Week 8 Goals February 19 to February 25, 2018

1. Three sofa cushions

prewash fabric
quilt fabric
measure for cushions
finish edges
sew cushion
add buttons

2. Mom's quilt

resew arm 1
resew arm 2
resew arm 3
resew arm 4
resew arm 5
resew arm 6
resew arm 7
resew arm 8

cut down the diamond border to 6 1/2 inches

3. Complete lessons on EQ8 Class

Monday
Wednesday
Friday


5. En Provence

QST green/yellow/neutral
QST green/purple/neutral

6. Killians's quilt
Decide which quilt to make
Draft in EQ8
Gather fabrics
Cut fabrics
Piece blocks
Borders
Quilt
Bind
Label
Pack
Mail

Week 7 goals February 12 to February 18

1. Three sofa cushions

I have the fabric and backing ready to prewash. I just need to zig zag the raw edges on the backing fabric. Looking forward to quilting this.

prewash fabric
quilt fabric
measure for cushions
finish edges
sew cushion
add buttons

2. Mom's quilt

What a task to deconstruct this quilt for the 4th and FINAL time. 

The quilt has now been deconstructed and I am going to deconstruct some of the arms so I can put them together better.

Apparently when I sewed them together originally I was in a hurry and just put the units together without much care.  

When I put the quilt back together I will use the method of half square triangles instead of inset triangles and squares. 


work on fixing the setting triangles
work on fixing the setting squares
cut down the diamond border to 6 1/2 inches

3. Complete lessons on EQ8 Class
Great lessons. There is so much to learn in EQ8.
Monday
Wednesday
Friday

4. Kate's Spectacular Stars Quilt
Such a fun project. Great to use EQ8. 
measure stars
measure borders
photograph quilt
draft in EQ8

5. En Provence
Finished all of my purple 4 patch units. YAY
4 patch units
QST green/yellow/neutral
QST green/purple/neutral

Progress on a rainy Wednesday

Couch cushion covers.
Here is the fabric I will be using for the sofa. I will be outline quilting it on my long arm before making the covers.

vintage home dec fabric

En Provence 

QST progress (quarter square triangles or hourglass units)

After discovering the units I made with triangulations measured 3 3/8 inches and were not square, I started over using my AccuQuilt cutter. 

Even with accuquilt you cannot sew from the tip of the blunt cut. The unit will measure 3 3/8 not 3 1/2. It has to do with the elusive scant quarter inch seam. 

Now that I have figured that out it's onward and upward.

There are 64 half units to make 32 QST units.

Love my AccuQuilt cutter.

Have a great day everyone.

Week 6 goals February 6-

Time to actually set some goals for this week. It is possible that I will complete all of them but it is not necessary. I just want to take the challenge. No stress, just fun. No affiliation with the any of the vendors, just passing on the information in case you are interested. 

I got three of the goals completed and an extra project. It was a storage case for our son David's sharpening set. You can see it here:

Make the lazy cushion covers for the sofa--

http://jezzeblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/upholstery-for-lazy-girl.html

1. quilt the fabric

2. cut and zig zag edges

3. find buttons

4. complete the 3 cushion covers

Complete all three sections for my EQ8 class.

https://on-point-quilter-subscriptions.myshopify.com/

1. Monday

2. Wednesday

3. Friday

En Provence

1. work on quarter square triangles

2. work on purple four patches

Pam Clarke quilting 

1. decide on a video to watch

2. trace patterns every day

Mom's quilt

1. try to fix the issues with the setting triangles and squares

Borders class on Craftsy unlimited

Finishing School--Better Borders

https://landing.craftsy.com/multi/?redirect=true

Free trial. I love Craftsy Unlimited. Have learned so much already this year. 

1.Try to finish watching the class at least the sections that will help on Mom's quilt

What was I thinking?

I have been organizing in my studio and came upon this stack of blocks for a quilt. I have no idea when I started it but I think it was going to be a quick charity quilt. That was years ago.

The good thing about a large studio is that you can stash/store lots of things. The bad thing about a large studio is that you can stash/store lots of things.

The fabrics are from Connecting threads and have been in my stash -- no wait, my curated fabric collection-- for years.

While I was deconstructing Mom's birthday quilt I decided to tackle these blocks also.

It is a drop in the bucket in studio organizing but I will be plugging away at it this year and sharing progress here.

Mystery block uses a layer cake square and a charm square with  two 5x10 rectangles.

Deconstructed and ready to be put back into the stash.

Out with the old... Mom's quilt is out of hibernation again

Happy 2018 everyone. It is hard to believe that we are already into the second week of this new year.
It is always wonderful to greet a new year, full of possibilities!!
New projects to start and old projects to finish.

Mom's birthday quilt is out of hibernation again!! Firstly it needed a good pressing, so that part was easy. 

Mom's quilt was started in September of 2012 and has been in and out of hibernation numerous times. It took many months to piece all of the units but it certainly should have been finished years ago.

We just don't know what to do with it. The center is an eight pointed star that is paper pieced with all batik fabrics. I saw this star in a book and decided to make it into a quilt. That was the setup for the challenge right there. I have successfully designed lots of quilts over the years but none have been this challenging.

So when we have hit design impasses it has been put away and then it has been "out of sight and out of mind". However, this is the time to finish this quilt and enjoy the satisfaction that will come with completion of this quilt. No more hibernation!!

This lovely print is the inspiration for Mom's quilt. 

These are the paper pieced units that make up one arm of the center star. 

Mom designed the star from the units that I sewed.

Final layout for the star. 

Mom is working on designing one of the squares. This was March of 2016. I had all of the squares and triangles sewn around the star. I removed all of them so it would be easier to applique all these amazing shapes. 

I got an AccuQuilt die cutting machine for Christmas 2016. We decided it would be amazing to have applique squares and triangles surrounding the star. 

We got 6 of the 8 squares and triangles all ready to applique and decided we did not like it!! We decided the star should be the star. So I took all of the applique shapes off the setting squares and triangles and sewed them back to the star. Then I added the two borders below.

The top diamond border was the inner border and the lower piano key border was the second border.

We decided that we did not like the two borders because it made the quilt too big for the bed. So I removed both borders from the quilt and then from each other.

Next week I will bring the star top, the piano key border and some background fabric over to Mom's and we will try and come up with the ideal borders. This is the year we will succeed and will prevail.

More updates to follow. I can't wait to see this quilt finished and on Mom's bed. We will both be doing the happy dance when it's all done.

Hats for 2017

Wow-- good to be back to blogging again. Life has had challenges since I last posted but things are good and life is good too.
Last year I donated 50 hats for cancer warriors and had planned to make 50 hats again this year. So finally I have started.

The patterns For Giving e-book are wonderful and always keep the hats fun. It's more of a formula than a pattern. It can be purchased on Ravelry.

You can find me as Mommabee on Ravelry.

There are options for the brim body and the decrease section at the crown.

It is easy to do a hat in a day, so there is hope for me to achieve my goal!!!

I'm experimenting to find a good size needle for the yarn. Since these patterns are meant to be extra warm many of the options use two strands of yarn.

The stitch on the body of the hats is called thermal stitch and it's warmer than just stockinette stitch.

Here are the first three. They are all adult size and the last two are an XL size.

 I am happiest with this hat. I used a size 8 needle. 

This hat is still really big. I used a size 9 needle

This hat is super large, but someone with a big noggin and lots of hair will be thrilled. I used a size 10 needle