This week's goal

Since I have been unable to stop buying fabric and haven't used as much as I wanted to, I pulled out a UFO that will require a lot of fabric and it is my goal for this week to finish the top. This is a curved log cabin that I started last year and put away because I got tired of working on it. Besides stashbusting this year, I also want to finish some of my UFO's. Half of the quilt is pieced and put together. I made 10 blocks this morning... have 30 to go. Once it is pieced, I will have used almost 14 yards of fabric... this I know because I drafted the pattern in Electric Quilt and then did the yardage calculation. Even though my log cabin is all scraps, the yardage is still the same.

Here's a picture of the first half of the quilt:

Stash Report Week 4

If I didn't have to go into the quilt shop to teach, I wouldn't even think about buying any fabric. Mike just happened to pull a bolt of PURPLE Fairy Frost, and I just had to buy the rest of the bolt, which was 30% off. I do have a plan for it, though, so it wasn't compulsive buying :) I also bought 1 yard of yellow dotted fabric for my brights stash.

So here is the stash report for week 4:

Fabric bought this week: 7 yards
Fabric used this week: 9 1/4 yards

Fabric bought YTD: 32 yards
Fabric used YTD: 25 1/4 yards

Stash busted YTD: I bought 6 3/4 yards more than I used.

I didn't get to do as much sewing as I wanted to this past week and hopefully next week will be better. I don't have any classes to teach until February 4th so that will keep me out of the quilt shop. I'm going to work on increasing my pile of tops to be quilted because it takes longer to make them than to quilt them.

Harvest Spice

Finished this quilt top this morning!

Now I'm off to the quilt shop to teach a class. Hopefully I won't be tempted by the 13 bolts for 30% off... or the 13 bolts Mike will pull at 3 this afternoon. I think I might be even in my stashbusting effort YTD. Will report tomorrow :)

Ohio Star Variation

Finally got to do some sewing! Got this top finished, but it will go into the pile to be quilted. But it counts for stashbusting this week!

Electric Quilt

For Christmas, I decided I needed some new toys so I bought myself a laptop with a 17" screen and also purchased Electric Quilt software. I'm having a lot of fun with both! Judy over at Patchwork Times uses the software and designs the most wonderful inspiring quilts. I have been using one of her creations "Chicken Dance" to learn how to use the software and after creating a copy of her quilt, I then changed the layout and created my own version of the quilt..."My Chicken Dance".

I think these chickens are doing the do-si-do :)

Sixth Picture Meme - I've been tagged!

I've been tagged by Zlaty from Zlaty Sews for a Sixth Picture Meme. I went to my pictures folder, then to the sixth folder and am showing the fourth picture because there were not 6 pictures in the folder. Here is the picture:

Here is the story: My husband came into the house one day and said "Bring your camera! You've got to come and see this!" So off I went to see what he was talking about and he had found the biggest horned toad I have ever seen! We put his glove next to it so you can see exactly the size of that baby. That horned toad never moved from his spot. I think he was cold and was trying to warm himself in the sun. My husband is no small person... those are large gloves.

The rules are simple and here they are:

Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
Go to the 6th Folder, then pick the 6th picture in that folder.
Post that picture on your blog and the story that goes along with the picture.
Tag 6 other people that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.

Granddaughters :)

I received some new pictures of my two beautiful granddaughters yesterday and I just had to share this one with you. Brooke, on the right, loves to sit with her feet in the sink and watch her mommy work in the kitchen. Darcy is now big enough to join her sister in the sink!

Stash Report Week 3

I knew I was in trouble when I found out the quilt shop where I teach was holding a 30% off sale. Luckily they won't do this very often, but there was fabric that had been calling my name for weeks and I couldn't pass by 30% off!

Fabric added this week: 20 yards
Fabric Added YTD: 25 yards

Fabric used this week: 3 1/3 yards
Fabric used YTD 16 yards

Total YTD: I bought 9 yards more than I used.

Next week should be better. I will count the yardage in the Harvest Spice quilt as soon as I finish the top. I am also working on a baby quilt so that yardage should be counted also. I am almost caught up on quilting tops I have had laying around for a while. There are only 4 items in that pile and only one of them is bed quilt sized.

More Auditioning

As I was wide awake at 6 this morning, I was thinking about this quilt...actually, I woke up several times during the night and also dreamed about this quilt. This is the idea I came up with. This picture just has one of the purples as the middle stripe. It slightly contrasts with the center block.

The purple on the bottom is the same color as the center block and also matches the purple stripe in the border fabric. It can go either way... I like them both!

Auditioning Parts for a New Quilt

I'm having a little trouble deciding what to do with this quilt. I bought the fabric for this Harvest Spice Quilt 3 years ago, but I didn't want to make a huge quilt so I only bought 1/2 yard of many of the fabrics in the collection. I have plenty of the border fabric and I bought 1 1/2 yards of the gold print. What to do? I know... I could leave out that center print square and sash the 4 pieced squares and then I wouldn't have to deal with filling in all those triangle spaces. I do love the way the blocks turned out, though.

Baby Booties

I quilt, I tat... and I knit. I found these cute baby booties in one of my knitting books and I have been making them by the dozens. My daughter has lots of friends who are having babies, there are always babies being added to families at my church, and the rest go to Adoption Assistance Agency in Albuquerque or CareNet in Edgewood, NM. Then I found the mitt pattern online and thought it made a great addition to the booties! Now the babies have warm tootsies and won't scratch their faces :)

Mystery Quilt

I thought I had posted a picture of the mystery quilt I did with my small group, but I hadn't. So here is my quilt:

And here is a picture of the rest of the quilts (mine is in the middle). This mystery was one I found online at a site that no longer exists. The quilt was paper pieced and we had a lot of fun doing it.

End of January Quiltathon

I didn't get nearly as much done today as I thought I would. Went to church this morning and by the time I got home around 11, I just wasn't in the mood to do much quilting. I did do the quilting on this quilt that I already had loaded on the Voyager.

This quilt was the "surprise" two years ago at the Jackie Robinson New Mexico retreat. She provided the fabric for the top and the pattern. This was her "Fuschia" line of fabric. All I need to do to finish it is the binding, probably tomorrow.

Stash Report Week 2

I did pretty well this week! I have been working on finishing some of my UFO's so the backing used counts, but not the tops as they have been sitting around for a while waiting to be quilted and finished.

Week 2:
Fabric Bought - 0 yards
Fabric used - 9 1/3 yards

Total for the year:
Bought 5 yards
Used 12 2/3 yards

Stash busted - 7 2/3 yards

My friend Teresa helped me this week by using 3 yards of batiks for the jigsaw puzzle quilt she is making for her dad. I used 3 yards for backing of the three tabletopper/wallhangings I finished. 2.25 yards went to make calendar holders. 1/3 yard was binding on the Reflections quilt. And 3 fat quarters were used to do the 3 guild BOM blocks.

Quiltathon progress

I'm getting some of my tops finished! This is the 5th time I've made this tabletopper/wallhanging and the second time in this color scheme. I just love this pattern and need to have at least one on hand to give as a gift so I'll probably keep making them. The quilt was first found at:
http://mccallsquilting.com/golden/39_heart/
I revised the pattern with inspiration from one of the Yahoo groups I am a member of and made it octagonal instead of square.

These next two quilts are the same pattern, but with the colors arranged two different ways. This was a Spidron workshop I did in one of my Yahoo groups in August, 2007. This is the definition according to Wikipedia: In geometry, a spidron is a continuous flat geometric figure composed entirely of triangles, where, for every pair of joining triangles, each has a leg of the other as one of its legs, and neither has any point inside the interior of the other. The first quilt is how the pattern was done for the workshop. The second quilt I did because I wanted to see how the colors made up stars within stars.

Pre-Quiltathon Accomplishments

Yesterday I worked on getting things ready for this weekend's Quiltathon. I finished the August BOM yesterday, the September BOM this morning and the December BOM this afternoon. My embroidery machine needs to go into the shop to be cleaned and adjusted so I won't be doing any more embroidery on these blocks.

I only have the November block left to do and then I am done with this project!

January Quiltathon

I'm getting projects ready to do this weekend for Judy's Quiltathon

I have a quilt on the Voyager frame and several small ones waiting to be quilted on my Bernina. I plan on working on Christmas presents for 2009... want to get an early start!!!!! Finishing my calendar BOM from guild is on the list too.

3 UFO's finished!

I paper pieced this Santa wallhanging and the blocks sat around for a while, then finally put it together and it sat around for a while, but now it's finished... just in time for next Christmas!

Then I quilted this design from Billie Lauder's book... the block is called Reflection.

And finally, this paper pieced Storm at Sea variation.

Solar Progress

We have it! The solar cells on the roof are heating the radiant floor and the domestic hot water. This should really reduce our propane usage, which is the whole point of going solar. I don't have a before picture of the mechanical room, but this is what it looks like now.


More tanks, more pipes... I'm calling to get our propane tank topped off and then we'll be able to see how much propane we'll be saving with our new system. The current price is $1.87 a gallon... down from the $2.13 we just paid on November 10th! Good thing... we need about 200 gallons to fill the tank.

One of my bad habits

I don't know why I do this, but when I finish a quilt, I put all the leftover fabric in a baggie instead of dealing with it. I guess I think I may make another quilt just like it????? I don't know. So as part of my stashbusting efforts for 2009 I am working on getting my fabric more organized. So here is a picture of the baggies I found...

And these are the baggies that are left...

These are legitimate UFO's. These baggies contain blocks that I just might use someday. Everything else was either cut down into strips... or 4" squares.

And whatever I just didn't want to mess with went right into the trash.

Stash Report Week 1

My thanks to Judy at Patchwork Times for inspiring me to work on my stash and all my UFO's

I am going to try to keep track of whay I buy versus what I use and see if I can deplete my stash in 2009. So far, I have bought more than I have used, but the year is just starting!

The quilt shop where I teach has started a new promotion. Mike is blindfolded and then pulls 13 bolts of fabric. These bolts are then on sale for the week at 30% off. Needless to say, Mike pulled 2 bolts I liked and so I bought some from each. 2 yards of a light fabric and 3 yards of a southwestern turtle fabric.

So my stashbusting for this week...

5 yards purchased
1 2/3 yards (90 wide muslin) used for backing

I think that almost makes me even for the week :)