The Seven Days of New Year's 2020: Day 3

Woo hoo!  It took me all afternoon and this evening but the "Snow Day" top is now done!

This is the chair it will go on once quilted and that's the backing on the arm.  With two rows of blocks, setting triangles and sashing to put together, I thought this would be a quick finish.  However, as always finishing takes longer than anticipated.  

I had made a cutting error for some of the strips for the setting triangles.  I had to correct for that especially since I didn't have a lot of the fabric left.  Measure twice, cut once!  I was able to cut a few new strips but still had to figure out how to correct for the mis-cut ones.  Ultimately I took scraps and did a good bit of "poverty piecing" to get the total I needed.  

After finally piecing the block rows and the sashing strips together, it was time to attach them to the rest of the top.  I had cut the sashing strips based on a length I had calculated when I worked on this in NC.  But when I pinned it to the new block row there was a lot of excess.  When I looked at the previously pieced rows, I realized I had (incorrectly) pieced them with too large end triangles that extended the ends of the rows past the seam allowance of the blocks.  the new rows had been pieced with the (correct) smaller triangles on the new rows which explained the difference in length.  So that meant correcting the sashing and after attaching the new rows also having to trim back the previously pieced sides of the top. 

But it's done and I still have a few more days to try to get some more things done.  The good news is that the doctor's office called and moved my appointment for tomorrow to the morning.  I'm glad not to have to interrupt the sewing day to go out.  Look forward to seeing what I can get to when I come back!    

The Seven Days of New Year's 2020: Day 2

It's getting late, time for check-in:  So it was a busy day today -- not so much for quilting but for baking!

Bread was low and who wants to go out to the store on a cold day?  So a quick batch of our favorite quick and easy rolls to go with the equally quick Ham and Cheese Crustless Quiche (another favorite gotten from Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times blog years ago) to help use up the ham made for Christmas.  Would you believe that I got the ham while in NC at the COVID testing site?!?  The testing was held at a church and was a drive through set-up. 

 After you were tested but before you drove out, each person tested was a given a spiral ham shank and a box with other dinner supplies (potatoes, sweet potatoes and a small bundle of collard greens, corn bread, stuffing and gravy mixes, canned fruit and juice) as well as PPE supplies (a box of masks, a bottle of sanitizer, a digital thermometer, two boxes of Ibuprofen) and a flyer with a number to call if you needed someone to talk to if you were having trouble dealing with stress regarding the pandemic.  If every test site did that, everyone would get tested!  

Since both my MIL and I got tested that day, we both were given the supplies.  I left the collards with her but shipped the rest back home knowing I was set for Christmas dinner!  Of course, good but simple food needs a good but simple dessert -- Sugar Cookies anyone?  It's DH's last day home before returning to work.  The post holiday package rush will probably continue this week so I don't expect to see him much until New Year's Eve so a little indulgence was in order!

As to the quilting:  I did get one of the sets of nine patches done last night before we broke to watch the last two episodes of the "Mandolorian" with our sons.  DH and I followed that with the "Call the Midwife" Christmas special and then I headed to bed.  Today between all the cooking and baking, I got the second set of fifteen made.  Since I don't have my MIL's die, I had to cut the setting triangles the old fashioned way:  strips and the Fons and Porter setting triangle ruler.  

As I had when I worked on the top in NC,  I'll need to attach setting triangles to two sides of each block to make playing with the placement of the blocks easier,

We'll see how many I get done tonight but I think I'll have a better chance of getting a good portion of them and the layout settled tomorrow after the hubby heads out to work.  At least there's enough leftovers that I won't have to cook!  That's always a big boost to plans to spend the day quilting!!

The Seven Days of New Year's 2020: Day 1

I hope you had a wonderful and joyous Christmas!  For me, it's time to.....

Last year I spent the period between the Day after Christmas and New Year's Day doing a little project cleanup and creative recharging to put myself in good spirits for the start of the New Year.  Just like last year I am fortunate not to have many scheduled activities (just one doctor's appointment) or any pressing deadlines.  Which is not to say that I wouldn't love to finish off a few things before the year ends though, Lol!  

So once again I'm going to spend this period of time indulging in an extended daily Quilt-A-Thon session.  A lot of it will also be a bit of a look back at the quilt ambitions and obsessions of this year (here's to you Edyta Sitar!).  I don't know about you but I already have a pretty long list of "Want To Dos" for 2021.  The more 2020 projects I can bring closer to completion or finish, the more likely the new list will actually happen!

One of the biggest ambitions for 2020 was to tackle a new Christmas decorating color scheme of Blue and White.  I already had ornaments in those colors that I had purchased years ago.  

So I started the year by compiling a scrappy stash  of a lot of blue and white fabrics for making coordinating accessories for the season.  My plans included making a tree skirt, quilts for the back of our couch and the chair in our living room and for the wall next to where the tree would go.  The first idea for the wall quilt was to make this year's annual AQS Christmas Countdown BOM.  Its color scheme of teal, dark blue and white I felt could easily be expanded to utilize scrappy blues. 

The binder holding all the finished blocks.

As noted in a previous post, after making the blocks, I'm now rethinking whether scrappy was the way to go after all.  So that project is moving onto 2021.  

Unfortunately while a lot of the other desired projects got started, the center piece for the whole decorating project -- the Christmas Tree -- was never found!  We usually decorate with a small 3 to 4 foot tree but was not able to find any this late in the season this year.  So our "decorations" truly suited this year's holiday season:  this was all we did for this year's "COVID Christmas" decorating!

The one thing I did manage to get done for holiday decorating was the blue felt "Merry Mugs" fabric ornament kit I picked up after deciding on the Blue & White theme.  I was lucky enough to catch them on sale from Quilt In A Day back in the summer. 

I've made ornaments from these Rachel of Greenfield's kits before.  I did the stocking ones a few years ago and had half of the set of Mitten ones completed.

Having made these by machine before, I was really surprised at how quick they made up by hand!  Because of that, after finishing the last of the mugs earlier this week, I decided to also finish up the last of the mittens too.

I worked on the skate yesterday and finished up the Bell and Santa this afternoon.  The Bell is not actually from the original kit.  The kit had a Christmas tree for one mitten but since I had already made a Christmas tree as part of the Stocking set, I found a bell design in a Penny rug and Ornaments pattern by Pat Sloan from McCall's Quick Quilts and used that instead.

The chair quilt project was going to be my version of "Snow Day".  

It is also part of this year's Laundry Basket Quilts obsession.  As soon as I saw Edyta Sitar's design on her website, I knew it HAD TO go into the B&W project queue!  I knew I'd have enough scraps for the nine patches.  Then I saw the perfect fabric for the sashing in my AQS BOM stash.  Unfortunately, I only had a half yard of it.  When I went back to the store I was able to find the same print although the background of it was a pale blue rather than white.   

Still works though and I found a good fabric for the setting triangles.  So I worked on the nine patches as leader/enders along with other projects.  For some reason I had it in my mind that I only needed seven rows of blocks (fifteen in each row).  By the time I left for my trip at the start of December, I had five rows of blocks made so shipped the block sets for the remaining rows and the sashing and setting triangle fabrics down to work on them while at my MIL's.  I did get them done while there and also found backing fabric for the quilt.  I needed four inch finished quarter squares for the setting triangles and was able to cut those with my MIL's Accuquilt Ohio Star die which made very quick work of the cutting!  I got the top done....

...except I then realized that no, I needed nine rows of blocks!   So the task for this evening is to finish making more nine patches and then maybe tomorrow, I'll get those last two rows on.  

And the bonus for today?  Because Christmas was on Friday, TODAY is the day to pick up the latest installment of Bonnie Hunter's current "Grassy Creek Mystery"!  Woo hoo!  Hope you had a quilty day planned for today too!

Slow Sunday Stitching and Ornament Talk Today

Good news!  I did go get my return-from-a-trip COVID test on Friday and it was negative!  Woo Hoo!  Freed from Quarantine!  And good too:  we currently have a city council special election going on in my district to fill a recently vacated seat.  I was able to leave the testing place and go right to the polling location to cast my early vote (the official election day is this coming Tuesday).  That accomplished, I also took care of some errands in the neighborhood and then yesterday ran errands that needed the car. 

 As the last week of the holiday package peak season begins, my DH had to go in to work today (UPS) so will have the car which means today I can settle in for some more stitching at home.  In my last post, I noted I was working on this:

Now I have these all done:

The last one I took with me to the COVID testing place and started the stitching on it while waiting for the results of the rapid test.  I am truly surprised at how easy these are to make up by hand and am really enjoying working on them!  Today I am going to work on this one:

This set of Rachel Pellman felt ornament kits (also available as patterns if you already have a felt stash) are all part of the Blue and White Christmas decorating I had planned to do this year.  However right now I'm not sure if that decorating will even happen!  While out yesterday I went searching for a small tree for us but didn't find any in the places I went to.  With our kids grown (but not out of the house) we usually buy a little three or four foot tree that can be put on a table we have at the top of the entry stair case landing.  This was the tree from a few years ago:

I had put the other ornaments I've made from the stocking and mittens Pellman kits on that tree.  It should be noted that those were all done completely by machine, utilizing decorative stitch patterns.  However, the blue mugs I'm doing this year are all being done by hand.  I've completed all the ones from the earlier stocking set but still have three more from the mitten set to finish up.  I plan to do them by hand this time while finishing up the mugs.

Another project I had taken on the trip with me but didn't get to work on while there were for some fabric "Cathedral Windows Ornaments".  They are offered as a pattern or kit by Shabby Fabrics and demonstrated in Jen's videos here and here.

I made one during the return quarantine and have fabric sets ready for two more.  The fabrics for these came from the blue and white fabric stash for my AQS "Twilight Flurries" BOM project.  The only hand stitching on these though is to whipstitch the opening closed after you stuff them!  

Unfortunately, I only realized when I had to pick a ribbon for the hanging loop that I really didn't have anything right for the color or the season.  Good thing one of my errands yesterday was a Joann's run and they had holiday ribbons on sale so now I can replace that blue twill tape! 

Speaking of felt ornaments, Aurifil did a post on them Friday and offered links to some great patterns.  I really want to try this one!

Doubt I'll get to it today but since I'll still be tree shopping this week, there's still time to try it out!.  

There's more hand work fun to see over at Kathy's for her weekly "Slow Sunday Stitching" link up.  Go see what inspiration you can discover there!

Snowed in Quarantine!!

 I came back Sunday night after spending two weeks in North Carolina with my MIL.  Per New York state's current return quarantine regulations, I had been tested last Thursday while there and received the results Monday that the test was negative.  A blessing considering that during the second week I was there, the governor of that state only now had instituted a "semi-mandated" mask requirement and early closing of restaurants and liquor sales in response to skyrocketing transmission and hospitalization rates in their state.  

For NY, the new reduced return-from-travel restrictions instituted about a week before my trip by our Governor,  required me to quarantine for three days once I returned and then get tested again here.  If the second test is also negative, then I would be immediately freed from quarantine and free to move about --- still with a mask while out in public of course!

Well, today would have been the day to go get tested but Mother Nature decided otherwise......

Fortunately I had a project on my design wall when I left that needs assembly and worked on enough projects while away that can also be moved forward should this "snow in" last more than a day or two.  For instance, this ornament started on the train ride back....

A little mobile Slow Sunday Stitching!

....can now get finished up with more to go!

More on the trip in the next few posts!

BOMS Away: Progress As the Year Draws To A Close

At the start of the year I had set an admittedly ambitious goal to work on four different BOMs with the plan of action being to deal with a different project in each week of the month.  Well the pandemic, the later quarantine orders and the resultant slew of online quarantine quilt alongs and new quarantine inspired projects quickly threw this "Squirrel Moment" quilter off course!   With the year now quickly coming to a close, I wanted to try to make good on at least some of my BOM goals.  I spent a lot of my quilting time in October and November focusing on bringing the BOMs up to date.  Here's how that went:

First up is my scrappy version of this year's AQS 2020 BOM "Twilight Flurries".  

This was my first chance to try making one of the annual American Quilter Society (AQS) Christmas Countdown BOMs.  I had liked their teal, dark blue and white color scheme and decided to expand it to a scrappy selection of blues across that color spectrum.  Adding an equally scrappy mix of whites to the scheme, I was hoping the resultant quilt could be used for holiday and winter decorating.  

This was an ambitious BOM to have started since it is comprised of twenty-five blocks, something I didn't really examine closely when I chose to do it.  Because I fell behind on the blocks in the early months of the pandemic, it's been a challenge to try to catch back up over the course of the summer and fall.  This is particularly true since I needed to have all the blocks done by the end of November or early December to even have a shot at finishing the quilt for Christmas display.

The good news is that I did mange to finish up all the blocks.  Here are all the ones I got done in the last two months:

I admit I've struggled with getting good contrast in the designs of these blocks because I also didn't factor in the small size (7" finished) of these intricately pieced blocks when I made both my purchasing and piecing fabric choices.  Another issue is that having gone scrappy, I'm concerned about whether my blocks will work in the original quilt layout -OR- if I would be able to come up with a different layout that will accommodate the scrappiness of the fabrics in my blocks -OR- if I could find a background print to pull all the blocks together.  So I am already prepared for the possibility that I might not be able to solve that riddle in time for this to be a holiday display quilt after all!  

However, that is not as much of problem as you would think:  the good news is that I compiled such a healthy project stash for this at the start that it has generated an unexpected wealth of projects for using up the Blue and White fabric leftovers.  So I may wind up decorating with the other quilts I'm working on from the leftovers and the BOM project may wind up not getting completely finished until next year!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Next up are the last few blocks for the Joann Countryside Cottage BOM

The blocks for this BOM have been the easiest to make up because they are all from pre-cut kits.  Also helpful is that it is a traditional mostly-one-block-a-month BOM.  As a result, I was able to finish up just about all of the last blocks over the past few months:   

All that's left is the last one. It's an applique block that I am doing by hand applique.  

Pieces prepped and ready to stitch!

I had originally hoped to have this project be one of a group of Fall projects I wanted to tackle.  The coloring of this quilt fits right in that theme!  However, with everything else I was working on, it soon got too late to work on the rest of those projects this year.   I am still hoping to get this last block done and then finish the top next month.  At that point I'll decide whether try to get it quilted and finished this year or just put the top with the other Fall projects and work on them all in time for next Fall.  

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The "self-styled" BOM in the bunch was the one I call "Modern Bohemia".  Based on the "Bohemia" design by the Homestead Hearth ladies, I had hoped to have some fun with what I saw as "Mod" style fabric prints.  I thought this was also going to be an easy one to finish up early since it is made up of simple Churn Dash blocks, all of which I die cut the parts for.  I had done a few blocks before the pandemic hit and once I had finished up a few quarantine quilt along projects, I thought I could bring these blocks to a top by the end of June!  NOT!!!  At that point I was here:

However, I did finally get back in gear on them in October to the point that I was down to the last rows of blocks and some filler.  Of course that also takes into to account that at this point, I've decided to make this quilt smaller than originally planned.  I believe I have finished all that I am going to do so now I am here:

I have to review the block/color placements and then will sew all the blocks together and call this one a finished top!  I expect this one will have the best chance of getting quilted and finished up before the year ends. 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Right off the bat, the BOM I was most excited about working on this year was my "Scrappy Christmas Figs".

This is another BOM that I'm working up in my own choice of fabrics and was a chance to stash a bunch of older Fig Tree Quilts fabric lines.  So the challenge here was to choose fabric combinations I think will work in the blocks and which will fit my vision of what I want the finished quilt to look like. Turns out that takes way more time than I expected it would!  It is also another BOM with two blocks a month for ten of the months (the last two are for making sashing cornerstone blocks and finishing) which can be be hard to accomplish in just one week.  

Once again, that was something I didn't take adequate notice of when I chose to do it so when I got behind on the blocks at the start of the quarantine period, it was that much harder to try to catch up and still meet a deadline of finishing the blocks by November or December.  As result of that and more "Squirrel Moment" projects I decided to start in the interim, this one has gone on the back burner so will not get worked on for the rest of this year.  So say hello to the first project on the 2021 project list!  

No wait, it's the second project:  the first is my Quiltville "Tobacco Road" mystery which I had been focused on sewing the center together when the pandemic and quarantine orders hit and still need to add borders to.  

Looks like 2021 will be as busy as 2020!! 

Linking Up to "BOMs Away" with with Lynette at What A Hoot Quilts and Kate at Katie Mae Quilts 

The New Quiltville Mystery Officially Started Yesterday!!

 Ahhh, another opportunity for 2020 to get back to normal again -- the start of the annual Quiltville mystery season!  This year we will all be taking a stroll down to "The Grassy Creek" with Bonnie Hunter!

As Bonnie noted in her post for Part 1, the one good thing about this pandemic is that it doesn't upend the ability for everyone to "get together" and join in on the mystery season.  Last year I mused about the many ways that you can participate in the mystery even if you don't think you want to make the actual mystery project!

At this point I have so many past mysteries still in progress, I hadn't planned to actively participate this round.  To date, I've still got:

• Double Delight --- To Be Quilted
• On Ringo Lake --- Need To Make Backing
• En Provence --- Need To Make Backing
• Tobacco Road --- Needs Borders
• Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll --- Piecing in Progress

However, that won't stop me from following along weekly!!  I especially look forward to the progress link ups where you can see what others are doing or how they have changed the color palette of the project.  

I will say though, I just reviewed the color picks again and I can see myself caving on this one in the near future!  Just not until I get at least one of the previous ones done though!!  So join in on all the fun between now and January.  It will be another great way to close out this year!