September APQ UFO Challenge and my finish for this week

Finsihed or Not Friday   9-21-18

September’s selection was # 2. I had 2 panels from Moda, called A Child is Born. I wanted to make them into wall hangings for each of my children and their spouses.  Life happens and now both my kids are divorced and still single. Neither will use a  wall hanging at this point. Limited space to

either hang or store Christmas decorations is the issue. 

So I thought about a donation. Long story short, I have one complete to wall hanging size top. I have backing ordered, and I need to get on the list for a long armer, the second one will have to go back in my UFO tub. I have an idea to do a different technique, but need to “ think it through” a bit more.

I will link up with Myra's Finished or Not Friday !    Cause it is not technically a finish!!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy!

Scrappy Blue Saturday 9-8-18

I got started on blue!  I wonder if I should add some dark neutral, like black. For some reason my blue scraps are sparse. I could cut into some chunks (less that a fat quarter), I guess!!  This is under my needle at present!

I had hoped to make a dent in my scraps this year. It did not go as planned. I cut and stitched, cut and stitched, and still there are more scraps than I know what to do with!


Here is a tad more blue!  I spent an hour at the laundromat yesterday!  That can make you "blue"! 

The laundromat closest to my home is called Surf and Suds!  Ther
e is a beach theme in there, which is slightly strange in NE Wyoming!  But it is very clean, there is helpful staff ( I hadn't been to a laundrmat in a quite a while!) and it was successful - my large quilt was washed and dried and no running of the black fabric!  It is now ready to be gifted at the end of the month. It's called Surf and Suds because they have free WiFi!  Not a regular occurrence here in the great vastness of NE Wyoming. 

OK, Angela is off on a 10 mile!!!! run and I am running upstairs for another cup of coffee!  Have a great Saturday, all!!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

linking up to SoScrappy's ScrapHappy Saturday!

September One Monthly Goal and some other challenge goals.

This month is going to be busy!  A new One Monthly Goal, A New Color for RSC18, A new block for Sept-Oct for CiL, a new project for All People Quilts UFO 2018 Challenge, a trip to Phoenix for our son's 50th birthday, our great grandson's 5th birthday, Mr Busy's 74th birthday, Oh My!!!!!!!!


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1.  One Monthly Goal for September:   My Thursday Stitchers group has decided to do a traced design exchange for Christmas. So far there are 8 members participating, but I am sure a few more will jump on the bandwagon before too long. So that means I have at least 7 copies to make of this design I downloaded from Jenny of ELEFANTZ's  Craftsy page.

I'll need to make 8 if I want one for myself to stitch in 2019. We will exchange the "traced on fabric" designs in early December. We have a few members that travel for the weeks around the holiday. Our only criteria, is to make sure the design is free, or that you have permission from the designer to share. We do not sell or profit from these stitcheries.
So my September OMG is to get 6 of these traced. Then I will have another month or so to catch up, before December.
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2. The new color for RSC18 is Dark Blue or Dark Neutral ( meaning Black or Brown, I think). Not started yet, but I am making Slab/Crumb blocks.  So it will be ongoing for the month.

3. The new CiL block is an Adult I spy block!  Check out Kat's post here!

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4. APQ UFO Challenge 2018 for September:  Project #2 was picked. My challenge list #2 is to make 2 wall hangings or small quilts from 2 Christmas panels I purchased several years ago with the intent to gift to my son and DIL and my daughter and SIL.  They, unfortunately ( or fortunately, however you want to look at it) are now both divorced. So I will make them anyway, gift them to the son and daughter! I planned to use the Sidelights pattern shown here, but I have not yet purchased or looked for coordinating fabric.

I am linking this post up with Patty at the OMG-September Link Up. 

So..........................
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

August OMG Finish

My OMG goal for August was to decide, execute and get to the "ready to be quilted" stage for my October Retreat Challenge for Loose Threads.

I decided on the pig!  I enlarged the graphic I found to 157%.  I chose pieces of red and pink fabric from my stash. I wanted to embroider the names of the "parts" by hand, so I knew I did not want fusible on the back.  But in the end I applied the fusible in the window technique, so there was fusible around the edges, about 1/4 to 3/8".  That gave me a more flexible center of the pieces to do the hand embroidery. I used both chain stitch and a back stitch. Some with double floss and some with single, depending on the space and the size of the wording! I knew I needed some interfacing for the back as I blanket stitched around the outside edge. I used my old tried and true method of using "used only once" dryer sheets. I basted them to the wrong side of the base piece. Fused the pieces in on, following the diagram, roughly. Then outlined the pig with the single blanket stitch on my machine. Then I chose other stitches from my machine randomly. Used some white thread, some red, some pink. I really like the way it turned out. You can cut away the "dryer sheets" or leave them. Either way has worked for me in the past!

I cut a piece of muslin to use as backing for the quilted pig. I think I will use a grid method. I think red thread or maybe pink. I am not proficient with FMQ, so a guided look will be better. It is ready to be spray basted and then quilted. So my  GOAL has been met.  My plan is to make a pillow cover, so the backing and binding will be the FFA gray print and I decided to use a contrast flap for the zipper cover. I'll post about the finish after we have the challenge reveal in mid October.

I will link this to Patty's One Monthly Goal August  Finish Link Up!


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Harvest Table Runner - Fall is Back!

Finished Or Not Friday is a small one this week. A kitted tablerunner that was also my challenge for August for APQ ( All People Quilt) UFO Challenge.

It's almost a perfect fit for the coffee table in our family room. But I have 2 great grands who don't think anything should be on a table!  So it will not live there permanently. I think I will gift it to my sister-in-law! 

The pumpkins are pieced and the little houses are fussy cut from a piece of fabric. I did my usual wavy line quilting, but wonder if there should be more. I have a spool of multi-colored tan/orange/brown thread that I used and I like the way it blends and then doesn't.  A friend suggested big stitch quilting on the panel ends. See the whole photo above. The back has the panels on the end too, so outline stitching that would look fine on the front would not be good at all on the back.  I may give a bit of big stitch quilting a go. I will have to go shopping to locate some appropriate color and weight of thread. "darn"!!

Linking up to Busy Hands Quilts! 


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Orange is the New "Color"

So the second Saturday of the month I finally have some orange to show. I am plugging away at orange. I had to really dig and to relax my parameters for "what is orange"!  You will see some

definite red/yellow, some apricot, some orangey yellow!  But I think it all works in the end!

I am working toward 7 and 1/2  slab/crumb blocks that are 7" square. It is a work in progress. And my scrap bin does not show that there has been progress!  Why is that?



Stay Busy and Stay Happy

I'll be linking to ScrapHappy Saturday at Angela's blog.

Finished Or Not Friday, and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

I finished making 8 red, white and blue stars for CiL's July - August block drive. If you want to know more about that, check out Kat's blog here. 

At the beginning of the year, I committed to make at least 6 blocks for every drive in 2018. No pressure, just a commitment to myself! January-February was string blocks, no color specified, just strings.  It was really fun, I stopped at 12!  See my blocks in this post.

March and April the block drive was for Hunter's Star blocks in blue, one solid, one print.I decided 6 was an odd number for Hunters Star, so I made 8.  My finished blocks are posted here. 

For May-June, Kat took a little break and requested that we support the block drive at Purple Poppy Quilts. You can read my post here.

And that brings us to July-August, "Oh My Stars" . These are the 8 blocks completed. I used a pattern from Quilt in a Day, called Scrappy Stars by Sue Bouchard. but deviated from the scrappy 16 patch centers on a couple. A  6.5" square of some special Lady Liberty fabric brought to me from NYC by a friend, a large 4 patch with blue star points instead of red, a scrappy set of 4 4-patches and one that was just blue and white alternating squares.  I will get these finished blocks off in the mail to Kat, early next week. I actually put them in the mail, yesterday!  Hooray!

 It looks like a smudge on this one, but it's a reflection of the overhead lights. This is a glass top table. And it looks here, like the background in yellow......it is not!  More reflection I guess!

 Just 4 patches instead of 16.

 This one is different. 4 4 patches, technically not a  scrappy16 patch.

 For this one, I wanted to use all squares of the same deep blue, but my scrap did not go far enough. So I substituted 2 blue dotted squares in the center. 


I also finished putting the binding on the birthday quilt for our son. Now it needs a label and it will be ready to be delivered in person at the end of September. Our son turns 50 on September 30th. All my other kids (daughter, granddaughters, great grands, and even his ex-wife) already have quilts. So this one is special, it's a FINALLY!  It's a secret though. None of my family knows I have a blog, so I should be safe.

Pattern:  Intertwined by Cheryl Brickey from the book, Modern Plus Sign Quilts.

Fabric: B &W: Plus Signs = Tag by Cheryl Arkison from Connecting Threads

Green : Latifah Saarif's Graphics collection = Brick Wall

Border: White Out by Robert Kauffman

Backing: Cheers by Robert Kauffman

Binding: from my stash: Vintage Wheels, I have no idea who the designer is. 

Quilting:  Retro Graphics 2 done by my friend Marva Mooney on her long arm. 

This is a slightly better view of the quilting and the binding!

We took pictures at a local park. The fabric is right side up on the back, those beer bottles and glasses are not laying sideways!  Silly Mr Busy decided he should do a "Wilson" impression from Tool Time. Do any of you remember that TV show? He's 6'3" and had to stand on tiptoes to look over the sign we were using as a prop!

So there you have it!  Finally some finishes!

 I'll be linking to Busy Hands Quilts, Finished or Not Fridays
and Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

ps: if any of the text about shows up as RED, I apologize. I tried to correct it 4 times and each time I come back to read and edit again, the sentences are red!  Don't know????