Blueberry Progress

I had hoped to share my Supernova blocks today. I've been waiting to show the blocks until I know my partner has gotten hers and since my block from her is in the mail (hopefully it will come today) I'm switching things up this week. I feel so much like a little kid waiting for Christmas. Even now my biggest problem with waiting for Christmas isn't the impatience to see what I got, but the excitement to show everyone what I got them. It's taken so much discipline not to share pics of my blocks until I know my partner has seen it first.

Friday my quilt guild had a workday starting at 1:00. I made arrangements with my boss to leave early and got to spend the afternoon and evening sewing. I just have to add borders and my pink quilt top will be finished. Sadly I forget how easy it is to zone out at these work days and put in eight hours of sewing with only a brief break to walk to the quilt shop and another break at super time. My back was so mad at me this weekend. I did a little sewing, but mostly the couch and I were very good friends. Since I couldn't work on quilting from the couch my knitting got some attention. This weekend I got past the waist decreases and am about half way done with this sweater back. I probably should have worked on the second sock for Father's Day, but I needed to switch it up a bit. I think when I finish this piece of the sweater I'll go back and make the second sock. Thankfully my daddy likes me and is willing to wait for hand knit socks.

Farmer's Wife Friday 20

This week I owe a huge thank you to all of you who read my blog. Yesterday I didn't have any Farmer's Wife blocks finished. I was really tempted to just forget about it, but a little voice in my head kept asking what I was going to post on Friday if I didn't have my blocks done. I was ready for work and had an hour to spare (yes I wake up crazy early) so I decided to see what I could get done. I unpicked the black side of wild goose chase and redid the block. I'm seriously thinking of making up a paper pieced pattern for this block and seeing if I can get my geese to look a little less drunk, but for now it's okay.

#105 Wild Goose Chase

I also worked on Friendship. This block is one of the few blocks in the entire quilt that has to have 5 colors to work. I have a fat quarter of the very dark grey that is reserved for these blocks. I'm still a bit tempted to go get a little more of it and add it into some more blocks, but my other two greys are working well and I still have a lot of them left. This block also shows the importance of using pins and not sewing in a hurry. I had about 30 seconds left before it was time to put things away so I hurried to finish this block. 

#39 Friendship

I'm getting very close to my goal of 56 blocks by July 4th weekend. I'm starting to think that it might be a good idea to dedicate that weekend to reviewing the blocks and fixing the things that are still bugging me. Maybe now that I'm half way through this project I'll have the skills to do a better job on the blocks that have caused problems for me. (And time to do those little fixes like ripping out a seam and sewing it with pins.)

47/111

52:20

All Iowa Shop Hop

In June the quilt shops in Iowa are having a statewide shop hop. At each stop you get a stamp in your passport and a 5" charm square of a Kona solid. Saturday I convinced my sister to go with me to the first five shops on my list. I'm slowly converting her into a quilter. Mwahaha. 

I signed up to teach a class at my local community college this summer, but there weren't enough people enrolled for the class to be taught. They've asked me to try again this fall and I've decided to teach a Jelly Roll Race quilt. I want to show how a basic JRR quilt can be embellished with applique so I got some low volume prints for some flowers and a yellow that will either become a sun if I find some friends for it or will be the center of my daisies. The blue solid in the background is a fabric I found at a shop that specializes in "hard to find" fabric. When I read the description I was expecting to find fabric lines that are a few years old and have gone out of production. Instead I found fabric that looked to be from the 80s and 90s and was so not my taste. I was so excited that she had this solid (left over from last year's shop hop) so I could still support her store. Even though it's not my taste I'm sure somebody loves her fabric a lot.

My husband loves monkeys. I've decided to start collecting monkey fabrics with the intention of making him a quilt someday. I'm not sure when someday will come or what the quilt will look like, but I found some really fun fabrics.

Finally I got the theme fabric for this year's shop hop. I really love the cheater blocks that are printed at the bottom of the map print. I've got a couple of ideas bouncing around in my head for what I'm going to do with those. There are also two accent fabrics for the shop hop this year. I got the grey version since I don't do a lot with tans right now.

Farmer's Wife Friday 19

I'm so close to getting caught up. I've been doing 3-4 blocks each week that I've set a new goal of having 56 blocks done by July 6. If my Fourth of July weekend turns out anything like Memorial Day I should be able to make a lot of blocks. 56 blocks will put me half way to my goal of 111.

I used templates for Farmer's Daughter. I could probably work out the math, but a 5x5 grid in a 6" block is going to result in some wonky measurements. One of the tricks I've learned with the templates is to place the fabric on a sheet of sand paper (I prefer 150 grit.) Without the fabric shifting the templates aren't nearly so much of a headache.

#32 Farmer's Daughter

For Temperance Tree I went back to my usual method of HSTs and rotary cutting squares. There's a little bit of accuracy troubles, but the sashing will help with that.

#95 Temperance Tree

I'm not a big fan of baskets, but this one is so much fun I might have to play with a quilt made from this block.

#42 Fruit Basket

After work one night this week I was putting together these blocks and my husband was surprised by my organizational system. I was struggling to keep all of those tiny pieces straight so I pulled some containers from our cabinet that were missing their lids and assigned one container to each block. (The fact that we have so many containers with missing lids might be part of why my husband was surprised that I had an organizational system.) I've put a piece of masking tape on each container and write the name of the block I'm working on. I've heard of people using paper plates to do this same system, but this is what I had on hand.

I've been storing all of my fabric for this quilt in a large tote. I've been trying to keep similar colors together, but it's been getting more and more mixed up. This weekend I finally got fed up with my fabric bin, and organized that too. I have a lot of yardage I'm using for this block so I cut up an old box to use as dividers. If I was making this in a scrappier version I think I'd make dividers for my lights, mediums, and darks. I've been saving the papers from my templates to use as scratch paper so that's at the back of my fabric. By organizing my bin this way I have enough space to store my blocks neatly in my bin too. I cut a divider for the back so my blocks are in one section. The other section is where I'm storing the tiny bits that are still big enough for blocks, and the extra HST units that I accidentally make. 

This is my first week with this system, but I think it will make me a lot happier.

45/111

51:30

Sneaky Blueberry

The Father's Day socks are progressing very slowly. Not sure why these socks this sock is taking so long. I was informed yesterday that Father's Day this year falls on June 15th. For some reason I had it in my head that I had until the 21st. (Not that a week will make that much difference.) It might be time to start looking for an alternative gift and throw these in the box of Christmas presents. 

If you're wondering what that blue little ribbon of ribbing is, that is blueberry. I have my pattern for these socks on my ipod and was listening to it in the kitchen this weekend. I was feeling lazy and didn't want to go get my ipod so I cast on for blueberry. I had toyed with the idea of knitting blueberry in one piece, but I realized I'd be stuck with the paper pattern and wouldn't be able to read it on my ipod. When I pulled what I thought was enough yarn to cast on the 250 some stitches for the whole piece and only had enough yarn for the 120ish stitches for the back my decision was made.

Giveaway Drawing

I've had so much fun this week reading what everyone's favorite animal. I was worried about throwing off the number generator so I didn't leave responses. Oddly enough the one person I responded to was mamas mercantile since she lives in the UK and I still feel guilty about not being able to ship internationally. Of course the first number the generator came up with was comment number 8 which just so happens to be my comment. Of course one of the first give aways I win is the one I'm hosting.

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:8Powered by RANDOM.ORG
Since winning the pouch myself really isn't in the spirit of my give away I drew a second number. This time the random number generate came up with comment number 2 Designs by KC wrote "My fave animal is my mini doxie Daisy May! A dog :) Kathi." I follow Kathi over at Design Originals by KC where she shares pictures of Daisy May. I can see why she would be Kathi's favorite animal. I'll be contacting you later today Kathy to get your shipping information. 
True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:2Powered by RANDO
*One of these days I'll learn how to take a picture of an internet site. I'm not sure why when I copy and past the image it puts the number generator back at 100. I did pick a number between 1 and 25 (the number of comments I had.) 

Paint Chip Challenge Part 1

A couple weeks ago my quilt guild held our annual quilt show. I've got pictures of the quilts to show that I'm saving for the weeks I don't have anything I can share. This week I've been working on my farmer's wife blocks and my first blocks for the Supernova Friendship Swap. Since I want my partner to get the chance to see her block first I decided to share the first round of quilts from the Paint Chip Challenge. 

It was so much fun seeing how everyone interpreted this challenge. Everyone got to choose their own paint chips and could add white, blacks, and greys if they wanted. They could use a pattern or create their own design and there was no size guidelines so some people made bed sized quilts and others chose to make table runners and wall hangings.

Georgia Johnson 

I really debated grabbing this paint chip, but I wanted to have as many unique colors as I could. I love what Georgia did with all of the browns.

Mary DeYoung 

I'm not sure which magazine Mary got her pattern from, but she was inspired by the desert canons of Colorado.

Marcia McDowel

Marcia decided to do some stash busting with this. She made her quilt top first and then found a paint chip to match. I love that idea! If you look really closely at the picture you can see the hearts Marcia quilted into the space between the boxes. This girl has mad quilting skills and does everything on her home machine. 

Mary Winter

I think Mary said that this was the year of flying geese for her. I'm not certain, but I think she came up with this design herself while playing with the block.You can tell that she really had fun playing with this block and the monotone colors really makes the geese pop.

Jo Alberda

Jo makes some amazing art quilts. She has this really cool technique of essentially making fabric mosaics which she used for her challenge quilt. 

Lori Zwart

I love how Lori used her paint chip to inspire her table runner. I'm not sure if this is an original design to her or if she used a pattern.

Since there are 17 quilts that were entered into the Paint Chip Challenge I think I'm going to stop there. Keep watching for more Paint Chip quilts and general quilts from the show.