Design Wall Monday...

Go here to see wonderful quilts that other people are working on.


My Monday project hasn't quite reached my design wall yet.
I am starting another T-shirt quilt.
Today I am measuring and rough cutting the designs.
Next I will fuse interfacing to the back, trim and
decide the best way to lay them out.
The person this quilt is for picked the fabrics for sashing and borders. I think they are lovely. She picked a medium gray fleece for the back.




I finished the quilting on the Dr. Seuss minky strippy quilt. The binding will be the blue minky.
That is next up after the T-shirt quilt.

It is cold here today, 27 degrees F and snowing a little this afternoon. I am ready for spring.

Design Wall Monday

To see what everyone else is working on go here...

Here is my design wall as of today...


Starting on the top right are left over pieces from a recent quilt for a friend's new granddaughter. 

I am thinking about doing something similar for my own new great niece explaining why they are still up there. 















Below that are pieces for In a Pickle by Karissa Key Designs. Here is what it will look like when finished.





Back at the top, in the middle are three blue blocks. Last year I started working following along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge here...
I started in the middle of the year so I was behind to begin with. Anyway, I made these 6 inch blocks following directions I found on the RSC site. Still working away on this although it does seem to get put aside for other projects.

On the top left are units for Fire Island Hosta by Judy and Bradley Niemeyer. My husband says it is 'top priority' so I am working on it more than my other projects.




On the bottom left is a leftover block from this quilt for a co-worker's new baby.


 I don't know why it is sideways, sorry.

On my quilt machine is this strippy Dr. Seuss quilt. The strips are minky-type fabric and the backing is as well. The mother of my friend who I made the purple, green and white butterfly quilt for pieced this. I was asked to quilt it for her as she lives in a senior retirement facility and does not have the room or the means to do it herself. I said yes because I always need the practice. It is for her granddaughter. I know she will love it.



This is what the soap dispenser did to me this morning....again.
This is the third time in a weeks time that has happened. The first two times I was getting ready to leave for work and had to change my top. When the soap dries you can still see it.
Today I don't have to work because of the MLK holiday. I am leaving this shirt on since I will be cleaning and hanging around the house today and no one will see me. Well, no one except my husband and he won't care. In fact he will laugh.
And it does seem the joke is on me. If you look at this picture upside down the soap splashes appear to be a smiley face! Bad soap dispenser.
This is NOT funny! :)

What I Am Working on Today...

Another school emergency day for me. We are still under a wind chill advisory. It was suppose to end at noon today but I see we are under a winter weather advisory now. It has begun to snow along with the high winds. I really am not a fan of this weather.

But, I have been enjoying being at home and playing with my fabrics and yarn.

This is the Fire Island Hosta. My husband says it needs to be at the top of my priority list! I had planned to work on some other things also today, but he keeps talking about it so I thought I better get busy. I have all the paper pattern pieces cut and bagged. Now I am cutting the fabric into the required strips and bagging them with the paper pieces. That seems to be the tedious part for me so I thought if I could get that part done then I can just grab a bag and sew when I have time.

I have 4 of these leaf units finished. I also added a few more diamonds to the Diamond Log Cabin.

 I like to keep an knitting project to work on during evening TV time. My house is not well lit so I find sewing difficult. I like to keep my hands busy, but can still pay attention to the TV and the husband. I finished this 3S Shawl by Amy A Meade. A link to the pattern can be found here.

 I recently visited my parents and this little cabinet came home with me. It is perfect for my threads. I put a design board that I recommissioned into an ironing pad on top. It is on castors so I can roll it right up by my machine.

 Last year I found this blog. She was doing a Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2014 and is doing another one for 2015. Even though I found it late I thought I would start at the beginning and play along. Here is what I have done from 2014. This was the color for January. I didn't get too far, but that's ok. I will just keep working on it when I am able to.

Here I was trying to decide what gray sashing would like. I decided I need 12 blocks of each of 10 colors to make a quilt the size I want. There was no color for December- that was 'finish it up' month and I don't think I want to use the brown/black/gray option for November. This is Bonnie Hunter's Jack in the Box block from the January/February '11 issue of Quiltmaker.
soscrappy is also giving block ideas for this challenge.

This is what it looks like from my front door today. Glad I am able to stay in and play!

Brrrr....

As I am sitting at my computer and looking at the weather forecast the temperature is -2 degrees F with a 'feels like' of -24. School has been cancelled for today. We got 5 inches of snow Monday night. It has all been rearranged due to the wind. I am quite happy to stay warm in my house all day today.

I decided quite some time ago that I need to organize my 'stuff'. Some of my fabric has migrated to the living area of my house. That is mostly my husband's fault! :) I can't remember exactly how it happened but he thought I was spending so much time upstairs in my sewing area that he never saw me so I set up a machine in the TV room and gradually my fabric and other supplies followed me.

The attic of this house has been finished into a room and I had been using that area to sew. I thought it was nice because I could walk away in the middle of a project and no one could see the mess. The problem is that the room also has become the dumping ground for anything and everything that doesn't have a space in the main part of the house. Company coming - do a quick pick up and dump everything upstairs, out of sight.

The other problem is that there is only one heat/AC vent to that upstairs room and it is disconnected so that the air for that vent blows into the unfinished basement to help with humidity control there. So in the winter the upstairs is pretty cool and, even worse, in the summer it is pretty hot. Even so, I decided that most of the fabric and supplies not being used everyday should move back up there. Another problem is that there is no lighting up there. We recently bought some shop lights that will be installed soon, I hope. I really need to get that room organized and just get rid of things that have been forgotten and never used again once they have been moved up there. But I find it overwhelming and I get easily distracted. The other day when working up there I found this forgotten tub FULL of fabric. See, I had started saving scraps years ago!

This is a pretty big bucket. It is as big as my kitchen trash can so it holds quite a bit of fabric. I am digging through it for pieces for the Diamond Log Cabin piece I am working on.

I have also been making Bowl Buddies. If you haven't seen these here is one of many tutorials on how to make one. http://www.seamshappy.com/2012/08/13/microwave-bowl-pot-holder/
And here are pics of 3 that I made.

The top two pictures are the ones I gave to my parents. My mother likes owls and my dad is a Bear's fan and a Cub's fan. I didn't have any Cubs fabric so I used baseball fabric. It's all good he likes to watch any team play football or baseball. The camo one I made for my son. He is camo crazy. I hate it, but he loves it. I made some for my teacher friends for Christmas this year, but forgot to get pictures of them.

I got to visit a quilt shop over Christmas break so I thought I had better add to my stash!

 The white in the middle of this picture is Kona. I find I am using a lot of white lately so I needed to stock up. The purple and gray are 1/2 cuts. The purple might get used in a project I am working on using Civil War type fabrics. The gray - I just liked it. :)

 I already had the charm pack of Snowman Gatherings. I added the two pieces that will get used somehow in whatever I decide to make with this charm pack.

 These were ordered from Connecting Threads. They were on sale for a great price. Again, haven't decided what to do with them yet.

 I am collecting batiks. I had made a twister quilt with batiks. After I shared it on Facebook and friend contacted me and wanted to buy it. I debated about selling it but I had wished I had made the quilt bigger so I sold her the quilt and am planning to make another for me. I have already started cutting.

These will be cut into fat quarters. I recently found a quilt group in my area. We are doing a light background FQ exchange this month. These will be used for that.

Design Wall Monday

Well, Happy New Year!
Here is what is on my wall.

I have lots of little scraps. I consider anything less than 2" little. I just cannot bear to throw them out.
So I am working on Diamond Log Cabin. I have made a few more diamonds since I took this picture but I haven't upload them to the computer yet.

 I recently discovered a quilt group in my area. They have just started a monthly exchange using star blocks. Each month our fabrics get passed to the next person on the list who makes their star block. In the end - 15 months since there are 15 quilters doing this exchange - we will all have 15 different star blocks. Here are my fabrics.

 Here is my block - Solomon's Star.

Completed this past month is this baby quilt for a friend - she has a new granddaughter.

This football quilt is for my new grand-nephew.

Some of these pictures are not very good. For some reason my computer is not recognizing my camera and won't download the pictures. I had to use my iPod and those pictures are kind of blurry.