Quitling and snow

Last evening my SIL came over to shop my stash. She is getting back into sewing and needed to make another baby quilt for someone her husband, my brother, works with. She had bought a green, blue, cream, tan, and brown stripe, but could find anything to go with it. Here are four fabrics that she took a piece of for the quilt. I didn't think to take a picture of the stripe fabric, but at least she was happy and can now start to work on the quilt today.

I did get a little bit of the next UFO quilted this morning. I was so tired last evening I just couldn't even sew. I need to get this one done by end of day tomorrow so I can count it for a January finish.

Yesterday we had icy rain/rain and early this morning it has turned into snow. Thank goodness I only have to drive 1.1 miles to work as the streets were awful! Here is what our parking lot looks like.

I plan on staying home this weekend and sewing. I think I have enough veggies and fruit on hand that I won't need to go to the grocery store. Have a great weekend!

Basketball and pin basting

No, I wasn't playing basketball! Last evening I walked to the high school to see my nephew play basketball. He is on the freshman team and I have not seen him play this year so I thought I better make an appearance. The game started at 5:30 and was over at 7, but I still had to walk home. It is only about a mile. Of course it is harder to walk in the slush, but I had my YakTrax on and had my light so cars could see me. Here he is waiting for someone to shoot a free throw.

This morning I managed to get the next UFO quilt pin basted. Now it is all ready for me to start quilting when I get to the house after work.

Next project

I now have the next small quilt ready for pin basting. This will be another one for my baby quilt stash.

I hope you are keeping warm. In NE Ohio it is 4 degrees right now. We were lucky that we did not get the snow that the east coast did, but tomorrow could be a bad day. The weather channel is calling for ice and rain. The side streets around here are still snow and ice covered even with plowing. I notice that they threw down cinders instead of salt so until it warms up a bit the side streets will remained covered.

2nd & 3rd finishes for 2015

I was at a company meeting all day yesterday thus no post.

I did get finish 2 done on Saturday. It turned out to be 37 3/4" by 49" and will go into my baby quilt stash.

On Sunday I got this improv pieced quarter square log cabin baby quilt quilted and the binding machine sewn on. Last evening I finished hand sewing the binding for my 3rd finish for 2015. It turned out 35" x 46" and will also go in the baby quilt stash.

I also got me a new toy! I needed a new juicer as my old Juiceman was on its last leg. The plastic was breaking apart and I was getting a burning smell. It was a centrifugal type juicer which I have read is not as good as a crushing type juicer because the centrifugal type have a tendency to heat up the juice. Well here is the old and the new.

Binding and look what came in the mail

I walked for 55 minutes after work last evening and then got myself together so I could make the binding and sew it on the quilt. I trimmed it and now it is all ready for the hand sewing.

Look what I received in the mail! I had sent Vicki of Field Trips in Fiber a couple of dark blue wine bottles for her to play with in her slumping trials. I saved them from the art museum when I was volunteering this past summer. They were just too pretty to toss in the recycle bin! Vicki turned around and sent me a slumped bottle back! I was so surprised! Isn't it gorgeous? It will have a place of honor on my living room coffee table.

I am so glad the weekend is here! I plan on finishing the above quilt and get another one started. I need to do some cleaning and walking. We are suppose to get some snow, but I will slap my YakTrax's on and still go for a walk. Have a great weekend!

Progress on the quilt

I finished up the machine quilting this quilt so I will be at least working on the binding tonight after work.

Despite getting 2-3" of snow yesterday before lunch, I slapped on my YakTrax's and went for my walk right after I got to the house from work. The main roads were ok, but the side streets were snow and ice covered. The YakTrax make all the difference even though my new boots have really good tread on them. Just to let you know, I wear a 9 1/2 shoe and I bought a large sized pair of YakTrax. I had a set of medium ones and they were stretched to the max which caused them sometimes to pop off, the wires started breaking, and some of the connecting rubber web strips that the wires are wrapped around broke from over stretching. In this case, bigger is better!

Progress on the next quilt and walking

It has been a bit crazy so I haven't had very much time to quilt. I do have half of the current quilt done.

Despite the weather I have been going out for a walk every evening. We have had some thawing and freezing which causes some slippery walking so I put my YakTrax's on my boots for my walk the last couple of nights. I had no problem walking at all.

Next quilt, free motion designs, walking

Here is the next quilt I am going to finish.

Saturday I didn't get much done. I was just so tired. I pin basted the quilt, downloaded some CD's

watched a documentary and went for my walk.

but Sunday I starting quilting on the above quilt. I had spent some time watching two DVD's from Patsy Thompson. I would quilt along with the DVD and here is my stack of practice pieces. I have three more DVD's to watch.

This is the design I am using for the quilt - well, kind of. It is a wavy spiral - at least that is what I am calling it. The motifs are coming out a bit more round and wavy on the quilt than my sample. This design covers a lot of area quickly, but is not as boring to do as meandering. I forgot to take a picture of the quilt in progress. I post one tomorrow.

The weather was decent so I went walking again Sunday afternoon. Since it was early afternoon I walked beyond my neighborhood a bit. Look at the snow art in this front yard! They always do something interesting. I wonder where they got all the snow since we have not received that much this year so far.

And Two more ready

With making up these sets of items needed for each quilt, I have reduced the batting scraps quite a bit. I did find a couple of larger pieces that were not in the picture. Here is the original pile

and this is what it looks like now

I pulled out my stack of backing scraps and found a piece for the quilt top with the red. Here is what my backing scrap stack looks like.

So now with these six groups set up

this weekend I will start pin basting and getting some machine quilting done.

Two more ready

I managed to get the batting, backing, and binding ready for two more quilts. My batting scrap pile is dwindling!

My first 2015 fabric purchase and using up batting scraps

I didn't hold out very long before I made my first purchase! I have been trying to ignore all the sales everyone has been having, but for 50% off ... well, that is a hard sale to ignore! Here is what I bought

I have this pile of batting scraps

and some small UFO quilts that need quilted so last evening I sewed the batting together to make big enough pieces for two of the small quilts. The batting was wrinkled so I lightly pressed it.

I had a nice big piece that I needed to add a strip to the side and the bottom.

To do this I overlapped the pieces by a couple of inches and made sure they were the same length at the end where I would start sewing.

With the rotary cutter, I cut a gentle curvy wave thru both pieces then removed the trimmings.

I took the pieces to the sewing machine and set my stitch for a triple stitch zig zag 13a i.e. each zig has three little stitches in it. Using this stitch keeps the batting from forming a ridge. I also used the widest setting and set the length to a 2. The standard length on my machine is a 1.

Place both pieces under the foot with the edges butted up against each other. I started sewing keeping the butted edge in the middle of the foot so the zig zag would go back and forth catching both pieces.

I guess I should have used a different colored thread to show the seam so you could see it better, but it is what it is - a nice flat seam that will not be noticeable!

I managed to get the batting pieced for two quilts along with the backing pieced and binding cut. I will continue to make batting for the rest of my small UFO quilts and stack them up until I am ready to start the next step of pin basting them.

Before I went to work I made a lime coconut quick bread to take to the fellows at work. I didn't want to make it last night because I would have smelled it all night and that would drive me crazy! They fellows said it tasted good. I had to change the recipe since I didn't have any coconut oil or coconut milk. I used butter and skim milk instead. I did a calculation of the calories and if I cut it into 8 slices each slice would have 337 calories! Holy cow! It sure does smell good! Very limey!

1st finish of 2015

Yeah rah! I even got the label sewn on! So here it is. The quilt turned out 82 1/4 x 91 1/4. The patch on the detail picture was on one of the t-shirts so I sewed it on after I was done quilting.

Here is the back. The fabric with the white clouds has mortarboards on it so I had to buy it when I saw it on sale several years ago for this quilt. By the way, this quilt is very orange as it is my niece's favorite color. Even the label has orange polka dots!

I used a variety of threads to quilt this piece - Mettler, Signature, Connecting Threads Essentials, and Aurifil. The batting is Warm & Natural 80/20. Onward to the next project!