Catch up

I have used some mindless sewing on the road to recovery to occupy myself over the last few weeks. 

I sewed some more bow ties, about 300, I guess: I can't wait to start putting these together, but I must finish the sets I have kitted up, so I have maximum variety-this is a sample I made earlier to try a layout.  There will be about 1200 when I'm done, all finishing at 3". I think there are about 900 done already, the double quilt will need 1000 or so.

Most of the knots don't match the bows exactly: I had all the squares cut and waiting, I refused to cut more fabric so I raided the 1 1/2" strip bin for most of the bow tie  'knots'.

I have sewn some strips for the rainbow hexie

 ........and the Darwins Flower garden now has-almost-all the corners done-red, orange, blue, green, so just the border paths on the four 'corners' and the green 'hedge' edging to do, the end is in sight.

 Centre.... 

..before I sewed the orange up...

  ....and the blue corner almost done.  

The blues are really vibrant, I have a new phone with a truly rubbish camera, this picture is adjusted for white balance!  I have a new camera too, but its barely out of the box, I will have to get familiar with it.

Over  Christmas I lost myself in making the nine patches for the black and white quilt 'Morphine', about 100 of them.  I will be cutting triangles next for this quilt.

I have plans for a design wall, I will definitely need to to lay this one out. 

I got really bored with black and white, and started sewing randomly coloured mis-matched nine patches as leaders and enders, from pre-cut 2" squares, taking care to use up all the uglies.   They took over and I made about 200!  I haven't  decided what to do with them yet. 

I have not been working on the random hexie, though I know I only have about 5 more sets to sew before I have enough for a double quilt, this seems to have grown faster than anything else.  The top will definitely be done this year.  Not hand quilted though, there are others in the queue before this!

I can remember roughly when and how I acquired all these random fabrics!  Why can't I remember where I put the car keys!!!

 This year needs to be about machine quilting- I have a bout 10 tops ready to go.  I keep putting it off as 'I'm not good enough'. Things will get out of hand with the number I have to quilt soon-as if it's not already out of hand!

I have decided on the next leader-ender project, it will keep me busy for the next two years at least, it's Bonnie Hunters Perkiomen day dreams, each little square finishes at 1 inch. 

This is the basic unit......

Pale blue, yellow , red, and dark blue.

About 10,000 squares in a double. Gulp.

Summary for 2014

1. Two projects started!! (Random nine patch, black and white 'Morphine' nine patch)
2. Significant progress on Darwin's flower garden, bow ties and rainbow hexie.
3.  Another project planned. 
4. Promises of finishes!

Weekend work

This weekend, a little bit of outdoor work in the shade.......

Green Darwin's flower garden corner section

 and 4/8 VE1 series table mat  done

Cutting remarks again

I spent Saturday on a lonely cutting bee that I had long been putting off.  I had to make 12-sets for the outer rings of the brown hexie, my portable project.

 

 

All the brown centres are sewn up, leftovers from Darwins Flower garden.  

These are leftovers too.  I will have enough 'flowers' for another quilt!  I finished the last few this week, I wanted to get them packed up and out of the way for the time being

I also cut some more papers, not my favourite job in the world. 

It's been a hexie themed week, I sewed a few hundred papers in for the random hexie: the variety is low at the moment for this project, so I started some blocks off, to be filled out later when I've sewn in more papers and the colour variation is better. 

I have watched a lot of pre-recorded documentaries in the last few days too!!

The hand sewing has gone way for a bit, I have seen enough hexies.  I wanted some mindless sewing, so this morning I made about a hundred bow ties. 

I barely scratched the surface of the sets I have matched up ready to sew.  The orange and red ones have knots made form the leftover snips from  pink Sisters Choice. 

They are smaller than the other knots so will add variety.

The rest of the week I will be trying out my machine quilting. Scary!

Confessional

Fabric used in completed quilts this year:  about 1.8m

Fabric purchased total: 12.5m

This sale items parcel included:

4m of yellow (I bought some before and it's good quality)

2 m of neutral

1m to bulk out my small purple stash

4m black and whites for the designs later in the year.

Progress in the last two days: 

A films worth of hexies  papered up for the 'random' box-see the sharks?

And several documentaries worth of sets for 'Darwins flower garden'

 And a deceased Kindle

 ~{:¬<

Where is that seam ripper?

 

The green hexie corner is stripped and stashed away. 

I set myself a comfy spot, and put Bonnie's latest Quiltcam on this morning whilst I sewed a couple of Brown Hexie flowers up.......................

......and got these done.....

 

                                                                                          

I got out the quilt which needs the machine quilting ripped out last night, thinking it would take 10 minutes- but I couldn't find a seam ripper-it was impossible to get the small 'in the ditch' stitches out without risking damage so that's postponed until I can get a new one. Grrr!  Moral? 

Be tidier!

 

I'll be sandwiching this playmat next, which will be simply machine quilted  as I need to get at least one of the five done quickly.

To do this month list....

.......or at least progress things:

I'm recovering from an operation, thus fairly restricted: as my son said, a guilt free opportunity to please myself- he has been a good cook and bottle washer for the last week!

1. caterpillar corner fill-in to cover my inaccuracies on 'moth in the window'-I have been thinking about what to do with this for ages, caterpillars now seem so obvious to go with the moths-these will be my first public attempt at hand applique and shouldn't take long, so they're at the top of the list                                                                      
   
                                                                                   
2.  finish the green corner strips and stow away for a later date (next couple of days                
   
                                        
3. Unpick the aborted  machined in the ditch quilting (only a few rows) and finish this long overdue gift AFTER deciding on the new quilting pattern that will test my wobbly skills and enhance what I did with the colours-you can barely see this as the blocks are too big, the eye doesn't follow what's happening, it just looks 'busy' at the moment. I think it needs ribbons of dense quilting to enhance the colour layout
   
   
4. layer and machine quilt two of the five playmat flimsies-again practicing technique.
   
5. Find a smaller hoop so I can do the hand quilting for another overdue gift-I can't hold the hoop against my stomach at the moment!                                                                                                               
   
   I am soooo frustrated, I have so many ideas and no time to play with them, partly as I work full time and partly as I already have so much on the go, promised to others (ALL of the above!).  I will try to treat this week as an opportunity to practice what I will do with my retirement and GET IT DONE!    I had a really good week last week propped up with hours spent guiltlessly browsing blogs that I wouldn't normally spend, seeing what everyone is doing, its been great!  You are all such inspirational people.

I would love you to leave a comment, share if you are doing something similar or 'follow' me! xx

Green corner formatted

Tricksy greens, never happy with merging from blue to yellow

This is the last corner. 

Blues were stripped up by yesterday evening.

Now I can sit in a chair and sew the strips together instead of on the floor!

In the blue corner....

The orange flowers are sewn into strips and stashed away. 

I have almost 'stripped' the blue ones.  I'm doing it this way as the floor is the only surface large enough to lay things out- I'm recuperating at the moment so have the time to get the basic layout done quickly and get things off the floor as soon as possible. 

I will lay the greens out tomorrow, but they're tricksy!

Then the slightly tiresome border issue:  I have some 'path' rosettes to cut and sew, to join the red, orange, green and blue sections on with, then measuring as I think it will be too big already to do a 3 row border with path and a couple of rows of foliage, as I wanted to do.  My son and daughter in law have a king sized bed, so this is ENORMOUS.  It will be hand quilted (no doubt over several years!) quite closely to stabilise all the hand sewing.

I do feel I'm getting somewhere with it though, finally. 

A Pieceful job

I'm recuperating, but have a serious case of the fidgets: I need something to keep my hands busy whilst I sit and rest.  I got up early and laid out the orange corner flower bed for Darwin's flower garden.  This should take me a couple of days to make up, whilst I watch as many David Attenborough documentaries as I can: 'Africa' is first on the list. 

 This weeks read is 

About half way through and my Kindle died-nasty things happening on the screen, so I guess this one will be finished on the computer, not my favorite way to read. Enjoying the book so far.

Yesterdays fidget job was unpicking 60 blocks that I had sewn up wrong for 'the big green one'.  I did that four weeks ago and put it away as I couldn't face doing it at the time.  There was only one seam to undo and actually it didn't take that long.

I had sewn the four patch and triangle pair together, then had to join two of these sets, I put them the wrong way round: moral?  Keep referring to the drawing, even if your sure!