I keep plugging away

Yesterday at lunch I knitted. I added another 1 1/4 inches so it is now 19 1/2 inches long.

Last evening I was tired. I had been up later than normal the night before, throw in 5 miles of walking, and I was fading fast. Between last night and this morning I did get one more side the of the binding sewn. Oh well, its better than a stick in the eye.

I don't have any big plans for the weekend except to get this quilt done and get started on the next project.

Have a great weekend!

Binding progress

Yesterday at lunch I mitered the corners. After work I trimmed the batting and backing then pressed the binding away from the top. I sat down, watched a movie, and got half the binding hand sewn. We are inching closer everyday to getting this one done!

Busy evening

I was looking for a recipe last evening that I had printed and couldn't find it. While I was looking I decided to take care of a few things that were laying around.
1. tape together my 2016 UFO list and hung it on the door

2, Gather and put the recycling and trash in their respective bins in the garage. I wheeled the bins out this morning before work.

3. Found the recipe for cinnamon almonds. Made them. I had to go stir them every 10 minutes. They were ok. Would I make them again. Probably not.

4. Hung up my pencil sharpener FINALLY! I put it in the downstairs closet which is next to my studio. It only took me 10+ years to finally do this job which took between 15 and 20 minutes to actually do! Good grief!!

Nice sharp pencil!

5. Took a picture of the progress on my scarf. I had knitted 2 inches at lunch and now it is 18" long.

By this time it was 6 p.m. and after getting in almost 5 miles of walking I was getting tired, but 6. I plowed on and got the binding sewn on the quilt. Tonight I will do the corners and try to get it trimmed and ready for the hand stitching.

A bit done

I ended up walking 5.74 miles yesterday so I was a bit tired last evening. It was 45 degrees outside and too nice to go indoors. The snow is almost gone here. When I finally went inside the first thin I did was fixe my watch band. The loop that keeps the strap wrangled broke. There was an extra loop on the strap so I Gorilla glued it in place and held it with some binder clips until this morning. I know it hard to tell by this photo, but what the heck I will show you anyway.

I got the binding, cut, stitched together, and pressed. Yeah! Tonight I will work on sewing it onto the quilt.

No, it's not finished

I ended up doing paperwork all day Saturday which I could not put off so no quilting happened. I did quilt all day on Sunday so at least all the quilting is done!

I found the fabric I will be using for the binding.

So this week will be all about binding this quilt.

My quilting set up and a little progress

I have had a couple of comments that I will answer in this post. One comment was about handling the free motion quilting for heavy quilts. My machine fits down in a cabinet and I have two tables, one behind my cabinet, and one to the left, which gives me a big area for the quilt to lay. I have these tables in the corner so the quilt won't fall off the edge of the tables. I also have two heavy folding TV trays that I set up to my left to also help support the quilt as I work on it. I will take the TV trays down when I don't need them. The TV trays, cabinet and tables were all made by my Dad years ago. I gave him measurements and he made the tables to fit my space.

Another comment was about sewing at lunch. Since I work 1.1 miles from where the job site is located where I am working right now, I go home everyday for lunch and can get a bit of something done - sewing, dishes, laundry, or whatever. I am so lucky I can do this. Once the project I am on is finished, that will not be the case. At lunch yesterday I got this two small areas quilted. I am now 75% done with the machine quilting.

My plans for the weekend will be to finish this quilt and figure out my next project.

Have a great weekend and keep those comments/questions coming!

More progress

I got this shirt quilted at lunch

This shirt - front and back - done last evening - lots of lettering to outline so that took quite awhile to do

and these two smaller bits this morning

So I am now 73% done with the quilting! Just so you know the quilt is 79 x 91.5.

Big progress

I quilted at lunchtime and after work yesterday and made big progress on my nephew's t-shirt quilt. I now have 63% quilted! I quilted the navy shirt with the tie dyed green stripe, the gray shirts, the green guitar shirt, and the little gray block that says first class.

I have nothing on my schedule for this upcoming weekend except for getting my walks in. I am thinking I could have this quilt done this weekend. That would be great! I have been thinking what my next project is going to be. So far I haven't decided. I guess I need to look at my UFO list.

T-shirt progress - RIP Glen, Mic, and Dale

I quilted last evening and this morning before work. I was up early for no particular reason so I thought I would quilt a bit. I got 548.75 square inches quilted which means I now am 47% done with the quilting. Here are the two shirts now done.

It took over an hour to do the bright yellow/green Universal Studios shirt since I outlined much of the design. Here is a picture of the back so you can see a bit the outlining.

With the t-shirts quilt I usually just neatly backstitch the starts and stops.

I did get a bit of knitting done at lunch and after work. The new scarf is now 13" long.

So sad Glen Frey is gone. I remember when he played a pilot in a episode of Miami Vice taking Crockett and Tubbs to Columbia to chase after some drug smugglers. Glen's song Smuggler's Blues was featured in the episode. I never got to see the Eagles live, but their music lives on my iPod. RIP Glen Frey.

On Sunday Mic Gillette, horn player for The Tower of Power died. One of their hits was Ain't nothin' stoppin' us now. Then Dale Griffin from Mott the Hoople died. This is starting to make me feel old. RIP guys.

Finished scarf and the t-shirt quilt

Amelia Quilts and Maartje Quilts - your email address comes to me as noreply-comment@blogger.com. You need to enable your email address in your Google Blogger profile, then scroll down and SAVE. Thanks to everyone for the lovely comments on my first finish for 2016.

I got the scarf finished on Saturday. I just couldn't stop knitting. I didn't realize how much I missed knitting. The scarf is 9" wide by 71" long.

Unfortunately I tried it on and there is a bit too much scarf width wise for my short neck.

The pattern had called for 41 stitches and I had cut it down to 35, but once I fold the scarf in half it is just too much bulk. No problem, I will just knit another one! No I am not taking it apart! The lady that cuts my hair wants me to knit her a scarf so I will take it to her my next appointment and see if it works for her or if she needs a narrower one like the new one I started on Sunday. This one is 25 stitches which will be about 5 1/2" wide. I am using a size 6 needle.

My next quilting project is to finish my nephew's t-shirt quilt I started in November or December. It will be done before the deadline of March 4 when my sister comes to Ohio. The quilt is all pin basted and I had started free motion machine quilting it on my home machine a Pfaff 1475CD. One thing I forgot to do was use my nephew's baby blanket or as he called it a "lanky" as part of the back. So I spent a bit over an hour yesterday removing the pin basting from one corner of the quilt, cutting the backing, and sewing in the lanky.

Here is the lanky

I pulled the top and batting back and made a cut to remove the backing to the seam line.

The lanky wasn't wide enough so I had to trim the backing and attach a piece to the lanky. I has also interfaced the lanky since the fabric was pretty thin after lots of use and many washes.

I then sewed the lanky section back to the backing

Next was sewing the seam back together. You may wonder why I did not cut off the selvages. I prewash all my fabric and the salvages did not shrink up so I didn't bother cutting them off.

Next I straightened out the quilt, laid bricks to hold the quilt in place, and taped down the backing so I could pin baste the quilt back together.

Done and ready to quilt!

I worked on quilting it and I now am 39% done. The top row was already done, but I worked on the t-shirts down the right side yesterday.

I am going to try to get at least one or two t-shirts quilted each night so maybe I will be able to finish this one in the next two weeks. I would like to have at least two finishes for January and the t-shirt would be one UFO completed also.

1st finish of 2016

Well, here it is! Finally my first finish.

And now the back. I used another one of my African Dutch Wax prints. Zippy!

Since I concentrated on getting the quilt done, I only got 1 1/2" of the scarf knitted yesterday. So now it is 44.5" long. Only 25.5" to go!

So now I will go back to working on my nephew's t-shirt quilt. Have a great weekend!

Big progress

I got to work as soon as I got home from work. I am now halfway done with hand stitching the binding on the music quilt. Yeah! The size of the quilt is approximately 75 x 90. I have been careful not to post any pictures of the fabric that I used for the back. I want that to be a surprise and see what your reaction is once I show it (cross your fingers!) tomorrow.

At lunch I knitted again and I now have 3 more inches done. So now it is 43" long.

We got a bit of snow last night so I was out shoveling the driveway before I left for work. There was an early morning visitor, a cat, who left their paw prints in the snow.

A bit more done

I was lacking much motivation to get anything done last evening. I have to put so much cream around my eyes it makes it hard to see when the cream ends up migrating into my eyes. Then of course it makes it so much harder to get anything done when it is so hard to focus. With this cold the skin around my eyes is extremely dry and just peels like a sunburn. Weird. I still have congestion in my head and ears after 2 1/2 weeks. I know it could be worse, but it sure is getting old.

I did get the miter corners for the binding sewn, the quilt trimmed, and the binding pressed back from the quilt. Sewing on black didn't make it any easier to see what I was doing!

I did get a few rows on the scarf at lunch and after work. The safety pin shows where I started for the day just so I can see how much I got done. The scarf is now 40" long. With it being 9 degrees out this morning, I sure could use this now!

Plugging away

I managed to get the binding sewn on to the music quilt. Tonight I will miter the corners and trim the excess batting and backing.

For the scarf, I got another 3.5" knitted. It is now about 37" long. The pattern says to keep knitting until it is 70" long so I am just past the half way point.