March 2021 OMG Completion

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I am calling it done for my March OMG. My goal was to work on The Curves for the QAL 2021. I do not have the flimsy yet but I did make up a lot of blocks. 

I put them up on the big design wall in a few different versions and asked my Sat morning group for ideas. So now, I plan to put it aside for a while and consider all the ideas. 

Another goal idea was to sew on some of the sashing strips to Ella blocks so I could put them up on the wall easier. And I did that. Most of the blocks around the outside are just prepped and some of them have some of the hand applique done. I work on these for my 15 minutes to Stitch each day. I think I missed one day this month. I had thought to start working on some of the machine pieced blocks but will leave them until June. I should have lots more time then since I am working madly trying to complete the last courses for my doctorate. So back to the books.

Here is a picture of the antique quilt I found. 

Blessings,

Chris

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March 2021 OMG Goal

Sometimes I agonize about what to choose for my OMG goal each month. Often I pick a goal and promptly work on something else. So, what if I were to suggest the choice of 2-3 different goals and complete one but not the others? Would that still count? Food for thought. 

One of the goals I have been thinking about is to remove some of the sashings already sewn onto the completed Ella blocks and redo them. I want to take a full quarter-inch seam allowance and show less brown, then sew sashing strips onto the rest of the completed blocks. I like to put them up on the big design all to look at and choose more colours, but that is a lot of work with so many pieces. 

Another goal could be to play a bit of catch-up on the pieced Ella blocks. There are far more applique blocks in the quilt. 

These are the 7 blocks I complete in Feb.

There are only 3 more months of blocks to be released and my goal is to have a flimsy by June. That is a lot of work. 

Then there is The QAL 2021 The Curves. To keep on track for that, I will have to sew all the blocks together but there will be a couple of hundred leaves yet to fuse, cut out, and applique on by machine. That will be a lot of work.  And, of course, I have to choose a final layout. It is a reproduction quilt but the little girls might talk me into adding a few modern dragonflies or butterflies. Wait a minute. Devan is learning to sew curves on the machine. I wonder? 

The RSC colour for March is green and I have all the green blocks complete for Bright Jane. I made exactly none of the yellow last month. 

So now that I have laid it all out like this, The Curves needs to be at the top of the OMG list to keep on track for that QAL. 

And in other news here at the Farm, My Sweetie's 92-year-old mother's toaster caught fire and she exited the house very quickly to get help. Five fire trucks, EMS, police, and road closure in rush hour traffic later, her kitchen was badly damaged. So one blessing is that she is no longer living alone in her house but staying with her youngest son here on the farm with family to look after her. 

Blessings,

Chris

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February 2021 OMG Goal

 I always find it a challenge to settle in on just one OMG goal. What will it be?  

What about Bright Jane? I made 5 pink blocks for RSC to add to the 7 I already had made. 

Feb's color is yellow. My quilt needs 11 blocks for that colour. 

I have been sitting here hovering near the girls doing their school work. Ellyse is so much like me Totally distractable.

Ellyse joined me and Chooky and the girls Monday night on zoom. We cut out a whole lot of green and white pieces for The Curves. It was hard work and I let her do the cranking. 

She had a paper cut on her finger and "had to" change the band-aid every 4 hours (a bit OCD maybe). She was asking if she still needed yet another new bandaid but I said no, the cut was healing up very nicely. Then I reached down into a box on the floor to pull out some papers and what do you know? I came back up with a very big bloody paper cut on the ring finger of my right hand. You know, my-push-the-needle-through-the-applique finger. Ouch. So. she put a bandaid on it. It is healing very nicely. I only changed it once when it fell off washing dishes. 

I continue to do my 15-Minutes of Stitching daily. So far I am 100%. 

This Ella block was a bit daunting. I started with back-basting the yellow centers in each corner. Then I added the red petals on either side. 

 

I forgot to take a picture of only one of the brown curlycues that frame each flower. I am doing these in 4 separate applications. I probably could have done it as one piece, but I wanted to do it the way the original maker switched hers. 

This will be my hand stitching for the next few days. 

There will yet be a cluster of flower petals at the end of each of those brown stems. 

My OMG goal for Feb has to be The Curves.  I must have all 64 units done so I can put together the required 16 blocks and complete the rest of the things by the end of the month. I plan to get Ellyse to help cut out more pieces. 

Blessings,

Chris

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The Storyteller

I did the High5 Quiz online recently and it tells me I am a Storyteller. You think?  That's part of why being a writer is so exciting. I get to tell stories. Here on the blog, I tell stories about quilt blocks I make or the process of making them. I tell stories about my grandchildren. To be challenged to tell a story without words, is, for me, well, a challenge. I could post pictures but always want to be explaining things.

This is as far as I have gotten with the January RSC pinks for Bright Jane. I still have a week so I might get more made. 

The craziest thing here on the new Blogger. All my photos came up in reverse order. No problem. I will just change how I write up my story, even though I have been writing bits and pieces throughout the week. 

This is the back of one block with the back-basting. I used a regular pencil this time. I figure it will be hidden on the back under the appliques. That fabric is white, really. 

When doing the back-basting thing, you stitch the bits in layers. This is the first layer of this block. I stitched down the top part of each petal and cut a tiny notch for the curve but realized it was perfect for transitioning from the stitched part to the flat part that will be under the next petals. You will have to wait until next time to see the progress. 

I made this block a while ago but finally finished the Broderie Perse applique. Devan is claiming this block for her name. I had to convince her to wait until the quilt was done, as she was already looking for a Sharpie. You can read that story here.

Wait until you see what this block will look like. I hope my process works. I like process. That is part of why I like blogging so much of my quilting journey. I can document the process of making the blocks. I make a lot of blocks.  

And, I did get in at least 15 minutes stitching every day. Sometimes 3-4 hours.

I prepped 6 applique blocks for my 50th Aniversary Quilt aka Ella. One of the other girls in the group tucked in a scene in one of the blocks. I will see if I can find one for this center. Otherwise, there will be more 8 petal flowers inside, inside a square inside a circle with skinny petals in the corners.

I just realized that I am doing a lot of hand stitching these days. Why? Because my hands do not hurt quite as much as they were. Stopping eating so much sugar cannot possibly be the reason.

I was looking at my 50 Goals for 2021. One of them is celebrating our son-in-law's 50th birthday. We had plans and a little boy sleepover and something other than pizza with the cake, but we are in a stay-at-home lockdown this month so will have to wait until another time. You only turn 50 once. We had pizza anyway.

This the other block I completed this week. I was liking the softer colours - the creams and butter and coral and chocolate and aqua. My Sweet husband of nearly 50 years thought it was rather underwhelming. But when I put the egg yolk and cranberry together with a touch of chocolate, that the thing started looking exciting. 

My OMG goal for January was to complete 16 units for the QAL The Curves! I found the fabrics I needed and pulled out the GO cutter and the 7inch Drunkards Path die. Oops. The way the die is designed, I will be wasting a lot of fabric cutting the way I want. 

We shall see. I still have a lot more cutting to do. I did make my OMG goal for January.

 

In the meantime, the little girls decided they wanted to do some quilting. Sigh. I am so lazy sometimes. I have kept putting them off saying it was too cluttered to work here and with them and their school work, it is even more so. But Devan would not let me get away with that. So, they both started a new quilt. Five-inch quilt as you go hexagons. They are learning to use the rotary cutters. But we still have to make a bit more room for them both to work, because they have to do it at the same time. These both are Devan's blocks. Then she decided to make some pillows for her stuffies, but I would not let her use the machine because I have it set up with my sewing, so she pulled out the biggest needle in the pincushion and started stitching by hand. 

Ellyse put her's into a project box. Just like Gramma. 

Blessings,

Chris

linking with:

offwallfriday. wendysquiltsandmore  confessionsofafabricaddict. alyciaquilts. 

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sugarlane-designs 

 slow-sunday-stitching  kate-life-in-pieces.  whatahootquilts.

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2020 Quilt Starts and Finishes

Frederique at Patchwork and Quilts is hosting a weekly linky party and has asked for finished and started quilts for 2020. Well, let me tell you. I finished nothing.  Well, I did finish my breakfast. 

 

No that is not entirely true. 

I did finish the Beyond the Cherry Trees Quilt top. 

It is not yet prepared for quilting. The plan is still to hand quilt it. Maybe next year. You can find the pattern here at  sentimentalstitches.

I only started 2 projects this year.  Gay at Sentimental Stitches offered a mystery block of the week back in June called 3030 Quilt. Thirty blocks in 30 weeks. We are at week 27. This is all I have made so far. There is an incredible appliqued center medallion that I will get to someday. And the final layout is still a mystery.

The other quilt I started was released monthly also by Sentimental Stitches starting back in Sept 2019. This is the Ella Maria Deacon Quilt 

Ella was originally made in 1841-42.

I have 8 blocks done and 7 more applique blocks prepped. 

I collected most of the blocks each month, paying half price for them. I started it in April. The plan is to make 50 of the 85 blocks. It is my 50th Anniversary Quilt project. 

I have plans to start the QAL 2021 The Curves! on Jan 1, 2021. I will post more about that in January since we are not allowed to actually begin making it until then. 

Blessings,

Chris

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