Hole in the Barn Door

I finished it last night. The border fabrics both came from old stash- fabrics I bought several years ago when the Hancocks 5 minutes from me closed down. Here is a closeup of them as I think it's hard to tell in the other picture. I soooo want a design wall or I need to clear off a better place to take pictures.


I have enough of the jigsaw puzzle fabric left to use as the focus fabric for a quick quilt.
Just need to find an easy pattern.

I also got rows sewn together for the Black & Bright Shooflies. I decided rather than making 1 large quilt I'm making 2 small. 1 will have the pieced borders I designed and I found a great black with colored Musical notes on it in my stash for the other one. I think this Hole in the Barn Door is the first time I used a print and not a TOT to border something! So I am learning!

Goals for the week of July 13th

My boss is on vacation so I have Office Duty this week. This means that I have my mornings free to get some sewing done. I fully intend to take advantage of that!

My goals for the week:

1. Finish Kids Hole in the Barn Door.
2. Finish Kids Shoofly
3. Make at least 3 DJ Blocks.
4. Continue making Crumb Blocks. My scraps and partial block bin runneth over. This quilt will be my Camping quilt so I need to have it made, quilted, and bound by mid-October.

I'm going to pull some multi-colored brights from stash and choose from those for the HBD. I hope to finish that top by tomorrow morning. I have the black washed and all the scraps ready to go to finish the Kids Shoofly. I can do it! 2 tops this week!

Pictures

Here are "Hopscotch", "Cathie's Campfire", and "Simple Simon"



These have become addictive! I spent some time this weekend sorting through my bright scraps and pulling all the Black & White fabrics I'm gonna use. As fun as these are though, I really want to use my time this week to finish up a couple of UFO's.

Friday night I pulled this BOB (blocks in bags) and sewed them together.

I don't know what colors to do for borders. It is going to be a charity quilt so I really don't want to piece anything. I could do strips of any colors except yellow. There is a lot of green already so I really don't want to use that. I thought about a skinny blue and then wider red, or reverse that and do a skinny red and then a wider blue? Help?

Multi-Tasking

The other night David and I were watching "Surviving Surburbia" and "The Goode Family" on TV. 2 more shows that I love and have probably been canceled. The last several Saturdays they've finished up the "Eli Stone" episodes. I really liked that show. Not just for Eli's sometimes musical visions, but that each show seemed to convey an almost spiritual message to me. Beginning this Saturday they are gonna show the last 4 episodes of another short-lived favorite- "Dirty, Sexy Money". Nothing spiritual about that show, just several good looking men.

Anyway, I already digress. We were watching TV and I turned on the computer. I played some solitaire and I worked on some stuff in EQ6. David questioned what I was doing. I can't "just sit". If I "just sit" I fall asleep. My hands have to keep moving. I have to have something "to do". I seem to multi-task everything. You should see my "to do" list. I plan short things to do while I'm waiting on other longer tasks. For instance, clean out the dishwasher while waiting on the washing machine to finish.

Now most of the quilters I know have lots of projects going on all at once. Right now I have:

• Dear Jane (aka DJ) Blocks
• Adagio
• Scrappy Rocky Road to Kansas
• Crumb Blocks
  
• Kids Hole in the Barn Door
  
• Kids Shoofly

The first 4 on the list are "on-going" projects that will take me a while. The 2 kids quilts are short term projects that I'm actually hoping to finish this week if I can stop making DJ blocks long enough.

However, I really do know a couple of quilters who start 1 project and actually FINISH it before they start another one. I don't see how they do it. I like having choices. I see what mood I'm in and that decides which project I'm gonna work on. I've already got another UFO pulled and 2 quilts I want to start after these 2 kids quilts are done.

So what do you do? Are you fidget-y? How many projects do you have going on right now? What do you do to relax? I tried reading...it put me to sleep too...

Weird Names

Here are A6 Uncle Homer and A8 Florence Nightingale. I should do some research and see if there are reasons behind the names. Most quilters know A6 as "Uneven Nine Patch". I've also heard it called "Puss in the Corner".

As I get into this more and make the harder and more challenging blocks and work with other brights and colors, I may go back to these beginning blocks and redo them if I need to change colorways.

Adagio

Here are 2 of the blocks. This is going to be so cool. I love how all these colors are playing so well together although I'm not quite sure about that dark green corner, so I might change it later. We'll see when I get more blocks made.

On a Roll Again!

After being so frustrated Saturday night about the pink & brown quilt, I drowned myself in a little bit of ice cream and went to bed feeling defeated.

Was not to last long because just a few hours later I was wide awake and ready to go, so I picked out patterns and printed off papers and got these made.

I had already made and sent her 5 but I don't have a picture of those. I hope that she likes all of them.

After a break to do a load of dishes, several loads of laundry and take a short nap, I spent the evening working with these strips

I got 48 blocks started but didn't finish a single one. I will tonight and get a pic posted. I have grand ideas of entering this one in a show so I am trying to take my time and do everything just right. Sure don't want to sew any of these upside down. LOL.

What's wrong with this picture?

Yep, I just realized after all the problems with the piano key borders, that in my rush to finish this, I sewed the last 2 rows on UPSIDE DOWN. ARGH!!! I don't know how to fix this, other than beg and tip tirane real good for her help. Or just give this to charity. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it anyway.

But it's done for now and I'm on to those blocks for Medina...

Sewing Marathon

The school is closed today and David has to work all weekend so I am having a sewing MARATHON. I'll do a little sleeping, a little eating, and take a break tonight to go to "First Friday Folksingers" at church but other than that I'm going to sew, sew, SEW.

My weekend goals are:

• Finish the Pink/Brown/Cream Rail fence aka "Sweet Rails".
  
• I'm starting my version of "Dear Jane" and have picked very easy blocks to start with. I want to get at least 2 done this weekend.
  
• I need to make some blocks for Medina. We had a 1 on 1 exchange and sent each other a yard of fabric to make 12 blocks. She's a SAHM and had all of my blocks made and back to me within a month. I've been slacking and haven't finished hers (several months later). Still need to make 7 blocks and hope to get most of them done this weekend.
• Many years ago when I was active in the quilting group at about.com we did a swap for 2 1/2 inch Moda Marble strips. The colors chosen were so pretty I didn't want to use them in anything else and sat the tub of strips aside. They started screaming at me the other night and I sat down and designed the quilt in EQ6. I have a ton of solid black to use with them and have named this quilt "Amish Stripes". Gee, I wish I was more creative with titles. LOL. I want to get this quilt started and as much progress made on it as possible.

So that's it! I promise pictures and progress updates so stay tuned!