August 22 To-Do Tuesday

 The list from 2 weeks ago  shows much accomplishment.

1. Put away my books and clear off the tables. DONE
2. Figure out how to correct the printer off-line error so we can print stuff. DONE but got a new hard drive so am dealing with unexpected changes.
3. Put away the clutter from the big ironing board. DONE then I promptly filled it up.
4. Take some before and after photos. DONE
5. Write up some blog posts. DONE 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Sew up one yellow Bright Jane block. NOPE. NEW PLAN
7. Fix the mitered corners on the center medallion of the Wedding Quilt.  PROGRESS
8. Prewash the new fabric for Windermere. DONE
9. Put up the Corn and Beans blocks on the big design wall and decide on a setting. There are so many options. Getting this to a flimsy will be my OMG goal for August. DONE
10. Cut out a couple of Lucy blocks. JUST ONE AND DONE
11. Launch the new How to Stay Married for 50 Years blog. DONE
12. Find the new mouse traps I bought last week and set them. DONE 

That list took me 2 weeks to accomplish.  

One of the fun things about family visiting is we can learn new things. So I went shopping on line and bought a few new toys. And the many heavy rains we have been having this summer have turned the geranium flowers brown. So deadheading is my puttering task. 

These are the most amazing gadgets ever created for us senior gardeners. Well, for any gardeners. I did not have to kneel on all those rocks in years past. 

This week's list looks something like this:

1. Write something every day 
2. Blog posts. I got way behind this summer with people and events here so just jumped back in. I also quietly launched the new blog How to Stay Married for 50 Years. I will be posting weekly. Now to figure out how to create a button for it. 
3. Get my flowerbeds looking beautiful again after many rainstorms.
4. No playing games.
5. Work on sewing up Corn and Beans.
6. Progress on Wedding Quilt.
7. Play with some 23 ufos. I pulled  out the 3030 box to see what is happening there so I can prep for the new Sweet 16 BOW. I will be using 30s reproduction fabrics. 
8. Drink more water. A lot more.

That should keep me out of mischief this week. I have little girls here this week and they all want to earn $$$. I have a plan for that. 

Blessings,

Chris

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Playing With Bright Jane

 

 I pulled out all the Bright Jane project boxes. There were 4. On the very top is one with bits of pre-cut background fabrics in it. There is also one with DJ2 applique stuff but I will have to look for that.

I started this Sept 2014 just after I completed my first Dear Jane Quilt. I was going to do it in a year. Eventually, I started working in the colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I printed off foundation patterns and chose fabrics and put them all in nicely organized zip-lock bags and then file folders. And there they have sat for a very long time. I bought new solid coloured bedsheets recently and they need a colourful quilt to lay on top. 

 

Then did a count of the completed blocks by putting them up on the small design wall one colour at a time.

I still need 4 blues. Working on that.

Feb is pink month. I have 8 more blocks that have been prepped for Foundation Piecing for several years. 

Red has 10 complete and 2 in process. That amazing circle of geese was foundation pieced using a stay in fusible but is very stiff to work with that way. I have an idea how to finish it. Come back on red month.

For some reason, I thought I had all 20 green blocks done. I see one missing. I will  not fret about that until next green month.

 And purple. For some reason purple kept getting missed. There will be 25 of these beauties eventually. I long since had stopped making the Dear Jane blocks as I had already made the entire thing in reproduction fabrics. Finished that more than 8 years ago and it is still not quilted. One of these days. But it is on the 23 ufos list. 

I have been making a variety of patterns that can be made using just one colour. 

Is it pronounced 

or (an) ge

or 

or (on) ge? 

Guess it depends if  you live in Ontario or Quebec. 

Either way, I still have 6 blocks to make. No. 7 blocks. That top left one belongs in the yellow collection. 

Still need to make 7 more yellow blocks. 

I am using a variety of bright fabrics I bought just for this quilt. I am not so fond of the bright colours. That is one reason this project has languished so long in project boxes.

And there is aqua. What can I say? These are all done. I like them. This is my project for the RSC this year. I only have 59 blocks to go. I think. If my math is correct. 

My To-Do Tuesday quilting list includes: 

1.  Sew something.
2.  for at least 15 Minutes a Day.
3.  Don't touch Lucy this week. 

My Other To-Do Tuesday list includes:

1. Hot tub.
2. Laundry.
3. Clear those 2 eight foot tables - again.
4. Move the glass top table. I cannot reach the small design wall that sits on it and I want to play.
5. Put a lot of stuff away.
6. Write at least 3 times this week. I got a new book to guide my writing. 
7.  Massage Wed.
8. Prep for Women's Small Group Sat.

My February OMG goal is to complete something. 

linking with Design Wall Monday

Blessings,

Chris

End of January

 

This is what my sewing table looked like last week. A place to hold the overflow of my books and stuff. This is the Bernina that the girls use because it has a half speed option and a 1/4 inch seam guide. And yes, that is snow out the window. 

This is what it looks like now. Well, it did yesterday. Who knows what it will look like tomorrow. I needed more light so pulled out yet another lamp. And this machine sits in front of a window.

What can I say? I find the most interesting things in my sewing room. Devan created these lovelies for me a year or two ago. She found some tulip shaped post-it notes and turned them upside down and drew pictures of herself and her sisters. I love them. They always make me smile.  

Just for the record, I did complete my January OMG goal of getting all the things on my first To-Do Tuesday list done. Yah me! I have not completed everything on all the rest of the lists. 

My list for this week list is:

1. Continue to write at least 3 times this week. 
2. 15 Minutes Stitching daily.
3. Lucy can come out to play but only for 1 block.
4. Organize my desk calendar for the month of Feb. 
5. Dust Off a Book Blog Hop is coming in March and I am scheduled to post on Mar 6. Come back then to see which of my 23 ufos I decided to pull out and which book it is inspired by. 
6. No computer games this week. Now this could be a tough one. 
7. Determine my February OMG goal. I have several ideas in mind. 

That should keep me out of trouble for the coming week. 

Blessings,

Chris

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First To-Do List for 2023

All I can say is, it's a good thing I have a sense of humour and paid the extra for the warranty for my newly replaced keyboard and mouse. How is a girl supposed to play games and scroll and copy and paste without a mouse??? But, good thing I have a touch screen. I am so spoiled. 

I started an elaborate to-do list for the first 6 months of this new year, but I guess I should just do it week by week. The kids do not go back to school until Jan 9 so we still have a whole week of holidays and the grandkids are away doing wintery things elsewhere. The major blizzard that crippled our part of the world over Christmas has melted into mushy puddles and I think I can go out and plant a few more tulip bulbs. Yup. I can do that in January. 

My first to-do list of 2023:

1. Charge the camera batteries so I can take pictures of my quilt progress.
2. Remember to take pictures.
3. Get the mouse and keyboard exchanged at Staples.
4. Set my January OMG goal. It needs to be simple. I have a lot going on this month.
5. Organize my new 2023 Desk Calendar for January so I can see at a glance all that I have going on this month. 
6.  Clear the big work tables in the quilt room to get ready to be busy.
7. Put away all the pretty fabrics I pulled out to fussy cut a few more Lucy blocks. I could show pictures, but my camera battery is being charged. 
8. Stitch for 15 Minutes a Day. This includes hand stitching, machine sewing, cutting, gluing prep work, ironing, unstitching. Yes. I do some of that occasionally. 
9. Meeting with my local quilting friends on messenger this Sat afternoon so need to have the Lucy one inch squares, papers and glue sticks ready for a marathon.
10. Complete the 3 Palm Leaf blocks for the Wedding Quilt. I stopped ignoring it. 
11. Locate the Di Ford-Hall fabrics and see what I have on hand to possibly consider maybe starting Windermere in the next year or two. I ordered EPP papers when I ordered more Lucy papers. Shipping was outrageous.  
12. Play with some of the 23 ufos. This is where my organizing started to take over my fun time, so I think I will report what I played with and progress, if any. with pictures. I don't have to revisit them all this week now do I? The battery should soon be charged. 

I have decided that I need to get some routines established instead of being all over the place. I have lists of what that could look like also. I think my OMG goal for the month should be to complete this week's to-do list. That should keep me out of trouble for a few days. 

blessings,

Chris

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Revisiting 23 UFOs

  Some thoughts on revisiting 23 unfinished projects.

1. There should be at least 23.
2. These do not have be unfinished quilts. I'm sure I have something else unfinished to work on. 
3. I think 2 weeks on each project should be just enough time to have some fun without creating unnecessary stress to complete. 
4. Completion is not the goal.
5. Having fun is. 
6. And if I liked the project enough to have invested that kind of money and time in the first place, then I should enjoy myself playing with it again. 
7. No pressure to finish anything. 
8. Playing is the goal. 
9. Linking up with some of the encouragement parties in blogland is a great idea if that will keep me motivated. 
10. Okay, I like to make lists and could spend the first month just writing and re-writing my goals and to-do lists, but I already did that. 
11. That is not the goal.
12. Having fun working on the projects is the goal.
13. Two weeks per project times 23 projects does not equal 52 weeks.
14. I guess that's like working on 2 projects each month.  
15. Working on more than one at a time is okay.
16. As long as I am having fun. 
17. Starting new projects is not forbidden. 
18. This is for revisiting ufos. 
19. Unless I start a new project early in the year and it becomes a ufo by year's end, then it counts.  
20. Writing up an elaborate list of ufos is a great idea.
21. Checking it twice is nice and so is colour coding. 
22. But completion is not the goal.
23. Having fun is. 

Blessings,

Chris

23 UFOs for 2023

Call me crazy if you like. Or join me in the New Year as I set my quilting goals. Meredith had a challenge back in 2017 to revisit 17 ufos for 3 weeks each. The goal was to move projects forward. If a completion took place, well that was a bonus. That year I completed about 5. Probably the most I ever completed in a year. I did, however, pull out 17 old projects and took photos, and wrote up 17 blog posts. It was great fun, and I even added a few stitches to some of them. But that year I did quite a bit of traveling (I was in Poland and Rwanda and Indiana) then the little boys showed up 4 days a week for a year with diaper bags in tow while there mama went back to school, so little got accomplished in the quilting area.

I do not like the stress of a deadline to finish something. Never have. Probably never will. Well, I do like to finish the food on my plate. Except the pumpkin soup when I was 9. I did not finish it. Although I sat in front of it all day. I don't care for pumpkin anything, especially pumpkin spice. Give me chocolate and caramel any day. 

I have been participating in WIPS-B-GONE this fall, and I set my goal really low. To complete 2 smaller quilts that had minimal work left to do. And then there was the Wedding Quilt. The pressure I put on myself, with a bit of help from my Sweetie, kept me from enjoying working on it. Okay. Family commitments, health issues, and house guests kept me busy. This one is still a work in progress with progress. 

I have had several other crazy quilt-related ideas, like going to Australia for Scrub Stitching In April. Wait! I am going to Scrub Stitching in Australia in April! And my Sweetie is going too! It should be great fun. We have made a few short road trips together, but it's been about 14 years since we both got on a plane together and flew off somewhere for the fun of it. And since he is retired and has no cows to milk, we can stay away as long as we want. It's not that he is afraid of flying. We had to plan that trip a year in advance to breed cows to not calve while we were gone. That was my ingenious idea, and it worked. 

I will be back with more thoughts on this Crazy Goal to revisit 23 Quilts in 2023. And, no. I am not setting up a linky party. That is too much like work, and I want to quilt. Making comments would be n ice if anyone wants to participate. 

Blessings,

Chris

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