Finished - countdown and rocket

I have the countdown and rocket finished and hung!   My son's room as a stars and planets theme.

See the little ball above the hanging?  That's Pluto.  It's supposed to be on the other side of the house, but I wanted to keep all the planets in his room.  (Also, the box that the planets came in said on the outside "new and updated information for Pluto!" but I couldn't find it.  The leaflet still said it was a planet.)

The numbers were paper pieced as a tester for Meadow Mist designs.  You can find them here. The binding job on this was horrible.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, but you can see that there are big lumps in the corners. 

I mostly quilted it with meandering stars, but I also put in a few yellow accent stars.  There are also some red flames quilted in the flame section, but they're harder to see.

Here it is with his star quilt.

I wanted a rocket at the bottom of the countdown, but couldn't find one.  So I designed it myself.  If you're also interested in it, you can get it here.

Joining with Whoop-whoop Friday, Link a Finish Friday, and TGIFF.

WIPping along

I feel like I have made some great progress this week!  Woo-whoo!

I finished quilting the borders of the T-shirt quilt and am finishing up the binding.

In a moment of whimsy (i.e., 10 minutes before bed time), I changed my thread and started the Charming quilt.  (The strips are layered on top of each other...they're really all the same size.)

I continued the 1-up quilt, turning 8-rectangles into 16-patches.  This is one side of a cloud.  My points aren't lining up super awesome, but they're still turning out pretty good. 

 And these are the rest of the pieces.

Joining with WIP Wednesday.

AQS quilt show

Today I went to the AQS quilt show in Grand Rapids.  All by myself.  I'll admit, while it's fun to go with other people it was also a lot of fun to go by myself.  I could go at my own pace...sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly.  Most of the quilts were stunning.  This year I especially enjoyed the guild challenge section and the miniatures that were on tour from a museum in Kentucky.

Then I started going through the vendors.  It's actually rather overwhelming, and I almost saw myself going through the whole area and not getting anything.  But then I reminded myself I had some goals, the main one being to find a good sky.  It's for a baby girl so it couldn't be too blue.  It's going to be paper pieced so it couldn't be too patterned.  It's for a baby so I didn't want it too white.  The clouds I found were too directional.  I found one that I really liked, but the texture was wrong.  I finally found something at a booth that always catches my eye as they have great ombre fabrics.  One of the ombres might have found it's way into my basket.  During my searches I also found some blue snowflakes to match the red and grey flakes that I recently picked up.

WIP: cutting!

I've been doing a lot of cutting the last week or two.  One reason is that's just the step a lot of my projects are at.  The other reason is that we've been visiting with family and so it is a nice thing to do while still being social.

I have cut all the pieces for the 1-up quilt (top left), for Charming (bottom), and have started cutting them for my aunt's purple quilt (top right).

I've also sewed some of the 1-up pieces together...probably about 2/3 of the pieces are now in four patches actually.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

Yarn

I haven't done much with yarn, but my sister-in-law makes a lot of things with yarn.  Since she was going to be visiting us during her birthday, I thought it would be fun to get her some "good" yarn.  But, I had no idea where to start.  Luckily, Laura of Little and Lots was happy to direct me!  (We also have a mutual friend, which I think is pretty cool.  The world can be a small place.)

I ended up with some orangish yarn.  I think it's really pretty and I hope she likes it too!

July accomplishments, August goals

July ended up being a little odd.  I didn't finish my main goal, which I normally can do, but did get several other things done.

1. Finish the T-shirt quilt. Well, I just got the quilting started.  I decided to piece the back, and that took longer than I was expecting.  I also forgot to order the thread in time, so had to wait a day or two to start quilting until that showed up.  This will end up on the list again for August.

2. Make the July Simply Solids block and the tutorial for the August block.  Done!  One bee block already arrived in the mail for me and I'm excited to see the rest.

3. Finish the castle quilts.  Done!  These were almost done in June; I just had to finish tying up some loose ends (literally :) )

4.  Finish countdown and rocket - Done!  But since I finished it tonight, I don't have final pictures yet.  Here's the rocket part.  (And I know the binding is terrible.  I'm not sure what happened at the corners, but didn't care enough to start all over.)

5.  Quilt the fractured quilt. Done, although I haven't posted pictures yet.  I even have the sleeve put on it.  We decided on rearranging our living room a little bit, so I'm waiting until that is all done to officially hang it up.  In the meantime, while I was trying to have a photo shoot my son decided to step on it.  Normally that would be fine, but I may have freaked out a little when he did it on this one.  I don't want to wash it.

10. Pillow for family room. I have four blocks done and almost no scraps left.  The pillow I got is bigger than the scraps so I either need to make more scraps or sash it.  Any ideas?

15. Rocket pattern. I made the rocket after some big design changes as suggested by my tester.  I like the result, so now I just need to get the pattern set up.

August...even though I finished some things on the list, it didn't shrink.  It seems like it is baby season again.  I probably have one good friend per month having a baby.  I don't need to make quilts for all of them, but it means that I have added some more baby quilts to the list.

1. The main goal, for The Lovely Year of Finishes, is to finish the T-shirt quilt.  And actually finish it this month.

I'd also like to try really hard to:

2. Finish the rocket pattern

3. Cut out everything for the one-up quilt.

And the other things that are still on the list, hanging out:

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. Jeweled floors.
10. Picture quilt (finish by Christmas).
11. Charmed baby quilt (October)
12. Lost piece (almost whole cloth quilt)
13. Baby girl daisy quilt
14. Surprise mini (Christmas)
15. Baby paper airplane quilt
16. Baby quilt - undecided pattern/colors

A skinny quilt

It might be a little silly to put such a small quilt on the midarm, but I don't really have another good way of quilting it.  So on it goes!  It's about 5" wide and quilting it is going really quickly.  Probably less time than it took to pin the backing on.