Design Wall Monday and Stash Report

I think it's been about a year since I even attempted one of these. I'm determined to make 2017 a more productive year for quilting and maybe even knitting. (About 4 pairs of socks were knit last year; no quilts were finished).

But this year I've finished the En Provence top, and that clears room on my design wall for the APQquiltalong from (mumble) years ago. It's a low-tone Burgoyne surrounded and I never really gave up on it, I just didn't sew on it last year. I'm working on the 14th of 20 blocks and starting to get excited about it. It's really pretty!

For other people's Design Wall reports, see here.

 Finishing the En Provence top also made me face up to the Beast, that is, the Farmer's Wife Quilt that has been on the Megaquilter frame for 3 years, untouched, growing dusty, some of its fabrics fading from the sun. :(  But I am stepping back to the task and getting into the rhythm of quilting. For this there is so much stopping and starting that I need to keep my tweezers (for pulling up the bobbin thread) and scissors (for snipping the thread ends after about an inch of sewing) handy. It takes about 45 seconds start to finish to do one of those little vines on each sashing unit. The individual blocks are longer, but have to be broken up into two sections because of the fact the Megaquilter is not a long-arm. I was finished with 3 rows  (of 17) when I entered the 3-year hiatus; I just finished row 10 on Saturday. It was totally not worth leaving for that long, and I hope the quilting Erinyes will overlook my fault.

 The kitties rebuke me for leaving them on the rollers so long.

 This is the sad state of my "accessory box" for my 25+ year old Viking. I think they made it with plastic hinges... otherwise very sturdily designed. I am sad I will have to use it as a free-arm from now on. I loved all that cleverly-arranged on-board storage.

 And I mentioned before that I've been following along with the 365-day declutter challenge, so today I tackled my cookbooks. But the shelves they were on were really dusty and dirty, so I had to clean them, and then I was way past my 15 minutes. So I put back the really essential ones and later I will start ruthlessly evaluating 60-year-old homemakers' pamphlets, 15-50 year-old church and civic organization cookbooks, and cookbooks that were all the rage but their time has gone. Seriously, someone must want a guide to Knox Gelatine from the 1950's, or the Once-A-Month cookbook?

Stash Report:


Fabric used week/year to date: 8 yards (estimated for En Provence top)
Fabric added year to date: 0 yards (and I aim to keep it that way)
Net fabric used: 8 yards

Yarn used year to date: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 0 yards (and I am on a yarn diet as well)

For other stash reports, Judy L. has them here.

My main knitting project at the moment is a pair of socks from Sanguine Gryphon yarn I bought at Sock Summit 5 years ago. I am turning the heels now so everything is looking up. And if I get some time to do some quilting and knitting both this evening, after cooking and eating a healthy meal, I couldn't possibly ask for more from a Monday.

Allietare and Other Quilt Progress

Amongst the end-of-term teacher stress and exam grading, (you can see above what happens when I walk away from it for a few minutes) I found some time to work on quilts this week.  Allietare is seamed together, the center part with all the blocks, and I just have to determine the fabrics I'll use in the borders.

We had scattered sun a few times on Saturday. This was one of those times.

I think I've said this, but I really love the mix of colors in this quilt. And I've seen a lot of different color combinations, and it really seems to look good in any color combo.  Check out some of the other Allietare quilts at Bonnie's linkup.  Some people already have theirs quilted and bound! 

This above is my current top contender for the narrow inner (gold) and wider outer (red) borders.  The red is one that didn't work out for my Country Stars quilt, and I'd be glad for it to find a home in this quilt.  I also have enough of that really light, subtle gray for either an inner border or the binding.

Not quite so sure about this lighter yellow (the same one I used on the narrow border in Grand Illusion, ironically)...

 The only black fabric I have that there would be enough of is this yardage... but I think it has too much brown in it and would take away from some of the liveliness of the colors.

And then this.  I really am leaning more to the red.  But let me know if you have any opinions on the matter.  It should come together relatively fast once I make the decision.

And of course, I have a charming helper! She's there right now.

I have the rest of the January blocks finished for the 365 challenge.  I love making a variety of sampler blocks, but I'm not completely convinced about the 3" size of these.  We'll see if I can come back and catch up on February's blocks after this week of teacher work is done.

Here is the one finish I have for the year:

It's a simple flannel baby quilt.  4.5" squares, with a 2" border, backed with another piece of flannel but no batting.  This makes it an ideal weight for swaddling a baby, or for a toddler to drag around and wrap up in. I sewed it around the border with right sides together, leaving just enough space to flip it right side out and then topstitch around the edge.  This avoids having to bind it, and it really doesn't require much more than utilitarian quilting along a few ditches.  I have enough flannel squares for at least 4 more of these, but maybe without the border.  My mother-in-law made several of this basic kind for my kids, and it's really a nice, cozy gift to have on hand.  And will use up some fabric I no longer want to keep in my sewing room.

I'm also linking up to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday and
Stash Report:

Quilting Fabric:
Used this week: 2 yards for the baby quilt.  Maybe next week I'll have the Allietare top done!
Used year to date: 14 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 3 yards (+ 1 sheet)
Net fabric used year to date: 11 yards

Knitting yarn:
Used this week: 0 yards
Used year to date: 0 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: undetermined amount from sweater (from Goodwill) that needs to be unraveled
Net yarn used year to date: 0 yards

Design Wall Monday and Stash Report

 Let's be completely up-front about it... when it comes to putting together a bed-size quilt like Allietare, my design wall is just not big enough.  You need the family room floor, and you need to vacuum first if there's been a sleepover last weekend.  So after I came home from teaching today I unpinned the sampling of blocks from my design wall and started laying them out on the floor.  Then I decided I really had to change into jeans, because there's a fair amount of crawling around and rearranging.  This is what I came up with, trying to keep a pleasant variety of both reds and golds throughout.

I love the scrappiness of this quilt -- I decided midway in that I was going to go broader in my use of reds and golds if I had to be more restrained in my blacks and neutrals, and I'm glad I did.  It makes the overall effect very lively, to have such a wide variety of tones.  Including those red/white/black prints that wanted to play! They jump out and say "notice me", but in this quilt, that's going to be okay!  I double checked to make sure no two gold squares were matchy with each other at the corners, and I think I caught them all (is anybody else bothered by scrappy quilts that aren't scrappy enough?)  I don't think that will be a problem for me with this one!  Now to find time to stack and label the rows from NW to SE, and I can begin the sewing together.

I'm linking up to Patchwork Times for this. And while I'm at it,

STASH REPORT!  It has been about a year since I've tried this, and SOMETHING needs to be done to keep me accountable.  Plus, I finished the Grand Illusion top Saturday, so that means I can count stash used.

Stash Report:

Quilting Fabric:
Used this week: 12 yards (according to Bonnie's estimate at the beginning, I'm claiming it!)
Bought this year to date: 3 yards (3 Goodwill shirts, already deboned)
Net fabric used year to date: 9 yards

Knitting yarn:
Used this week: 0 yards
Bought year to date: undetermined amount from sweater (from Goodwill) that needs to be unraveled
Net yarn used year to date: -? yards

I will try to do these updates at least monthly, and get my consumption of fabric and yarn up so that my cupboards can be more neatly organized. Yay for a new year and a new start on organization!

Allietare Link-up and Design Wall Update

It's a bonus day! That's when a surprise snow/sleet storm comes and cancels school the first Monday after Christmas break. (It made getting to church interesting yesterday, too!  And I have to give kudos to my mother-in-law, who made the attempt to drive herself to church but turned around when she figured discretion was the better part of valor. We were able to pick her up and have Sunday dinner with her anyway, and returned her safely after helping her with some errands. It was Peter's last family dinner before heading off to college, so I'm glad we were able to have her over.)

This is what it looked like outside my sewing room window this morning. Very pretty! And a good day to stay in and sew!  Fortunately for all scrap quilters everywhere, New Year's day marked the release of the final clue in the Allietare mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter, and we all have something to work on.  It is such a pretty pattern, and I'm really excited to see it come together.  There are many others doing their interpretation of this design -- check them out at the Quiltville blog link-up party.  You can also find links there to download the pattern clues, for a limited time, if you missed it.

Here's what my design wall looks like at the moment.  I decided not to remove the rainbow string star underneath, but just pin the Allietare stars up to see the pattern develop.  So far I've made about 25 of the main stars and 4 of the Pisa blocks.  I also re-discovered that basket of flannels when I was attempting to tidy up some things, and started piecing a scrappy flannel baby quilt as leaders-and-enders, which are pinned on the right. There are three quilts on my design wall (which is not really big enough for a bed-sized quilt), and about 7 others in various stages scattered throughout my sewing room. My sewing room messy?  No, I'm just a creative genius!

 It's pretty, the way those patterns play off each other.  I still like my light gray, even though it's a bit subtle. It saves something to enjoy close-up. If I hustle, I might even get the blocks done today. But probably not. It's a good day for not-hustling.

Flannel baby quilts... my mother-in-law made several for my kids and they loved them to death.  These are some scraps from her as well as flannels I have saved for years.  I'm trying to clear them out.  They're just 4.5" squares.  I'll probably back them with more flannel and not put in any batting. It's a good, flexible but comfy weight that way.

I haven't set any quilting goals for 2016, or knitting goals, or anything. I'm still recovering from the great quilting wasteland of 2015, and hoping to finish a few things, that's about all.  Maybe in a month or so I'll figure out some concrete objectives.  The biggest challenge will be getting back onto the quilting machine. I have had my Farmer's Wife quilt on there for about 2 years now with very little progress in the last year. Yikes!

Design Wall Monday

This is on my design wall this Monday (and you can click on the link to see what others are doing).

I am almost finished with those big diamonds to form my string star.  Three are done, the other five have four rows and are waiting for the fifth, and I have pieced most of the individual small diamonds that I will need.  It just needs about an hour or two of uninterrupted time.  Ha Ha!  I need to start thinking about the background fabric and the design... I'm pretty sure I want to do little stars with some of the extra diamonds, but how I'm going to set them I don't know.

The 9-patches and blocks draped off to the right are for that "low volume" quilt-along I joined yay long time ago... when I sat back down to finally do some quilting back in September after a long hiatus, I thought I would piece a few more of those Burgoyne Surrounded blocks, but I ended up getting drawn into the diamonds instead.  It's always an adventure in the quilting area.  I totally should do this more often.

I also bought four black fat quarters in preparation for the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt coming up later this month, and because I liked them.  I should technically log them as part of a stash report, but I fell off that bandwagon some time ago -- not because I bought too much fabric, but because I nearly stopped blogging altogether.  I'll just stick to piecing diamonds for awhile yet.

Design Wall Monday and Kid update

For the first time in a very long time I have something different about my design wall... that's because I stitched this block this weekend:

 It's the sixth one I've finished with that low-volume quilt-along.

 So I put them all up, and there has even been a tiny bit of progress on the string diamond star.  But the sunshine out the window will tell you, I'm not getting a lot of quilting done at the moment.  Summer is just too short!

Up to our eyeballs in plums, but they sure are pretty.

 Quarta has been delivered to camp, where she has many friends.  The house will be a LOT quieter this week!

Pretty cool treehouse.

Peter has been doing things like this,

and this,

 and this (yikes!)

and this for the last 4 weeks at Basic.  He was allowed access to his phone for half an hour yesterday to call us for the first time.  I think he's doing great but he's definitely reached the point of wishing it was done.  And it's a long way from done yet!  He very much appreciates everyone who's been praying for him and writing to him but doesn't have any time to write back.

Some Grandma Quilts

It's design wall Monday over at Judy's blog and I realized I haven't yet shared these two quilts my mother-in-law brought over to be pinned recently.

I love this hexagon/triangles composition.

And this one is just stunning with all the batiks.

I am trying not to feel too depressed at how little sewing I've gotten done.  My own design wall hasn't changed in forever.  I mended some jeans the other day and fixed a ripped out hem, and that's about it.  I keep thinking I will have time, this summer vacation.  But I keep not finding it.

Yesterday the top cabinet in our kitchen pulled away from its moorings in the wall and we had to empty everything out of it and brace it with some 2x4's.  We are waiting from a call back from the handyman department of the designers who did our kitchen back in 2007, and hoping very hard the whole thing doesn't come completely loose and crash down, and that it will be a relatively simple fix.

Still waiting also for confirmation of Peter's arrival at Basic Training.  I'm sure they're keeping him busy.

Other summer things going on: raspberries are in season; we are having more leftovers from our Saturday cookout for dinner tonight; and I'm not really feeling the urge to take on any big projects.  The Tour de Fleece is starting soon and I'm not even sure if I'm going to participate in that.  And how did the potato salad disappear so fast?

Design Wall Monday and 1st Stash Report

Okay.  Bear with me.  This is what my design wall still looks like:

Except the long pieced strips.  Two of them are almost finished being sewn to Celtic Solstice.  One needs to be unpicked and adjusted a bit.  That is how little sewing I have been doing.

And I am going to post my very first stash report for the year.  This is my prize from the Sew Mama Sew giveaway, from Quiltz by Stephanie.  I'm estimating the yardage at 4 yards of the charming Olivia fabric.  I may not have been sewing much, but I haven't been buying fabric, either.  I'm hoping to change that lack of sewing in the near future.  I did a tiny bit today, but that fussy business with the Celtic Solstice borders is hard to work up to.

Stash Report

Quilt Fabric:

Added this week: 4 yards
Used this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 4 yards
Used year to date: 0 yards (oh, the shame!)
Net for 2014: 4 yards in

Knitting Yarn:

Added this week: 1200 yards (thrift store reclaimed sweater, black wool)
Used this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 1200 yards
Used year to date: 0 yards
Net for 2014: 1200 yards in

I have been supremely lazy about tracking this for some time, and I can't promise I'll be regular, but Spero Meliora.

Design Wall Monday

 My mother-in-law brought this quilt over yesterday for me to pin.  She says she enjoyed piecing it so much, she plans to do another, larger one.  I guess that's the measure of a successful quilt pattern!

This last week I finally got a chance to sew together the pieced borders for Celtic Solstice.  I'm thinking of a yellow fabric for the spacer borders.  I was hoping to have this together by now but not quite.  (Wouldn't it be nice to finish Celtic Solstice on St. Patrick's Day?  Oh well.)  Also, I started piecing the diamonds into strips for my rainbow String Star.  I still have plenty of string units to piece for that one too.  So, still no finished stash to report.

I went to knit night at Starbucks tonight (just got back) and finally divided for the sleeves on my yoked sweater.  I had some math challenges with working out the number of stitches for the pattern for awhile but I think I have reached the point where I know how to knit it from here.

Design Wall Monday

Linking up to Design Wall Monday today with a shot of what was on the floor... Celtic Solstice blocks laid out.  They are now stacked and pinned and ready to sew into rows.  This is my third of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts -- you can still download the clues from her site for a few more months, I think -- and her designs emphasize the scrappy so much that the layout itself is not a big deal.  There is really a little of everything within each color family in this quilt.  Looking forward to seaming it all together soon.

Once again I have no finished projects, so no excuse to make my first stash report of the year.   If I finish this top, then I can count some fabric used, that's my rule for myself.

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(The line of asterisks is my primitive way of telling you I'm changing the subject. Most of my followers are here for the quilts, but I can't really stick to one thing at a time, as they've probably figured out by now.)

Daniel is having his first day of classes back at college.  We had school today, although Tertia and the public schools were off.

In honor of Martin Luther King and the quest for civil rights and the right to self-determination, I'm also posting about this case -- have you heard about it? Jahi McMath, a 13-year-old African-American girl declared "brain-dead" by the same hospital that botched her tonsillectomy.  It's very worrisome to me, as the parent of a child with a disability, that the family's wishes should have been so  badly ignored in this case.  Another Down syndrome parent and blogger is well worth reading on this, at Kimchi Latkes.  She has some excellent links here and here exploring the ethics of this case as well, including some about how those in the African-American community feel about medical ethics after their history of exploitation and abuse.  It makes me wonder if we really should be so self-congratulatory on overcoming racism and discrimination.  I have a friend with a mentally disabled daughter who became medically dependent after a stroke while in the hospital... she reports a widespread bigotry on the part of medical specialists, especially neurologists, against those who have mental disabilities.

Understand, it's not that the ethics in these hard cases are unclear and there is no consensus -- that may or may not be the case, if you have a "quality of life" that meets the expectations of the ethical decision-makers.  What concerns me is that the consensus appears to be different for different patients, based upon the prejudices of the people who make up the hospital boards.  And especially troubling is the lack of regard for the wishes of the families.  So this is to get you thinking about the subject of the civil and human rights of the disabled.  I'll be posting more in the next days and weeks, because it's a subject that just keeps coming up in my everyday life and reading.

Design Wall Monday

So here's what my design wall looks like at the moment:

It's mostly Celtic Solstice.  I have more than 80% of the blocks pieced and will maybe get started assembling the rows later on this week.

And I have another block to show in the APQ low-volume quiltalong.  I think this is #5.  Not a lot of sewing went on over the last week, but enough to claim a bit of progress.  However, no finished projects of any kind since the beginning of January, so I still have nothing to make up a stash report about.  It will come, I hope!

Celtic Solstice on the Design Wall

Enough to see the lovely patterns formed by the 2 different blocks, this is Celtic Solstice.  I have all the 54-40 or Fight blocks pieced and am not quite halfway finished piecing the second blocks.  Then of course I will need to sew them all together and add borders to make it finish at 75" square.  It's a good design; I like it a lot.  There are several overachievers linking up at Bonnie Hunter's site who have already finished the top, I bet.  I will be content if I can finish the top before her final link-up.

My quilt is inspired a bit more by my Scottish heritage than the Irish, so I chose darker greens and plenty of plaids. But if you look at my ancestors it doesn't take too many generations for the Scots and the Irish to intermingle a bit.  And they all ended up being Americans together.  I thought of the colors of the Irish flag and the colors of the Scottish flag mixing in this quilt, (and orange for the Dutch too!) with the sun sparkling on the water, and I thought of this song by Battlefield Band, which seems appropriate:



Many thanks to Bonnie for another beautiful mystery quilt and a fun way to spend Christmas break! I'm also linking up to Judy L.'s Design Wall Monday, but not to the stash reports yet because I have no completed projects for the year.  Yet.

Design Wall, Celtic Solstice Link-up, and Year End Stash totals

The end of the year is a busy time for bloggers.  Everyone is compiling retrospectives on the year and setting goals for the next one.  But to be honest, I'm just here to have fun.  And right now, the organizing bug has not struck me.  I used to believe "cleanliness is next to godliness," and then I had kids, so it was adjusted to "organization is next to godliness... a little exposure to dirt will help build up the immunities."  Well, at the current stage of the family and the school year (remember I have to go back to teaching middle schoolers a dead language on January 6) I have a more resigned attitude of "lack of chaos is next to godliness.  Or at least, that's all I can hope for."  All of this to say, I may or may not publish an official "New Years' Eve" post retrospective/forcast like I've done in the past.  I can do this much, though:

 Here's the 4th block of the APQ quiltalong.  I made it this weekend.  I'm making it truly scrappy, and it's fun now that I've figured out a system for piecing each block and cut a bunch of the low-volume backgrounds.  If I keep averaging one or two a week, I'll be able to make this top about the same time as finishing up Celtic Solstice.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll tame the scrap pile a bit.

And speaking of Celtic Solstice: here is how much I have done of clue 5.  I was sick/organizing Christmas most of last week so I didn't have much time to sew; just finished up the very easy 4-patches from clue 4 yesterday.  I'm getting the assembly line for step 5 going today.  I am so tickled that Bonnie designed a quilt for us that was inspired by those cathedral floors from her trip to Ireland... it was what I was hoping for.  I am sure this quilt is going to be stunning.  Steve and I have fond memories of singing at both Christchurch Cathedral and St. Patrick's in Dublin on the GCC alumni Touring Choir tour in 2005.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Every bit of those cathedrals is a work of loving art by skilled craftsmen.  I love the idea of paying homage to that in scrappy fabric.  I also love that scrappy quilts can use things like the safety cone scraps and the bugs fabric and the Halloween fabric that I would otherwise not have found a home for.

Last week's photo of my design wall with a sampling of my (too many) current projects.
And the final results of this year's stash report:

Fabric:
I used 61 yards total in finished projects
I purchased 49 yards (plus an unspecified quantity of scraps that were either passed along to me and I do not care to estimate, and the contents of that 12-gallon bin I picked up for $5 at the epic estate sale, which I also do not care to estimate).
Net used for 2013: 12 yards.

Knitting yarn:
I used an estimated 10,900 yards in finished projects.
I purchased, spun, unraveled or otherwise acquired 5800 yards.
Net total used for 2013: 5100 yards.

Design Wall and Mystery Link-Up Monday

I rearranged the design wall, trying out a new arrangement of my rainbow string star diamond.  I think I like this one, with yellow points, better than the one that was up before this:

 This previous version had purple points and centers.  However the final arrangement of diamonds is, I'm thinking of a solid gray background and some kind of rainbow string border.  I'll stare at the two diamonds and think about it some more.

 Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice mystery is chugging along.  I made just enough of clue 4, the 4-patches, to put a border around the experimental block I put up on the wall last week.  I will need to cut a variety of greens and oranges still. But I think this design is actually kind of fun.  I wonder if I'm close at all to the final layout?

I'm turning out about one block a week in the APQ quiltalong.  There's a Flickr group now.  For me this is truly a scrappy quilt and so the cutting can be a bit of a chore, but I'm cutting extra low-volume pieces each time I have a chance and it's still fun.

For comparison, here are the previous two blocks I've made:

This will probably be the last time I post until after Christmas.  I did some shopping, errand-running, wrapping, and cleaning today and there's still a lot more to do, especially the cooking and cleaning.