NewFO’s and UFO’s and DWM – Oh My!!!

Wow!  I can’t believe September is gone already, can you? 

That means it's time for a little recap and report on my progress for the month.  And since it also happens to be Monday, let me start with what is on my Design Wall today….

This is the expanded block from The Blue Collection that I showed you yesterday.  I'm happy to say it is now completely finished with the exception of a few stems and leaves that I cannot add until the blocks are joined together.  It was already mostly complete, I only had to add some leaves and stems and the upper lip around the bowl …

These little stems & leaves may not look like much work, but let me tell you, I'd rather do ten of those oranges than just one little stem!  They are such tricky little boogers to turn under and get them just right!!!!  These two stems and leaves took me forever to complete!

….and then, because it was a heavy sports day, giving me lots of time for handwork, I finished up another one!

This one I completed from start to finish.

(And yes, I know it needs to be pressed LOL!)

The top went together like a charm - I love the fussy cut lid :*)

I think my needleturn applique is definitely improving!!!   =^..^=

I also prepared the next block for this quilt so I can be ready to work on it next Sunday :*)

It’s been quite a while since I have had a completed UFO to report for Judy’s UFO Challenge, so I was delighted to finish up Girls Just Want to Have Fun while at Runaway Retreat a few weeks ago!  I'll definitely be asking, Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop! on Friday!!!

I've got to get a better photo of this quilt!

This quilt required a lot of cutting and sewing up of a lot of little pieces, but it is well worth the effort, don’t you think?  And as I've said before, it is probably the only 30’s quilt I will ever make, so it will definitely be special to me :*)  I think my guests will truly feel pampered with it on the bed when they come to visit.  Now if I can just get it quilted. =^..^=

For Barbara’s NewFO Challenge, I had quite a few ideas and projects that were calling for my attention, as I reported HERE.  But I finally narrowed it down to these fun new starts…..

Most of you will remember that I participated in the Dots on Dots Blog Hop and made this cute little teapots table quilt which I named A Spot of Tea.  I received the Honorable Mention award that day – yes, I know, I’m special – hahaha!  :*D

I also jumped on the Hawaii Sunset bandwagon and got this block put together before I had to put it down for a while.  You can read more about my progress on this quilt HERE.

I hope to get back to it again later this week.  I just LOVE this quilt!!!!  There are quite a few bloggers working on this quilt right now, which makes it so much more fun! :*)

So that’s it for my September!  A lovely month, made even more lovely by the fact that my daughter came into my life in September.  I love you Christy!!!

October is always a bittersweet month for me.  I love the onset of fall with its cooler temperatures and the trees all resplendent with color and majesty!!!  But it also means winter is approaching, and that I do not like!  I've never enjoyed cold weather, coats or blustery winds – brrr!!!!!  But I know we have to have winter in order to have balance in our ecosystem, and in order for spring to come around once again, so I will choose to ENJOY this winter!  That has been my word for 2012 – ENJOY!  And for the most part, I think I've done a pretty good job of that.  What about you?  What is your favorite or least-liked season?

But today it is still just the first day of October, and I am now on my way to go and ENJOY spending the day sewing with some of my bestest quilting buddies!  I hope your October is an amazing month for you and yours :*)


Hugs & Blessings,
Teresa
=^..^=


Be sure to go over to these fun blogs to see what others have been having fun sewing up ......

April NewFO and Other Fun Stuff!

Technically I qualify for entry in the April NewFOChallenge – but just barely!!!!  Actually, it pretty much never made it off the ground.  I started out with every intention of completing my May Calendar Quilt...

..... but unfortunately it just never happened.  This is as far as I got…. 

Yeah, I’ve got a lot of work on this one yet! =^..^=  But I did start it, and as Barbara at Cat Patches reminded me, that’s all that’s required for this challenge… whew!!!!

I’m thinking for the month of May, I’m just going to hang up the March calendar quilt (see it HERE) with the bird house and flowers again.  I loved that quilt and it still fits the season.  Hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?

Now, on to other Fun Stuff….

I won this fun book from Vickie over at Spun SugarQuilts.  

Looking through the book, I see that it has the cutest little patterns for English Paper Piecing!  I have been thinking I’d like to try a small project using this technique, so I was just delighted with the win.  Thanks so much Vickie!!!

Work is progressing on Moonglow, but slowly because of all the other things I had going on this month.  I did manage to get all the paper piecing done for the final block....

Yes, you read it right - FINAL BLOCK!!!!  Now it just needs to be assembled and the center appliquéd in.  This one looks more like a circle at this stage, which is weird to me.  Jenny Beyer designed this one a little differently from the others.  Instead of taking the points all the way out to the outer edges of the block, she cut them off in a circle and did a Drunkard’s Path circle around it to finish it as a square.  Here's what the directions look like to make it a little more clear.

I’m not sure if this is wasted effort or not, but I figure at this point I don’t need to try to change things around, so I’m doing it her way.  She’s been quilting a lot longer than I have after all !!!  I’ll let you know how it turns out…..

After that FINAL BLOCK is finished, all that will remain is assembling all the blocks and adding the borders.  Wow!  This one took a lot longer to complete than I had thought it would, but it is going to be SUCH a relief to have it DONE!!!

On a final note, I want to share this sweet little bluebird house that my friend Corinne asked her husband to make for me!  Isn’t it adorable?!?

During one of our sewing group days, I was fussing because I had gone to the Southern Garden Show hoping to find a birdhouse for our yard, and there was not even one to be found anywhere.  The next week, she brought me this little treasure!  We don't have any tenants yet; we may have waited too late to put it up, but hopefully some cute little bluebird will find it soon and happily add to our little outdoor family! =^..^=

I have to tell you, friends are among my greatest treasures!!!  Thanks Corinne & Paul!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

Linking up today with:

Cat Patches – April NewFO Challenge

What a Hoot - BOM’s Away

Freshly Pieced - WIP Wednesdays

March Projects

 – UFO’s / NewFO’s / BOM’s

Yay!  March finally arrived!!!  And it feels like a beautiful spring day here in beautiful Music City USA.  The MarchCalendar quilt is happily hung in its spot on the wall, and I could swear the birds are chirping merrily in the sunshine!  I think they like their new home.  I know I love seeing them there every time I come down the staircase from a hard work session in the sweatshop sewing room!  I forgot to put the little beads on for their eyes though….. oops!!!  It will have to wait until I take it down at the end of the month.  Poor little things…

Judy pulled #8 for the UFOChallenge this month, and for me that means Moonglow!  This is a Block of the Month by Jinny Beyer that my husband gave me for Christmas in 2009.  

I saw this quilt in a magazine and fell immediately in love.  Then I saw that it could be had for a song (not really!) as a BOM, and I begged until the poor dear took pity sake on me and put a note under the tree telling me my gift would arrive each month in 2010.  The gift that keeps on giving!  I love it!  Jinny uses 27 different fabrics in this quilt!  And all of them are just saturated with color – yummy!

At the time I was thinking this quilt would really challenge me on my piecing - it has! And I thought it would help me refine my skills with templates & hand piecing - it has!  This project is definitely not for the beginner or the timid quilter!  It is a real challenge, but I think definitely worth it!

When I put it on the UFO list in January, I had six medallion blocks done and that was all.  I was a smart girl and did one of these blocks in January when I finished that month’s UFO early.  And that’s a good thing, because this UFO still needs a LOT of work!  This is what I have done so far …. seven medallion blocks.  There are 13 of these total.

And these are the medallion blocks I still need to do.  Block #10 has to be done twice, so even though there are only five pictures, I still have six medallion blocks to do. =^..^=  No way around it - six!  And of course, each medallion gets more intricate as you go along.

Then there will be the Irish Chain alternate blocks – 12 of those.  Personally I think this will be the most fun part of the project.

Then for the borders – looks like 7 borders!  SEVEN!!!  Yikes!!!!  And guess what I reeeaaaaally hate doing – BORDERS!!!!  And these are mitered too.  Am I in for some fun this month or what???  I gotta tell you, I just LOVE this quilt, but I am stressing a little about whether I can finish this top up in March.  It'll be a race to the finish for sure!  My one saving grace is that I have a four-day retreat the last week in March, so I can go on a Moonglow marathon if needed! =^..^=

On a brighter (and hopefully easier!) note, I am really looking forward to beginning my April Calendar quilt, which will be my NewFO for March.  I will keep you in a little suspense on this one because it is SO cute and I think you will enjoy the reveal when I have it done.  However, I’ll give you a clue:  “April showers bring May flowers…..”  For the next clue I'll show you a peek at the fabrics I plan to use.... Fun!!!

SoScrappy says the color this month for the RainbowChallenge is PINK.  Yay!  I love the way Pink adds light and sparkle to quilts and I’m very much looking forward to adding 2 bright and happy Pink Pineapples to my growing pile of mini-pineapples.  I’ll keep you posted on those when I get them started.

Jenny has not yet released the Promises and Borders stitchery BOM for March, but I’ll share a picture as soon as she does.

And as if that wasn't enough (!!!!), I've joined a group at my local LQS doing a BOM called Women of the Bible.  We only meet once a month and we do two fairly simple blocks each month, so that should not be too difficult.  I'll show you those as I go along also.

So that's about all I have going on in March - how about you?  Hehehehe!

Hugs & Blessings,

Teresa

=^..^=

Design Wall Monday – Week #9

*** Don't forget to come by for the Leap Day Giveaway on Wednesday! =^..^=

My design wall is bare right now because I finished my Scrappy Bearpaws top!!!

It’s a big quilt and it took some effort to get a good picture of it.  Of course, it still needs to be quilted, but my focus this month was to move it out of the UFO box and onto the To Be Quilted (TBQ)shelf.  So my February UFO is complete for the Patchwork Times UFOChallenge, and before the end of the month too – woohoo!!!

The pattern calls for just a plain neutral outer border, but I wasn't satisfied with that.  I think creamy neutral in big spaces just looks like oatmeal when you stand back from a quilt, even really pretty paisley neutrals like this.  

And I didn't want to just use red cornerstones.  So I decided to carry the bearpaw motif out to the cornerstones.  I really like the effect!

Here it is all lovingly folded up and ready to be moved to the TBQ shelf! 

And here is the empty project box it came out of!   =^..^=

But that’s not all…. I also got a UFO quilted this month! 

Here is Lavender Indulgence.  I made this beauty for my sister several years ago, but it sat on my TBQ shelf until I got to the point where I felt I could do it justice in quilting it.  My friend Joanne told me I could use her longarm to quilt it, so I jumped at the chance.  I knew it would look so much better done with a nice panto than if I tried to FMQ it myself on my home machine.  Not to mention all the time and muscle that would have been involved!  This is also a big quilt, so it took two afternoons, but it is done, and I am very happy with the results.

I sewed on the binding today and will spend several contented evenings hand sewing it down to the quilt.  I'm in no hurry since I our next visit to family in North Carolina will be in April.  If my sister is reading this – This one’s for you Laurie – FINALLY!!!!

So now share what’s on your Design Wall at Patchwork Times.

I’ll also link this post up with BOM’s Away Monday, Can I Geta Whoop Whoop! and Quilting by the River’s Tuesday Linky Party.

Hugs & Blessings,

Teresa

=^..^=

Design Wall Monday – Week #8

The current focus on my Design Wall is the Scrappy Bearpaws quilt that I am trying to finish up for my February UFO Challenge.  You may have seen some of the blocks on the wall from last week’s report.  Well, here they are all put together!

Don't they just sparkle?!?  I worked on this pretty much non-stop during my retreat this past week at St. Mary’s Sewanee and I managed to complete the center of the quilt.  I still need three borders – a scrappy neutral 2” inner border, a scrappy red/neutral 1-1/2” sawtooth middle border, and a neutral 4” outer border.  

But let me tell you what I am so excited about…. At the same time that I was sewing together the quilt center, I was also sewing together the sawtooth HST’s as leaders/enders! 

So instead of having to tackle 224 HST’s today, I only have 50 more to do!  Yippee Skippee!!! Thanks Bonnie at Quiltville for teaching us how to do leaders/enders!!!  I am seeing daylight on this project my friends! =^..^=

Also on my Design Wall is this really wonderful block that I found on Melissa’s Happy Quilting blog.  It is a tutorial by Pat of Color Me Quilty which she shared on Melissa's blog.

Isn’t this a striking block?  I saw it as I was sipping my first cup of tea and getting ready to go on retreat last Thursday.  When I saw that it just took three 2-1/2” strips, I hurriedly ran upstairs and pulled three strips from my 2-1/2” strip bin and stuffed them into my bags to take with me to retreat.  First thing, I quickly – and easily thanks to Pam’s great instructions! – made the block and put it up on my design wall.  Boy-o-Boy, did it ever get immediate attention!!!!  Everyone came over to drool over it and get the link so they could go and make some of their own.  Click HERE for the link if you like it as much as I did!  (and everyone else at my retreat :*})

So now share what’s on your Design Wall at Patchwork Times.

I’m also linking up today with LynCC at What A Hoot for her BOM’s Away Monday link-up. 

Here is my progress on Block #2 of the Promises and Borders stitchery.

This is so relaxing – I am very glad I decided to join along on this one!  I wish I could get a better picture – the colors are all muddy looking.  The lavendar flowers are a variegated blue/purple, and they're just lovely!  I’ll try to get one in the sunshine for my next report.

The Scrappy Bearpaws was also a BOM back when I started it.  I had the first 12 blocks done but decided to make it bigger, put it away, and a couple years later it is now in my UFO crosshairs!!!

Don’t forget to go check out the other BOM’s Away posts HERE!


I'm also linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for a big Whoop Whoop!

Hope everyone has a marvelous Monday and a wonderful Week!!!!

Hugs & Blessings,

Teresa

=^..^=