieces, and lay them out on the backing.  I'm not going to require myself to applique them down, but if I do, it's all to the good!  I use the freezer paper/ spray starch method to prepare applique pieces, and all the bias strips from stems are already cut.  I think it's doable in one month.  But of course I've also got Orca Bay and the Crumbs quilt to finish.

Yesterday I signed the completed Happy Quilting STARS quilt over to Cedar Tree for the auction.  They require you to place a value on it because they are not allowed to do that themselves... so I guessed $300.00.  If any of you have sold quilts at charity auction before, let me know if you think that's a good estimate.  It's really hard to say; it's a balancing act between the work and materials that go into a quilt and what the market will bear. 

In knitting, after my yarn barf episode, I cast on another shawl.  This is Melinda VerMeer's lovely and intriguing Nautilina, and it's autographed because the designer is in my knit group (Hazel Dell Starbucks, every Monday evening!)  Really, how cool is that? The yarn is my handspun, from a batt by Butterfly Girl Designs called "Seashells."  It's got lots of sparkly stuff in it, angelina and firestar, in a base of merino and bamboo.  I'm well into the second section so far.  So fun to knit.  The yarn was just recently washed in Kookaburra wool wash, and I love how it smells!

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.