Organizing the Studio

Look what I found!  How in the world did I forget about these?  Better yet how did I find them?  Oh my goodness the rabbit hole I've been down in the last week.  

But first lets talk about why these became UFO's.  Both became overwhelming due to the difficulty of quilting I chose to do on each.  I love fancy quilting but I don't like doing it.  Hence the reason for doing much easier quilting these days.  The yellow and blue quilt has tons of tiny crosshatching. 

And the Hummingbird quilt is 100% ruler work.  Those little blocks measure 4 inches!  Yikes.  What was I thinking?  Well they can stay UFO's a little while longer because I'm still not in the mood to spend that much time quilting them.  Both are about a quarter of the way quilted.  The yellow and blue quilt is about 100 inch square....UGGG.  Yep back in storage they will go.

So about that rabbit hole I've been in for the last week.  It all started when I order some fabric and it wouldn't fit in the stash cabinet.  My thought was I just need to do some rearranging and organizing of two different spaces.  I could toss or donate my batting scraps in the far end of my cutting table.  Then move the books from stash cabinet one to the cutting table.  TADA!  Problem solved.  HAHAHA!

What I thought was bags of batting were two bags of unfinished quilts and one bag of batting to finish one of the two quilts(the Hummingbird quilt).

This is where the snowball starts rolling down the hill and things got way out of hand and before I knew it I was finding and sorting scraps for days.  Days doesn't mean whole days.  I would sort about an hour or two a day.  It was still way more time than I should have been spending on this right now.  There's things to plant in the garden, windows to wash, patterns to be written and....so many other things to do.

Who put all this stuff away in such a mess?

With every drawer and cabinet door opened I found more and more chaos.  

Scraps everywhere!  Why do I do this?  As the old saying goes..."The road to hell is paved with good intentions".  I know my intentions were to organize these after the next must make quilt.  Sad thing is that list of must makes never ends.  

That's it, from now on I will deal with the scraps as they are made.  No more putting things off.   Well you know unless there's something really important or a time crunch kind of thing.  Sigh...all I can do I try to stay on top of things if I ever dig myself out of this mess.  Wish me luck!

Moo-ve 2021 is my word of the year.  It means to move myself in healthy ways both mentally and physically.  It also applies to quilting.  Moving old projects along or finishing them.  Basically it's all about making progress and MOVING.  

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Blue and Yellow Leaders and Enders

 The blocks for my current leaders and enders project are complete.  It took a little longer than expected to finish them.  For some reason I thought since it was a simple pattern with few pieces it would be farther along at this point.  In reality finishing it may take working on it during a couple more quilt tops.

Honestly this is the hardest part.  Waiting and waiting to put the rest of the quilt together.

They are staring at me and whispering "Come play with me" every time I walk in the room.  Oh the restraint it takes to stay on task.  They say it takes 12 times of doing something for it to become a habit.  Oh dear lord 12 more times.  Does this mean 12 days or 12 quilts?  Lets hope it 12 days.  

Maybe hanging them on the wall will curb the feeling to start making sashing.

At this point I realize I haven't cut the sashing.  Should I make it scrappy or use one print.

My plan is to make one of the quilts below.  The only difference between the two is one has yellow border.  The sashing and cornerstones are the same.  The blue corner units could be done in scrappy or one fabric.

And I could make the yellow in the sashing scrappy as well if I really wanted.  The large amount of white already gives the eye a place to land in this scrappy quilt.  Hmmm...I'm not sure but my comfort zone says one fabric for the blue and yellow.  Should I work outside my zone?  What do you think?

Did you know I'm an April Fool's baby?  Yep that's right.  My birthday day is April 1.  So I decided to have a my biggest sale of the year to celebrate my birthday.  

40% OFF  

No joke!  This is a great time to stock up.  I may have other sales throughout the year but none this large. No code needed the prices are reduced in shop.

Click here to go to my online shop

The leaders and enders quilt above is MOO-VING along nicely.  Most of the fabrics in this quilt are scraps from 2 other quilts.  If  new here and you're wonder what MOO-VE means to me, click the image below.  When the page opens scroll until you see the same image as below.

My Word of the Year

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Take a Peak and Finding Red

Just a quick heads up about my pattern shop.  There was a user error on my part.  I put the wrong ending date.  The error has been corrected.  If you placed an order over the last couple of days you will receive a 40% refund.  

Now that we have that out of the way here's a peak at my newest quilt pattern being quilted.  It will be a couple of weeks before this one will be released in my shop.  The quilting is about half ruler work and half free motion.  Light and airy quilting, no quilting it to death.  Although, it would be the perfect quilt for tons of quilting with the large amount of wide open space in the background.

While waiting for the patterns for this quilt I'm taking a little time each day to look for bolts of backing fabric.   As you all know I'm a big fan of the color red.  It seems that my favorite shade of crayon red is not being made much anymore.   Most of the new lines have red but they are not so bright.  They look more raspberry or cranberry.  This makes online buying a no go.  Out of my last 4 online purchases only one was the crayon red.   Online photos can be very misleading.  All devices can show the colors differently.  When I look at them on my phone they look perfect.  On my computer they look muted.  So this means I will need to hold the fabric in my hands before purchasing any more reds.  Yellow has also been an issue.  They are leaning more towards an autumn yellow which has a bit more brown in them.

A couple of years ago I order some fabric swatches from a fabric distributor called Choice.  They have a couple basic lines of fabric that might be just what I need.  I've order from them in the past and it's good quilt shop quality fabric.  They are known for selling discontinued fabrics at very reasonable prices to quilt shops.  Below is the their line of basics called Treasures From The Attic.

They also have their own line of  Supreme Solids.  Look how well the Poppy Red matches my favorite piece of Lakehouse Drygoods!  We have a winner!  I can't tell you how tickled I am to find a bright red.  Maybe a new pattern for a red and white quilt will be in the near future.

Did you know I'm an April Fool's baby?  Yep that's right.  My birthday day is April 1.  So I decided to have a my biggest sale of the year to celebrate my birthday.  

40% OFF  

No joke!  This is a great time to stock up.  I may have other sales throughout the year but none this large. No code needed the prices are reduced in shop.

Click here to go to my online shop.

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UFO...Digging Inside and Out

Spring has sprung here in Podunk.  Our daffodils are finally in full bloom and the trees are just starting to show signs of life with little green buds.  Of course the weeds are also in in full bloom but I'm okay with it, at least they have a color other than the dreary winter gray and brown.  

I'm not sure what my girlfriend and I were talking about that made me dig out this quilt top but I'm glad the topic came up.  This will be a good project for my word of the year, MOO-VE.  

You can read more about these large square blocks and the pattern used to make them here.  The link also has instructions for printing on fabric using a home printer and setting the ink when printing on fabric.

The original pattern called for 9 quilt blocks.  Well, it became a UFO and then it became a UFO I just wanted to finish up quickly.  The blocks were started in 2014 and I think I put them into a quilt top a year or two ago.  It's time to put this one at the top of the "needs to be quilted" pile.  I think the granddaughters will love cuddling up with the cute little girls.  

Oh! I forgot to mention where I found the images I used for the center.  A link to them can be found at the same link mention above or here if you don't want to scroll up.  There's about 20 or 30 images I have saved on a Pinterest board.  All of them super cute vintage girls and boys in bright and happy colors.

While I was digging in the UFO pile Mr. Podunk was digging in the back yard.  Doesn't look like as much fun as my digging.  He's putting up a fence to block my girl Khaleesi from getting her cable wrapped around a tree or two.  Her lead cable is about 50 foot long and attached to the back of the garage.  It extends into this wooded area about 10 -15 feet.  I've spent the last 2 years untangling her from this area several times a week.  I guess Mr. Podunk is tired of my whining.  We put up the green temporary fence hoping it would help and it did for about 2 weeks.  She quickly learned it was easy to chew through or jump over.  No way she can chew through this one and I'm hoping jumping it never crosses her mind.  Of course I have other plans in mind....Morning Glories and Cardinal Vines  and a new place for me to hang quilts!

Indiana is about half limestone and the other half is clay.  We have all varieties, gray clay, red clay and brown clay.  It makes digging and planting so much fun.(sarcasm).  Of course with it being spring time the holes are filling with water after he digs about a foot deep. This makes for a gooey stick mess of clay and a lot more muscle power.  I better find something else to do before he puts me to work.

Now is the perfect time to do some obedience work with Khaleesi.  This has become a daily routine.  We start out with a little training and then we go for a walk on the road. Our walks so far have only been about 3/4 ths.  of a mile.  Sometimes we'll do this in the morning and in the evening.  Before each walk we work on obedience commands.   The video below shows her newest trick.  She is still easily distracted and doesn't always preform perfectly but we're happy with her progress.

Did you know I'm an April Fool's baby?  Yep that's right.  My birthday day is April 1.  So I decided to have a my biggest sale of the year to celebrate my birthday.  

40% OFF  

No joke!  This is a great time to stock up.  I may have other sales throughout the year but none this large. No code needed the prices are reduced in shop.

Click here to go to my online shop.

My word of the year

 

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