The Good News and The Bad News

Hello from North Carolina!!  The Good News is that the Anita's Arrowhead project is now my first (and only) complete finish for 2011!!

This was made from a quilt kit featuring the "Fruitcake" fabric line by Basic Grey for MODA Fabrics.  I had gotten it assembled, layered and half quilted before we left New York last Saturday.  It is a requirement when I visit my MIL to bring a project to work on.  Starting Monday (after hitting some of the after-Christmas sales) we were able to get in some quilt time.  In the days following, I finished the quilting, cut and attached the binding and got up early and finished sewing it on this morning.  Now that it's finished, its "given name" will be "All Spruced Up" after the backing fabric and purpose: to decorate my couch during the holidays!

This was a good project to make my way back into stitching my quilts.  I did it in an allover swirl pattern and the busy fabrics hide a lot of sins.  In fact, excuse any pins you see in the picture, those are spots I need to re-do some skipped stitches.  And I really fudged up my binding corners but for a to-be-seen-once-a-year quilt, it will have to do!  I am happy that at one point I did find my free motion groove and know what I need to do and focus on in the future.  And I am grateful for all the tops I made this year because they will provide me with steady flow of practice tops for 2012!

So the finish is good news but before we left there was some Bad News:  The Chronciles BOM will NOT be a flimsie for 2011 as hoped.  I got word before we left from Homestead Hearth (the organizer of my BOM) that their supplier of the fabric for the BOM has to do a REPRINT of the red fabric used for the border blocks in order to fufill their order.  They are going to be sending out some of the fabric to get the blocks started but won't get the rest to us until FEBRUARY! 

Ooh boy!  I was already worried about getting the blocks done (have I mentioned that it is sixty-eight blocks?!?).  On the other hand, this means I can A) Take my time and work on getting the center constructed and B) get maybe a little less than half the blocks done and then finish the rest when the rest of the fabric gets in.  But I am disappointed in not having this flimsy in the can for this year and not meeting my BOM goal for the year either.

We will be leaving NC early Friday morning so expect to be back in New York by that afternoon.  My hope is to get a "Year In Review" post up before we ring in 2012.  I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and are looking forward to celebrating the New Year!

2012 UFO Challenges

Challenge #1: Continuing the PHDs

I have already made my lists for 2012 and now is the time to commit.  This year I participated in Myra's PHD (Projects Half Done) Challenge.  I am sad to say that I did not get anything completed although my UGRR/Pioneer Sampler project got as far as being layered and I doubt that would have happened without the challenge.

The good news for me is that many of Myra's participants are in the same boat so rather than starting a new challenge Myra is extending the challenge for the first six months of 2012 so that participants can try again to complete the things they had listed for this year. My original list of six projects is here and that works out great because that gives me one project a month to commit to working on.  This year, without a move to deal with and all the new ideas for quilts that come with it, maybe I can settle in and focus on what I already have in house.

Challenge #2:  Judy's Patchwork Times UFO Challenge

Judy is repeating her UFO Challenge for 2012 and I've decided to join in.  There were projects I had expected to get to once I had completed the PHD challenge and there were a bunch of new projects I made tops for during this year.  So Judy's challenge is great for me.  I also like the additional challenge of having to work on whatever project she calls for that month--the choice of project is out of my hands. I will admit that there have been times where I've avoided working on something because I couldn't decide on what to work on so this will eliminate that problem.  Here's my list for Judy's challenge:

1.  Autumn DWR - Piecing needs to be finished.

2. Floribunda - Needs To be Quilted

3.  Merrimac Dresdens - Needs To be Quilted

4. Chronicles BOM - Hopefully this BOM will be a top before the end of 2011 (I am still waiting for the last kit for the border blocks to arrive) and then it will need to be quilted

5. Safari Stars/WAK Triptych - Two companion projects, the first (pictured) needs to be quilted and the second to be photo transferred and pieced

6. Pulpit Tile - An old UFO that I need a push to quilt (and need to get a picture of)

7. Aunt Grace Circle of Friends BOM - Needs To be Quilted

 8. Bouncing Colorblocks - A swap quilt that needs to be quilted

9. Sage Sampler - This one almost made the PHD list; still needs piecing

10. Brrr! Park - Layered, Needs To be Quilted (and need a picture of)

11.  Civil War BOW Sampler - Now that all my other CW projects are pieced, I'm hoping to finally use all the scraps to get these made up since the blocks will only be up on the site until July.  Needs to be pieced.

12. Jan Patek House & Garden BOM - The last of the 2011 BOMs I participated in.  I hope to start it while I am traveling over the next week.  Needs to be appliqued.

And just to add a little more spice to the pot, a few other priorities are to get my Crumbs blocks finished for Jo's Crumb Along reveal at the end of January, make good on the promise to contribute two quilts to the BASICS quilt gather, quilt a finished top for Memorial Day/Fourth of July display and piece and quilt a Halloween quilt. In the end, whatever I get done, however few or many, is a blessing!

Getting Down To The Wire.....

Woo Hoo, all the Anita's Arrowhead blocks are now done!  I finished sewing the last row of blocks today.  So this pile....

....became this top.

The backing and binding fabric is already in house (picture below) and I have a ton of batting so I just need to decide what I will use for this.

This looks like it will be the first and ONLY complete finish for this year.  It is definitely the first one I am ready to quilt with no fears or trepidation.  It's for holiday display on the the back of the couch and busy enough that an all over design or maybe even stippling will be in order, simple to do, simple to finish.  O.k. hoping that's not going to be famous last words......

More on this later you can bet!

An Important Milestone (For Me) Has Been Reached!!

The Civil War Chronicles Month 11 Blocks are done!

And here are all the accumulated blocks.

I am finally up to date and am now waiting for the last month's set -- the sixty-eight (yes, 68!!) border blocks.  The goal is to get this top done by the end of year.  The debate is whether that will happen before we go away next weekend (since I am also trying to finish up the Anita's Arrowhead Xmas quilt blocks) or if I will be taking this one with me to finish the construction while away.  We will see, what we will see........

Either way I am happy to have gotten this far with it.  I'll say it again, thank god for Quilt-Pro Triangle Magic Software and the Quilt In A Day Flying Geese Rulers.  They rock and I couldn't have done it without them!

Another One Bites the Dust.....

The Month 10 blocks for the Civil War Chronicles BOM are now finished:

Although not without mishaps along the way that had to be corrected......

Now there is only one more month in house (Month 11) to be completed and I am reviewing what I need to do for those blocks.  The last month's blocks should arrive either this week or early next week.  Given that there are sixty-eight border blocks to be made, I hope it comes early this week.

In the meantime, I am also still working on the Anita's Arrowhead blocks and now have twelve blocks done.

Hopefully you got a lot done this weekend too (quilty or holiday-wise)!

P.S....ATTENTION JUDY LAQUIDARA/PATCHWORK TIMES FANS!!

If you are a big fan of Judy Laquidara over at the Patchwork Times blog, know that she is currently taking pre-orders for her new book, "60 Pieced Quilt Borders – Mix & Match" to be released in mid January by AQS Publishing.  You can read about it on her post here or put in your pre-order here.  I've already ordered mine!

Back In the Saddle Again.....

I took a much longer break than I expected to after the Thanksgiving holiday.  Of course, this puts me behind again but as always it's about doing what you can and moving on and eventually you get where you need to go.

As of today, Month 9 of the Civil War Chronicles BOM is now done.

This is the last of the months that call for only four blocks.  Months ten and eleven both need eight blocks each.  And after reading another blog, Mary's at Hill Country Quilter, who is also doing this BOM, it looks like the last month will be the border blocks -- a whopping SIXTY-EIGHT BLOCKS!!  I'm sure they are small but, whew!  It is going to be a challenge to get them finished either before we leave to go down South for Christmas or by the end of the year (since if I need to, I can take my sewing machine to my MIL's house and also sew there).  The last month's kit has not arrived yet so I'm just going to focus on finishing what is already here rather than worrying about what is coming!

I also started yet another new project (I know, I know):  I am doing the Brown and Aqua version of "Anita's Arrowhead" that appeared in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Quiltmaker magazine.  I got the kit on sale at the new kit discount site QuiltKits.com which sells closeouts of Keepsake Quilting, Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting, McCalls Quilting and Quiltmaker Magazine kits.

These are the blocks I have so far.  I wanted a Christmas couch quilt and the colors (christmas colors + brown) are perfect for our couch.  As always, I thought it would be a quickie but now I am not so sure since the seams are all pressed open for the blocks which is harder to line up the intersections (and these blocks have many) than when you can press opposing seams to one side.  I'm hoping I can get a few done each day and wrap this up over the next week or so.

My biggest disappointment over the last few weeks is that I didn't make the Thanksgiving week deadline for the BASICS December quilt drive.  Which is sad since I already had a top ready, all it needed was to be quilted.  I've been procrastinating really bad about quilting my tops and now have so many projects just needing that last step.  But I plan to address that issue shortly.  On the other hand, I've now made a promise to myself to make two quilts to donate for their final 200 quilt drive.

I've got a class trip with DS2's middle school eighth grade tomorrow.  We are going to the new CSI exhibit at the Discovery Museum in Times Square. I hope I won't be too worn out to sew when I get back.  Have a good evening because I'm off to bed!

Another Finished Top

In my last post I showed the start of "Safari Stars":

When I originally worked on this design back in 2007, I had scanned all my fabrics into Quilt-Pro and it had been designed to be finished with an outer border of the fabric on the left and a solid black inner border.  But I always felt that the design still "needed something".

Then I pulled out the fabric on the right and it immediately resonated with me.  I had used this fabric as the color inspiration for another project many years ago and made a prairie point border with it (see the "Focus Fabric Feathered Star" in this post).  I felt like the new fabric pulled out the center purple and rust stars better and the whole top melded together.  I also now felt that the inner border needed to be a print and went through my stash until I found the black and white fabric on the table.   But I still felt the corners needed work.  So I pulled out another fabric purchased at the New Jersey Quilt Fest show in 2009 (which you can see a peek of in the lower left corner of the picture above):

I liked this new addition and with it, the right side fabric definitely won out for the final design.  So yesterday I added the additions, appliqueing them on with a wavy edge, an idea I got from the borders displayed on the last quilt pictured in this blog post by Liz about her new Australian Modern Quilt Guild.  Here is the design after the center blocks were all sewn together and I did a final audition of the borders:

And today I have a finished top:

I already have backing fabrics and am trying to now decide on how to quilt it.  I am thinking of adding prominently stitched "Andinkra Symbols" in some of the open blocks instead of doing the embellishments I had considered before.  With one more flimise on the "to be quilted" pile, I think I've reached my tipping point and will be forced to face my fears and rev up my free motion foot!