IMOB Sunshine Quilts

Some months ago I 'inherited' some fabric from the stash of a much loved, founding member of sunshine quilts when she passed away. Finally got it washed a few weeks ago, and have started makign quilts from it. Here are pics of the 5 that I've finished off so far. Have made a small dent in the fabric that I received, but still have many more to go I'm sure. =) Don't know when these will be quilted because things are crazy in grad school at the present time and will be for a year and half at least.........so they are just going into my tote of finished charity tops until I either have time to do them or someone else can quilt them for me.


Gratitudes:
1. Grad School is going well so far.
2. Extra hrs at work to help pay the bills.

Cross-Stitch Projects

One of the things I've been trying to do over the last year is to focus on getting UFO's finished. Last year I had just focused on working with quilting UFO's and on getting some of my many sets of blocks into finished quilt tops. Made a lot of progress on that and now have all my swap blocks into one large tote, down from two of them.

What I've ignored for years though is not only finishing my cross-stitch UFO's, but also doing anything with the finished pieces. Instead all I've done is leave them folded up and collected in three filled gallon sized ziploc bags. (Yes, i have a lot of finished cross-stitch work - 53 different pieces at last count.) Part of my problem has been I just don't have the wall space to take and frame everything and then hang it. Already have a bunch of stuff framed, but it is still boxed because I can 't hang it here in this apt. So have not known what to do with it.

One piece is now on a cross-country trip as the starting block for a quilting block robin. In going through stuff, I was reminded of a set of cross-stitch pieces that my parents had given me yrs ago - actually 3 different coordinating series of cross-stitch pieces they had picked up in Denmark when they traveled over there. The main focus of them are various mushrooms and I like them, but have never really known what to do with them.


I have had one in process also for more years than I can remember. Finally finished it off yesterday and am happy to not have it "nagging" at me to finish it. Picture is above. lol............. It will go with the other 7 that have been finished for years to wait while I finish off the remaining kits, and find the one that is among the land of the missing.... Meanwhile I have decided in general terms how I want to set them into a quilt (and you thought I'd do something different?). Just need to get the remaining kits finished so I can put them all in the same quilt. Didn't quite end up the way the graph showed the colors, but even tho I know that there are 'design improvements' in it, I couldn't tell you for sure where all of them ended up being. The two pics here are of the ones that have been finished for year. I've got one more of the small kits among the land of the missing that needs to be found so that I can finish it as well.

One lesson learned in finishing this off that will be applied to the other danish kits that I've got - I will set up a card of some sort to label the floss while i'm working on it......and the shades are very close to each other in some instances....not a good combination when unfinished for a long time! Pic to the right is the piece that I finished yesterday.

Gratitudes:

1. Snow from Thursday nite was almost melted yesterday...hopefully last nite's snow will be gone quickly too!

2. Extra hrs at work to help the income!

UFO Block finished....

Last year I took a workshop taught by Karen Stone on improvisational quilting. I love her quilts, and just couldn't resist taking the workshop. The project for the workshop is similar to the one you can see on this site, with the only real difference being size. The pattern she gave us is only 10 inches square. She also taught us how to design our own quilts using the same techniques that she does and I'm looking forward to trying that in the future.

In the 8 hrs of the workshop I finished piecing the first of four blocks that I'm planning for a wallhanging. The points are all paper-pieced and then stitched together. Baby rick was supposed to be used for embellishment of the block, but I couldn't find a color that i liked. The color I ended up with was not at all what I have started out thinking of. This one spoke to me, even tho it's a little bigger than I would have liked.....I figure it's a design enhancement! lol

Three more blocks are still to be made. And then I'll decide on how to set them.

Gratitudes:
1. "Quiet" weekend.....
2. One lab report done...one more to go for this weekend.

Finished a UFO today!

Finished off several projects today - two quilt tops for Sunshine, and a wallhanging made from block that I had received in a swap way back in 2003. They were well aged for sure! For some reason, blogger won't show the pic of the wallhanging any way but sideways......sorry about that.

the blocks I used in the quilt were chosen because they had relevance to my life to this point. There were two other blocks that I ended up using in different projects because they didn't have anything to do with my life. The blocks stand for:
San Antonio, upper left - I'm a native born Texan and proud of it!
Phoenix, upper right - lived in Phoenix for 30 yrs and Mesa for 3 yrs as child. Have many dear friends there that I miss a lot.
San Francisco, bottom left - I spent almost all of my school days in southern CA (Riverside) and was able to visit San Fran as a kid with my family.
Boston, bottom right - Loved living in the Boston area for 2 years while in Grad School at Northeastern University. Wouldn't mind living there again at some point.

Gratitudes:
1. Good grades on the 3 exams I've taken so far!
2. Gorgeous spring like weather at the present time - love it!

In Case Anyone Wondered.....

..........what kinds of things I'm doing in some of my labs for technology education. Basically the lab projects are the kinds of things that once we are teaching will be having the kids do. For example, in my teaching manufacturing technology class in the first few labs we've used the laser engraver, an injection molding apparatus, metal bending setup, among other things.

I'm enjoying it all and am glad that I'm able to be in this program. =)

Orphans and inherited stash....

Have made some progress in getting projects finished up....finished BD gifts for my parents. =) My dad's will be going in the mail no later than monday this coming week.

Have been working on finishing off some quilt tops for American Heros and Sunshine. Which has made it 'fun' this week to get around in my sewing room, since the floor in it is my design wall! For the American Heros top I started with leftover strips sets that I used as the center of star blocks. I then added some patriotic hearts that I had and a couple of orphan blocks to round out the quilt. I bordered the hearts to the same size as the stars to make it easier to put together. Finished quilt is shown above.

I've also finished one top for Sunshine and am working on a second one currently. Both of these started with fabrics I inherited from Sunshine's quilting angel's estate. More quilts to go before I finish off the fabric i have from her stash. Pics of the finished top, and the one in progress are below.







Gratitudes:
1. Temps have warmed up here!
2. Second semester is going well so far. =)