Nose To The Grindstone Finally Paying Off

Good news!  The Merrimac Dresden blocks are almost finished!

After working on the Crumb Houses last week, I went back to these Dresden blocks figuring I'd have the top done by the time this week's Tuesday Crumb Along rolled around and could return the focus to the houses.  But for some reason I was dragging, not speeding along on these.  Sunday my husband and sons went to the NY Comic Con and I thought I'd have a Quilt-A-Thon day to myself.

 Instead I only got a few blocks done to finish the third row (but did get a lot of rest otherwise).  I really want to get this top done now because in addition to the new Crumb project (and finishing the quilting on the old one), I have a Halloween quilt project that was supposed to have been started already!  Not wanting to add even more flip flopping between projects, I decided to focus on getting this one done before moving on (or back) to other projects.

The opening picture showed the four rows I have of the five to be done.  On the machine is one block towards the fifth row.  Funny thing about that:  After completing three rows on Sunday, I went to set up the last two rows of blocks.  I was running low on Dresden blades and needed to know if I needed to cut more.  For some reason at that point, I thought I was short one background.  And of course, I didn't have enough of that particular background fabric left to make a block.  I did have enough of another background but it had to be pieced together.  Then to have enough blades to fill all the blocks, I had to do some "Poverty Patching" of what was left of my blade fabrics.  When I was done I had this:

I worked on the blocks again and when I finished the fourth row yesterday and put the blocks up on the design wall, I found that I had an extra block!  I don't know how that happened and now the pieced block and blades may be going on the back as a label.

There is still a lot to do:  finish the last row of blocks, blanket stitch them to their backgrounds, sew circles over the centers of the plates, border each of the blocks, put the center of the top together and then piece the outer border.  O.k. just listing all that tells me this top is not so close to being finished after all.  But as Michele of the "Distracted Quilter" blog so perfectly expressed in a recent post (in both text and video), you have to keep taking steps (no matter how small) toward your goal if you want to reach it.  So I will put my focus on the process and not the end because I already know the answer to the question "Are We There Yet?"!

Continuing To Catch Up

The other week I was so pleased to get  the "Chronicles" Month Four blocks done and I am glad to report that Month Five is done too.  Once again, triangle sheets became HSTs....

 

 Then additional triangles had to be cut to finish the blocks.  I was little short on one of the fabrics so needed to make a few "poverty patches" to have enough of them.

And with those, I finished all sixteen corner blocks!

I finished them two Saturdays ago and just in time:  Month 9 arrived in the mail the same day.  Yes, I am still way behind but at least I'm also still moving up the ladder!

When they were finished, my plan was to take a short break from "Chronicles" to work on two other projects (like many I suffer from Quilter's ADD).  The first was that I started piecing some house blocks for Jo's Crumb Quilt Along.  What's been done to date was reported on here. 

The second was to clear the last "new start" on the table: I've gone back to work on my "Merrimac Dresdens" blocks.  This one is important to me for two reasons:  it is the third in the series of Civil War fabric quilts I've worked on this year and a Dresden Plate quilt is one of my "Bucket List" quilts.

Right now I've got one row done and hope to finish the remaining three rows by the end of the week and add the borders for a completed top this weekend.   Yes, I know the usual ambitions, but will it get done?  We'll see!  One things for sure:  as always there's alot going on in the city that never sleeps!

Crumbling More Houses!

Having finally got on board the Crumb Along, I was able to add another house block today to the ones I started making this weekend:

You can read about my plans for these and how I got them started in my last post. 

When Jo announced the Crumb along I hadn't realized was that she was planning to do tutorials for specific (liberated) block units made of crumbs (like flying geese and stars). Today's log cabin blocks go right along with what I am doing with my houses so I hope in the coming days to make a few of those as well as some of the other units too.  While these were not originally in my house quilt plans, I am now thinking about how I can use them as border or sashing blocks or fodder for the back or label.  If all else fails, they can become orphan units for another quilt.  We'll see what develops!

Updates and A Quilt Contest Entry

The design boards are empty....

...because the Month Four Chronicles blocks are done!  Woo Hoo!

Next up is prepping the Month Five triangle sheets.

 There are sixteen blocks to do but they are corner blocks (a pieced triangle like half of a triangle square).  By the time I am done with this quilt (and the more blocks I do, the more I realize that this one is going to be a real beauty!!), I will be sooo over making quilts with a lot of HSTs!

I am hoping to get the Month Five blocks done either today or definitely by the end of the weekend because I need to continue clearing the cutting table by getting back to working on the Merrimac blocks and top (talked about here).  Then when that's done it's on to starting the Blackbird Designs Halloween quilt (that I'd like to get done by the end of October, of course) and possibly getting my sons back to piecing strips for their (winter) "Denim Blue Lagoon" quilts.

Big News!  I am Entered In a Contest!

I've entered my "Flying For Cover" quilt in this week's Quilting Gallery Weekly Theme Quilt Contest.  The theme for this week is "Flying Geese Quilts".  I've wanted to enter one of their contests for a long time but never had a quilt for the current theme ready.  Here's the quilt I entered:

If you'd like to vote for the quilt (or any of the others posted on the site) you can do so here from today until Sunday.  If you want to know more about the quilt, click back to this post.

One thing I realized is that this is one of two finished quilts that I have not put a label on!  I had designed a rather elaborate one back when I finished the quilt but it is text and picture heavy and needs to be printed on prepared fabric sheets and then hand sewn onto the back of the quilt.  At the time I had too many other projects going to want to focus on that and thought I still had details of the label design to work out.  But I took a look at my files and realize that it's all ready to go so I better prepare some fabric with Bubble Jet Set and get 'er done!  This is why I prefer piecing the label or a blank piece of fabric into the back of the quilt.  When I do that I can write the label information in as soon as the quilting is done.  In the case of the two quilts without labels, both need to have their labels attached after the fact.  But label I must, no anonymous quilts for me!

Have a good weekend!

End of Summer Update?! It's Almost Fall!

I am so glad to FINALLY get this post out!  I just read on someone's blog that the first day of Fall is next week!!  I can't believe the time has gone so fast. Note to self:  post things as they get done, don't wait to accumulate a few before posting.  That said, on with our show.

Well, the summer was busier than expected with a lot going on and things moving along but never as much accomplished by (self-imposed) deadlines as hoped.  But in the end, little by little, it all gets done. At least that's what I keep telling myself to keep sane! So what's been going on since last we met?

The "Valor" top (talked about in my last post) got finished during the third week of July.  And hopefully it will get quilted and bound by the end of the year and will be available for display for next years Memorial Day or Fourth of July holiday.

The next week was our long planned camping trip to Evangola State Park on Lake Erie and Niagara Falls.

There was a beach.

And a Pirates Festival...

...where they dug for buried treasure on the beach (and other fun activities).

Our campsite.

And of course the Falls!

Back from the trip, I spent the month of August focused on starting and finishing the blocks for Bonnie Hunter's "Floribunda" quilt-a-long.  This one was fun!  I was attracted to the funky retro look of the original quilt Bonnie had found at an antique store in Florida. 

Starting the blocks with Lori Holt's (Bee In My Bonnet) Mini Design Boards (click the link to go to her tutorial on how to make them). Mine still need the pretty borders added.

When I purchased the yellows for the project, I also looked for a few fat quarters that I thought channeled that retro feel or just looked good with the yellows and would add to what I could find in stash.  I didn't plan to only use florals in it but after re-reading one of her blog posts and realizing that all of the fat quarters I had purchased were in fact florals, I decided to continue with that theme and was surprised to find I had a lot of more of them in stash than I thought.  Particularly useful was a bag of fabric samples I bought years ago from an eBay vendor which gave me a lot of vintage looking floral prints.

Instructions from Bonnie's site, finished blocks and binding fabric already purchased.

  In September, after the kids were back in school, I was able to put the blocks together into a top, create a pieced back (the center calico was also from stash, woo hoo!) and now another finished flimsy is in the can.

Finished Top

Finished Back

After that it was all about getting back to catching up on the Civil War Chronicles BOM.  Yesterday, I finished the three blocks I had remaining to do for Month Three (top right and bottom corners).

Now the challenge is to stay on schedule and bring the rest of the months I have in house (Months Four - Eight) up to date.  One of my UFO goals for the year is to complete any BOMs signed up for this year by the end of the year.  Since the last of these blocks will come in December, I want to be ready to at least complete the top or even better, layer and quilt it by year's end.

Also on the agenda is to finish the "Merrimac Dresdens" blocks (also talked about in my last post) that I also started this summer (you can see the first one to the right of the "Chronicles" blocks).  I think those will probably wait until  next week while I try to get at least one more month of "Chronicles" done this weekend.

Hope your Fall is shaping up to be a productive one!

Busy Week

With school out there is no more volunteer work although I still have to supervise my younger son to get his summer work packets done.  DH went back to work this week after being on vacation, so I decided that it was time for a quilt-a-thon!

When last I left off, I had just finished layering the UGRR/Pioneer Samplers.

And that's where they still stand.  Part of the reason I think I didn't make the PHD Challenge deadline was because I was debating about how to quilt these. I really wanted to hand quilt them and was thinking about doing an all over Baptist Fan.  I've since found some confirmation of that plan but still need a little time to think about if I am sure it's really the way I want to go.  So while waiting, I also worked on these:

The four Month 2 blocks for the Civil War Chronicles BOM are finally done.  (The little Lemoyne Star in the picture was a test block for something I'll talk about later in this post).  And thank god for triangle paper (printed with Quilt-Pro's Triangle Magic software).  It turned four pages of this:

into this:

Note:  You can also do this with Brenda Henning's Trianglulations Software.

Next up was a new project (I know, I know, I'm supposed to be focusing on UFOs and BOMs): Pat Sloan's Valor quilt using her new Tribute line of fabric for P&B Textiles.

I saw the fabric in the Spring 2011 Fabric Trends issue and really liked it and wanted to make a quilt for display for the July Fourth holiday. Unfortunately I started in on it too late for this year but expect to get the top done over the next week and it'll be up and ready for next year!

This is the first time I've done Lemoyne Stars and of course being the quilt gadget lover that I am, I couldn't resist a new tool to eliminate those set in "Y" seams.  While reading blogs, I happened to come across mention of this:

It's by Deb Tucker of Studio 180 Design.  You may know her from the "Rapid Fire Hunter Star Ruler" she also makes (and which I also have but admit I haven't used yet).  The ruler made the eight inch stars for the Valor quilt as well as the four inch star that was pictured with the Chronciles blocks.  I also have a reproduction design project I hope to do some time this summer where I will get to use this again.  The "rapid fire" in this is that the diamonds and the backgrounds are cut from strip pieced strips and then subcut and sewn to create four square units (with two diamonds each) that get sewn into the final block.  You can see it demonstrated here and here.

And finally one from the HSY (Haven't Started Yet) list -- I did all this cutting:

for this project:  It was a Marcus Bros. free pattern (pictured on the left) back in 2008 for their "Merrimac" fabric line. 

I loved the Civil War repro fabrics in the line and the "Millwheel" block reminded me of Dresden Plates which are a "bucket list" block for me.  So I decided to do the pattern but change the Millwheels to Dresdens.  Then I couldn't decide whether to do rounded or pointed blades.  But I saw "John Flynn's Dresdens" in the February 2006 issue of Quilter's World Magazine where he did plates with mixed blades and I knew I had my solution.  I am doing mine with alternating blades (like the sample block in the picture) and plan to blanket stitch the blades to the backgrounds.

Whew!  That was a lot of dedicated work and although there are still no finishes here, I feel like I got a lot of "To Do" things off my mind.  I'm trying to to sew a little each day this summer in an attempt to make that an ongoing habit.

Missed the Deadline

Despite making a lot of progress on the UGRR/Pioneer project over the last few days I was unable to get this completed by the PHD Challenge deadline.  I am not totally disappointed since I know that without the pressure of the Challenge deadline, I probably would have never gotten this project even this far.

As it stands now, the two tops are layered, having added borders to the centers and even adding some monogramming to the Pioneer top. 

I'd still like to get this done before summer's end but also have the three other Civil War fabric projects that I want to work on, a quilt I want to make to display for the Fourth of July (at this point crazy, I know) and I got the yellow solids I wanted for Bonnie Hunter's latest quilt-a-long.  But now I can relax a bit and try to work at my own pace while still pushing myself to stay on task.