March accomplishments, April goals

March March.  I got my goals completed, although not much else.  Well, I bought fabric for several of the projects!  I went on vacation and my mother-in-law also quilts so we went to several fabric stores. :)

1. Quilt Sarah's next quilt.  Done!  I still need to do the binding though.

2. Quilt I-spy.  Done!  I don't have any pictures yet though as this also still needs a binding and some threads buried.

 3. Finish piecing Interlocking hearts and make a binding for it.  Mostly done.  The quilt is pieced and I've even started the quilting.  (Two rows out of seven are completed.)  The binding isn't all put together, but it's really close.  (And I still  have the rest of the night...)

I'll also try to get some work done on these:
4. make the wall hanging for office.  No progress.
5. pretend to work on scrap quilt.  Check.
6. finish green coasters. No progress
7. Aunt's throw.  No progress
8. Pillow for family room. No progress
9. Another wall hanging for upstairs. Well, some of this fabric got turned into a messenger bag instead.  I'm pretty happy with the change!

10. Quilt red quilt for mother-in-law.  No progress
11. Random triangles (finish by end of April). The HSTs are trimmed and ready to be sewn into rows.  I might get my son to help with that...he's a great randomizer/chaos maker.

12. Fractured quilt. I got the fabric!  I am really excited about it.

13. Jeweled floors.  I got some fabric!  I got it at two different stores thinking it was the same pattern, but it isn't.  I like the one on the top the best...we'll see what I end up doing.  The red and dark blue might end up going towards a different project.

14. Picture quilt (finish by Christmas). No progess

15. Write a pattern for interlocking hearts.  No progress.

Addition #1: Baby boy blanket.   I got some fabric.  This is my first precut pack...I was hoping to find some charms that I liked but the stores didn't have a huge selection of them.  Also, the actual fabric is much brighter than how it appears in the picture.

source: Fat Quarter Shop

For April...my three biggest goals need to be finished by the middle of the month.  I think I'll be able to do it, but it might be a little tight.  But then I'll have plenty of time to flit between other projects!

1. Bind Sarah's quilt.  (This shouldn't take long.)
2. Bind I-spy and bury threads.  (There are a lot of threads to bury, but it still shouldn't be too bad.)
3. Finish Interlocking hearts.  (If all goes to plan, I'll have a few extra days before this is due.  Hopefully.)

I'll also try to get some work done on these:
4. make the wall hanging for office.
5. pretend to work on scrap quilt.
6. finish green coasters.
7. Aunt's throw. 
8. Pillow for family room.
9. Pattern testing of some numbers.
10. Quilt red quilt for mother-in-law.
11. Random triangles (finish by end of April). 
12. Fractured quilt.
13. Jeweled floors.
14. Picture quilt (finish by Christmas).

15. Write a pattern for interlocking hearts.

16. Baby boy quilt from jelly roll.

17. April Simply Solids block.

18. Think about another baby quilt

Looks like I have plenty to do. :)

Linking up with Fresh Sewing Day and Just Three.

quilting pattern

Are you sick of this quilt yet?  I need more advice though.  And I like polls. :)

I'm going to be quilting it with a dark grey thread.  I'd like to do a pantograph because I don't have a lot of time to finish it, but do you think that is going to detract to much from the hearts?  Otherwise I could do a FMQ loopy meander.

Is a pantograph ok for this quilt?

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

Iron

I'm looking for a new iron since my old one's auto shutoff doesn't work any more. I picked one up yesterday, but it was heavy and after the auto shutoff activated the only way to get it to work again was to replug it into the wall.

I'm looking for something cheap ($30ish), with an auto shutoff, and not too heavy. I might get the same one that I had, but thought I'd ask and see if anyone has one that they like.

A bag

I thought that I had plenty of bags.  But then I decided that I wanted a small messenger bag so that I could carry some baby essentials without having to carry the whole diaper bag.  Since I didn't have one that fit the bill and I did have some beautiful fabric waiting to be used, I decided to make my first bag.

I got the pattern from mmmcrafts (for free!.  I used some great fabric that I won in a giveaway from Jessica at Quilty Habit.

Front

Back

One of the things that I like about this bag, besides being really easy to make, is that is has a distinct bottom. 

I added an extra pocket to the inside, since I figure that too many pockets are better than not enough.  I'll also admit...the inside wasn't finished by the time I wanted to use the bag.  So I used it without the inside in place and the extra strap length stuffed in the bag.  I figure that it gave me a chance to check out the strap length before committing to it.

housekeeping

It seems as though it is time for some housekeeping due to the announced death of Google Reader.  You can probably ignore the rest of this post.

Option 1 is Bloglovin.  I (very briefly) looked at it, but it seems like you can only see the first part of all the posts.  I really like seeing the whole thing at once and would rather quickly scroll through stuff I'm not interested in.

But I do have a Bloglovin account now and in following everyone else am claiming my blog.  I also added a button on the side. (Edit: apparently I have no idea how to claim my blog because it doesn't seem to be working.  I'm going to try one more new post...sorry!!...and then giveup.)

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

 
The other option I've seen is feedly.  So far I like this one better, but I've only been working with it for about five minutes.  It imported all the "liked" posts from reader that I haven't got around to filing or replying to yet.  I can see the whole post right away. The only thing I'm not sure about is if there how people follow you once Reader is gone.  Does it link with GFC?  Do you just have to add the website manually?  Is there a button that I missed that I should add to my webpage?

Giveaway results

First of all, thank you to everyone who commented on my giveaway post.  I had good intentions of responding to everyone, but wasn't expecting that level of response.  So if I didn't respond to you, please know that I'm very glad that you commented and, if you're following, thanks for following!

Here are the results of the least used colors.  Brown won hands down, but orange was up there too.  I thought that purple was going to be higher and was surprised that pink/red was so high.  Pink and red are used for baby girls and in so many holidays that I thought they'd be pretty low.

Congrats to Michelle at Purl Buttons for winning the giveaway!  She was randomly chosen number 201.

WIP Wednesday

Hey, I'm finally joining in on a WIP Wednesday again.  It's been a while because most weeks I feel like you've just seen what I'm working on or I don't have any substaintial progress to report.  But this week will be a little more interesting!

To start with, Sarah's next quilt is on the quilter and getting meandering stars.  I was really nervous about the thread selection as it looked kind of green, but once it's on the quilt it doesn't look green - just nice.  I have one of six rows done and have a goal of getting one row done every two days.

I've also done the horizontal sashing for the heart quilt.  I love how this is turning out.  The problem is that they aren't all the same width though, so I'll need to do some creative vertical sashing.  I have a few ideas of how to do it floating around in my head, but if you've ever encountered something similar I'd love to hear your solution.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

Blog Hop Party

I'm joining today with many other bloggers in a giveaway blog hop. Thanks to Michelle for organizing it, and to see the other blogs you can go here!

Here are some of the things that I've been up to lately:

Clockwise from upper left: map quilt, Adding up nicely, Sarah's quilt, Grandma's quilt,
Interlocked Hearts, Duvet, in-process HSTs.

And on to the giveaway...I have a charm pack of Kona dark solids to give away.  Ahh.  I love solids.

There are two ways to enter.  1) Leave a comment.  Any comment will do, but if you would like a topic how about the color that you find yourself working with the least. 2) Follow, or become a follower, of my blog.  Please leave a second comment.  I will choose the winner on the 15th of March.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope that you enjoy the hop!

Duvet - finished!

The duvet cover is (finally) finished!  It even comes with pillowcases.

I'll admit, while this started out fun, I was really ready to be done with it.  One reason is that I didn't double check the dimensions and had to add some borders.  While I'm happier with a finished product that fits, it took extra time.  Also, the mint green in the duvet matches nothing in my house.  In fact, it clashes with most of the walls, so I thought the colors looked off most of the time.  I finally saw it with only a white background as it was drying and thought that it looked nice.

See the lovely double border?

I based the pattern on Lawn Chair from the Moda Bake Shop.  The duvet is for my parents, and I remember helping my dad redoing the stripping on our lawn chairs when I was younger.  After several years we finally had enough extra stripping so that I could have a chair were none of the strips were the same.  I know, it's the small things in life, right?

And who can forget about the back?  I ended up using pretty much all the brown that I had...at the very end I was putting small pieces together to get the last border.  My biggest pieces now are maybe 2.5"x5" if I'm lucky.   Anyway, I really like the back.

Linking up with Whoop-whoop Friday, LAFF, Finish it Up Friday, Quilt Story, and Freemotion by the River.

Toys

I lost track of time, but my son played with spools for a long time. I think it means I should be quilting more. :)

hearts - a poll

There are two different possible layouts for my hearts.

 Rainbow:

Slightly mixed up:

I think I like the mixed up better, but think doing a rainbow would be cool too.  What's your vote?

Which heart layout?