Getting Unstuck

 I have been stuck. Stuck trying to find a way forward with my sewing. I do understand that it comes and it goes and I'm not worried I will never sew again or anything weird like that. And I know why I'm stuck. Grief can do that to a person. I do have some days where I sew, and I enjoy it. Other days, I don't feel like doing anything at all. I have a couple of projects in process. One, I can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for right now, and that's okay. It's more of a winter looking quilt.

My temperature quilt is one I am slowly plodding along with. I at least update the charted temps every week or so. I know I will sew them up eventually. I did some last week and am now mostly caught up.

This is January and February. I have decided to do each month as a calendar page. Whenever there is extra space in the month, I will use a piece of fabric that represents the month. Here, January is white on white that looks like snow, and February is hearts.

This is March, which has shamrocks for St. Patrick's day. Can you see how the temperature colors are changing?

This is April. April showers are represented here. Now, each month has 5 horizontal rows, but because of the way things fell in April, the 30th was all alone in a sixth row. I checked the rest of the year and it was the only one like that. So, I opted to split the last block between the 29th and the 30th. I know they usually do this on a diagonal line, but the houses don't lend themselves to that. So I guess I am caught up for the first time on this project.

Then, I got a bee in my bonnet, unlike anything else recently. I started a new project and finished the quilt top in one week.

This is from the book, Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. One of my all time favorite quilt books. I go to it a lot for inspiration. This is the High Five quilt. Amanda Jean's version is totally scrappy and I do love the look of hers. But I used some scraps and some yardage that I was looking for a way to use. I also made it a few rows shorter that in the book. I am very happy with how it turned out and now I just have to find the energy to pin baste it so I can quilt it. This got me a little unstuck.

What really got me unstuck though, was this quilt.

I started this quilt two years ago. I made the top while living in California. My plan was to have it available to quilt when I moved home. I finally basted it, using thread basting, because I had thought to hand quilt with Perle Cotton and big stitches. Until two days ago, I stopped and started many times. I really wasn't into it and working on it was a struggle. You cannot do something you are not enjoying. 

I called on a friend of mine for help. I said I don't know what to do. She said she had only hand quilted one quilt in her life and that was one too many. That really struck me. I had hand quilted many quilts back in the day before I learned to quilt on my home machine. But hearing her say this freed me somehow.

I spent a couple of hours picking out all the hand quilting I had done. It was somehow satisfying to cut those stitches and pull the threads out.

I wanted, and needed a quick and easy finish. So I did an all-over large sort of stipple. Remember stipple quilting? It used to be so popular when we were all learning how to free motion quilt. I loved it!! The quilt is soft, and crinkly. It was enough.

I found a half yard cut from the same fabric line and did the binding. The entire process of quilting and binding took me about7-ish hours. I can't tell you how good it feels to have this one done! But I'm sure you know.

Have a great rest of your week.

Yellow Yellow Yellow

Yellow has long been my favorite color. It is sunny, warm and happy. I love all yellows. I have long had quite a stash of yellows, and when it starts to get low, I panic a wee bit and buy some more. I know this is my aesthetic, and not everyone's, but I try and incorporate it whenever I can.

When Cheryl and Amanda Jean released Sunday Morning Quilts, I learned about making slabs out of scraps. I loved the idea. I ran a flickr bee where we used the book as inspiration for three years. A lot of great quilts came out of that bee. But when that finished, I still hadn't had enough of slabs. I decided to start a yellow slab and see where it took me. That was 5-6 years ago and I am sorry to say that project has languished in a bin for quite some time. Yesterday I decided to pull it out and see how it made me feel.

 This is the big chunk I have done so far. So many of these fabrics are so old. Some ten or more years old. Some nearly 20 years old. I am so happy to see them again, like old friends. I remember buying them at my LQS, which has since closed. It melts my heart a bit.

Yesterday I made the strip on the left to add to the big chunk. I am thinking this will end up a comfortable lap size quilt.

 I still have quite a few strip pieces that I am debating exactly what to do with. I don't want just a bunch of long strips, so I may sub cut them after joining them together.

And I still have a bunch of smaller scraps as well. The goal is to use all of these up. I haven't yet decided if I will use any of my more recent yellow scraps, which all live in another different bin. Those scraps are more tame, as I began cutting my scraps into usable sizes a few years ago, so 2.5 inch strips, 2.5 inch squares, 3.5 inch squares and 5 inch squares. I did save a very few odd sizes, but not many. I did this with all my colors.

 As I was sewing and pressing seams, I saw this small strip of aqua colored Newspaper Butterflies left from a recent project, and decided to add it into the slab for just a wee bit of interest among all the yellow pieces.

And when I trimmed it to fit, I had this one small square, which ended up in a log cabin block that I love. This will also be incorporated into the slab, once I decide it has enough logs on it.

I am truly enjoying working on this once again. It is fresh and new for me and I am thinking of ways to quilt it, some machine, some hand embellishment. I am excited with this. I needed to find something to re-energize my sewing. I was in a funk. This may just have been the ticket out of the funk. Off to sew now. See you soon with an update and hopefully a finished top!

Another Finish

I have finished my quilt top! This one came together really easily, but it was the lack of enough fabric to make it like the original pattern that had me stumped for so long. I found this quilt in this book:

I love Cheryl's style. So I picked out a quilt from this book I got for Christmas to start my new year.

 And after changing the layout to accommodate the fabric I had, and really really wanted to use, I came out with a new layout. It took me a bit to really like it with the polka dots since that wasn't in my original plan.

But now I am happy with it and have already been planning how to quilt it. This one is going to be a cutie!  Linking up with Amanda Jean today.  Have a great weekend.

WIP Wednesday

Here it is, Wednesday again and I am still stitching away from my stash. Proud to say, even though there are a few things I would like to have, I haven't caved yet.  Here is this week's progress:

 This little sweetie is going to be a table topper for a small round table in my living room. All made from charms I collected and pin basted and ready to quilt. The border print is from Malka Dubrasky's line, Stitch in Color. I have been looking for something to do with this for a long time. I even mitered the corners!

 Here is my Flags quilt top. This is from Cheryl Arkison's book A Month of Sundays. I changed the layout to be able to use the fabric I had chosen, even though it wasn't quite enough. I have decide to put a thin row of dots in between each row of flags. Still trying to find my way through this one.

And last, but not least, this is the back of another small quilt. I am pin basting this today. I am not ready to show the front off just yet. This is for the Mosaic Tiles Quilt Along on Craft Buds.  Hope you are having a great week. Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. Talk to you soon.

WIP Wednesday

So it's a vacation week for me and I am trying to do as much sewing as I can. I know once this week is over, it will be back to 30 minutes sewing here and there. And I am going to share lots of it here, I hope. So today, it's WIP Wednesday here.

I have about 5 or 6 projects in motion, but today I am focusing on this one:

 I asked for a few quilting books for Christmas and Santa didn't disappoint. This one has been on my list since it came out. I love Cheryl's style and this book is more than just quilts. Beautifully done.

 My goal is always to use these books and not just read them and stack them aside. This quilt really spoke to me for some reason, so I chose it for my first one from the book. (Sorry for the crappy lighting in the sewing room)

 I have been wanting to use these lovelies since I bought them and this seems the perfect project for the first cuts. I am trying really hard to sew from my stash this year. This pattern is supposed to be paper pieced, which I have to admit, I still have never tried. I wasn't ready to try it with this one yet either. I used my Tri Recs tools rulers which happened to be the exact size I needed for these.

I have been saving this yard of Wordplay for about a year I think, and decided it would be perfect for the background. Trouble was, I needed another yard to do the layout in the picture.  I put out a plea here and on flickr to see if someone had another yard they would be willing to trad, but alas, no takers. So I set out to reconfigure the layout and make it work. I tried adding several different fabrics for a more scrappy background, but I just didn't like it. So my little quilt will be even rows of 5 flags each. It should finish at about 42 inches square, instead of the 42 x 54 size. I am still going to love it.
Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. Talk to you soon.

Sunday Morning Bee Quilt...Done!

I have finally finished my Sunday Morning Quilts Bee Quilt.  Wow, that's a mouthful. Anyway, it is finished.  My month was April, so now that it's August, I am finally finished.  I chose the Gumdrops quilt from the book as my quilt. The one thing I did was to change the color scheme. I think it turned out quite nice. What do you think?

 The lovely Loulouthi backing. Even my hubby loves this fabric. He says it might be better than the front.

 I don't ever do this any more, but I pulled the backing around to the front to make up the binding and I have to say, I love it on this quilt. I even put my label tag on the front this time.

I had two beautiful strips that were made entirely of batiks. I couldn't make them work here, due to the length of the strips and I didn't want to just cut them off to fit.  So I found some batik in my stash and made this instead:

Don't you just love it? I do. And if you're wondering about the white patch in the top left of the quilt, I had to add to those rows to extend them and make them all the same size as the others. With bee quilts you have to finagle sometimes to make it all work out.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day.

Wanna Peek in My Scrap Bins?

Warning: picture heavy post!
When I mentioned that I was using my stash to make stuff this summer, my sister asked me about it.  What were my favorites, did I find things that I'd forgotten etc.  I was sewing for my Sunday Morning Quilts Bee yesterday and had my scraps out.  These really got me to thinking and reminiscing more than the rest of my stash.  They are so much a part of my quilting journey.  So I thought you'd like a peak.

First up, I found some squares in the yellow bin.  Leftovers from this quilt, made in 2001.  I guess I made too many to start.

 This quilt was on my bed for about 9 years before I made a new one.  It lives in the spare bedroom now.

 I found 11 little beginnings of log cabin blocks in the yellow scrap bin.  I made this new mug rug for my desk.

And I made it double sided, just changing the orientation of the blocks a bit.  I really like it.

 Doesn't it look good here.  My tool cup is an old favorite coffee cup that has a glued on handle.  Can't trust it with hot coffee anymore.

 Here are the three remaining mini blocks.  I am thinking about a small wall hanging with them.

 This is a picture of my scrap bins on the shelves.  I started sorting them about 4-5 years ago, by color.  I am happy I did this before Cheryl and Amanda Jean's book came out.  I feel like I had a bit of a head start on sorting and using.  I started with bins for the colors I had the most of, and added bins as my sorting continued.  There are a couple of small bins that are still a hodge podge and a couple (blue and yellow) that are over flowing.

 Let's look inside, shall we?  See, lots of scraps in all shapes and sizes.  Some go back to my first few quilts.  I even have one small piece of fabric from my very first quilt.  I found some pieces from quilts I have given away too.  It makes me smile to remember them.  I even have pieces I have no idea what they were from!

        Here is a closer look at yellow and red/pink.  I haven't divided them up yet.

 Here are blue and green.  I had green out yesterday to work on my August slab block for Sunday Morning Quilts Bee.  I will post about that tomorrow.

 Orange...my smallest collection of all.  I don't use much, only buy it for specific projects.  I don't guess it calls to me often.

 Creams and whites, tone on tone whites.  Some low volume fabrics, although that term is new to me.

 These are my holiday scraps, Christmas, Halloween etc.  Not too many in here either.

This bin is strictly strips, ends of jelly rolls not used yet.  After you unroll them, you can't always keep them on the shelf.  I also have a small bin of kids fabric scraps.  So that's my scrap stash.

If you read this far, I have a giveaway for you.  If you are reading the book, Sunday Morning Quilts, and you are trying to make some of those beautiful projects and find yourself short on scraps, I am going to stuff a flat rate envelope with an assortment of my scraps.  I will mail it to you.  All you have to do is leave me a comment here and tell me which scrap quilt in the book is your favorite one.  I will leave the give away open for one week.  Random will draw a winner.
Have a great day.

Sunday Morning Quilts

If you've been out of touch, you don't know about Sunday Morning Quilts.  It is a great book by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison.  There are lots of things going on around blog world that center on this book.  Amanda and Cheryl have invited anyone who has made something from the book to link up.  So here is my first project.  I say first because I know there will be many more.

 These are my first two ticker tape mini quilts.  Amanda Jean did a great big one in all colors.  I decided to do a series of smaller ones, each in a single color.  When I am done, I am going to arrange them in a collection in my bedroom.  For now, though, they live in my sewing room on a little clothes line.

Here is the third one.  I am truly using scraps and the background was a rectangular piece of white I happened to have.  So they will not all be the same size and shape, I guess.

I also have a Flickr group doing a Bee/swap of slabs from the book.  I hope to have future rounds of this Bee to make some of the other projects from the book.  Go take a look.

Have a great week.  I am off to run errands now.