Iceblossom

Still a couple of seams left so no picture yet of completed Grass top. I was moving slowly and pinned my first piece wrong -- but at least I found out before I sewed. It is 94" long so I know that now, I think it be about 60" wide??

I am finding that prewashing/ironing my shop hop and accumulated purchases from the past year is slowing my desire to purchase more! Is probably a good thing, gives me some time to think about what I have, how I hope to use it, etc. The shop hop ladies have family in from out of the town (known in advance) so no shop hopping for them (or me) this week. I think they have been to about 50 of the 69 stores!

Barb indeed is providing me with the birthday mushroom fabric I decided was perfect. It has a cocoa brown background, so it will darken down the blocks quite a bit. Here's a picture of the goofy big foots and the companion print. There are 20 big foots so it will be easier to make a rectangular project! I'm thinking some sort of Single Irish Chain sort of thing with the foot prints linking around the bigfoot and mushroom fabrics but the idea isn't fully formed yet. I'm thinking this won't be worked on until next year, Dragon Hoard and Bonnie Hunter through the end of the year...

73+quilts

This is a MAJOR OOPS!!!!!!
had money left over from paying bills this month--Please don't ask me how I did it 'cause I ain't got a clue. Just happened and I even made certain I had everything paid soooooooo

I've been hearing about Michael's and seeing ya'll are going and finding fabric. When I lived in California ALL of the stores were shut down. This was several years ago. I thought all of he stores were closed. I have not been back to California ever since the move so I don't even know if they were reopened.

Friday I was riding the city bus just to try to get to know this place a bit better. AND there it sat MICHEL'S. I pushed the button and after I was off the bus I headed straight to the store. I reminded myself this is JUST a window shopping type spy time. NO PURCHASES!


Okay so I went to the fabric section to see what they had--not real impressed until I saw the bin! $2.00/yard and there sat my Grinch on the shelf. I don't know why but my chair was suddenly next to the Grinch and he had jumped into my lap begging to come home with me. Well, how could I refuse such a sweet Grinch. was only 5/8's yard left so all of it came home with.......the Grinch and dog black and white check 3 yards. The monopoly 3 yards (ONE way fabric). The Grinch squares/rectangles 3 yards (PERFECT for the seek & find me) quilts. Carrots and Bunnies Easter Fabric 3 yards. Red White & Blue dog paws 3 yards. And last but not the lease is the Green, white and orange Shamrocks on a green background 3 yards. Only cost me less than $50.00. Brought it home and threw it in the hot water wash with 3 Shout Color Catchers so they were not able to fade on each other. Then I went yesterday and found the cutest 18" doll I have ever seen--even better than the American Girl Collection in my opinion. I actually went for a bag of batting but that is the one thing I "forgot". Actually, they did not have what I prefer so I will buy that online next month.

A Question:

Have you ever used the Pellon Natural Cotton Batting, off-White 96" x 9 Yards by the Bolt? If so, how did you like it for crib; lap; and twin size quilts? These are the only ones that I will be making for the Children's Hospital. I have been asked to add the crib and lap quilts and agreed.

WMUTeach

I did a rearrangement of my sewing room and found more projects that I just don't want to finish.... Solution, give them away to someone who would like the challenge of a mystery. At my quilting group we put odd UFOs or WIPS in brown shopping bags with MYSTERY or UFO written on it. Any one can take it home without peeking inside and use is as they wish: finish the project, donate it, turn it into something else, (potholders, place mats etc.) or they can return it to the bag and next meeting put it back on the table. There have been some lovely re-makes from these brown paper bags.

I bagged a couple. I also took a deep hard look at what is still lingering in my stash. What will I never, ever use? Reminder to self don't take free fabric if you really don't like it enough to use it and definitely don't pay good money for it! I cut those pieces into 2.5" strips and donated to a group that makes woven rugs. The uglies are out of my life and disguised as rugs. The rugs are sold and the funds are used to purchase batting for donation quilts that go to a local shelter.

No shopping, and a moderate amount of stash cleaning. I call that a win. Of course I also found some gems that need finishing and a couple of beauties that will appear in a quilt later this year. In the end, a bit of a treasure hunt.

73+quilts

All felt is gone to our local elementary school teachers of 3rd grade. Thanks everyone for the pm's suggesting the different uses.
I decidedthat the school would be the very best place to give it.

Iceblossom

@MaryKa Hooray for finding a home for the felt and making new contacts! We had quite a thing going for awhile between my husband (who handled scrap at his place) for getting her fancy ends of printing rolls (like gold foil, cellophane, non-papery stuff), not enough for a printing project but enough for an art class.

For my normal work (including my donations) I prefer a puffier poly batt and less quilting than is currently popular. For me, the Pellon doesn't give the loft I want -- but it is pretty easy to work with. Different organizations have different needs and requirements for their donation projects in addition to sizes. Some want all cotton everything, batting, thread, fabric, etc. so I learn to work with what the client wants. Or I find options (I usually target my projects to aging foster kids/restarting households) that let me do what I want -- I prefer it when the recipients get to choose their quilt, you could be really happy with one of mine or really disappointed

@WMUTeach good for you for doing some thinking and sorting and prioritizing. We don't have to finish the UFOs, many of what I do is finish other people UFOs. I don't mind taking something apart or cutting it up when I didn't do the work in the first place. I tried to do something like your quilting group at my old guild, rarely got any takers and even fewer finished projects but the "ugly fabric" mystery bags. Fabric had to be quality/usable but one of those "what was I thinking" sort of things. I have a couple of things kitted up that I might be putting in my ready to go box... not quite ready with that yet but I did a lot of purging pre-move.

QuiltMom2

I added up my year's fabric receipts and yes, I need to really stick to the moratorium . For years, I've budgeted a certain amount for new fabric and with the price increases it buys less and less! Anyway, it's only September and I've hit the limit so maybe I shouldn't set foot in a quilt shop? Maybe I need to stop finishing other people's UFO's? Maybe I should ignore every online fabric store ad that pops up?
I'm in the process of finishing piecing 2 major scrap projects and that's going to help with stash reduction. I'm piecing backing too so that impacts the yardage. I also gave away some scraps of fleece and minky that I wasn't going to use. Still too much on hand!!

Gemm

Yay for finding happy homes for unwanted/unneeded/unfinished stuff! Way to go MaryKa, WMU and QuiltMom for your successful rehoming stories. :-)

I love that mystery UFO bag idea, WMU. We see a lot of UFOs and orphan blocks on our guild's free table and there are some wonderfully creative ladies who take those castoffs and turn them into masterpieces for our community quilts efforts.

Iceblossom, I agree that it's so great when the recipients have the opportunity to choose their quilts. A Soroptimist group up here runs a "free store" where people supported by social services (frequently those who are transitioning out of foster care or shelters) are given the chance to go "shopping" at this store to furnish their new homes, and quilts are among the offerings on hand. I love this idea - dignity and a sense of self-worth comes from having choice and agency in hard times.

I'm also digging through my scrap stash and am putting together some colourblock units that I hope will turn into something lovely. This is still an idea more than a plan but I have high hopes!

aashley333

Add up my fabric purchases? For the year? Let's not!
However, I have not been tempted to open email that touts a sale all month. Also, our guild has its annual auction/fundraiser tomorrow, so I need to see what can be repurposed from my studio for a donation item.

Iceblossom

I was slow but productive yesterday at group. I finished up the Grass quilt, and started making the binding of the stripped border fabric. I love using stripes on the diagonal...

I started working on the Dragon Hoard project. I have a limited amount of the Makower yardage I want to use for sashing, limited enough that I felt a 1/2" reduction per block would help. Although the background squares the dragon blocks are printed on are consistent, the frames/dragon designs within are not! They are skewed and otherwise marginally different in size. It would have been easy to trim 1/4" off each edge, but instead, I was trimming 1/2" from the inner frame and although it started out ok, it quickly became apparent that they were not consistent or square. I decided that the visual effect of the borders within the blocks and the ones I will be inserted would still be ok if the blocks are not quite square. Anyway, I am making the setting triangles a bit large and will float the blocks within a consistent size.

So -- Picture 1 of the grass quilt finished. Is meant to be twin sized, is on top of a queen. Picture 2 is just a better shot of a side/bottom. The border cut on diagonal will be the binding. Picture 3 is an advance look at the dragon blocks. Due to the cutting and decisions I was making as I was going along, a little off in a couple of ways, like one corner will not float -- the point won't be cut off and I can live with it.

Edit: Hmmm, maybe I should trim all the points down so they have seam allowance but don't float. Will make sort of an odd size finish, right now I'm using a 10.5" ruler to square but trimming down would make it 10", so 9.5" finished? The crazy quilt blocks can be trimmed to whatever size I decide on, but the sashing will be going around the dragon blocks and not between. That is the crazy blocks will be the size of the dragon+border.

joe'smom

Hmmm. That's quite an idea. It would probably show that I've not done as well as I thought I was doing.

I've been out of it for several weeks, having had an unexpected surgery. I think I'm finally getting back into the swing of things slowly.