Paved With Good Intentions - Starting Over

I had such high hopes for the month of August.  I planned to make myself accountable and work on THE LIST of WIPs sitting in the sewing room to make room for some new projects.  Well, naturally, things did not go according to plan.  As usual.

I was fairly productive.  I participated in the Think Christmas Blog Hop and made a quilt....

I did manage to get two tote bags out of the WIP pile...

I made 4 Swoon blocks....

I played along in the Bowls With Borders blog hop and I made two wall hangings...

I finished my Covered Journal for my partner in Super Swaps...

And a name tag for my partner in the RATZ swap....

I made my swap items for my partner in the Scrappy Bits swap...

And chose the fabric I'm going to send along...

And even made some more hexies for my GMFG quilt.

But I didn't touch THE LIST.

1.  Jelly roll quilt - top is finished; needs to be sandwiched, quilted and bound
2.  Fairy Tale Friends - ditto
3.  3x6 Bee Blocks - I have accumulated enough blocks to make this quilt!
4.  Citrus Quilt - I have 10 of the 12 blocks I need, so the plan is to make 2 more blocks, then sandwich, quilt and bind
5.  Granny Squares Quilt - I have 12 of 18 blocks I need, so I'll make 6 more blocks, then sandwich, quilt and bind (SQB for short!)
6.  String Blocks Quilt -  I have 40 string blocks, so that should be plenty, , so make the top, then SQB
7.  Bow Tie Quilt - I have 80 bow ties, again, plenty, so make the top, then SQB
8.  Bento Block Quilt - I have 40 bento quarters, again plenty, so make the top and SQB
9.  Breath of Avignon Quilt - I'll have to see where I am with this one, but I think I can get it done as well.

Not.  One.  Single.  Finish.

I guess the good thing about lists is that this is MY list, and I can do it or not do it as I choose.  So, all those things will remain on the list.  For now.  Maybe I'll do better in September.

Maybe.

Meanwhile,  I have to go make a dress.

It's not on THE LIST either.

But despite progress on the list, I'm linking up with Lily's Quilts Fresh Sewing Day.  Won't you join me?

Fun Mail!

It has been quite a while since I did a fun mail post, but there has been some fun mail coming all along.  I'm not sure where I left off, but here are some goodies that have come recently.

I'm still working on my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt blocks.  I've tortured the members of several bees to accumulate my GMFG blocks.  I figure I need 80 blocks and these 8 bring me to 64.  I'm getting closer!!!

I finally chose the color for the connecting hexies and ordered a bolt from Westwood Acres.  I'm not going to count how many of those I need - I think I'd be really discouraged.  I'm sure it's in the hundreds.  And all the same =( but I'll get through it.  And my friend has offered to help.  Yay for good friends!

Nope.  Not the one with the pin.  That one is just too bold, I think.  I chose 9900-24.  It's a bright yellow, but I don't think it will take away from the blocks. 

And I've gotten a bunch of the basket blocks for my basket quilt from the ladies in the Bee Awesome Bee. Many, many thanks to them!  These blocks have been sitting in the WIP pile for at least two years, so it's nice to finally see some progress on this one.  This is a finish-it bee, so I should be ready to put this quilt top together when I get the rest of these!!!  Yay!  I'm starting to get really excited about this quilt.

And in other news, I talked to the sewing machine doctor on Monday and Stella is ready to come home.  He even offered to come by my house and put the rest of her together.  He says when you know what you're doing, it doesn't take long.  I'm sure she looks much better now!

Woo-hoo!  I can't wait. 

Productive...

Despite all the anxiety of having a potential hurricane barreling down on us, I did manage to turn off the Weather Channel long enough yesterday to finish up some quilty items.  I had planned to sew all weekend, but Saturday, when the storm looked like it was heading directly for us, husband went into the panic preparedness mode and we ended up shopping for things like bread, batteries and plywood.  Once the storm began to turn to the west, things got a lot more sane at our house, and I realized that turning off the tropical updates every 10 minutes was a healthy thing to do.

First, I made this pinwheel notebook cover for the Super Swaps covered notebook swap.  The pinwheels were the bonus HSTs from the mini-Swoon blocks I made for the 3x6 bee a couple of months ago.  I love it when things I might otherwise throw in the trash become useful and beautiful in another project.  It makes me feel so - thrifty!  I used a standard composition book for the journal.  They are inexpensive, easy to find, and a pretty nice size to write on.

Then I made a name tag for my partner in the RATZ (Rapid and Tiny Zakka Swap).  I thought I signed up for this swap and was perplexed when I didn't receive a partner.  I had just about reconciled myself to not playing this round, which wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen, when the swap mama emailed me and said that someone else was left out too, and asked if I wanted to partner up.  Naturally, having a chronic inability to say "no", I agreed.  This is a sneak peek at the name tag I made for her.

And finally, I finished my Raspberry Sundae Bowls with Borders mini quilt.    I took the photo with my phone, so the colors aren't perfect.  Overall though, I'm pleased with how it turned out.  Raspberry Sundae is currently winging her way to Germany, which is somehow fitting, considering that is where the pattern came from.  How ironic is that?

So, all in all, despite the distraction of the weather threat, I feel like it was a pretty productive weekend.

Announcing Bowls with Borders Blog Hop Winner

The Kitchen is the {Heart} of the Home Mini Quilt

Thank you to all who visited during the Bowls with Borders Blog Hop.  Wasn't that fun?  So many fun bowls out there.  Isn't it fascinating how everyone can take the same pattern and come up with something unique and different?  If you haven't been hopping along, hop on over to Just Let Me Quilt for a complete list of the blogs participating in the hop.  There are something like 165 bloggers participating!  Special thanks to Regina Grewe for the use of her pattern Piling Up!  There's still almost a week left, so make sure to come back often.

I had a lot of fun reading and responding to everyone's comments.  It's fun how sometimes you seem to really connect with folks in blogland.  I really feel like I'm getting to know some of you very well and consider you friends.

Raspberry Sundae Mini Quilt

Meanwhile, we have a winner to announce.  I had thought that I wouldn't be able to do this until after work today, but here I am, so I thought I would go ahead and choose a winner, if the computer will cooperate.  This is about my 3rd try.  Here goes...  Drum roll (can you hear it?)  Mr. RNG chooses:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

83 

Timestamp: 2012-08-23 12:56:28 UTC

83.  Sheila August 17, 2012 2:56 PM

Great bowls and I especially love the wall hanging .thanks for sharing

Who has chosen the Kitchen is the {Heart} of the Home mini.  

And I've decided that I really want to choose two winners.  This one is harder because I can't let Mr. RNG choose, since it has to be someone who chose Raspberry Sundae.  Let's see...

The first person who chose Raspberry Sundae was...

jatajomi August 17, 2012 2:08 AM

Loveley bowls, "Raspberry Sundae" is my favorite one.
Greatings from Germany ! :O)

I`m going to be a follower !

So congratulations, Sheila and jatajomi.  I'll be sending you an email later on today.  And I'll get to work this weekend finishing up Raspberry Sundae and get it ready to mail.

Thanks to everyone who played along.

Stella Part 1: The Unveiling

NOTE:  Today is the last day for the Bowls with Borders Blog Hop giveaway.  I will choose the winner tomorrow after work. 

So if you read this post, you will know that I spent part of my vacation this summer at my sister's carefully packing my grandmother's treadle sewing machine to ship it 3000 miles from Seattle to Florida.  I've decided to call her Stella.  A fitting name, I think, since that was my grandmother's name - her original owner.  And Stella Singer sounds pretty sweet.  It has a kind of old - timey charm, don't you think?

I hope you will find this post interesting.  I was actually kind of thrilled to remove Stella from her cardboard prison.  She has, after all, been given free reign up til now.  But she needed to be protected on her long journey.  Lots of hazards for a single girl traveling alone on a cross-country trip.

I'm sure that my sister thought thinks I am crazy, wanting to transport Stella such a distance, but she was a wonderful sport about the whole ordeal, and with her gift for research and her aptitude for all things spacial, came up with the perfect plan.  I didn't take very good photos of the packing, so I'm going to be very detailed in the un-packing.

First, there is the box.  It's a Home Depot medium shipping box cut to size.

Lots and lots of foam insulation in this box.  We used 1 inch construction foam for most of our packing material.  My sis is great with the hacksaw cutting the pieces to just the right size. 

And some styrofoam insulation.  Lynda cut it to fit perfectly.  See?  I told you she's really, really good at this stuff.  Doesn't it look tidy?

And underneath all the insulation is some polyester quilt batting.  Neither one of us use this stuff any more. 

And some high density upholstery foam - with a Target shopping bag thrown in for good measure.  The Target bag is holding the foam around the wheel, while the other miscellaneous bag is holding the foam around the machine.

And so it begins.  I pulled out the packing materials one by one.

And created quite a mess.

Until I got her alone in the box.

There she is, still shrouded in her most protective layers.

Lots of protective foam around her sensitive parts.

And a special piece of foam to protect the spindle.

And now she's just left with her "cast" as my friend called it.

Two layers of foam underneath her to protect her bottom.  Yup, she's pretty dirty.  But she's been sitting unused for at least 30 years and sitting in my sister's garage for 3 years.  I'd probably be dirty too.

We cut special holes in the foam so her gears wouldn't break.

There she is - free of all her restraints.  Now she's off to the doctor.

I was totally excited when he gave me the estimate:

$58 for the cleaning, including the outside.  (While you should never use WD-40 inside a sewing machine, apparently its a great cleaner for the cast iron outside.  Who knew?)

$6.95 for her new belt (a very inexpensive fashion accessory, I believe!)

$.95 for the rubber piece on the bobbin winder.

For a grand total of $66 plus tax.

Far less expensive than I thought she'd be.

Unfortunately, with WH unable to help me put the cabinet back together, it may be November before I get her all assembled.  But I've made a great start, and I'll be content with that.

For now.

Swooning Along

Note:  You have one more day to enter the Bowls with Borders giveaway.

I spent Saturday swooning.  No, I wasn't ill - haha!  I was making Swoon blocks.  They are really not difficult, but they are a little tricky.  It's easy to mess up if you're not paying attention.

You know how with some block patterns once you "get it" you can just whiz along and put the pieces together and make perfect blocks?  I can't do that with Swoon.  I need to keep the instructions right there where I can see them.  I pin them up on my spool rack (a straight pin in a spool of serger thread makes a great bulletin board!) right above the sewing machine and look at them for every step.

The swoon pattern is all rectangles, squares, HSTs and Flying Geese, so the components aren't hard.  But somehow getting them in the right order baffles me.  I have found that once I finish all the HSTs and Flying Geese, if I lay them out in stacks and in sewing order next to the sewing machine it's easier to put them together correctly.  The 4 corners of the swoon pattern are all the same, so I stack them up and sew them assembly-line style.

Here are all those pieces in the above photo stitched together.  But one thing that blew my mind is that it is upside down for the next step.  I put several together wrong and had to take them apart.  Yes, my seam ripper is my {best} friend.  =P

It only takes a moment to flip the stack around so that it is "right side up", but boy did it help me.

Four blocks down.  Eight to go.  I'm swooning along.