Finishes, Frames and Food, or Goals, Grace and Good

Update on July's ALYOF Goal and Finish Along 3rd Quarter.

Missed it again.

1.   Experimental Bar Mops for a top secret project. Three of four items finished.

2.   Finish my ALYOF goal for last month. Quilting as we speak

3.   Start on that Wedding Quilt I have mentioned before. Still waffling

4. Start and finish a project using my newly won quilting bounty. Fabric purchased and this will be done on my new-to-me toy!

Bittersweet Design's ALYOF Goal for August: The Wedding Quilt. 
Settle on design
Purchase Fabric
Cut

Start sewing.

Here are some things I finished or am working on this month.

Top Left: 30th Anniversary of meeting my husband at Diablo Canyon.

Top Right: Dish Mat #1. It was made with my experimental design and so far I am loving it.

Mid Right: Dish Mat #2 that was gifted to my sister to try out.

Bottom Right: Dish Mat #3 that is going to my son as a first post collage apartment warming gift. We leave for Bham this afternoon. The box holds his newly minted diploma. Hoping to make it by a frame shop while we are visiting. He needs to get this thing on his office wall!

Mid Bottom: My ALYOF June and July goal. I'm about half done with the quilting.

Bottom Left: My Star Challenge block. This was my first attempt at paper piecing. I will be doing more.

And now for my new toy!

This was offered for FREE by a member of my quilt guild. Thank you so much Diann! She is upgrading to a Long Arm after about 3 years of using this. It was gifted to her by her MIL when she upgraded. Someday it will be gifted by me. Will it be due to an upgrade or a this-just-aint-for me realization? Time will tell.

Location looks pretty formal doesn't it. 

Not long ago this room looked like this. It is the last pocket of traditional I have left in my home. In my heart I have never felt comfortable in a traditional setting. Augusta is just such an over the top traditional place that I tried to go with the flow for years. I rebelled about 10 years ago and started purging and replacing. I have only kept the dining room furniture because I had to have something to fill the formal dining space that is found in a majority of the homes in this area.

I had an epiphany a few weeks ago and came up with a great way to shuffle the various dining tables and chairs to transform this room from a "Sewing Room" back into a "Dining Room" for Master's Week rental.

We have double front doors so the Grace frame can be carted out the front door and stored in the garage in one piece. This is such a better solution than figuring out how to store a queen bed.

I have the formal furniture listed on Craig's List. I am going to look into finding a consignment shop. Right now the different pieces are scattered all over my house. I can seat six in my Master Bedroom.

I keep getting asked why I am not using it to quilt my ALYOF goal. Well, the frame's old owner had it set up in king and I have it in queen length. She gave me the king leaders but I do not want to cut them since they are the expensive Grace set and not homemade. I found a tutorial by Just So Olivia on making your own and have purchased the ticking. It's a serger project. I love using my serger!

I also purchased this adorable fabric at Hancock's to practice on. It was on the sale table and I could not have purchased muslin for less. 

Cupcake update.

Hubby made it in time for Key Lime Pie last week. 

Son #2 got to it before I did so I had to recreate it.

It had a slice of real lime on top and a yummy pie filling in the middle.I'm taking his word on that, I'm not a KLP fan myself.

We haven't had any cupcakes this week.

Grand Total: 15 (39 to go)

I just want you to know, I am not eating all of these!

Thanks for visiting!

Linking up with Lily's Quilts Fresh Sewing Day.

June Update, July Goals and Sewing Space #2

Where did June go?  I missed the mark on my June Finish Goal for A Lovely Year of Finshes.  My week long trip to Washington State sure did take a bite out of my creative time. It didn't help that I came home full of nasty things I inhaled on the plane, my son passed around an even nastier tummy bug and I totally forgot that I would have catch-up work at the office.  

Here's some things that I did get done or started:

From top left traveling clockwise...Red Bird from Heather Bailey's Birds and Branches, June's ALYOF quilt top (I added the boarder on 6/30 but no photo), border cuts and my Yellow Bird, iPad pouch attempt #2, 5 pouches for my WA trip, Sis and me on the way home from WA. Not pictured...my mending jag; Hubbies cycling jersey, Son #2's Chubbies shorts, my robe, and trimmed and serged some useless micro-fibre wash-clothes to fit my Swifter.

I also celebrated a birthday. I was born in 1960. I think my Sweetie may have shorted me 50 SmallCakes. I'll give him until the end of 2014 to make it up to me.

A Quilting first for me in June...I finally won something! Must have been the magic of my birthday month. Thank you so much Hema. I'm giving a sneak peek here but I will give it a full share a little later. 

My Prize!

Now for my July 2014 List of potential project:

1.   Experimental Bar Mops for a top secret project. If it works I will share. If it doesn't work...I'll probably share the failure anyway.

2.   Finish my ALYOF goal for last month. The top is complete with borders. I am still in the process of scribbling the back on graph paper. I haven't settled on a design yet.

3.   Start on that Wedding Quilt I have mentioned before. I have had another design change of heart. My goal is to at least have the fabric purchased by the end of July. I am giving myself a November 1st deadline since that is the original wedding date. Coincidentally, it is also my anniversary.

4. Start and finish a project using my newly won quilting bounty.

My July Goal is once again to finish completely the goal I set for June.  That would be project #2 in blue from above.

 Another Sewing Space share:

When I set up my sewing space after Master's 2013 I moved to the Rec/Bonus Room. Sorry, no photos of the setup.

I set up in that corner between the Dart Board and the Carom Board. The pool table was a great layout area until the guys wanted to play. The wool felt like to hang on to all the little bits of thread and fluff.

Then red leather chair and Ikea "Dave" was nice for handwork in front of the TV. How many "Daves" do you see in the above photo? Well, that's less than half of the number we own. We love those things. They are still available but they changed name. Too many name infringement lawsuits? They will always be "Dave" to us.

I stored my fabric and tools in that little black cabinet. But not everything. I still had things in the guest room. It's a long haul between these two spaces. More and more tools migrated over. It go pretty crowded.

I broke the area down for the stream of November and December visitors over the Holidays. I didn't set it up again. The next space has a bit of a sordid history. It started ugly, real ugly...

Linking up with Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday.

Linking up with Lily's Quilts Small Blog Hop.

Lovely Finish for June

Linking up with Bitter Sweets A Lovely Year of Finishes.


You can read about the birth if the quilt here.

I was a little optimistic about my design plans for this quilt but I had to scale it back to a more simple design. I think it would be best if I attacked my first value quilt with a pattern. At least with more pre-planning. 

This quilt came about as the result of a successful retail ploy...the messy markdown table ploy. Don't get me wrong, it's a great ploy and I don't regret falling for it. I have really enjoyed working with these fabrics. It was so exciting to find a few lovely fabrics in my stash that were not my normal style but that blended and enhanced my sale-table fabric find. Two were winnings from quilt guild meetings. I am a new member as of 2014 and I can't wait to share this quilt with them. 

I am the the only quilter in the group who leans toward the modern aesthetic. It is great to be accepted by this lovely group of talented ladies. They share the most amazing pieces.  

The fabrics can be seen in the photo below. The traditional star on the top right and the hand dyed piece on the bottom left.

Here is the layout I am going with. Well just over half since it won't all fit on my dining table. I really need to get cracking on a design wall soon.

Blocks or rows? I chose to go rows. It seemed to be the best choice to keep the layout straight without a design wall.

I am pinning the rows together now for the first pass. There are fifteen rows. I will add a border with a little extra detail to be revealed at the finish. Don't get too excited, it won't be that special, remember I am a novice at this.

Now for my linky goal:

This quilt is to be finished by the end of June. 

Thanks for visiting. 

May "A Lovely Year of Finishes"

• 

A Lovely Year of Finishes May link up

I did it! I finally finished the Man-Quilt. I've even tried it out a few times and the Flame Stitch FMQ makes it so comfy and soft. It is quite large for a lap quilt, 63"x74".  It is officially my largest finish to date.

Good thing I have this great wrap-around-porch because these photos had to be taken in the rain.

I sat in the chair on the right and listened to the Old Crow Medicine Show play Wagon Wheel at Lady Antebellum Amphitheater last night. How great is that. I got to listen to incredible live Bluegrass on my evening dog walk. We sit here and watch our community firework displays too. There are  benefits to living within a mile of an outdoor amphitheater and community park.

Front

The Back 

(I think I like it the best)

FMQ close up

This Flame Stitch FMQ makes this quilt move like liquid. It is so over the top cozy. I was afraid my over zealous FMQ style would make it stiff but I was wrong. I like this so much better than my Hounds Tooth quilt that has much sparser straight-line quilting. 

Progress pics: L-Additional yardage to expand the pattern to Man-Size and R-squared and ready to bind.

For more information about the history of this quilt please visit my original Post for AYofLF.