Sewcial Bee Sampler Blocks

Like an itch you just have to scratch, I continued making the rest of the 25 blocks for the 2017 Sewcial Bee Sampler. I knew that if I started focusing on the next pattern I plan to release, the stack of blocks might get put back in the cupboard and I really didn’t want that. Here are the last nine blocks I made since I pulled this UFO project out last week. The first two were in a previous post, and all been shown on Instagram.

Top row: Block 17 Spools and Block 18 Square Peg; Bottom: Block 19 Circle of Friends and Block 20 Irish Chain Variation

This quilt along was hosted by Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell, both designers for Art Gallery Fabrics. It was the first one they did. 

Drift

Well here I am with my first quilt finish since ... egad June 16?! I've made several makeup bags another placemat (purple) and pj shorts, but no quilts. This flimsy has actually been finished since July 13! Ah well, Brady here for three glorious weeks, coupled with lots more glorious weeks of pristine summer weather has meant I haven't had the urge to quilt it. Oh how I love this quilt!

It's got Sandra written all over it: my colours, and an ocean theme.

Au Naturel

This is my first year participating in Gail's PHD: Projects Half Done. So far I am on track! Here is my UFO finish for June, a top that has languished in my finished tops pile (which actually only has two quilts, now just one, in it) for .... omg.... five years! Well languish no more, she's done!

Many thanks to my quilt model, Rufus.

9-Patch Spectrum

I have another Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt finished! This baby is staying right here with me. I don't know what it is, maybe loving 9-patch blocks, maybe all the memories tied up in the 120 fabrics surrounding the 9-patches, but I feel very attached to this one.

Yep, we got some more snow, this time just a light one, overnight, so I had pristine snow on the front lawn upon which to toss the quilt. And bonus: a beautiful sunny warmish day!

Summer Stars

Last summer I participated in a QAL called Sweet Star QAL. It was a sort of DrEAMi, in that I started in almost at the halfway point, and I had no business taking on another project, but it sort of consumed me, as those squirrels do. The best part was that I finally had found a pattern for my Blueberry Park stack of fat quarters that I'd bought a few years ago at Craftsy (who are back, which I'm sure you know, and as Craftsy, and it's "watch whatever you want for the next 45 days" event to celebrate their return). We made four blocks a week, and I had such fun combining various fabrics to make the blocks. I love the blues and greens with a bit of yellow and gold thrown in. Once the top was done, I behaved and got myself back on track with deadlines and commitments.

Couldn't you just snuggle up with a good book in that oasis? Well maybe not; it was rather hot and humid! Still, it evokes the idea, and one could sit on top of the quilt there and read...  Our Sweet Autumn clematis is absolutely stunning and its heavenly scent pervades that entire area, reminds me of jasmine in Florida in looks and scent. It cascades down either side of the fence. There's another small one, but we think it hasn't gotten enough sun since the cannas, mandevilla vine, barberry and elephant ears have filled in all around and above it. Note for next year!

Fly High!

I am so pleased to have this long-awaited UFO done and checked off the FAL List. It's been on that list for over two years!

The block is one by Deb Tucker, called Migrating Geese. I followed this tutorial, making it as one of my RSC 2017 projects, but doing my own layout. Each month I made one row of the geese.

UFO Busting #33.5

Welcome to Tish's UFO Busting party! While she is busting up UFOs and stompin' all over them, eating pie, and doing some shopping with blogger friends in Ohio, I am hosting the party for her this week.

Welcome!  Tish and I go a ways back... to a certain New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop 2015, during which we further bonded over books and pibbles. We've gotten up to all kinds of quilty fun over the past 3.5 years, some of it finished, some not. One of our sew-together projects that we both have not finished is the Sewcial Bee Sampler Quilt Along, though she is further along now than I am. Anja joined us, and since she has been in India, I haven't bothered to even try to catch up with Tish...Anja's my excuse ha! Let's take a look at what has been occupying 99% of my quilting time this week...

A Bit of Everything

I was dark almost all weekend, meaning I stayed off-line. Didn't read blogs, didn't post on Instagram, except for my yoga challenge and one quilt photo, didn't even look at gmail. So my apologies if you're wondering why I haven't read your TBT post or responded to a comment. However, I was pretty productive, despite not sewing at all on Saturday because of IRL commitments.

The first item on the catch-up list is the Fireburst mystery that Tish of Tish N Wonderland is hosting. This is my fabric pull...

Q2 FAL My List

When someone said somewhere on social media that 2018 was one quarter done, my eyeballs popped open and my heart rate sped up! What? Wait! oh...yikes.

How did I do on Q1's List? I completed 5 of the 7 on the list, so I am pretty happy with that. The two incomplete will move onto this quarter's list, and I've moved them #2 and #11 on this list.

Here is the list of what I would like to have finished by the beginning of July!

1.  Postcard from Sweden

The deadline is April 18! It's further along than this photo, but not quite a flimsy yet.

2. One H2H quilt, to be made using some or all of the Canada fabrics on the left:

3. And I hope to use up the last bits of the Dot Crazy fabric, which is on the right in that photo, for a second H2H quilt. I used this fabric for the Plus Playtime quilt for the ezine Modern by the Yard, which also is the one we will be making in my second annual QAL! Head over to either of those links to download your free copy of the ezine which contains not only my pattern, but a few others, all free! For the first post and to see what fabric I'm using, click here. Next week is the main introductory post.


4. The IB challenge for April is a vintage design made with a modern flair. I plan to use these fabrics, and I'm super-excited to make what's been floating around in my head for the past week or two.

5. Here are the fabrics for the new Plus Playtime quilt I will be making, with an adult vibe, for my QAL.

6. I need to make two cat mats using these fabulous cat fabrics I used in Cat-Eye-doscope and I also want to make two cat mats for either the Windsor Humane Society, or the cat rescue I've heard about in Leamington. The second two might be out of these fabrics, maybe out of others.

7. I'd really like to finish my knitted selvedges rug, but that is dependent on how many selvedges I generate over the next three months!

8.  A cushion using some of these Island Batik beauties. I am not sure which ones yet, so this and #9 fabrics will possibly change a little, partly because I can't show you just yet some of the one set of fabrics we received.😉 I'll update this post once we're allowed to!

9. A crib size quilt also using some of these Island Batik beauties!

10. I need to finish the quilt for my niece, Fawn. I just have two more family quilts to make: hers and her brother's, and then all the nieces and nephews will have an Auntie Sandra quilt; well, Fawn and Dray will actually have two, as they each got crib quilts when they were babes.

11. Poor beloved beautiful migrating geese! This is one of my three RSC 2017 projects and I'd love to get it done this quarter since it got neglected last quarter, although I did get the backing assembled.

This should keep me more than busy I suspect!

Linking up
Busy Hands Quilts (certainly these are "Finished or Not!")
Confessions of a Fabric Addict (because I'm whooping about a new list and possibilities!)
Dizzy Quilter (for the FAL)
Tish 'n Wonderland (because #2, 10 and 11, well and now, ha, #1 are UFOs)

UFO Progress

I thought I'd pop in to let you know what's going on in the 'many irons in the fire' world of mmm! quilts these days. This post was mostly written on Tuesday, with a couple of items to finish up Wednesday morning before posting. Unfortunately a rather wicked persistent headache put the kibosh on my plans, which means this is getting posted Wednesday evening!

UFO #1:  Rainbow Scrap Challenge
I've caught up on my blocks for March and made the second one for February. If you recall, I did not have much in the way of purple scraps with me in Florida. March's blocks are the light and lime green ones. Here they are all together for the first time. These are definitely eating up some 2.5" squares! I am cutting 3" squares from bigger scraps  to make two at a time HSTs.

UFO work and Another Exciting Announcement

UFOs

I didn't think I'd be able to link up with Tish's party this week, because I didn't think I was working on any UFOs, and then I realized one of my UFOs was not on the list from this post.  (I've gone back and added it, not to worry.) My cat mats. Each year I make two, giving them to the Englewood FL Humane Society where we get our dogs' heartworm tests. I always intend to make two more at home for the Windsor Humane Society or for a cat rescue I've heard of right near me in Leamington. I haven't. So this time it is my OMG as you read on my last post. I did a quick look and had a quick think and easily found the four possibilities I showed you in the OMG post. Because the paler blues are the RSC2018 colour of the month, I decided my first cat mat would be in those colours. I made it like the second one for which I never did write a tutorial, so watch this space, as they say, because I'm taking photos along the way and I'll show you how I did it, pretty easy-peasy. These mats are about the size of a placemat, so you can always use it for those too. 😉

A little progress; man I do love these blues! That's the last of the arrows print; I feel glad and sad, do you know what I mean?!

Any progress is good progress, right? The Splash of Colour was also on the UFO list, the "B" (Blocks) list, and is due shortly to link up for prizes. I missed the deadline and link-up for the flimsy, so I'll be damned if I miss the final link-up. I've decided to call this "Float", and it is half way done quilting. I'm doing an all-over hook & swirl design of Angela's.

It's back!

Speaking of fun linky parties, which provide another opportunity to meet other quilty peeps, several of us have missed Throwback Thursdays which were held with Jen at A Quarter Inch From the Edge. Well, I emailed Jen last week and offered to babysit this linky for her while she is buried in full-time teaching and raising two littles (been there, done that, no time to sew except for school breaks). She assured me she is still getting in some sewing and quilting time, but blogging ain't gonna happen.

So, the first Thursday of the month Throwback Thursday is going to be held here until further notice. What is Throwback Thursday for those of you who may not know? It is a chance to pull out and photograph those older quilts, probably pre-blogging, and tell us their story.  Every quilt has a story (isn't there a song about that... ah Rod, you know that's what you meant).

Since we missed the first Thursday of January, the party is going to happen this coming Thursday, January 11. I will be telling you about the quilt below that always sits on my bed for the month of December and into the beginning of January. Sneak peek:

I'm making a page for Throwback Thursday, so you can find my previous posts; it's also a way for me to remember which oldies have been documented.😃 I have also put a little description there for those who might happen to be randomly cruising around my blog...

Linking up
Tish's Adventures in Wonderland
Cooking Up Quilts

Quilting Confessions

Okay.  Deep Breath.  Here goes...

I get sidetracked pretty easily. In life, a bit (I can see MacGyver busting a gut laughing at that), so, since this is a confessions post, okay fairly often. This is why I work so well under pressure. Put the blinders on. Focus. Pedal to the metal kind of thing. Therefore, I have quite a few UFOs.

Blogging has been both a positive and a negative when it comes to UFOs.

• A positive: joining in with FAL to get things done, prizes to motivate, pulling out some older projects to put on the list
• A negative: like a magpie or is it a crow, I am easily distracted by shiny objects; like a dog, I am tantalized by squirrels and rarely pass one by, (I started a DREAMi monthly linky that kind of celebrates those chasing squirrels moments); and, getting designs published means pushing the FAL list to one side while a deadline takes precedence...

Enter Tish and her mission for next year to help us tackle the skeletons in our closets, pretty plastic organizers, IKEA Kallax units, drawers, top shelves, bottom shelves, under beds...wherever these cotton skeletons lurk. Her post about it is here.

I'd asked Tish if we should count the projects that are still in our heads and we'd maybe just bought a few pieces of fabric towards making them...she called them mythical quilts (I love that!)... well, it would take a few posts to list all the wannamakes in my brain. Know that some of the quilts on my list below are in the mythical quilt category!

All right, full confession: this is not a full confession, LOL. I did start a list in Word, however, and I plan to get those, as well as more lurking UFOs, organized and put them out here... well, maybe. It's a good way to maybe stop the buying? Make myself reread the list before I hit 'check out' at the online sales...ya, okay, I'll let you know how that goes.  I admire Lynette at What a Hoot Quilts for her candid post she linked up. Interestingly, reading Lynette's post on the Henry Glass Fabrics projects she created is the reason I got involved in the Henry Glass Desire to Inspire challenge in 2016. Cool how our paths cross here again! Her list is very much like I suspect my own would be were I to actually sit down for a day or ten and itemize every project in my sewing loft. She is running 18 in 2018, which you may want to check out. I may participate in that too. Anything to move these projects along!

Without further stalling, here is the abbreviated list of projects I need to move along over the next year:

Quilts partially quilted

Brr Park (this one has been started quilting on my Bernina) red face of shame that it has been put aside for two years now...

Flimsies awaiting quilting

RSC 2017 Migrating Geese
Stepping Stones
fleurs (Self Round Robin done at my former guild)
Wayward Transparency
Lazy Daisy
Kaleidoscope #2

I see I have created an A list, a B list and a C list of UFOs! Well I tweaked it a bit to get this, but I like it, but then, that doesn't surprise me, because as crazy as my UFO list is, I do like order.

UFOs (Blocks stage)

RSC 2016 Pop Rocks
RSC 2017 Strings
RSC 2017 Houses
150 CA Women
Splash of Colour
Scrap Vortex
Canada Quilt tested for Cindy
Stack n Whack green/coral
Magic Tiles

UFOs (Cut fabrics stage)

Box A Lot
Hometown Charm Jelly Roll (MBS by Rose)
Celestial (McCalls Quick Quilts) *about 1/4 of the strips are cut
Sea glass Quilt

UFOs (All, as in various, stages)

Tula Pink City Sampler (x2)
Flag
Cat mats (at least 2, hopefully 4 this year)

Kits

Downton Abbey b'day quilt
Gravity
Sea Swept (Quilt Sampler Cotton Patch LQS)

Patterns I want to make (some fabric already pulled/purchased) 

Aunt #3
Cats quilt
Postcard From Sweden
Sewcial Sampler with Tish
150 Canada pillow
With Glowing Hearts
My Guy
Geode
Dandelion
Modern Hand Drawn Lily & Loom
Suburbia with Boundless Blenders
Puzzle Tropics

38 items!  Won't happen.  However, seeing them in print here, and then checking back, will, I believe, help me get these done and in use or given to whoever they may be for, including charity. Some of these will also show up on the quarterly Finish Along and monthly OMG in which I usually participate. I've found these to be excellent motivators.

Hope you may consider joining Tish!

Thankful Thursday #5

The news today was full of the 70th anniversary of D-Day.  Watching and listening to a veteran recount his story, I couldn't help but be upset.  We do not ever do enough for veterans, no matter what their age.  I do not support war; I do not understand why we can't live and let live, as humans.  We don't see eye to eye with everyone, and that is okay; that is called diversity, and it is often a way in which we grow.  We learn to accept, even if we don't agree, or maybe we do change our thinking, or broaden it at the very least.  Live and let live.  I can live my life in total happiness, even though I do not get along with all with whom I come into contact.  I don't wish them any ill; I don't feel a need to be vindictive, crush or control them, as do those who enter into war.  Each person in this world does have goodness inside him, or her.

Sigh.  At the end of my yoga classes I teach, I always say, "The light within me humbly honours the light within each and every one of you."  This is the translation of the Sanskrit word, Namaste.  Would that everyone reach into themselves and choose Light rather than Darkness.

And that brings me to my gratitude topic for today: Yoga.

OM symbol for a good article on this click here

I have been intrigued by yoga most of my life, since back in the 70s when my mum and my aunt did it.  My aunt continued to practise yoga for decades; in fact, she might still today, at age 77!  When I'm thinking of nothing else but my breath, and watching my body from the inside out, I am at peace.  When I'm teaching Yin, and I see my students so into a pose, I beam inside.  I am so grateful for this beautiful meditative practice, that gives me health on so many levels.  I love doing it and I love sharing it.

SO!  Perfect segway into my third part of this post:  I am going to commit to another month of Melissa's A Lovely Year of Finishes, and FINALLY!  Yes!  I can!!  Make the yoga mat bag I have had in my head for about a year now.  My old yoga mat bag's zipper gave up the ghost about 4 years ago now. . .

I'd thought about inserting a new zipper, or making a new bag, but then about a year ago I had the brainwave of what I want to create, using Leah Day's motifs --eek! that excites me:  teal or maybe blue thread on black!!  However, it got added to the UFO pile:

Black Kona cotton with thread possibilities

Hopefully it will come into being by the end of the month!

What was I working on today?  A brand new quilt top!  Angela Walters' Textures fabric I bought online this winter while we were in Florida.  More on that another day!

And where is the hand-quilted runner that was my goal to finish for May?  Cough.  Same place as last week...

I did get Brady's Christmas Party! quilt washed and dried.  It's so soft and cuddly.

 

Both the Isacord and the Robison Anton threads sunk nicely into the quilt.  The spiral motifs are more visible now that it's crinkly:

Namaste everyone.
Sandra

Another Link-up...

...that I hope will ensure I get some more old projects out of storage and onto beds or walls!  It was really motivating just to blog about those I took with me to Florida, and watch the real progress I made getting through eleven of the 26!

I was on Quilting is More Fun Than Housework last night, and Cynthia led me to Sew BitterSweet Designs where I found this cool "A Lovely Year of Finishes".  Great idea.  So, I am going to join in and continue slogging sailing through more of my UFOs.

Here is mine for May:

I am embarrassed to contemplate how old this runner is.  Sigh.  I designed the runner (I just realized that right now!) using three different star blocks.  I LOVE stars to this day.  Yep, (choke) it was supposed to go on our wooden coffee table in the house we lived in pre-1999.  Egad.  I lost interest in handquilting once I took a free-motion quilting class at my then LQS, Lori's Country Cottage.

This is the shop that started me on my quilting journey, way back in 1994.  Hey! And they were featured in Better Homes and Gardens' Quilt Sampler in May 2012!!  Pretty cool.  Also cool is the look of my stitching!  It isn't teeny-tiny, but it still looks nice.  I did work on it a fair bit this past winter, but did not finish it.  The border needs to be quilted, as do some of the background squares in the star blocks, because I think they are too poofy and the quilting lines too far apart.  I was thinking of doing a square inside the square I've already quilted and some radiating lines  in the triangles, similar to what Joanne is doing in the red triangles on her gorgeous quilt.

Here is the back.

While working on it over the winter in Florida, I rediscovered my love for handquilting, and really, handwork of most kinds. (not so much appliqué, snort)  Hope to have this done and bound for the end of May link-up!

Random pics:  (sorry they're from my iPhone)
This is what is left of that green fabric!  Killed it!  And this will get cut up into two 11" strips for another one of Cynthia's Scrap-a-Palooza quilts.  Love it.

Cat's IN the bag

Funny thing is that is my Laurel Burch cat fabric bag!  Rocco didn't know what to make of her sitting in there like a princess. WHY do all cats love to curl up in bags?  Or on top of a shelf of t-shirts or sweaters in a closet, and then several hours later, when you freak because you haven't seen her in some time, you hear a faint "mew" and the hunt begins... which drawer?  cupboard? closet?

I am just making it by the deadline (May 1-7) for my first link-up with Melissa's A Lovely Year of Finishes!  And I'm heading out for supper with in-laws, but afterwards I am stopping in at Chapters to pick up the May 2014 issue of Quilt Sampler with my gift card!  :-)