What I'm Working On

String Challenge and What I’m Working On…

April 9, 2018 by Jo 14 Comments

I have no childcare for the next week….so, I’m playing as much as I possibly can, that is in between driving to appointments in Lacrosse for the prep for my thyroid cancer recheck.

So what did I do…

I started sewing my churn dash blocks together only to discover that I cut about a quarter of the alternate blocks at 5″ rather than at 5 1/2″. UGH!

So in between some other things I was doing in the kitchen, I started cutting new blocks. I was a little sad at first and then decided to “get over it”. At least the 5″ blocks are a size I can use later down the road. They’ll be perfect in a charm square quilt pattern….in fact, I’ll likely cut more and plan a project with them.

What else I’m doing on my play days….THIS!!!
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String Challenge and Lucy’s Baby Quilt

March 19, 2018 by Jo 16 Comments

Yesterday I told you that I was lamenting about the gray fabric for Lucy’s quilt…well this is what I ended up with….. plain light grays.

See the rectangle that’s plain? Well I want Lucy’s name to go there….so I hand drew out some letters. Here they are. The first “L” was too big. This is the second version.

I’ve not really done this kind of applique much so I’m a newbie. I decided to use Lori Holt’s method using sew in interfacing. I didn’t know what way to turn the letter when I traced it on so I tried reversing it…. I followed the steps by tracing the letter onto the interfacing…..

I made the slit….
I turned it right side out… Darn it….see what happened….
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String Challenge and Mystery Sewing

December 25, 2017 by Jo 4 Comments

I’m hooking up with Bonnie Hunter’s Mystery Quilt link up today. Welcome if you’re new here and the link up brought you. We are a busy blog with update twice a day, unless life gets in the way. There’s always something going on here!!

Last week I finished up the quilt for the wedding and then the busyness of the week before Christmas set in. On top of that…I caught a nasty cold! I didn’t know how mystery sewing would go but it went fine….

I cut it out on Friday over naptime..and then more cutting while making supper. I did some sewing Friday night….Some again on Saturday and finished the sewing of the flying geese on Friday night.

It appears that I have enough! I’ve debated about making a few more each time the numbers are given and make the quilt bigger. 75″ x 90″ really isn’t very big. It will do a twin sized bed and that’s about it. Hmmm. At this point, I’ll wait until the final reveal to decide what I’m doing.

In the middle of cutting out for this I realized that I am running VERY low on neutrals. UGH. It wasn’t the problem of the directions it’s the problem of me! In the middle of this I raided my neutrals and cut out another quilt so…My neutrals are almost gone. Just at that moment I realized that Hubby was in town doing an errand in West Union. They have a quilt shop there that I rarely go to. In the past one of the reasons I didn’t go was they didn’t have tons of fabric I was interested. They actually had LOTS of batiks. Well I got the idea to call there and see if they could cut fabric and Hubby could pick it up.

I called Hubby and asked if he would mind stopping if everything was ready. He said he would gladly stop (one of the many reasons I love this guy). I called the shop and they said they could quickly have it ready. I told them I didn’t care what they sent. It had to be a neutral and wanted a quarter yard cut. It didn’t matter if it was fat quarters or yardage and that I’d take up to 20 different cuts.

This is all I had left….There was limited variety. Most of them are only a few inches wide.

Here are the new fabric cuts….Ah…I feel much better as the next clues come that I’ll be prepared.

I was worried if in the next clues, we’d have to cut out 3 1/2″ squares or something like that, I wouldn’t have enough fabric.

My batik supply is somewhat limited as I just started shopping for batiks over the last month or so.

Onto my String Challenge:
For those of you who have been following along with me, you know that I’ve challenged myself to finish all of the quilts in Bonnie Hunter’s new book String Fling before her new string book comes out….I only have four that aren’t finished and all of them are started….so….here’s this week’s progress.

All of the applique is pressed and in place for the Daylilies quilt.

5 1/2 blocks have the applique finished. It’s not hard but it is time consuming to prep for applique.

I know some of you are working on finishing projects before the new book comes out as well.

I’ll see you back here next Monday with more mystery sewing and more Sting Challenge sewing.

Mystery and String Challenge

December 11, 2017 by Jo 1 Comment

I’m hooking up with Bonnie Hunter’s Mystery Quilt link up today. Welcome if you’re new here and the link up brought you.

I had a busy week…My evenings were filled and not much sewing got done around here. That’s okay. Life and the people in my life take priority over quilting any day. I did get clue #2 done and moved on to clue #3.

Friday when my childcare kids were sleeping over nap time I was able to cut clue #3 out. I’m a flip corner girl so cutting was super easy.

I got a little bit of sewing done on Saturday….not much but enough that I had one of the units sewn but not cut. Sunday Hubby said, “Hey let’s go up to the farm store and finish Christmas shopping”. Yep, we’re classy like that. As a young kid we had a farm store Christmas and it was always good for me. I threw the pieces I had sewn in the truck and off we went. Hubby drove and I clipped away.

Back home I got busy sewing the other unit.

All of them are now sewn. I’ll trim and press at nap time in the upcoming week. It’s the perfect nap time thing to do.

In other news…this is on the quilt frame and that’s as far as I have it done. UGH. This is a wedding quilt for Saturday. Hubby has a fireman’s meeting tonight so this is FRONT AND CENTER for me! It’s go time if this is going to get finished!!

…and I worked on my String Challenge project. If you’re visiting, let me explain. I started a String Fling Challenge for myself and invited others to join. Here’s the scoop. [Read more…] about Mystery and String Challenge

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