Day 7: 31 Day Blog Challenge

Random picture of the day: swap quilts from February. Good thing I made two because one of them had an extended stay at the post office in California.

I don't normally show my fabric purchases on my blog.  I don't want to encourage people to buy things they don't need and I don't want my family to tell me I don't need the things I just bought.  But since it is a daily post challenge, I figure I can make an exception.

Let's see what do they all have in common? Oh I know! They were all bought in the wintertime, when fabric is on sale.  And anyone who has the insatiable need to tell me it isn't winter yet can just back away from my blog. You are not my friend.

Day 6: 31 Day Blog Challenge

Random photo of the day: The snow on the branches look like a chicken foot. It is also not from this winter.

In quilting news, I've been ironing the blues, but I don't have the ironing blues.  I pressed the backing for the drunkard path quilt and the binding for the Droid quilt.  I also pressed the Drunkard's path quilt top for good measure.  I need to come up with a better name for that quilt. The picture is from 2008, back when the walls weren't lime green. I've moved the ironing table farther to the left, away from the window now. I made new curtains for all the windows. And those longstanding WIPS have been put away and been replaced by new WIPs.

This picture is from before I pressed the fabric. No post-pressing pictures will be shown because then you will judge my ironing skills, and lack thereof.

I know I just showed you this picture, but it reminds me of a story.  Back around the time I was making this quilt, I was shopping at Joann's and this old lady and her husband were gathering bolts of fabric to take to the cutting counter. The store was having a sale, and I wanted to be helpful and run after this old lady to tell her that ALL of the fabric was on sale, and not just the ugly, older fabrics. She could buy pretty, modern fabric for the same price. The fabrics she was choosing looked like the purple fabric at the top of this picture. I only used it in my quilt because I was trying to use it up the stash.

Now, of course, I am probably the same age as the "old lady" and I just bought this backing fabric this year that looks like it fits perfectly with the blue and red fabric in the quilt. It's a good thing I didn't run after her because then it would be irony or something.

Linked to:
Let's Bee Social

Day 5: 31 Day Blog Challenge

Random picture of the day: Adinkra binding.

I found my WIP pile. I had placed it on the floor right by the door of my sewing room so I wouldn't have to hunt for it. Giggle. When I opened the door, the door swept the pile to the wall and hid it.

Day 4: 31 Day Blog Challenge

Random picture of the day: Pointless Puddle.

To give you some current quilt I progress, I went to find the projects I was working on before the big holiday gathering cleanup.  I apparently put it in a very safe place where I could easily pick up where I left off.  At this point, I have determined that Safe Spot is not in my sewing machine table drawers, and not in my sewing room.  But the good news is that the sewing room does look a little bit cleaner!

The end of the year is making me think about my annual goals, which leads me to my quilting spreadsheet. The one that tells me how long it takes for me to make a quilt (2 years on average).  I was looking at it the other day, and there is a quilt top on it that just needs to be quilted.   It's my oldest unfinished quilt. I know that finishing it will mess up my average, but it isn't getting any younger and even though I still don't know how I want to quilt it, I think I should just get it done.  Those calico fabrics aren't getting any younger!

It's a drunkard's path quilt, and it is so old, all my photos of it are in physical form! Looks like I was trying out different settings. It is dark now and there is no way I can get a good picture of it. At least it leaves you something to look forward to. The picture of the finished drunkard's path quilt shown earlier in this post is a child of this one, even though it was "born" earlier.

These blurry photos were also in with the drunkard path photos.  In duplicate, no less! So you can see how far I have come with my photo taking!

This blue at the front is what I got for the backing. I bought it this year. I think the  mottled fabric fits perfectly with the other mottled fabrics in the quilt. It is a backing fabric that was on clearance. When I checked it to see whether I needed to piece it, I saw that it was cut into two pieces. It was cut specifically for a certain quilt, but it works fine for my quilt.  It doesn't have as much excess around the width as I usually use, but I tend to use a lot and there is enough if I am careful.

Day 3: 31 Day Blog Challenge

Random picture of the day: Some texture and pattern picture from January 2018.

Day 2: 31 Day Blog Challenge: Circles

A random quilt picture selected from January. These are On Ringo Lake blocks. The project is now a quilt top.

It's become a mystery of sorts, hasn't it.  With a standard title like Day 2, you have no idea whether it will be feast or famine today. Will you get just a random picture you have probably already seen before, or will you get to see some quilty eye candy  or anything worth a click?

Winner

The sun is out today, and it has energized me to make more progress on a quilt.  Today, the lucky winner is the Circles 365 quilt. You. I mean you are the winner, because you get to see quilting progress.  When I put 365 away for the gathering, I had plans to put the existing blocks together in rows, but I didn't have time. So now I have done that.  Before I could, I had to add a couple more blocks.

Circle Block 257

I had X's on the brain from the 70273 blocks and grabbed the first available fabric to make this block.

Circle Block 258

This bird circle was already in the box with the rows so all I had to do was put it on a background fabric and sew it down. I hope the wrinkled fabric doesn't make your eye twitch.

And with these two blocks and some coping strips, I put the three sets of rows together.  Here it is in multiple photos. As the rows get added, the blocks seem to get smaller and smaller in order to fit into the camera range.

Left side. The newest blocks wound up on the bottom left, in two separate rows. The quilt is not put together in chronological order.

  Left middle

Right middle

Right side

Whole quilt

 15 Minutes to Stitch

This week,  I made some x blocks for the 70273 project, two circle blocks, and put the rows of circle blocks together.  My progress as of Sunday was:

15 Minute sessions of stitching this week:  7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year:  283 out of 336 sessions
Success rate: 84% 

Linked to:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Day 1: 31 Day Blog Challenge: Photos

I have joined the  31 day blog challenge that Muppin is hosting.  At first it seemed like a silly thing to join a challenge like this during a busy time of the year, but then I remembered I was going to tell you about a feature I figured out on my computer anyway, and maybe I could recreate it in some way for you. The two ideas converged and so I joined the challenge.

Since you can figure out what a 31 day blog challenge is, let me tell you about the new-to-me feature on my computer. You know how you can set a background on your computer so you have a pretty, personalized image behind all the icons you clutter you desktop with?  Well, there is a way you can tell it to choose a picture from a particular folder.  I chose my quilt pictures folder.  It's the folder where I copy all the pretty quilts I want to make.  At one point, I had thought about asking people if it is okay for me to make the quilt or ask them where they got the pattern, etc., but then I realized that the folder was pretty much a collection of pretty things to look at, and since the folder grows everyday, there really isn't a way for me to make all these quilts.

The really nice thing about this feature is that every day, I get to see a pretty quilt that I really like and at least it gets its time to re-inspire me to get my quilting done so I can start it. Of course by the time I get my current quilt done, I've seen several other quilts to inspire me also, so the chances are, it is just a way for me to get to see a new quilt without making any effort whatsoever.

The way I am combining it is that I will go ahead and queue up some random quilt pictures (my own photos so I don't break any copyright laws or upset anyone), and you get to enjoy your very own random picture. I'm going to go ahead and schedule them to post every day, so you are guaranteed to get 31 days of posts.

Now you may notice that I have not been missing a word from the title: "writing". Well, there will be writing, since I have to come up with a blog title.  I am hoping to sneak in from time to time and tell you a little bit about my crafty day, so sometimes you will get more than just a random picture.  You may get lots of random pictures between all the words.

There are a lot of other people who are joining this challenge, so be sure to click on this link to see what they are up to.

Linked to:
Wandering Camera