OMG I finished my OMG

I went down to the wire. I quilted this Thursday, trimmed and added the binding last night and sewed the binding down today.

This is Raising Cane by Dorothy Young of A Pocket Full of Mysteries. I made this quilt either in 2009 or 2010 all from stash. It's 48.5" square.

My OMG from Elm Street Quilts for December was to finish this. Mission accomplished! I had also tagged this as one of my 4Q Finish Along Goals.

I'm linking with Elm Street Quilts and Finish Along 2016.

Happy New Year!

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Scrap Wrangling

I've been thinking a long time about how I wanted to wrangle my scraps. In fact when I was at my mothers many years ago I had sorted her fabric into yardage versus scraps. She passed away several years ago and so I inherited this sorted fabric.

I'm currently in the process of making a quilt almost exclusively from her fabrics. It uses a lot of 2 1/2 inch wide strips so I finally decided to attack her scraps and get as many 2 1/2 inch strips as I could from her scraps and then 2 inch strips and then 1 1/2 inch strips. For the smaller pieces I've been cutting varying sizes of squares.

I will see how I like this process as I work through it with the current quilt and see what is left. I will have to choose another quilt to make from the scraps to really know if this is going to work for me. If I like it I will adopt the practice for my own scraps or at least the parts I like.

After session 1:

After session 2:

It does take quite a bit of time but if I cut scraps down as I go it will be more manageable. I'm currently using photo boxes to store the strips.

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Merry Christmas to All

 This has been a very tearful holiday season for me this year. I have been really missing my mother. I've been doing a lot of baking and cooking and that makes me think of her. But I have to admit that when Christmas day arrived it turned out to be one of the best Christmases I've had in a while. There was no fighting and everyone seemed to get along. Some of the neighborhood kids, who are friends with my kids, came down and ate dinner with us. They even helped clean up the kitchen afterwards.

We exchanged some nice little gifts and everyone seemed happy.   I got to sew for a few hours and made good progress on my Wanderlust quilt.  I'm working on the birds in the air block which is the corner of the main block. I need to make 120 total and have 49 completed. Slow and steady wins the race.

So from my house to your house I wish you a very Merry Christmas.

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Pillowcase Finish

I was gifted these two pillow cases as kits.  They were all cut, rolled and pinned following the hot dog pattern.  I received these in early 2012.  I sewed the first seam, turned them out and let them sit until last week.

I was talking with some friends about gift ideas for our guild Christmas party.  As soon as someone mentioned pillowcases I remembered I had these.  I went home and hunted them down.  I sewed that final seam and wrapped them.  They were gifted and the recipient seemed to like them.

There were some neat door prizes as well.  I had a 50-50 chance of winning.  I didn't but my table mate gifted hers to me.  These were made by some of the guild members and have a cute sewing theme.

Quilty hugs!

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Wanderlust

 This is a Bonnie Hunter mystery that I took at Fabric Fanatics in Plano Texas in January 2013. This is one in a series of quilts that Bonnie offered as a New Year's Eve mystery. Wanderlust was the one offered about six months after my mother passed away so I decided to use her fabrics to make this quilt. While I was in this class I got a call from my dad that he was in the hospital.  To say this quilt is full of emotion is an understatement.

 I pulled this quilt out earlier this year to work on but was frustrated with the lack of variety that my mother seemed to have in her stash. I learned from working on Garden Party to tackle these complex quilts one small step at a time in order not to be overwhelmed. So I decided to focus on the small 4 1/2 inch star block in the center of all of the bigger blocks.   When I did this I managed to find all the variety that I needed in her stash and completed those small stars today.

 Another realization that I had while working on this quilt was that there is a constant of black and orange in the quilt and my mother had neither of those so I already had to add fabric from my own stash to make this quilt. This makes me feel less strict about sticking with her fabric only but I'm going to select from hers first where possible.

Quilty hugs!

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December OMG

I am repeating Octobers/Novembers goal.  Still helping my daughter deal with the fallout of her accident in October.  Her new to her car has only been in her possession 3 days since buying it on 11/10. I'll tell that story another day.

I have been sewing quilt tops just haven't been quilting any.  Maybe I should call myself a flimsier rather than a quilter.  A flimsy is a term I learned referring to an unquilted quilt.  Some call themselves toppers.  Regardless I need to breakthrough whatever log jam that is keeping me from quilting things.

Again I present to you my Raising Cane by Dorothy Young.   Just needs quilting.

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts goal setting link up.

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