To Do Tuesday #30

Missed a week...seems to always go so fast and I felt that I needed to finish something before linking up again.

My list was as follows:

- finish off my sock

- write another blog post on my new pattern which I did not get around to this week

- make a start on the wholecloth table runner as I do need to start preparing for a workshop in September; maybe just get the basting done at the very least.

- continue sewing my scrap blocks together.

Well, I did finish my socks and they are looking rather good

Could say that I planned the orange colouring this way, but no...that just happened by coincidence. Did wear them in the week and washed them since then. All good, still fit! Did a whole lot more research into sock knitting and sizing and am planning another pair.

On the quilting front, I did manage to finish one of my scrap tops. Took a bit longer because my initial layout needed to be extended by one row. I had 9 blocks by 10 rows which looked somewhat odd to me so I did need to construct another row which I finished today. This has taken much longer than anticipated due to the matching of the seams and general lack of motivation, but its done.

Absolutely crazy amount of scrap fabric! The quilt will come out at 54in x 66in, so quite a good size for a throw for the sofa. I am now going to piece a backing together. Again, this took a while to decide what exactly to use but in the end I decided to use up one particular green blender, complemented by another greenish print. Will have to wash the fabric as I cannot remember whether I have done this before or not.

Planning to use my Baptist Fan rulers on this one which should be good fun. We shall see how long it will take me to get this done. Struggling a bit with motivation to do anything at the moment and am always surprised how much quicker things get done when I am actually doing it! Might be the weather over here...it's been miserable, cold and very rainy. On top of that we have been doing a fair amount of running around, going to different appointments, taking our cat to the vet due to a thyroid issue, looking after my daughter's cats while she was away, car shopping with my other daughter etc.

My second scrap quilt should be quicker as I am not going to match seam for seam, so I am hoping to bang this together a bit more quickly.

Also made a start on my table runner

Not really happy with how I did the feather in the middle, something went wrong with my guidelines on the side. Should have chosen a more uniform guide that follows the divisions, I think. Live and learn. However, this is just for show and tell in the workshop, so I am not going to worry too much about it. As the surrounds will be filled in it might just all blend together and it might be a good example of how not to do your guidelines for the feather spray. Still a fair amount of filling in to do...hopefully I will get this done over the next couple of weeks.

Apart from that I did baste together a small Growth Chart quilt for my Etsy shop, however did not take a photo. But basically that it also ready to be quilted.

So, plenty of stuff to do, might just have to work on my motivation a bit. Hopefully the household will calm down a bit and we can get back to our normal routine.

So, what am I planning? Maybe for the next week I will

- make a start on a new sock pattern

- make a start on the second scrap quilt just sewing the blocks together

- continue on the table runner, i.e. filling in the background...there will be a bit of a grid, a rainbow pebble filler and a more boxy filler, then some pebbling and lines around the feather structure

- start on the handout for the workshop (wishful thinking??)

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #30 over at Quilt Schmilt.

Karin

To Do Tuesday #28 - Continuing Scrap Quilting Adventure

The last two weeks were unbelievably busy with errands, household chores and adult kids coming and going. In addition, our local quilt show was on last weekend which was an extra outing on top of everything else.

So I did not get as much done as I had hoped. My list from 2 weeks ago was:

- continue to sew those strips together until I have got enough to make a quilt top. I am approximately half way through on both stacks of blocks, so this should be do-able✅

- start on quilting another of my table runner wholecloth quilts

- start writing up my new pattern (this will take a few weeks but I have to have this on here, because I am definitely procrastinating)✅

- continue knitting my second sock - struggled through the beginning again but am on my way now).✅

My scrap project went completely bananas! As explained earlier I decided to use up the bulk of my strips to make some scrap quilts...and then I found a stack of  Charm Squares. So all told I am working on three different quilts. Made some progress on the first one, but let me tell you how much I got out of my scraps first. I am embarrassed to say that out of the strips that I already had and another stack that I cut to size for this project I made two stacks of strip blocks. I had

- 92, 3 strip blocks (each strip at 2-1/2in) and 

- 72, 4 strip blocks (each strip at 2in).

… and I still have strips left over! It is absolutely insane how much I have accumulated over time. I only stopped as I was running out of certain tones, as I sewed my strips into dark, medium and light arrangements. Interestingly, I ran out of 2-1/2in strips in the light range as opposed to the dark tones in the 2in strips. Also discovered that I obviously like orange...I had so many orange strips which was a bit of a surprise.

I am working on the bigger quilt now and have started to put the blocks together

This quilt will be 9 blocks x 10 rows, so 54in x 60 in. Not that interesting in terms of layout but if nothing else it will just be very colourful.

The other quilt will be 8 blocks x 9 rows, so 48in x 54in. 

In this arrangement I sewed dark, light, medium and dark together and will probably have one block facing horizontal and the next block vertical. 

Both quilts will be gifted away to be used as throws, in the car or whatever. My Charm Square quilt will be challenging. I started to work on that as well, sewing together light and dark squares but struggle with nothing going together as the fabrics has been collected over many years. I've got children's print, reproduction fabric, solids …all sorts and it is hard to overlook this and go for an uncoordinated look. We'll see.

I did manage to write up my pattern for my Etsy Shop

The alternate block is the Fancy Foot block which I really like, particularly in bright, near solid fabric. Very eye catching. As this blocks involves making half rectangle triangles the write up was a bit more involved and I included some photographs as well as lots of diagrams on how to do this. The PDF pattern includes two sizes, one square baby quilt and one crib size baby quilt ( will need to do another blog post as I ran out of time to post about the new listing).

And then there was the quilt show. Happy to say I did not buy that much. Just bought one new panel and then also 2 growth chart fabric panels. These are good little projects for listings in my Etsy shop when I am running out of juice in terms of coming up with new exciting patterns 😆 

Also continued on my second sock. It has been just as hair raising as the first sock. I thought that I would retain the information a bit better but again had to watch my instructional video several times as I could not remember how I did knit sections in the first sock. Also did a fair bit of research into the sizing of socks and how to go about adjusting the sizing to your particular foot. I am a bit hooked, I must say and I do intend to knit another pair after this lot. Very addictive! 

So, for the remainder of the week I will try to do the following

- finish off my sock

- write another blog post on my new pattern which I did not get around to this week

- make a start on the wholecloth table runner as I do need to start preparing for a workshop in September; maybe just get the basting done at the very least.

- continue sewing my scrap blocks together ... no hurry, as this will take a while I think

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #28 over at Quilt Schmilt and 

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is more fun than Housework

Karin