FNSI Results - Start of Pythagoras' Lute

I'm a tad bit late showing the results of my FNSI, but I did get to sew that night.

I worked on my final project for Project quilting.  The theme was triangles.  Unfortunately I didn't get the project done on time - it still isn't done - there were a couple of reason why it didn't get finished.

First I had a hard time deciding on a pattern - this time I didn't have trouble with ideas, the trouble was that I had too many ideas and didn't know which one to pick. They were all wonderful in my mind. I finally decided to to start on a twisted triangle log cabin quilt. I even colored my layout and started picking out fabrics, but as I was laying the paper piecing patterns on the wall, I decided I wanted to make the quilt a lap sized quilt and I knew I couldn't complete that that in the amount of time I had left.

So I went to plan two, Pythagoras' Lute.  It has ten paper pieced wedges. I thought to myself, "Surely I can knock that out in two and half days, it's only 10 wedges." I reasoned that the piecing would take the longest, but once that was done I could do some simple quilting and still make the deadline for Project Quilting.

Well, when I got the pattern I found each wedge was made of 16 smaller pieces.  I small snag, but I still had hope. The first part was slow going. I was switching between the ten different fabrics for each tiny piece and cutting small pieces here and there from bigger chunks and trying to line up the pattern to make sure I was doing it right.  Then I realized I printed the pattern wrong (sizing issue) and had to scrap the whole first half of one wedge.  Then I started the same process again with right sized templates. I was beginning to think I had bitten off more than I could chew, but as the clock got closer to midnight I finally had an epiphany.

There are five color combinations, and each color combination is done twice, but the second one is done in reverse.  I realized I could take one color combo and complete all the pieces at once and then move on to the next color combo.  My piecing went much faster after that, but bedtime was looming and I had to get up at 6 am to get to my first day of BIO lab.

--This term is my last college term. I am taking Bio 101, the lab to go with it, and my last business class.  When these classes are over I will finally have my bachelors degree!--

I had planned to sew the rest of the Saturday after my bio lab and knock out the top, and quilt it up early Sunday morning, but my Bio Lab ended early.  You would think that would give me more time to quilt, but that wasn't the case.

My family had planned a trip to visit the in-laws that same weekend, but they had to leave by 1pm in time to get to a planned event. That meant I couldn't go because I wouldn't get home from my lab class till after 2pm or later.  But since my lab ended at 10:30 (that included my lab partner meeting afterward) instead of 12:30, I suddenly found myself free to go with the family.  I rushed home, packed up my stuff and headed out of town.

I didn't get home till midnight Sunday night, so needless to say I didn't get my last project done for project quilting, But that is ok.  We hadn't seen some of our relatives in almost a year and it was definitely worth it to see them.   I am still excited to finish Pythagoras' Lute, but it will have to turn into a UFO for the awhile.  There are other quilty items that are due first.  I don't think I will put this one in a bin though. The ones that go in bins seem to stay a UFO the longest.  I shall keep it on the desk in a corner to remind me to keep it on the current to do list.

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Celtic Solstice Step 2 Finished - FNSI results

I finished step two of The Celtic Solstice mystery.

I sewed last night and a wee bit this afternoon to get all 244 of these sections sewed together and pressed.

 I even cut up the orange and yellow for Step 3.

For the rest of the evening, I am going to spend time working on my entry for Project Quilting.  The challenge this week is upcyling.  I am very much out of my element for this theme, I had no clue what to make, but I finally came up with an idea the other day. Nothing to fancy but good enough to stay in the challenge this week.  I'll post pictures tomorrow before noon.

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First FNSI of 2014

Tonight is the first Friday Night Sew In (FNSI) of 2014.  I have a birthday party to go to for the first part of the evening, but later on tonight I will be finishing up Step Two of the Celtic Solstice Mystery.  I have spent the past week quilting for some guild mates and tonight I want to piece.  So I decided to put these chevron blocks are on the agenda for FNSI.

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November FNSI

When I signed up for "Friday Night Sew In" I commented that I was going to sew the night away.
What I really did was "press" the night away.
Each stack below has 10 blades in it.  That makes a total of 400 blades that needed be be turned and pressed.

Who knew turning and pressing 400 wedges would take most of the night.
All these blades will end up making two quilts, one for me and one to give away.  

I did want to get some actual sewing done for FNSI so I stayed up long enough to sew one full Dresden plate together. It was nice to be working on this Christmas quilt and the one I posted yesterday.  I have spent most of my time quilting for others these past couple weeks so it was fun work on a little something of my own.  

Click here to see what every one else worked on last night for FNSI, (scroll down for the link ups).

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FNSI-September

For the September Friday Night Sew In, I didn't really do much sewing.  Instead I spent the evening doing dome prep work for my dotty Dresden quilt.

 I turned this pile of fabric into a pile of neatly pressed Dresden plate petals.

 I also cut out all the brown circles I will need to finish my quilt.

While I was at it I also decided to press a different set of Dresden plate petals.  I was originally going to use these pastels for my Dots on Dots blog hop block, but I didn't have enough dot fabrics to finish the Dresden plate.  This particular Dresden pate will need 20 petals, and I when I started it, I only had enough dot fabric for 5 petals. I thought about duplicating fabrics, but I really wanted 20 different ones for this project.

 I have since collected a few more pastel dot fabrics, but I am still on the hunt for three three more to finish it up. 

Even though there was no humming of the sewing machine on Friday, I was still very productive.

Now that these petals are prepped and pressed, I can zip them through the machine in no time.

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July FNSI

I got lots of progress done during FNSI this weekend.  I finished up Beverly's second quilt and my Mondo bag.  I was gone all day yesterday though and didn't get a chance to take pictures or post my projects so I am doing it today.

I don't have a picture of Beverly's second quilt yet because it has been raining on and off today and I didn't want to risk it getting wet.  I did take some photos of the Mondo Bag though.

This is one huge bag. It is 10 x 10 across the bottom.
And the fusible fleece makes it stand up all on its own.

This is going to be a great bag to carry my show and tell to guild meetings, and for the beach, and for overnight or weekend trips.

I did have trouble with the lining though. The pattern said to make the lining the same way as the outer bag. So I did that, but once everything was sewed together and flipped right side out the outer corners of the bag did not match up with the corners of the lining and the lining would not lay properly inside the bag. It looked like a wadded mess of fabric in the bottom of the bag.  

I couldn't deal with that so I unstitched the whole thing this afternoon. I thought that if I rotated the lining one turn the inner and outer corners would line up. After fiddling with that for an hour and getting no where I finally realized that because of the construction method of this bag I had to sew the lining together in the opposite direction of the instructions. So I unstitched the entire lining and resewed it together, backwards.  After I did that the lining fit snug and now I have nice full corners on the outside and nice smooth lining on the inside.

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June FNSI

I spent the June FNSI finishing up my 7th quilt top made from men's shirts.  I didn't do any math for this quilt, I just cut out squares and hoped everything would fit and if it didn't I would fudge it to make it fit. The sides of the checkered outer border fit perfect! But the top and bottom borders were a wee bit too short.  

Instead of adding a couple 2x4 inch rectangles in the top and bottom border, making the those sections look weird, I decided to trim one inch off each side of the vertical inner black border.  That seemed more visibly appealing to me rather than having 10 squares and one rectangle in the top and bottom border.

After I finished the top I decided to work on my Schnibbles for June. I decided to do the 49 patch version and got out my bin that holds 1.5 inch scraps. On the top of the pile was all the leftover green and pink squares I cut out for my I.S.T.H Schnibble project back in February. I didn't count all the leftover squares, but it looks like it might be enough to make the whole quilt out of pink and green.  I got two blocks together before I decided to hit the hay.

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May FNSI

I spent my FNSI working on my Faceted Jewel quilt.  I now have all the blocks sewn together and the two rows on the right sewn together.  I also have the first border, which is 1/3 of the original blocks, sewn on to each block.

I laid out the second row border to get a feel for the completed circles.  I still have to make some more geese for that border though but I didn't have enough wings (I guess they are called wings) for those geese  so I cut out some more this morning.

Everything is coming together slowly but surely for this one.  I could be going faster, but I keep picking out my stitches to fix the points I cut off while sewing.  I have heard the quote, "If you can't see it from a galloping horse it is fine."  But I don't ride horses so I have to fix my points.  :)

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April FNSI

For April's Friday Night Sew In we were challenged to make one pillowcase for for Conkerr Cancer, who distributes pillowcases to critically ill children.

I had 28 inches left of this cute frog fabric which is the perfect size for a pillowcase.   It came together super fast.  I even did the french seams on it and it was still fast to put together.

Which meant I could use the majority of my sewing time last night for finishing up the quilting and binding on Sara's Turning 20 quilt.

Sara, a guild mate of mine, had been gathering flower fabrics that represented each state where her children were born.  She also added some other fabrics that represented each child and her husband.  The top and bottom border are forestry fabric to represent her husband and his long career in that field.

I did an all over flowery loop quilting for this quilt.

I love all her flower fabrics, they are all so soft.  My favorite is this pink flowered fabric.

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FNSI - Shirt Quilt #4

Last night for Friday Night Sew In I had intentionally decided to play with my Reunion Jelly roll, but when I actually sat at the sewing machine I felt like sewing together the blocks to make shirt quilt top #4.

I used the instructions from Crazy Mom Quilts for this top.  It uses both the solid and the striped shirts.   There are 9 different solids, and 19 different stripes.  The white is Kona  Cotton White.

Shirt quilt #5 will use this same pattern.  #6 is going to be a different pattern, but I haven't decided which one yet.  I have a lot of 4.5 and 3.5 squares left over as well as lots of 1.5 inch strips.  Perhaps I can find a way to incorporate all those sizes in one quilt.

When I got up this morning I was still in sewing mode, so I opened up the Reunion Jelly roll and matched up the strips and sewed them together in sets of two.  I am using the tutorial from A Bright Corner, but I want my quilt to look like the one from Grace and Favour's blog.

I am excited to do the next step for this quilt, but the sunshine coming through the window is making me want to go out side and get my garden started.

Dirt, here I come!

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Results of February FNSI

 I spent most of my Friday Night Sew In finishing up the top of my third Shirt Quilt.  

I cut and added all the sashing and border.  I can now add it to my "Ready for Quilting" pile.

Yay!! Only three more tops to make.

After that I fiddled around with some more smaller 9 patches before hitting the hay.

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