UFO to a WIP

 I worked on my Wild Thing quilt two days in a row.
Does this mean this project has moved from a UFO (Un-finished Object) to a WIP (work in progress)?
Or is it is considered both? Either way I am moving right along with this project.

This was my progress from yesterday....

  

 and here are the blocks today.

I'm linking up today at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.
Click on over to see what everyone else is working on today.

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Adding the Red and Blue Strings

I am on the home stretch! My goal is to have the top finished by the next guild meeting, which is October 3.  I already had the blue string blocks finished and today I put them on the design board with the Ohio Star Blocks. This morning I finished up the last of the red string sections.  

Phew, these red triangles took the longest and there weren't even as many of these as there were Hour Glass Blocks.  I definitely know that chain piecing makes things go faster.  I wasn't able to do that with these string blocks though. I took my time finding strings that were just the right length - I hate to waste fabric, even string fabric.  Now that they are done, it will be a breeze to add the "wings" (which I have already started).  Once the wings are on all I have to do is piece the rows together.  I even have the borders ready to go.  I Can't wait to see it all together.  I am totally in love with this quilt!

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Lots of Ohio Stars

These blocks would make a great quilt all by themselves, but they are going into something else.

I have been asked to be in charge of the Opportunity Quilt for my guild and I have decided to make an Orca Bay quilt.  It was Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt a couple years ago.  I didn't do the mystery at the time but every since I saw the finished quilt I have always wanted to make one. I figured this would be the perfect time to do it.

I used a lot of my own scraps and also asked the ladies of the guild to donate their red, blue, black, and neutral fabrics.  Then I went out and bought some fat quarters to fill in the rest of the scraps.   I wanted to have a lot of different fabrics in the quilt.  Each Ohio Star block has a different red fabric center.  That is 56 different red fabrics!  I love it!

I'll finish up the colored string blocks this week and then I will add them to the Ohio Star Blocks.  I am getting really excited about this project.  I may have to have my husband buy a bunch of tickets so I can increase the chances of it coming back to my house when it is finished.  ;)

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Pile of Pinwheels

I love Pinwheels.  They can look good in anything.

54 Pinwheels soon to be added into my Christmas project.

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Colorado Beauty - America the Beautiful

Next to the Oregon Trail block is the Colorado Beauty.  The block above is the closest full block on the quilt, even though I did cut off the bottom of the block with my camera.
There is no sashing between these blocks like the Ohio Star and the Carolina lily, but I used consistent fabric to help this block stand out a little better than the Oregon Trail.

Only three more days till I can show off the whole quilt!!

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Oregon Trail - America the Beautiful

I outlined this block in the photo to help decipher the actual block in the quilt. I used so many scrappy fabrics for this section, it makes it hard to see the block if you are not familiar with it. Another reason it may be hard to decipher is due to the shape of this section.
There is only one full Oregon Trail block in the quilt. The rest get cut off by other sections.

Reveal date is getting closer!  I am excited to show off the whole quilt and to see how the rest of the guild interpreted this theme.  I'll share some of those photos as well on June 6th.

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Texas Tears - America the Beautiful

To represent the lower west and the desert states, I used the Texas Tears Quilt block.

You may be able to visualize what the whole quilt may look like by now. But I still have the quilting to show off, which I'll do on June 6th.



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Kansas Star - America the Beautiful

This is another block in my America the Beautiful quilt.

It was made for my quilt guild's annual quilt challenge, "America The Beautiful - Home Sweet Home"

For this challenge I decided to make a quilt using my own design.  This section is the Kansas Star block and it represents the Amber Waves of Grain. The block measures 6 inches and I paper pieced it together to get nice sharp points.

I'll show more sections of the quilt every few days and on June 6th, the day of the Challenge reveal, I will show the whole quilt in all its quilted beauty.

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Carolina Lily - America the Beautiful

Here is my version of a Carolina Lily block representing the south.

Hubby said it reminded him of Christmas, which it kind of does to me too, but I wanted the background to be green instead of white since the south is full of green trees.

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Ohio Star - America The Beautiful

Representing the upper Northern half  of my "America the Beautiful" quilt is the Ohio Star block.

Lots of green with some blue to represent lakes.  You can also see a hint of the "Carolina's" Under the Ohio Star. The curve of the river on the left almost makes it look like I used a fish eye lens on my camera.

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Guild Quilt Challenge

Every year my guild puts on a Quilt Challenge.
The theme for this year's challenge is "America the Beautiful - Home Sweet Home".
  I have been spent most of my quilting time working on my interpretation of the theme.
The Reveal isn't till June 6th, so until then I can only show bits and pieces.

   Today I want to show off one of my favorite parts of the quilt.
It is the storm at sea section (with a hint of sandy beaches on the left).
I drew out the block on graph paper so I could work with a 6 block.
Then I printed it out and used the templates for paper piecing.  

There will be a total of 8 different quilt blocks in the quilt, along with some other techniques.  I'll show a little every couple of days and then on June 6th, I'll post a photo of the whole thing along with the other quilts in the challenge.

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Churn Dash Block

The block of the month for my quilt guild's last month was the Churn Dash.  

The only stipulations were that it had to be 12.5 inches and done in your favorite color.  

My churn without a doubt had to be red.

It's not sewn together yet in this photo, but this photo turned out way better than the sewn version.

I also created a photo with some simple cutting instructions for the guild's newsletter which I am in charge.

And here are all the churn dash blocks that were turned in at the meeting.  

I am anxious to see how the winner puts all these together.

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Dresdens Going Together

I've been spending the week hand appliqueing down my Dresden plates.  I have six more to go.

Halfway done.

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I am glad my kids still like to hang with me when I sew.
I use to give them buttons to play with when they were little,
Now they have upgraded to the pins.
This is what my 16 year old did with my pincushion yesterday.

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Christmas Quilt in February

My Christmas quilt has been on my design wall since December. It has gone from this....

  ...to this.  Everyone denies knocking the board over. They are all blaming the cat.  

With the help of my son we got it back to it's regular layout.  That was about a month ago.

Yesterday I found the motivation I need to get this project rolling-
I need my design board to help design a new quilt.
Nothing like something new to help you move along with something old.  :)

I have all the Half square triangle sewn in pairs, a couple full blocks sewn together, and one whole row done.

Not sure why I picked the third row to sew first, but you can see how much shrinkage there is from layout to finished row.  The plan is to finish the top this afternoon. Hopefully I won't have too many distractions.

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Dare To Dresden

Dare to Dresden Hop is going on this week and today is my day to post.
It has been a weekend of dresdens for me as I prepared for the hop.

First, I had been itching to make a tiny dresden. This one measures 3 inches from point to point.
I turned it into a spiffy pin cushion. For my dresden template I took a small circle, folded in half over and over till I got eight wedges. Then I cut one of the wedges out as my template. Super easy and fast.

I also fiddled around with a 10 degree ruler and made a dresden with 36 plates.
The ruler I used orginally makes a 25 inch circle, but I cut my wedges from a 2.5 inch strip and got small flower petals so my circle measures 10.25 inches. I plan on turning this into a table topper. The wide center circle is the perfect spot to place a nice spring basket.

 I also worked on adding some more wedges to my pastel Dresden Quilt project that I started in September.
I still need to find 8 more pastel fabrics I like to finish up the circle.

It has been fun playing around with dresden plates the past couple days.  Make sure you check out all the other great posts going on today.  You can see them all here:

January 29^th, 2013

A Peach in Stitches

Nancy W @ “that Other Blog”

L3 Designs

Bungalow Bay Quilts

Quilted Delights

Quilt Crossing

Lixie Makes it

A Quilting Sheep

Charlotte's Creations

Quilt-n-Queen
Domesticity and Other Ponderous Things

Sew Much 2 Luv

A Quilt and a Prayer

Amanda Murphy Design

Little Mushroom Cap
Kathy's Quilts

Sandra Kaye Design

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Leaf Blocks

The leaf part of my blocks are all finished. I am excited to add the corner stripes, but that will have to wait till next month.  The sewing machine is booked up the month of December with Christmas projects.

First on the list is finishing up Aunt Darla's shirt quilts. They have been in my care long enough and  it is time to push and get them finished in time for her to give them away at Christmas.

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More Orange Strips

There hasn't been much sewing going on lately other than the three blog hops I participated in and Halloween costumes, but this week I was able to sneak in some 15 minute intervals of sewing time and got some progress on a couple projects.

 
First I cut and sewed together some more orange strips.

When I originally made my mini quilt for the Wicked Blog hop I had 10 wedges left over.

I played around with the leftovers and added some black sashing.
Then I decided a lot more wedges would make great throw size Halloween quilt that I can use next year.
So I made 6 more oranges strips.  They are all pressed and ready to be cut into wedges.

 
From each strip I can cut enough wedges to make 2 spider blocks.

After I sewed and pressed my orange strips together I got back to cutting out my fabrics for my leaf block.
I cut most of the pieces to make 19 more leaf blocks. 

 

 While I was cutting and trimming I noticed that my Kaleido-Ruler is the same size as the corner strips on my leaf block.  When I made the first block I paper pieced these corners, but I am thinking about sewing strips and then cutting wedges for this block as well.  If I do that though, I will have opposite wedges that don't go in the block so I will have to come up with something to do with the extra wedges.

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Start of Dimestore

I will definitely be coming in just under the wire for this month's Schnibble project.  With summer vacations and school starting, for the kids and me, there hasn't been much time for sewing this month. I did take time to cut my fabric for my Dimestore Schnibble yesterday and today I spent most of the morning sewing blocks together. 

I am adding an extra row to make my top a rectangle.

 I wanted to use this red and blue flower print for the background, but I didn't have a charm pack that matched for the sashing.  So instead of going to my scrap bin and pulling out a bunch of different fabrics to match, I decided to take the easy route and make all the sashing the same.  I have sewn them into strips and will cut them to the right size.  So this ended up being a color cordinated quilt instead of a scrappy one.  I hope it turns out good.  I don't have any distractions later on this evening, so tonight I will be at the sewing machine finishing this top. It will be ready just in time for the parade tomorrow.

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Doc in the Works

I made some good progress on my May Schnibbles project, Doc, yesterday evening.
I have all my half square triangles cut out and trimmed and all my fabrics matched up.
I even made the first block.  Only 8 more to go.  I feel like the rest will go together lickety split.

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15 Blocks to Go

I got all the "54 40 or Fight" blocks sew together over the weekend.  Then I laid out the alternating blocks on the design wall and have a total of 3 of them sewn together.  This is suppose to be a scrappy quilt, but I have a fear if I just grab colors out of the pile I will end up with the bottom corner of the quilt being all blue.  So I organize it before I sew it all together. I call it my controlled scrappy look.

When laying it all out I realized I am short one Goose.  I either lost it when I was shifting stuff around, or I miss counted when I cut and sewed them all out a while ago.

Here is the full version of my design wall.  I LOVE IT!!  I had been taping a flannel backed table cloth on the french doors, but I kept having to take it down for various reasons.  So I built this design wall.  It is made from two blue insulation boards that I got from Lowes.  I trimmed them down and taped them together with white duct tape to create a wall that measures  6' 8"  x 7'.   Then I put some warm and white batting on top of it, wrapped it around to the back and taped it on.   It is light weight for good portability yet stable enough to hold up all my fabric.  I love it!

Behind the design wall is my shelf of fabrics and my daughter's sewing machine, which she doesn't use (I still have hope that she will get it out and want to sew something again one of these days). To the left, which you can't see, is my sewing machine and computer.  I must admit I spend most of my day in this part of the house.  And now that our TV is broken, thanks to some rowdy boys, the kids spend most of their time in here too.  I must say, it is a nice place to be.  :)

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