Mini Wayward Transparency

I do believe this little mini quilt qualifies as a squirrel, if ever one did.  About a month ago, I seriously decided to drop everything and make this quilt...DrEAMi?  While standing in line for a steak hoagie (glamourous right?), I ran into a girl I graduated high school with.  She and her daughter had been to the quilt show and she was telling me that her daughter fell in love with the blue quilt I had entered.  They were walking around picking which quilts they were going to vote for in the people's choice category and her daughter stopped when she spied my version of Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl's Wayward Transparency Quilt and said that that was her quilt.  When she read the tag she realized it was my quilt.  I thanked her for sharing that story with me it truly made me smile.

UFO Busting #23

It's a crazy weekend this week as my daughter just returned from camp yesterday.  Today we are washing clothes and getting ready to send her off to another week of camp tomorrow.  My head is spinning and UFO's are buzzing around almost ready to be busted.

I am so close to a few finishes it's not funny.  One is a current me project, a helping David project and another has turned into a UFO.

The mini Wayward Transparency Quilt is quilted!  Who would have thought I could jam so much thread in such a tiny little space?  I'll give it it's own post once it is bound and delivered.  I can't wait to surprise the recipient with it.

UFO Busting #22

Welcome back for week 22 of UFO Busting.  It just occurred to me, if you are a super human quilter, you could potentially have finished 22 UFO's this year if you finished one a week...yeah, that's not me either.  But if you have, I want to be your new best friend and learn your secrets.

This week I'm not working on anything super old, more the work in progress category.  I've pieced the mini Wayward Transparency Quilt and quilting has began.  When I contacted the mom of the girl this will be for, she told me her favorite colors are teal, turquoise and pink.  I went with teal fabrics for the quilt and decided to sneak the other colors in when I quilted it.

I happen to have four spools of Aurifil thread that would work perfectly.  Luckily for me, I didn't toss my original quilting plan when I quilted the larger version.

I'm finding I have to alter my original plan slightly as I go, but I'm staying as true as I can to the first one.

Other news on the quilting front, I'm trading quilting services with my husband.  We made a deal, he would piece the wedding blocks into a quilt top for me, if I would quilt a commissioned quilt for him.

My top is nice and finished and...

I have super high hopes of getting this all quilted up for him this weekend.  I didn't grab a picture but I have a 1/4 of it finished already.  It will have to be a surprise which thread made the cut.

If you are participating in the Fireburst Mystery Quilt, the first set of piecing instructions were released yesterday.  If you'd like to join us, you can find everything you want to know about it here on my landing page.

So what were you guys up to last week?  Well, Wendy at Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life was celebrating a finish and I'm in love!

Those fabrics!  I LOVE the Dixie by Cluck Cluck Sew and used it on my Star Blossoms Quilt.  I was drooling all over my key board as I read her post and then she scared me by saying, "let's cut it, shall we??"  What???  I thought, Wendy, put the scissors down!  Man, I'm glad she didn't because she created the BEST mat for her outdoor umbrella table.  Now I want one!  Well, I'll have to get a table first, but maybe if I make one, the table will come.  Make sure you pop over there and read more about it and how she turned a simple mini quilt into the perfect table cover.

So what have you been up to this week?  Link up below and tell us all about it.



An InLinkz Link-up

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UFO Busting #21

I have two finishes in a row to celebrate, I can't even believe it!  This week I was all giddy about my Garnet Star Crystal finish, which you can read more about here.

It didn't spend much time in UFO or WIP land, but I'm happy to report it waited patiently for me to get to it.  I even entered her into the local quilt show and I promise to share about that soon.

Last weekend was crazy with 0% anything quilty going on other than a quilt show.  I think I've stated several times here on the blog we live in a small zoo of animals...mostly aging animals at that.  Part of that zoo is pit bull littermate brothers, never separated in their entire almost 11 years of life, Becker and Newton.

I like to think of them as yin and yang. 

My buddy Newton has had some digestion issues going on but we got them all ironed out, life is good.  Then last week, I noticed a mass on his rib cage that I swear wasn't there before.  Like it's huge, how could I have missed it??  A trip to the vet confirmed he has a rather large mass on his ribcage that really isn't in a great location to be removed.  Because of how quickly it came on, we are going to assume it is cancer and not put him through a bunch of tests.  On top of that he came down with a bad infection that we are trying to treat.  I'm not sure how much longer my little silver fox has, but I will not let him suffer.  I love him way too much to be selfish.  So most of my attention is focused on him making sure he knows he's the best boy ever and that his brother will be okay in the long run. 

Now let's talk quilting again, I have managed this week to side track myself with two new projects.  A wedding quilt that will hopefully be gifted in July. 

A spool of Aurifil Light Lemon is making its way to my house as I type.  Hopefully, these blocks made with Cory Yoder's Sundrops (Jollybar) and Moda solid layer cake will become a quilt top this weekend.

This also started happening this week.  I'm making a mini version of  Yvonne's (Quilting Jetgirl) Wayward Transparency Quilt for a special little girl.  Who knows, maybe I can inspire her to be a quilter one day too?   More coming about this quilt later as well.

So what were you guys up to last week?  I'm focusing in on Louise at Quilt Odyssey.  Louise got it going on!  Have I mentioned she lives on a boat and enjoys beautiful views everyday?  It's not just those things she's got going on, but she is busting UFO's like a champ.

She's been busying getting some UFO's ready to go so she can celebrate some finishes.  I love how she marks her quilt tops with painters tape so she knows the exact size of the quilt.  She even labels the possible charity it will go to.  This my friends, is some serious UFO organization that we can all learn from.  If you missed her post from last week, make sure you check it out.

So now it's your turn, what have you been up to this week?  Let us know, are you blasting through some old project just begging for a finish?  Or did you get distracted by something new and shinny, like me?  What ever the case link up below and tell us all about it.

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**As of Friday, blogger doesn't seem to be emailing of comment notifications and I am currently trying to figure out how to reply to comments by email without their help.  If you do not hear from me, know that I appreciate your comments and I'm tring to figure out how to fix this.  Hopefully, Blogger will fix it as well.**

Wayward Transparency--A Finish

Wayward is finished!  I can cross something off that very long list of things to do in 2018.  I've been following along with Yvonne's at Quilting Jetgirl's Wayward Transparency QAL.  Making the four blocks was super easy.  Deciding on a layout, definitely the hardest part.  There were so many super cool layouts depending on how you turned the four blocks.  Ultimately, I landed on this one.

I really loved the square shape that was formed in the middle of the quilt.  I thought this layout would provide me with some great shapes to add cool quilting too.  I'm a big fan of what I like to call ghost quilting.  Essentially creating shapes or adding visual elements to a quilt using thread, that are not part of the piecing.  Or, "hey that triangle wasn't there when it was just a pieced quilt!"  That might not be the best description, but I think you get what I mean.

Two of my quilting goals for this quilt was to add some curves just for fun and subtly add balance to the design without taking away from its asymmetrical design.  Kinda sounds like a paradox; adding balance but not. 

The pieced design has some wonderful square elements that you can see with the lines I added to the diagram above.  I wanted to continue or extend the diamond shape in the center and accentuate the squares shapes already in the quilt.

Here is my original starting plan.  There were some things I knew I wanted to add, but I wasn't sure on specifics, like the lines in the top right and bottom left corners.  I knew I wanted to add something to add balance, the quilt just had not told me what yet.

Threads where the next big decision.  I needed to choose shades that would complement my quilting designs and fabrics.

For my dark and medium blues I chose Aurifil #2775 Steel Blue and #2784 Dark Navy.  Both the Dark Navy and Steel blue melted beautifully into the dark and medium prints, but when I wanted to provide a bit of contrast, the Dark Navy worked perfectly on the medium blue.

For the quilting on the light blue fabric I chose two different threads.  Aurifil #2215 Robins Egg and (are you sitting down) Superior Thread Omni in Silver.  The Robins Egg was almost a perfect match for the light blue fabric and the Silver added a nice subtle contrast.  My hopes where that the motifs stitched with the silver thread would stand out just ever so slightly more than the ones stitched with the light blue.  Why did I used the Superior when everyone knows I'm a Aurifil girl?  My boyfriend is still Aurifil, but he told me it was okay to go to dinner with my best guy friend...I mean I invited him too!  No, I had purchased a cone of Superior thread a while back and since the color was perfect for the project I decided to give it a go.  Also, please don't tell Dave about my thread "boyfriends."

I started my quilting journey in the center of the quilt, quilting the orange peels in the small border I created.  I could easily use my seam lines as quilting points.  I filled in the triangle area created by the peels with dense quilting to allow the peels to pop more.

A second orange peel "border" was created.  Both of these where stitched using the silver thread.

This is a close up of the on point squares I quilted into this section.  Dense quilting was again my friend, allowing those squares to pop off the quilt.

For the large corner triangles, I went with simple dot-to-dot quilting.

I mimicked the quilting in the corner triangles in the opposite corners, creating ghost shapes.

When it came to the background, I was a bit stuck on what to do.  I originally thought about pebbling.  It's a wonderful texture and because the way the background is broken up, wouldn't take long to quilt.  But what is just as yummy as pebbles?

Quarter inch straight lines. 

So that basically covers my quilting train of thought as this quilt came together.  Now I will leave you with some quilt shots.  All of our snow melted for a day or two!

Some quilts want to be made just because they want to be quilted.  This quilt was that for me.  Yvonne's design was a blast to make and I had even more fun quilting it.  I love a quilt that gives me wonderful shapes to play with.  I can't wait to see what everyone else has come up with, so I'm hopping over to Quilting Jetgirl to link up and see all the beautiful quilts.

Don't forget tomorrow is another addition of the UFO Busting linky party here in Wonderland.  I hope I see you there.

Today I'm linking up with Main Crush Monday, TGIFF, Finished or Not Friday, Wayward Transparency, and Can I Get A Whoop! Whoop!

UFO Busting #1

Well it all has to start somewhere and start we shall!  Welcome to the first addition of the UFO Busting party.  A place where we can link up to talk about our UFO problems, denials, progress, successes and distractions.  If we all work together, I think we can work through our stacks big and small and see some finished quilts.

I've done a bit more work on my UFO spread sheet and categorized them by big, medium and small.  To my surprise, each size makes up about 1/3 of the list.  So I equally slack on everything, big or small, go me!

So, what are my plans?  I'd love to finish Quilting Jetgirl's Wayward Transparency before the end of the month.  Yvonne will open the finished quilt (top or quilted) on January 12th and keep it open until the 31st.  I want to be part of the party! 

My quilting plan has been a bit labor intensive and I'm half way there.  I've been trying to juggle in some curves to this very linear quilt.  It hasn't been on my UFO list for very long (and I intend to keep it that way), but I have skipped over it several times for other distractions projects.

I have two other quilts I would like to tackle this month, or at least start.

I call this one, "David's Not Turning Twenty" or "Ron's Quilt."  It started out life cut out to be a Turning Twenty.  After arranging the pieces on the floor and not liking what he picked out.  Mr. Stemple started shuffling pieces around like a mad man and happily announced he had found what he wanted.  Now he just needed his mid arm quilter to quilt it.  That was, late summer?  Would I have it finished by November, when his co-worker retired?  No problem.  He should have known better, right?  He lives with me.  

Here we are early January and it is still basted and folded in the back room.  He would like me to do wood grain in the borders around the top and bottom four patch squares and swirls in the four patches.  I'm stuck on what to do in the middle section.  Any suggestions?  Let's not let this one fester any more than it has to.

Next up is the Magnolia Mystery by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs.  Tish, why is this on your UFO list?  The final piecing instructions just came out.  Well, I pattern tested it earlier in 2017 for Cheryl, so mine has been setting around waiting for inspiration to strike.  Nothing.

Now that my quilting juices are flowing again, I think I have an idea of where this one is headed.  I can hear it calling my name, I just have to make it understand, not quite yet...not quite yet.

I have a few other projects bouncing around in my head, but I need to stay focused on these three.  Will I have a finish by next week?  Or will I crash and burn and hide under that stack of quilt tops in the back room.  Stay tuned to find out.

Now it's your turn?  What have you been up too?  Have you finally stared down your list of projects that need tackled?  Are you stuck and don't know how to finish something?  Do you have a UFO finish to celebrate.  Or are you crying because you got distracted again?  Link up, share with us and feel free to grab my button below.  We are all in this big boat together.

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An InLinkz Link-up

My Fisnishes are Flimsy

My finishes may be mostly flimsies, but that doesn't mean they are weak.  I can finally share this finished quilt top with you!  Cheryl has released the last piecing and setting instructions for the Magnolia Mystery Quilt.  It wasn't until I trekked (okay walked outside) into the snow (light dusting) to take this picture, that inspiration has struck with a quilting plan!  I do believe I will draw up my quilting plan, so that it doesn't escape my memory.  I have a whole folder full of good quilting intentions.

After playing with all the different layouts, I'm happy to report this is the one I have landed on.  I'm still debating borders.  I think how I decided to quilt it will help determine if I add borders.  I'm loving the look of all the straight line quilting I've seen so far with this quilt online, but I'm wondering what adding some curves to the mix would do.

Confession...I've been spending a fair amount of time with another man...Mister Domestic.  Yes, David does know, he even joined in.  Ha!  It started out with fabric pine cones.  Once Matthew posted them on Instagram, I knew I had to make them.

So far I've made a total of eight and they have been gifted to members of my guild.  I have to say they were a huge hit.  David fell in love with Matthew's woven hexie star ornaments and suggested we make some for our tree.

I followed Matthew's tutorial and cut my strips for weaving at 5".  It worked, but it was kind of a struggle to make everything fit...curse words helped.  David decided to cut his slightly bigger at 5.5" and had a much easier time with the weaving process.  If I decided to make more, I will definitely go a slightly longer length.

Next up on the finished stand, is some 1930's print signature blocks.  Our guild will be participating in another block exchange after the first of the year, making signature blocks for everyone to sign.  These particular blocks will be for a secret project, but it sure feels good to have them done ahead of schedule.

Now let's talk UFO's for a minute.  Dave and I have been doing some serious cleaning of our back room.  YIKES!  My problem is bigger than I had anticipated.  But admitting a problem is the first step.  So I think starting on Wednesday, December 20th, I will host the first UFO linky party and we will call it our Quilting Confession addition.  Think of it as a safe space to support each other and talk about our quilt project hoarding collecting.  I the first step of tackling WIP's and UFO's will be to know exactly how many you have and what they are.  Trust me, you will probably feel much better about yourself once you see my list.  I'll open the second linky around the end of the month and we can talk about what we are going to work on, maybe why it became an abandoned project and what we need to do to make it a finish...then do our best to finish it, however long we take.  So I hope you will join me next week, to have a little chat about abandoned projects and conquering our quilt finishing fears.

In the mean time, I have some smaller projects I'd like to finish before the new year.

I've gathered my threads to quilt a small Star Cross wall hanging.

And I've gathered threads to finish quilting three Americana Flags I completely forgot about.  You can find the tutorial for them here.  These poor flags have been hanging out since December 2015.  I think they deserve a finish and I'll see if I can deliver....wish me luck.

Today I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social and Midweek Makers