13 Finishes in 2013 - The Recap

Last January, I set a rather ambitious goal to finish 13 projects in 2013.  Call them UFOs or WIPs, or whatever, the truth is these quilts-in-progress were just languishing in a basket in the sewing room, taking up space and making me feel guilty.  Here was my original list:

 1. Jelly Roll Quilt - Finished March 9, 2013

2.  Fairy Tale Friends Finished - February 21, 2013.  Donated to Project Linus.

 

3.  3 x 6 Bee Blocks - I thought I had enough of these aqua & red blocks to make one quilt.  Turns out I had enough blocks to make two quilts.  I didn't quite get them finished to complete my May goal, but they were both finished by June 8, 2013 and both were donated to Project Linus.

4.   Citrus Quilts - I thought I had 10 blocks.  Turned out I had 48 blocks! so I ended up making 3 quilts and asking for a few more from the most recent round of the  3x6 bee so I could make one quilt a little larger.  These 3 were completed in August.  I have the final one on the list for 2014.  Two of these were donated to Project Linus, but somehow, I couldn't part with the third one. 

5.  Granny Squares Quilt.  These blocks were from a couple of online bees in 2011, so I had plenty of squares to finish this quilt. It's one of my favorites, in fact.  It's also the only quilt I've had the pleasure of quilting on a long arm (thank you, Marcy!)  This one was finished in April.

6.  The String Blocks Quilt  was finished in October. 

7.  The Bow Tie Quilt was finished in September.  I really had fun quilting this one.  I called the quilting motif a Double Daisy, but the ladies in the guild thought it looked like Sand Dollars.  Whatever it was, it is finished.   Yay!

8.  Bento Block Quilt - I finished this one in December.

9.  Breath of Avignon Quilt - I haven't made any progress on this one, so it will be tops on the list for 2014. 

 

 

 10.  Ari's anthropologie knock-off duvet cover was finished in April, 2013 as a graduation gift for Ari and her husband, Mitch.

11.  My Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt is really coming along.  I am actually amazed at the progress I've made on this one, so while it's not really finished, I'm not going to count this as a fail, either.  It's a great project for wintertime, since it's all hand-stitched, so I'm going to put it on the list for 2014 again and see how far I get.  I'm really pleased with my progress on this one.

12.  I have made 2 Weekender Bags from the leftover HSTs from the Swoon quilt, so I'm going to count this one as finished, July, 2013.

13.   I've made virtually no progress on my Basket Blocks quilt.  It's still sitting there in it's little zip lock waiting for some attention.  So this one is going to the top of the list for 2014.

There were a bunch of other finishes in 2013, and one day I will get around to figuring that out, but that's it for this list.  While I didn't get to everything, I'm not going to beat myself up about that.  Overall, I'm pretty pleased with what I did accomplish, and that's good enough. =)

I'm debating whether or not to try to do 14 in 2014.  Is that too much?  Especially considering that my WIP pile is considerably smaller than it was last year.  There are these two unfinishes of course - the Breath of Avignon and the Basket Blocks.  

And then there are a bunch of others.  Some have been sandwiched.  Some are just finished quilt tops. 

And a few are just unfinished blocks - or blocks yet to be made.

It will be interesting to see what quilty pleasures 2014 brings, won't it?

Lark Weekender Bag - Take 2

I finally got the room in some kind of useable shape, and since I was so behind, I decided to delay the "decorating" and get to work.  This is the second Weekender Travel Bag made with the bonus HSTs from the Lark Swoon quilt I made for my daughter - and I still have enough HST's to make a couple more bags - or something else (which is more likely!)

I decided on chevrons and pinwheels this time, with echo quilting on the chevrons and straight line quilting everywhere else.  The piping is the black texty print from Madrona Road.  Love that fabric - will probably cry when it is gone.

 Pinwheels on the pockets - green on one side...

Blue on the other...  And lots of dots.

 One of the things about making a bag for yourself is that you can add all the little features you want to suit your needs.  One of mine was to add a strap so that the bag will fit over the handle of my roll on when I travel.  Hated covering up the cute little pinwheel, but the pinwheel was done and quilted before I remembered I wanted to add the strap and I

wasn't. 

ripping. 

it.  

out.  

Sorry little pinwheel.  The good news is that it was my least favorite one...

I added a zipper pocket to the outside in addition to the pocket on the pattern to stash stuff I need to have handy, but don't want to lose.  I'm thinking maybe cell phone and wallet here.

I chose some Denyse Schmidt fabric I found on sale at Joann's for the lining, which was great because since I had surgery on Thursday, I didn't feel like driving across town to the drug store.    Then, I added an elastic strap to keep my computer case corralled inside.  Still need some wide velcro to make this work, but the guts are there.

So that's my new bag!  It will be my sample for the class I'm teaching at Derrel's in August - the 15th and 22nd.  If you want to do a whole cloth Weekender as shown in the pattern, you can just come to the second session.  For a quilted bag, you will want to come to both sessions.

And then I think it may become my favorite travel bag.

"W" is for WINNER of the WEEKENDER

Well, it's a good thing that SMS Giveaway Day lasts a whole week, or I would be in a pickle, wouldn't I?  When I got up last Monday morning, I had no idea what I was going to do for a giveaway prize, and being that I hadn't yet started sewing on Monday morning, I'm glad I had a few days to finish it.

Overall it was a really fun project and not at all the nightmare I had been led to expect.  I pretty much followed Elizabeth Hartmann's suggestions and took it slow and easy, and used a large (size 18) needle.  Since WH was out of town, I had lots of time to play on the sewing machine, so when I got bogged down with it, I worked on another project.  Consequently, I have made progress on several other projects in the process of making the bag that undoubtedly will become topics of future blog posts.

I really enjoyed reading everyone's comments.  If I didn't respond to your comment, it was because I was something of a ditz - I got so excited reading them that I forgot to respond, and once they were read, I couldn't figure out who I had responded to and who I had missed.   Thank you all for the kind words, for following the blog, and for following me on FB and Pinterest.  I hope that we can become good online friends.  Maybe I'll even get to meet some of you in person one day.

But now it's time to choose a winner.  I have to admit that I'm having a little trouble letting go of this bag.  This is the third or fourth time I have sat down to write this post, and each time I have gotten interrupted sidetracked.

But this time, I am going to succeed in posting a winner.  I asked Mr. Random, and he chose

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

84

Timestamp: 2013-05-12 20:09:29 UTC

Who is my friend and former swap partner, Mary,  and who writes one of the very first blogs I ever started following.

 84 Mary on Lake Pulaski  May 6, 2013 at 2:23 PM

I "like" you on Facebook.

Again, thanks to everyone who entered.  Mary, I'm off to email you right now.

Weekender Travel Bag #Sew Mama Sew Giveaway - FINISHED!

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I couldn't wait for "sweet light" to introduce you the Weekender Travel Bag I made for the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway.  (If you are entering the giveaway, please leave a comment on this post - comments left anywhere else, while oh-so-welcome, will not count as entries for the giveaway.)

As you can see, I used mostly Amy Butler Lark for the quilted outside panels of the bag.  I am actually really excited about these chevrons, you know - these were some of the "bonus HSTs" (I made the HSTs as I was making the flying geese - a suggestion I read somewhere - Flickr, maybe?)  I had left over from all those flying geese in Amanda's Swoon Quilt that I made her for Christmas.  You can read about the Swoon quilt here and here.   I really love creating things out of scraps.  It makes me feel so thrifty!  And I really had a blast creating this bag.  (And now that I've re-read the Swoon posts, I think I'm going to have a really hard time giving this baby away.  Luckily, there are lots more HSTs if I decide to make another bag.)  If you'd like to make one, I think Amanda still has some Lark in her shop.

Here's the other side.  While the color combinations are basically the same, the fabrics on both sides are different, partly because I didn't have enough of any one fabric, and partly because I thought it was a fun way to create the bag.  Making the bag wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.  The most time consuming part was quilting the outside.

Not a single wordy-dirty on this project, can you believe it?  A bunch of bent pins, but that was to be expected (I really have to get some of those quilting binder clips.)  And only two broken needles - one because I didn't screw the needle in tight enough and it came loose while I was sewing - oops!  The other because the needle I was using was too small.  In the instructions, Amy recommends a size 16 needle and sewing s-l-o-w-l-y.  I think she means it!  I didn't have any 16's, but I did use an 18 for most of the bag construction (after I broke the size 12 needle, of course), and it worked perfectly.  I used most of Elizabeth Hartmann's suggestions for the bag, including using cotton duck instead of peltex, and I really like the sturdiness and heft of the bag.  If I do make this bag again, I'll use this same idea. 

I decided to vary my chevrons a bit for the end pockets.  I kinda wish I'd thought of that sooner.  It's really fun!

I used texty prints as filler - and also because I thought it was really fun.  And the piping is a texty print I stole scavenged from Amanda when she made her Weekender last fall.

It has a double zipper...

And my favorite divided pocket inside - perfect for cell phone, keys, and other small objects you don't want to lose in the bottom of the bag.

I'm so excited about this project!  I sure hope the winner likes it!

Making her Swoon

One of the things I really enjoy about my iphone is that I don't have to wait until I get home from work to check my email.  Today at lunchtime, I checked my email, and I had several lovely comments about the Swoon quilt I made for my beautiful daughter and her husband.  I know that she posted it on Instagram and got over 200 "likes", which warmed my heart.  But today she did a blog post about her gift. And several of her friends stopped in here to tell me they liked her gift!  I am so glad they did.  It made me feel wonderful!

Those of you who may have read the blog recently know that I made Amanda a Swoon quilt for Christmas.  Or rather, I made the quilt top and put it in a box with the backing and a promise to send it to the fabulous Sarah for quilting.

We mailed it off to be quilted in early January, just days before Sarah gave birth to a darling little girl.  Ironically, I received it back the day her baby was born.

Sarah sent it back to me for binding, which I finished in a weekend - all 420 inches of it.  And I managed to get it mailed off again in a reasonable amount of time.  BD#1 had the quilt within a month of Christmas, despite the fact that it had to traverse the country twice!  (Itself a major miracle.)

I wanted this quilt to keep her warm.  I wanted it to show how much I love her and her dear husband and their adorable children.  I wanted this gift to bridge the distance between us.

So today, she posted on her blog about how this little gift made her feel.

She made me cry.  In a good way.

And that's the best part!

Souvenirs

So what kind of souvenirs do you bring home when you go on vacation?  This is what I brought home.  This stack is the result of visiting two of my favorite quilt stores and my daughter's home, which is really a quilt store in disguise.

I know I'm going to have a ton of fun with all this, if I can ever find the time to sit down and sew.

Best of all, this stack was on sale!

Happy quilting!