New Year

It's been a long time since I posted anything here.

The pic from the Carol Doak Class had prompted me to eat healthier and exercise. So far, I've only lost 15 pounds, but I'm a work in progress.

Quilting: I have not been sewing for months. It seems that my Quilt room has become a Catch All Room. My goal for the next two months is getting my room in order. It seems that, over the last year, I obtained even MORE fabric and it does not fit on the shelves, it's now spread to the chairs and the sewing table. I really have to STOP buying fabric and work with what I have.

I need a plan.

I'm thinking of removing the dresser that is in the room and putting that in the bedroom. Then take the bins out of the closet so that I can easily get to all my gadgets, WIP, UFOs and other things in the bins. Eventually, EVERYTHING will have to come out of the room so that I can reorganize it all again. I know I have many UFOs. I have blocks just waiting to be put together to form a quilt top. Right off the top of my head I can think of Carol Doak's BOMs, lighthouses, teacups, friendship blocks and sampler blocks. Oh and all those Build a Blocks, postage stamp blocks and various paper pieced blocks that I have done. Many kits, just waiting for me. A quilt top that is in the process of being put together (I HOPE I have all the pieces). Not to mention the tops that I have done that need to be layered, quilted and binded.

Then there's two mystery quilts that are just SCREAMING for me to make them. There's the NYE quilt from the Pickle Group and the newest Quiltville Mystery. I just won't be happy unless I do them. And then from my Blockbuddies group, I want to participate in the challenge and make a potato bag.

I have not joined in any type of block swaps on any of my groups. I must get this room straightened out and then I can go from there.

Orange Crush in Progress

What's my next project?

I stopped making a mystery quilt to start working on those darn lighthouses. The mystery is from the Quiltville site. It's called Orange Crush. I'm trying to figure out where I'm at, what step I'm on. I've come to conclusion that I finished step 5 and made 30 spinning stars.

The other pic is pieces that I have left. I printed step 5 and now have to figure out what fabric I was planning on using for this step. Apparently, I do have the smaller block pieces assembed, ie the pic of the pieces. I also need a total of 140 3.5" squares of fabric. 120 are suppose to be orange but I already put orange in the quilt, I will have to see what I have. I also need 20 3.5 inch squares in blue, that's the easy part. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the orange part. I'll have to see if I have another shade of orange or if it will be too much orange with my orange spinning stars. I'll have to see what I have in my stash.

Good thing I have a few days off from work. I can work on this mystery AND be home for the refrigerator repairman. Ugh!

Tea Cups

This is the type of paperpiecing I enjoy. I made these teacups from Carol Doak's design for a Carol Doak Group swap. I made these in one day. I was able to use some of the charms from the baseball group. Lots of fun!

Lighthouse

I posted a pic of one of the lighthouses I made for the Blockbuddy Swap. I had to make 12 blocks, each block had 15 tiny sections, each section had 3-10 pieces. These are only 8 inch blocks. I will NEVER do this type of paper piecing again. It was too much. It became a boring and monotonous process, until the end. Once I had the 15 sections done, they went together easily and quickly. Yippee! I'm sooooo glad they are done!

Finally!

Schlep Bag

I belong to several Yahoo Quilting Groups. I enjoy them all. I'm always inspired by others creativity.

On my group "SewGoodFriends", Jana puts out challenges for the members. The current challenge was to make a schlep bag. The pattern can be found here:
http://sentimentalstitches.net/free-stuff/free-quilt-patterns/schlep-bag/

I also belong to the baseballswap group. We swap 6 1/2" squares of cotton fabric. The amount you swap and receive depends on how well the MLBB team or teams that you're backing are playing. I began participating last year. I chose the Mets, because that's the team that I grew up routing for AND I chose the Tampa Bay Rays because no one else in the group was picking them. Of course, because of the Tampa Bay Rays, I sent out more than I received last year. This year, is another story. Tampa Bay ROCKS!

Anyways, I now have quite a few 6 1/2 inch squares and decided to make a schlep bag while utilizing some of them. Since I used smaller squares of fabric then the pattern called for, I had to modify the pattern and got lost doing it. Regardless, the end result came out nicely. Here's two pics, one of each side.

Quilter's Home

I love Mark Lipinski. His magazine, Quilter's Home is a joy to read. I also enjoy his Yahoo Group, even though, right now, there's a political debate going on there.

Ann from the group shared a quilt mystery over the summer called, "If I had a Nickel". I was able to use a few of the 1000 FQs I have in my stash and make a nice top. Buster loves it and already was breaking it in, even before I could actually quilt it. Nope, his eyes don't usually glow like that but the Red Eye photo edit thingie doesn't work on his eyes. He's really a sweet dog.

I must work on 'the lighthouses' but I really want to work on one of those schlep bags. I wonder how fast I can make one................