It's Monday what am I working on? Cleaning & organizing the sewing room

I believe that I need to go through my sewing room & clean it/ organize it every so often. Well I had been putting that off & putting that off & well my sewing room had gotten out of control.  We are having company come in for Thanksgiving & my kiddo sleeps in the sewing room when company comes. I started working on it last night & was able to work on it for an hour.  This is what it started at 

This is what it looks like after an hour of work

Much better but there is more to be done. I've decided that I'm going to gift all of my minky fabric to my Mom. She makes cute & warm baby quilts minky & I know that she'll use it. So far I have one regular sized trash bag full & I believe that there is more. If for some reason I need minky I'll go & buy just what I need. I don't need my own stash of minky. Plus I'd rather have that room for cotton fabric that I can piece with. 

I did get the table runner that I mentioned in the last post done. It'll be going to my quilter tomorrow,

I do need to pull a backing for it & then it'll be ready to go. 

I had purchased new fabrics from the quilt shop to help promote them & well I did not calculate very well. I am a scrap quilter I don't figure yardage until after I'm done piecing. I just want to know how much fabric scraps I've used up. So the leftovers from this project will find their proper place into the stash. Here's a pic of my quilt hanging in the shop

I'm going to continue working on the sewing room & working on my version of 4 patch X. I'm getting closer but my goal is to have it done by Friday. I'm still trying to decide if I want to participate in Bonnie Hunters mystery. I hope y'all are staying warm. It's kind of a gray day here. Have a great day. More later on,

Vicky

I'm breaking all the rules these days

I never thought of myself as a rule breaker but here lately I sure am. Well only in my quilting world. My husbands rule of " Don't start one project until the current project is done" has not been followed here lately. I was feeling very blah on the string spiderweb quilt & I wanted to sew on my treadle so I started working on some batik 4 patches. That was going well until my stitches were not very sturdy 😢. I'm not sure what needs to be tweaked but now was not the time to figure it out. I took all of my 4 patches & moved back to the modern Pfaff machine. I had a momentary pause of should I stay on one machine with each project then I realized that was rubbish. As long as your 1/4" seams are consistent switch between as many machines as you want! So in the craziness of yesterday I managed to finish 4 blocks, woohoo!!!!!!

Now I just need to finish 140 more! My goal is to have the top finished by next Friday. (That's when Bonnie Hunter at quiltville.com is starting her yearly mystery. I'm still playing with the idea of participating.) I've given up on the thought of making smaller quilts for my family. We just love the bigger quilts & I believe that they use up more fabric. 

On Friday nights I get together & sew with some friends. Well last Friday Kathy gifted me 3 bags of fabric

More scraps! When it rains fabric here it pours! This will go in to the stack of fabric that I need to sort.

The thing is that I currently want to sew & not sort fabric so it's kinda backed up on me. We've got family coming in for Thanksgiving so there will be lots of sorting & organizing going on this weekend.

I was supposed to teach a string piecing class at one of the local quilt stores here this week. Well my student never showed up. That was ok though because it gave me a chance to talk with the owner about my patterns. She bought some of each of them & they will be hanging 3 of my quilts in the shop!

With the String Diamonds quilt there will be a table runner made up using the same technique as the quilt just using a different color way. 

They will also be hanging Christmas Stars

I am making a table runner, quickly, in a different color way so that they can show it along with this quilt. The third quilt. Is The Cross

They have the patterns for these quilts & my other patterns in store & maybe online as well. Check out 

MeadowsQuiltingandSewing.com   The quilts will be hanging until mid January.

 I hope y'all are having a good day. It's beautiful here & warmer than it has been in a while. I might open the windows later on. More later on,

Vicky

It's Monday morning. What am I working on? Ironing

This week I had finished up matching all of my 2 patches into 4 patches. They were layed by the treadle just begging to go under the needle. 

Finally Saturday I was able to sit & treadle & was able to get through quite a few of them. Yesterday I finished sewing them all up! Now they are just a pile under my treadle waiting to be cut apart & ironed. 

I have never gotten into the habit of ironing them while they are still attached to one another. I tried it once but never really cared for it. I think I need to put on a good movie & have a ironing party. I'm hoping that by the time the movie is over the ironing will be too. 

Today is going to be the last warm weather day for a while. Starting tonight & into tomorrow it will be my kind of weather. I tell my husband all the time that I think the dear Lord made me for the Artic Circle & him for the Equator. Thankfully we're in Kansas & that's in the middle of the two places so we're both happy. 

Just wanted to share a fun pic of some of the calves playing King of The Hay Bale this am. They are fun to watch. 

I hope y'all have a great day. Checkout patchworktimes.com to see what other quilters are up to today. More later on,  

Vicky

It's Monday & I'm working on My Civil War Spider Web quilt

I'm so glad it's Monday! I know that might sound weird but I look forward to Mondays like most people look forward to the weekends. The weekends here are generally jam packed. My husband wants to cram as much as he possibly can into his 1 1/2 days off. On Monday mornings after my husband goes to work & my son goes to school I feel like I can slow down a bit. 

I'm working on the Civil War Spider Web quilt. This is not a fast quilt to make but that's ok. It's using up fabric & I really like it. I'm using Civil War Repro fabrics (AKA dirt fabrics). I haven't been a huge fan of CW fabrics in the past but I'm learning to appreciate their beauty. This quilt is more to my husbands liking. 

I've got 2 rows done & kinda like it always does you can't really tell I've used any of my strings. You can find out more on this quilt by reading my previous post.

I've also had lots of opportunities to work on my embroidery project this week. 

This will definitely fits the bill of "it will take me a long time to complete it". My husband is challenging me to make more projects that take a long time to complete. He says I make too many quilts too fast. 

This embroidery project has at least 8 of these blocks with a possibility of making more. We'll see when we get there. This is just block 1 of 8. It looks like it will use over 2 skiens of floss per block. 

So in between laundry & cleaning the house I'm going to be sewing! I hope y'all have a great day. It's another beautiful but windy day here. If you'd like to see what other quilters are working on check out 

patchworktimes.com

Vicky

p.s. Sick calf update. The vet came & gave her a thorough exam & ended up giving her a couple of different meds. We are trying to be optimistic. She has shown more energy yesterday & today but only time will tell.

Sitting & waiting for the vet

As caretakers of cows you are on call everyday all day, including holidays, birthdays & anniversaries.  Sometimes it really stinks because these crazy creatures will wait until Christmas Eve to have a medical emergency. I'm currently sitting outside in some of my cold weather gear drinking coffee & waiting on the vet. We've got a sick calf & it's beyond my experience. I'm hoping it'll be an easy fix, I'm  trying to be optimistic. So while I wait i decided to write a blog post. Gotta love smart phones 😀

When I first started Quilting my husband gave me one rule " Don't start a project until you are completely done with your current project". Well for the most part I've been able to do pretty good with that until currently. I've got my Friday night quilt project ( I get together with some Quilty friends & sew on Friday nights), the new batik 4 patch project & there are piles of fabrics in my sewing room already grouped up for specific projects. 

I was really starting to feel overwhelmed by it all. So I'm going to focus on the Friday night project & get it done & then move on down the list. I guess my eagerness got in the way of reality.  Here's my Friday night project 

It's a Civil War Spider Web quilt. This was inspired by a stack of CW layer cakes I was gifted. I kid you not that the stack of layer cakes was 6". 

Isn't that crazy! The quilter didn't want them anymore & gifted them to me. I was extremely thankful & told her that I would put them up good use. I sorted them out & took just the CW pieces out to use. The rest is set aside for future projects. 

I'm using the template & foundation papers that I got from Missouri Star Quilt Co to make this quilt 

I cut 42 stars & then sliced up the rest for strings. It's going to be a heavy quilt with all of those pieces & thread. 

I hope that y'all have a great weekend. It's cold & beautiful here in the middle of the USA. More later on,

Vicky