May journal

SEWING
Quilts, crafts, and clothes. Covered it all this month.

1. X is for X block in the Squared Away Block of the Month. The X was March's block, and I also did April's block. Green done, yellow done. Still working on pink for May.

2. Four more blocks for the Night Sky quilt. I'm trying to get section 2 done of the quilt, but it's not quite coming together yet. I wanted to do more on this project, but at least I hit the minimum.

3. Two pairs of shorts, one of TA and the other for JK. More coming.

The purple speckles was from the remnant bin at Hobby Lobby. The ice cream cones are from Made EveryDay, the Boardwalk Delight line.

I think I resolved my Shorts conundrum. I have the Kid Shorts pattern from Made Everyday but it only goes to a size 10. SM is way out of that now. I was trying to figure out how to size it up, and I probably still could. But I discovered that Oliver+S has a FREE!!! Sunny Day Shorts pattern online, so I printed it off. They're made differently - Kid Shorts does not have a separate waistband, Sunny Days Shorts does. They're put together differently, even though they look pretty much the same when they're done. And hey, I don't know that SM will even fit into a 12 anymore - I've been buying her 14/16 at the store, and even went to the Juniors section when we were shopping for a dress for her last week. So we'll see. But at least I have one more size up after the Kid Shorts 10.

4. On Sunday night this week, I got a sewing bug, and in just a little while, I made a swim cover for JK. Adam asked how this dress is different from any other dress ... it's not. It's regular fabric. But the top is too loose to be modest so we'll call it a swim cover. JK found the bow in my basket of random items and asked me to add it.

She's ready for the pool! Bring on the summer!

5. I started ... another ... WIP ... a fabric pennant garland for summer camp. I'm going to our church's youth camp with SM as one of the adult chaperones, and this is girly in that campsites are "decorated" somehow. So enter a pennant garland. This is just getting started so no photos yet.

It has the typical triangles but also flowers scattered randomly in between. I made a bunch of flowers as a hand-sewing project (and one was even swiped by JK - she had me stitch it to a hair tie). The gathering stitch would be MUCH faster on the machine, but I wanted a hand project to carry around and knocked out over 20 of them just while sitting in a women's church conference. This particular version of a pennant/flower garland is from the book Sewing Bits and Pieces by Sandi Henderson - I got it from the library for a different project, but this looked cute too.

This has been a great way to clear out blues that quite frankly, I'm not going to ever use in a quilt because the fabric is too rough, doesn't go with anything else, or I just don't like it. Putting those fabrics in a garland that's going to get the crap beat out of it by being outside!


THE HOUSE
We have a baaaaaaaack-splaaaaaaaaash!

This was the last major piece of our kitchen puzzle, and kind of on a whim, we just got it done. I wanted glass tiles in some shade of blue. When I was running errands at Home Depot once, I went through their entire in-store selection and really wasn't happy with it. It's mostly brown-toned, which doesn't not work with our gray/black counter at all. I found a couple of things and took samples home but nope. So we tried Lowe's and hooray! They had a lot of blues! We brought home a bunch, and the all-white that Adam liked and grabbed at the last second was the winner. The blues didn't look right with the counter - that was a hard match. The white/gray was also the cheapest - score!

I went to a Saturday night book club and when I got home, Adam had most of it up. (I need to leave him unsupervised more often.) I just had to come through behind him for the wipe-down of the extra mortar. (Typical. He makes a mess, I clean it up.) It still needs the grout and to be polished off, but the tiles are up! Hooray!

W is for WIP

WIP is "work in progress" and I am working really hard that this quilt does not stall out and become a UFO!

Here's the story so far of the Night Sky quilt, which has now been in process for 16 months. It's going slooooooow.

When I was making The Pink Babies quilt and said that JE would get it, SM told me what she wanted for her own quilt - blues and purples with stars, like the night sky, because she would be sleeping under it. Makes sense. My brainchild was to do star blocks in white with blue backgrounds, rather than colored stars on lighter backgrounds as is common. We named it Night Sky before I even started.

Then I went a little crazy. I did online searches for star blocks because I wanted a variety - this is totally a sampler quilt. I've made maybe a couple of duplicates, but in different sizes. Mostly everything is different, but mostly also half-square triangles. I guess that's the easier part.

This was block 1. I found it in a Google image search (no source), and mapped it out on graph paper. It's huge - 20 inches across. I call it a Woven Starburst.

I made the next 4 large blocks veeeerrrry slowly over time last spring. We were busy at the time with house projects - remodeling the kitchen and a lot of painting. Adam had his Summer of the Mental Health Crisis. But by September 2017, this is what I had:

P.S. This is NOT a "design wall." It's just some random space between the doorway and coat rack on the left, and the water heater on the right. I pinned up my blocks because I didn't want them getting lost or messed up. Plus, they're pretty! I like to look at them!

The three 8-inch stars on the left were Mindy's contribution, that she wanted to add when she saw the big blocks during our family reunion. The little teeny bear claw was randomly pieced together of trimmings from the big blocks. At this point, I diagrammed the whole thing out on graph paper to figure out how to set in the large blocks and where I needed to add filler of smaller blocks.

January 2018, a year after I started cutting fabric: the first of five sections was done! Working on my Christmas log cabin quilt was going pretty fast, because that's the same block over and over. But I purposefully set that aside to focus on Night Sky. This is still going slow because I keep finding more star blocks online! But section one (top left on the graph paper) is finally done!

I set a baseline target this year to sew at least 2 1/2 hours every week. I did pretty well in January and February, but this quilt has to share my time with a lot of other things, as you can see from my monthly journal reports. During those 2 months, I made four 4-inch blocks and three 10-inch blocks. Then in March, as soon as I finished SM's costume for the school play - seriously, 15 minutes later - I gashed my finger with my rotary cutter. There went over a week of no sewing time at all. Dang it! Night Sky was entirely neglected in March.

In April, I got myself sewing again with little projects of zip bags and the pillow, and I had to make JE's baptism dress. Now we're starting May, so I'm regrouping on the quilts. I'm shooting for at least one block per week/four per month on THIS quilt - any other quilt blocks (like the Squared Away block of the month, which I'm now behind on) are extra.

February journal

1. Squared Away block of the month: 4 blocks. I finished two more blocks for light blue-January that had already been started. I did just two purple blocks for February, and Mindy and I will each get one of them. So Mindy and I each have a set of blocks that looks like this, so far:

2. Valentine's hearts in plastic canvas and yarn: my little girls wanted Valentine's decorations, and one of them found a few random sheets of plastic canvas that have been kicking around for forever. No more. It's all been cut into hearts, and yarn or ribbon looped through them to hang in the windows. TA and JK took turns stitching and we made a bunch of them. JK keeps calling it "knitting" and I keep correcting her to "embroidery." (There is no knitting in our house - I tried and it didn't take.) Happy Valentine's Day!

3. Night Sky quilt: only two more 10-inch blocks (the center one was January's block), but I finished what will be the top row of the quilt! Next target is to finish the entire second section.

4. Clothing: SM came home one day with costume instructions for the school play, and I had all of a week and a half to figure it out. And we were traveling for 5 of those 10 days. Thanks for the advance notice, School, that you don't have a costume shop and I had to take care of it. She's a "fairy tale peasant," in the chorus of Into the Woods. So I knocked out her peasant top using some white fabric from my quilting pile (I think it used to be a bedsheet) and these directions from Things of Cloth. It only took me a couple of hours, I was surprised but pleased it went that fast. The skirt is in the works, and I also need to make an apron. I'll do pictures of the whole costume together when it's done.

I'm glad that this got me kicked into gear on making clothing - the target is 12 items for the year, and here's two right together.

5. A Doll Like Me doll quilt drive: I committed to 6, and the first one is done. The traveling and the theater costume took cuts in line for my time.

I meant to do T and U for the Alphabet Challenge before going to V for Valentines ... I know what I'm doing for them but other things have obviously taken priority.

For March, it's time to make dresses and skirts for Easter, because it's April 1 this year. I've made Easter outfits only once before. Last summer, my mom found a close-out sale of a fabric store in Idaho and FaceTimed me (in Connecticut) while walking around the store choosing fabric. Best fabric shopping ever! The catch was, you had to buy what was left on the bolt. (I also got major yardage of flannel to use for quilt backs, and the whole load cost me only 50 bucks. And they were coming here on vacation anyway, so we didn't have to ship it!) I ended up with 8 yards of this lightweight cotton that's perfect for skirts and dresses. I'm going to try to use it ALL. I have the Carousel Dress pattern traced off and trimmed for either TA or JK.

R is for red, white and green WIP

I'm noting this project, and then hitting the Pause button.

On Christmas Day, I had a bug to start working with all my Christmas fabric scraps. I've been wanting to make a Christmas quilt for a long time, and I'd decided recently to make it with log cabin blocks. I've put in quite a lot of work on it for the past two weeks - a lot of trimming my scraps into strips, and I have 12 completed 12.5x12.5 inch blocks.

But I have two quilt starts staring at me - the Night Sky for SM and Extreme Reader for RG. And TA has been pestering me this week to work on her quilt, T's Town with house blocks. (Yes, she is literally named for the town in which Adam and I met.)

My Christmas log cabin quilt is for the couch, but the couch doesn't talk and is a lot more patient than little girls who are growing up WAY too fast. So the Red White and Green blocks are now put away and will come back out another time. After these other three quilts, and probably a lot of clothes, are done.

2017 annual review and 2018 plans

I didn't have a whole lot of planning for this year. I knew we'd be doing a lot of work on the house in the first half of the year, and wow - we did! Most of my sewing was in the 2nd half of the year. I did get the bedroom curtains done for the girls in January (surprise surprise!) and I made JE the split skirt that she wanted ... and now has worn all of two times. *frowny face* I worked on the quilt for SM and bought fabric for RG's quilt but haven't really done anything with it yet.


SEWING
Mending: 21
Spools used up: 6

Alphabet Challenge - I knocked out another 6 letters - N O P Q R S. Shooting to finish it this year! October will be 4 years - we started in October 2014. That's long enough for a sewing challenge, but I have persevered! Good for Mindy for finishing last month, and completing it in about 3 years!

1. For Laura Ingalls Wilder's 150th birthday in February, we had a whole Laura Day with a number of homeschool friends. The girls all dressed up in bonnets and aprons, we made Laura's recipe for gingerbread (heaven!), and we attempted to make rag dolls like Charlotte. The girls decorated the faces, and I sewed all the edges. Unfortunately, I cut them too narrow and the fabric frayed a lot more than I thought it would. Double whammy. This was eventually abandoned, but not without a lot of effort.

2. Felt banners for the girls' Frontier Girls badges. We haven't spent the money on the uniform vests yet (and might not at all), but they needed a place to put the badges they've earned.

3. Oliver + S family reunion dress, lunch box culottes, ice cream dress. For JK, JE, and TA. (SM and RG got dresses last year. Also Oliver +S!)

4. Open mouth zip pouches: 7 total for the year. The first one was a bomb, but I tried it again to much greater success.


5. Bento origami bag - only one this year, but it makes 7 total. All 5 girls have them for their dance bags, and JK was FINALLY old enough to start dance. And 2 more were made as gifts a couple of years ago.

6. Purple cape for JE to be Skyra the Guardian of the Portal (!!!) from Lego Elves at Halloween. The other side of the cape was a dark purple, and I did a fancy embroidery stitch all the way around the edge. Dad made her staff out of a really long dowel he found in the garage.

7. No-sew fleece scarves - we made 5, and they were donated with a larger amount made at a church activity to an organization helping people from Puerto Rico relocate to our area after the hurricane destruction during the summer.

8. Two placemats made from the leftover table runner strips, and Christmas strips on the other side. Double duty, as a Christmas gift for my parents.

9. Flannel handwarmers for the principal and vice principal for Christmas gifts. I apparently need to make more because Adam and the girls want them too.


QUILTS
1. Night Sky quilt: Work in Progress. I started cutting pieces for this in January of last year, and have been sloooooowly moving forward with it. I have these on the wall, and a piece of graph paper with the quilt mapped out into 5 sections to do, then put all together. The first of the 5 has been mostly sewn together but is not quite done. 2018 plan: Finish it. Sooner rather than later. I already have the backing purchased - a light blue flannel.

2. DC Map embroidered quilt: Work in Progress. I don't have a photo of the current status, but I've put in north of 50 hours on it so far. I haven't really kept track. I've learned the running stitch, back stitch, split back stitch, and French knot. 2018 plan: Keep going! The work on this goes in spurts because I don't want to move it around so much. The map template is starting to shred in places I haven't done yet. Maybe I'll get it done, but I won't be surprised if I don't.

3. Jeans upcycling: I'm chopping up old jeans and making picnic blankets. I did one last year, and spent some time this summer chopping up more jeans and sewing some strips. Not much done on this extended project. 2018 plan: Make at least 2 for the end of year gifts for the 4th and 2nd grade teachers, so they can sit outside and relax during their summer break! They've earned it! I've got enough pants piled up that I can probably make 10. I want to have 4 for myself, so I have an 8-foot square.

4. Reinforcement stitching: Adam has a couple of quilts that his mom made for him. She has little tiny ties in the corners of fairly large squares, so I shoved them through my machine and did stitch-in-the-ditch around the main blocks to strengthen it all.

5. Joint project with Mindy: navy and gray giant woven star quilt: DONE 12/10/17. Given to Tawnia for Christmas.

6. Joint project with Mindy: jelly dot baby quilt: DONE. I did a lot of the piecework in making the squares, so I'm going to claim it for my own work list. She finished it and gave it away as a gift.

7. Autumn table runner: DONE 11/22/17.

8. Aussie duvet quilt: DONE 10/15/17

9. A red quilt: Work in Progress. This is the third joint project with Mindy, which she is doing most of. I did the border and mailed it to her, and she's doing the rest of the quilt. She has suggested doing a Color challenge when we finish the Alphabet Challenge - well, she's done with the alphabet so she can start on her rainbow. Here's the entry for Red.

10. Red White and Green quilt: Work in Progress. I have a bunch of random Christmas fabric scraps, from making Christmas outfits for the girls in the past (including the very first clothing I ever sewed), the Christmas tree skirt I made (my first sewing project EVER), and a few other projects. I'd been wanting to make it all into a Christmas quilt to put on the couch to snuggle with in the winter, and I decided recently that log cabin blocks were the way to go. I made these first 5 just on Christmas Day. I have a total of 10 done now at 12.5x12.5 unfinished. 2018 plan: The target is 25 blocks to make it 60X60. I might need to redo the layout - I don't know that this diamond layout will work with 5 squares across. I'll figure that out when I have my 25 blocks.

THE HOUSE
1. The kitchen is Adam's project, and it's not done yet. But wow - he did a TON of work and it's a completely different room than when we started. Adam custom built floor-to-ceiling cabinets all the way around, including all the drawers, facings, doors, and hardware. He also raised the ceiling around the edge of the room, wired for new lights above the sink and for moving the stove, ran a water line for the fridge ice maker, a lot of drywall and plastering, and laid new tile when we moved the appliances. We had granite counters professionally installed. I repainted the entire kitchen, including a cranberry red accent wall.

So happy to have the counters installed! We had plywood with contact paper stapled to it for 4 months. This was in July. The bottom cabinets all have drawers and doors now, and the corner cabinet has a big lazy Susan turn-around. Still no doors for the top.

2018 plan: Adam needs to finish the fronts and doors of the cabinets, finish touching up the ceiling where it was raised, add the molding for the top and bottom edges, and we need to choose and install the backsplash. My job is the detail work like the window and making all new hot pads so we can throw out the junky ones we have now that are trashed anyway.

2. Curtains for both bedrooms for the girls. I made 10 panels in all with ruffles across the bottom.

(This is one bedroom. For the other bedroom, they have a yellow ruffle and purple bottom. Third pair for a small window is yellow with a pink bottom.

3. I made a drop cloth cover for the white (and filthy - I've been scrubbing at it, and it's clean-ER but still not CLEAN) armchair in the reading room.

4. I painted the reading room, kitchen, and front hall during the summer.

our front hall from the living room on Christmas morning. 

the color before, last Valentine's Day

2018 plan: finish all the touchups from my previous paint jobs - there are gray marks on my white ceiling still. I also need to go over all the baseboards where I've already painted the wall, and at least scrub them if I'm not going to repaint them. The front door is slated to become navy blue. I have paint ideas for both bathrooms, and the girls keep bouncing around on if they want their bedrooms painted or not. I do have a gallon of really pale lavender that could get started on one of them.

WOW. I had no idea I'd done so much! My plans for 2018 don't mean starting a bunch of new projects, but continuing the ones that are already in process. Hopefully finishing them! So then I can start on new projects. I have a list of over 20 quilt ideas that I'd like to do, so I'd better get moving with the ones I've already started!

Finish-A-Long 2017 Q4 (Mindy)

I stumbled across a blog: Sew Me. Or rather, a particular post on that blog: the 2017 Finish-A-Long.  It's a multi-blog contest where you post a list of all the projects you have started and hope to get finished by the end of the quarter.  And then you post your finished projects at the end and possibly win some prizes.  Motivation to finish things?  I'm in.  

1. Fluttershy costume for Snowflake

The basic jacket is done, but needs hems and details.

Pants are cut out but not sewn.

2. My Little Pony-inspired fabric balls.

All 12 are cut out, 4 sewn, 3 stuffed but not closed.

A Christmas gift for Snowflake.

3. Flannel Rag Quilt

I actually had it sewn together in May? June?

It has been a while.  Time to make it fray.

4. Fleece Jacket for Cupcake

I made one for Snowflake (as a trial Fluttershy)

and cut one out in a much larger size at the same time.

So the pieces are cut, but nothing is put together.

I should probably finish this one too - it needs closures.

5. Canada Quilt

This is where most of my time will go.

I've designed it and got all the fabric.

I can't wait to start making my squares!