Midweek update: part 1

I started writing this at the end of last week but got sidetracked, so firstly here is Friday's post:

Design Floor Friday

Some quilters have a design wall - a vertical cloth surface, often made of flannel, that quilt blocks can cling to or be pinned to, and there is a weekly blog link to Design Wall Monday to talk about what you have on that "wall". I have the flannel, but it has not yet been deployed in our new home so I am still working with the "design floor".  One problem with the design floor is that it can't be left in place as it is in our family lounge so I usually clear my WIP away and replace the coffee table before everyone else needs to use the room later in the day, another is that the cat loves to come in and rearrange the pieces, a bonus is that it makes me sweep and vacuum that room before I put all those hours of work down on the (past its best) parquet flooring. Both a nuisance and a bonus is that the DF is on the main floor and I sew in the basement, this means I have to remember how the blocks were arranged (my phone camera is a big help here) but I do get some, much needed, exercise going up and down the stairs.

The first 3 blocks of En Provence

My "helper"

Progress by the end of Friday

I treated myself to two new quilting books last week and they arrived on Thursday.

The one on the left turned up on a blog post I found when searching for ideas for the future setting of my Dresden plates, the other caught my eye as I wanted to qualify for Amazon's free shipping because two books are definitely better than just one and I love trying to use up all my little scraps, after all even those corner triangles we trim off were bought and paid for :)

Alphabet Soup - or a post full of TLAs

In 2016 I am aiming to move things from my UFO list to my completed list - in this instance a UFO is an UnFinished Object as at 1st January 2016.  To count as a UFO the project has to actually have been started in some way, i.e. at least some cutting and/or sewing must have been done.  This means a WIP* at the beginning of the year counts, but PIGS, PITs & PIWs don't, nor do USOs or WHIMs.  My UFO count at the start of the year was about 15 and I would like to get at least one completed each month.

This week I managed to complete a UFO from 2013, unfortunately this is not my oldest UFO, but it is now quilted, bound, labelled and has a hanging rod fitted so I can display it when I decide on where it will look best.  This was a class project from a workshop I took in October 2013 with Jenni Dobson.  The central panel was a joint exercise with another of the ladies taking the class.  I think I may yet replace the letters in the word "contrast" with black fabric, but I shall let that idea mature for a while.....  However it is finished and ready to hang so I have completed my OMG for March!

Of course having completed a UFO I didn't pull out the next one to work on, oh no, I started a new project instead!  This time an elephant quilt for my grand-daughter from Quilter's World magazine Spring 2016 issue.

I am using up pink fabrics for the elephants, many of which are from the scrap box and some yellow scraps for the ears.  The stash and scrap raid yielded sufficient fabrics for fifteen pink elephants and by the end of the weekend the five small ones had been assembled and placed on my design "wall" aka my ironing board.  All the pieces for five medium and five large ones are cut and ready to go.

A bonus this week has been some warm sunny weather meaning I was able to get out into the garden and carry on clearing last autumn's leaves from the flower beds and my plant pots where they have helped shelter my herbs from the coldest winter weather. The herbs were all pushed up against the wall of the house to aid their survival but now they have been moved out into the open to benefit from the rain we are promised next week.  My spring bulbs are also looking good, some of the crocuses are blooming and the daffodils are pushing up leaves and flower buds.  Now I have to be patient before planting my vegetable seeds for the year - last year I was a bit too impatient and the seedlings were getting too big before it was safe to put them outside, this year I shall hang on a bit longer before starting them inside.

This week I am linking up with:
Design Wall Monday and
Oh Scrap!


* WIP = work in progress
PIGS = project in grocery sack
PIT = project in tote
PIW = project in waiting
USO = UnStarted Object
WHIM = work hidden in (my) mind
TLA = Three Letter Acronym :)

Keeping track

This year, now things are somewhat more settled, I am going to take a leaf out of Nann's (With Strings Attached) book and try to keep track of how much fabric I use over the year by counting up on a month by month basis.

As do most quilters, I have a stash of fabric acquired over the years, some with a particular project in mind (not necessarily started), some because it was just right for a current project (and now there are left overs), some received as a gift or in a swap, some because "it was bargain" and some simply because I liked it. My intention is to "shop the stash" before heading out to the quilt shop for more fabric, which may or may not be successful, I tried it last week and still didn't have what I needed, so went out and bought 5 new FQs which don't count in the accounting because I bought them last year!

I also intend to create an ongoing list of completed quilts, some of which are already flimsies (quilt tops ready for sandwiching and quilting, some are complete collections of blocks waiting to be sewn into quilt tops, some are just a few blocks needing more to be made and some are only ideas or uncut fabrics.

First up to be worked on is Circle in a Square, which I started in a class in the Bernina Connection in Phoenix AZ in December 2007.  The class handout, my chosen fabrics and a handful of completed blocks came to light in the Big Move and thanks to some excellent, and most appreciated, detective work by the shop owner and the designer I now have a photo of the finished class sample to guide me. Of course, I can't do things the easy way and am making a twin sized quilt rather than a wall hanging (hence the 5 FQs in the last week of 2015) but hope to make good progress over the weeks.  As of yesterday evening I have assembled all 77 blocks for the centre of the quilt.

Today I am linking up with:
Design Wall Monday