Charity Quilting Day

Yesterday turned out to be a day to work on charity quilts. I cut 3 kits out of some of the donated batik fabrics. One is a strippy quilt and the other two will be rail fence quilts. I am going to take them to a charity sew in we are having next weekend and see if I can get some interest in taking them and returning a finished top or better yet a finished quilt for hospice.

In addition I basted a quilt on my frame. This is the first time I have basted only a quilt. It was easy but took longer than I thought it would and was very boring to do. The quilt is lovely, I took a picture of one block only. This is going to be a fund raiser quilt for a local senior center that lets a sewing group I am part of meet in their facility at no charge. Each of the redwork blocks depicts a scene from Southern Maryland so hope they are able to sell lots of tickets to raise funds for their senior activities.



Kathie

Oh My Gosh

I went to one of my guild meetings today and a one of the members donated a whole box of mostly batik fabric for charity quilts. The colors and fabrics are so pretty I am just having a great time looking at all of them.

The guild is going to use part of the fabric to make twin sized quilts for a local shelter that is requesting quilts. The rest of the fabric will be used for hospice quilts.

All sorts of ideas are going through my head. I am going to settle on 2 or 3 different ideas and hope that my other guild will use its next "sew in" day to cut and put together kits for members to take home and sew up.

Kathie

Wacky Wednesday

Ok, not really wacky but what goes with Wednesday?

Today is a busy day with probably no sewing. I had to drop my daughter and her science fair project at school early this morning. They all looked like a bunch of ants going into the high school with their big tri-fold display boards.

I will be off to my day time guild meeting in a few minutes. This is the greatest guild. Wonderful friendly ladies, great programs and lunch on top of that. Four or five ladies take turns each month to bring in lunch and it is always great.

Later today is yearly doctors appointment and then tomorrow morning I take my daughter to her first physical therapy appointment for an injured knee from dance.

I will have to reserve tomorrow afternoon to do nothing but sew.

Kathie

Second Charity Quilt

Well I am definitely on a roll. I am trying to average quilting 1 to 2 charity quilts a month and here is my second one for January. This was a little Quilts for Kids quilt made by Penny. Love the fabrics in this and she did a great job of sewing it together. I quilted this yesterday afternoon after finishing up a couple of small panel pictures for a customer.

I really enjoyed yesterday and was glad school was back in session. I love my daughter dearly but you know teenagers, I seem to have spent all her Christmas break hauling her from one place to the next. Also with everyone up and moving early I get a whole lot more done.

I think I need to get back to setting weekly goals to keep myself focused. I use them more as reminders to myself than HAVE TO lists. My goals for the next few days

Keep plugging away on my Monet quilt
Quilt small customer quilt
Baste (on the frame) queen size raffle quilt for my sewing group

I think that is enough. I would like to add do a little more organizing in the quilt room and pull out patterns and pick out the next project or two to do to start on next years craft show items but I need to stay focused on the monet quilt.

I was getting tired last night of piecing all the mini 9 patch blocks so think today I will switch gears and piece some of the alternating blocks that have a little larger pieces.

Kathie

Design Wall Monday

I finally have something of interest on my design wall. This is the start of my Monet's wedding ring quilt. Just a few blocks made and pinned on here but I am starting to get the idea of what it is going to look like.

Easy piecing but LOTS of little tiny pieces in these blocks. I am current sewing up a bunch of the tiny 9 patch blocks using 1 1/2 strips. I usually don't do that tiny.

My daughter is back to school today after a two week break. It was time..........

Kathie L.

Sunday Stash Report

Ok, I thought I would jump in with all the people making sunday stash reports this year to try and make myself more aware of what I buy and use and try and make a big dent in my stash. I am not sure when people are going to report fabric as "used", if it is when they cut it, when the quilt top is finished or what?

I have decided for myself I am going to report it as used once the fabric is sewn into something (blocks, borders or whatever). I have cut up a lot of fabric this week but the actual "used" is much less.

1/3/10
Fabric Purchased This Week 1.5 yards
Fabric Used this week 2.0 yards

I also quilted my first charity quilt of the year yesterday. I cut out this little quilt a few months ago and my husband sewed it up for me. Someone in the guild had donated some puffy batting so I used that for this. It is way to thick so I just did a meander. I will use up the donated batting but only on small quilts and then I will split the batting in half so it isn't so thick. I hope someone will still enjoy this quilt even though it will probably stand up by itself!!!


Kathie

Last Years Resolutions

Took a look at my posting from New Years Eve a year ago. My resolutions/goals were
1. Sew up at least 3 PIGS (I know I accomplished that)
2. Piece 1/2 backings (I continue to piece MORE than half of my backings)
3. Piecing backing before putting the quilt tops away (totally bombed out on this one, I don't think I did that maybe but once all year)
4. Finish at least 2 UFOs. (I think at last count I completed 11 UFOs last year. Now some of them were just table runners but glad to see them done).
5. Buy less fabric so notice a dent in stash. (I guess that is a yes. I don't know if I purchased a whole lot less but I only purchased when I needed something for a specific project. I just didn't purchase for "someday" and add lots to my stash)
6. Quilt at least 15 charity quilt tops and piece at least 3 (I quilted a total of 23 quilt tops and pieced about 6 so far exceeded this goal).
7. Do at least 1 project using 2 1/2 strips as the bin was overflowing. (I did at least 2 Christmas quilts using the 2 1/2 strips but the bin is STILL overflowing).

For 2010 - less specifics, just more general goals.

1. Continue to get rid of PIGS. Either make them up, return the fabric to stash for use on other projects or give them away.

2. Finish/give away a few more projects from my old old old UFO listing.

3. Continue to quilt as many charity quilts as I can between customer quilts and my own quilts and to not feel guilty if I tell someone NO. Each quilter has their own personal charity of choice and I don't have the time to do quilts for each of those. I will continue to primarily quilt hospice quilts but will do an occasional one for other causes.

4. Seriously work on using up or giving away scraps, strips and orphan blocks that just add to a messy quilt room.

Hope everyone has a happy healthy 2010.

Do you realize it is TEN YEARS AGO that we were all worried about Y2K?

Kathie