Cutting, cutting, cutting

Good morning, everyone!  This past weekend was very exciting and tiring for us.  Our son and daughter-in-law finally moved into their new home after everyone put in a LOT of work to make it ready.  If you're selling a house, please clean it before closing.  It's just rude to leave piles of trash in every room for the new owners to deal with.  I'd put up a picture of the trash pile, but it was too ugly.

Also, please take care of your pets!  Here's a story that will break your heart--not only did the former owners leave behind a bunch of garbage, but they also left their cat.  Seriously, they took off his collar and left him outside. Let me say that again--they moved (to another state) and left their cat outside on purpose.  It was so sad--the poor thing was batting at the doors, trying to get into the house.  The neighbors finally explained why.  What an incredibly cruel thing to do! Thankfully, the kids like cats and the cat seems to like them, so I guess he's a bonus that came with the house.

But now that that's finished, back to sewing!  I usually cut things on the weekend, but I used up all that time painting and cleaning carpets, so now I'm catching up.  Look at these great colors for the Roman Floors quilt:

These are brighter than the original floors, but they're not 500 years old.  I also made a sketch to decide how many of each color I needed and how they might be distributed:

The blank blocks are already made, not actually blank in the quilt!

Boy, am I excited to get started on this!  I went back to the quilt shop and bought several more yards of the navy batik so that I have enough for a couple of quilts, because I may or may not have made a sketch of another floor.

Yeah, we'll see what happens with that one.  I bet it would look great in a rose color instead of orange.

I also finished cutting all of the remaining pieces for the Friendship Star swap that I'm doing with friends:

Ziploc bags are a very useful quilting tool!

These are just bagged up and ready to go so that I can make up the stars quickly.  They don't take long, but having the cutting done makes it even faster.

Speaking of swaps. . .I let a friend talk me into another swap where we will swap 50 sets of 50 1-1/2 inch squares for a postage stamp quilt. There are actually about 60 people in the group, so everyone will get different scraps. I am saving 1-1/2 inch squares for a quilt, so. . .

This sounds awful to cut , but it really isn't!  And since I'm clearing out many of the scrap colors that we've already used for the rainbow scrap challenge, some of them had enough to cut 50 squares and will go to people who will appreciate them.  Plus I'll get different fabrics for my own quilt--already cut! And they're out of my bins, so I'm happy!  I have a few more to cut and then will sort them into identical sets.

And finally--I cut apart my Marquette fabric and started cutting pieces for that quilt.

Cutting that apart was hard since I can't get any more of it, but I guess now I've officially started that quilt!  I need to go find some more white on white, though, because I don't think I have enough yardage for the whole thing.

Okay, time to put the rotary cutter down and go sew something together!  It's hot today and will probably rain, so no guilt about not doing something else!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, and WIP Wednesday.

A little help from my friends

Hi folks!  How is everyone this week?  If you're like me, you are busy, busy, busy.  Why is it that there always seems to be a ton more work to be done when you get to be at home instead of at work?  I guess that housework expands when it knows you have time to pay attention to it.  Otherwise, I can't explain where all this dirt came from.

This week I mainly worked on the house and on my paper for the conference next week, but I also squeezed in some time to work on blocks for a block swap I'm participating in with some friends.  Here are my blocks for this month:

Well, they're kind of blowing around there, but they look okay.  Every month our fearless leader gives us colors to use for the different parts of the block, then we send them to her and she swaps them.  It's been a good experience.  Here are some of the blocks I've gotten in return:

A lot of variety there! That's the great part about swaps--seeing everyone else's fabric choices and interpretations of the block.  We only have one month to go and then I'll have a Christmas quilt to show off!

If you're interested, we're using this pattern, which is free: Santa's Rising Sun Quilt. You should know that these babies turn out great, but they take forever to put together.  At least they do for me.  Maybe I'm extra slow, but read the pattern and see what you think.

Now that that swap is winding down, I joined another one with my quilt group. Yeah, I know, nothing like obligations.  But these are friendship stars, with very few rules, and no month to month color requirements. There were several groups, like scrappy, batik, Christmas, etc.  For some reason, I chose solids.  What is it about solids that is drawing me in lately? Here is my first batch:

It was sunny and difficult to get a good picture of the pinks, so I tried to be artsy and put them on the grass in the shade. Well. The corner triangles are really a yellow green, which don't show up so well, but you get the idea!  One thing I discovered while making these (which was MUCH faster than the Santa blocks) was that the solids will show if you are even one thread off on the corners or the matching, which wasn't much problem but made me nervous.

That was my sewing week!  Hope you got a lot more done than I did! Everyone enjoy the weekend.  Stay away from the housework--like I said, it expands. Best to be safe and stay out of the way!

Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict and also Finish it up Friday. Come on over and have a look!

New projects

Hi folks! Is everyone snowed in? Oddly, we are not. All of our snow went south and east, which is okay with me, but I know some of you may not be very happy about it. Believe me, I can totally relate to how you're feeling. It's happened to us many times. The only thing to do is make some cocoa and wait for it to be over.

So, this weekend I cleaned my main sewing machine and changed the needle. I swear that I could fill a quilt with the garbage and lint I pulled out of that thing. How does that happen? I got all the buildup out and then oiled the machine and it is now very happy. After I finished that chore, I made these:

Happy blocks, though the blue ones still need squaring up. Some friends and I are doing a swap using this free pattern from Victoriana Quilt Designs. It's a very cute quilt, but the directions were hard to understand. At least I had a hard time wrapping my head around them. Plus, anybody else get really nervous when you're sewing for someone else? I was a wreck! But I think I did okay with it in the end. We'll see when I get everyone else's blocks.

I also pulled this out of the closet to start on it:

Isn't that a great-looking quilt? This is a BOM kit that I bought from someone who no longer wanted it long after 2008, which is the date on the pattern. Okay, maybe I bought it from her in 2010, which is now five years ago, but don't judge me. The whole time that this was in the closet I thought that it was a kit for a wallhanging, but lo and behold it's for a king size quilt! Which would make sense if I had actually paid attention to how much fabric was in there. So now I feel a lot better about paying more than $100 for it, but really dumb because I could have been using it on my bed for years.

I grabbed this block to start with, which is month 2. Don't those fabrics look yummy?

So, that's my new project! I figure if I can do a block a week or something I'll get one more thing out of the closet and have something pretty for the bed. I think there are 12 monthly envelopes. I really should have checked that before I decided to start it, but I was so stunned by the fact that it's a king quilt that I forgot.

One more project that I started this week involves this series of posts from Kimberly. I don't have a big stash, but I did pull everything out of the closet, which is how I got interested in making the new project to begin with. She has some interesting ideas. More on this as I go along!

Hope everyone stays warm and dry and that your power and water stay on. Whatever you are doing, stay safe. And make someone else shovel the driveway while you get some stitching in!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, and Let's Bee Social.  Be sure to stop by!