New Commission

And the next commission has come in as of this morning. 

I've found my inspiration for the figures, and believe I have the stencils I need to make the lettering....where they are and finding them, well that may be a different story...lol.

I'll pull yardage for the background.  3 FQ's or equivalent should be plenty for the remainder of the elements - red, light blue and white.  I plan on using tone-on-tone fabric types for this.

I should have most if not all of the fabric needed to make this already in my stash, so I'll hunting for it today after I get home from work. 

The customer really hopes to have it before her DIL has her baby the end of September or beginning of October.  So my plan is to have most if not all of it done by the end of next weekend so that it can be finished and into the mail before the end of September. 

Now to not get distracted by too many other things so that I can keep to the schedule!   I'm hoping this leads to other referrals and commissions.

Gratitudes:
1. For friends who refer customers to me through a variety of means

2. For a stash that allows me to take on jobs with short deadlines w/o having to stress over how I'm going to get the fabric needed for them.

Finished Top

Finished off the snail this weekend.

This was made with 2" finished squares, all cut from scraps.  There are 30 rows and 21 squares in each row for a total of 630 squares in the quilt.

This one will be finished and sold to help pay bills off.

Didn't see a real difference in the bags of green scraps but at least they close now....lol.

I'm thinking that the next scrappy critter I make may be done with some of the very large pile of black scraps (kona) that I have.   But then again I may change my mind........

Gratitudes:

1. Temperatures have finally cooled down

2. Had a great time seeing friends last week.

Scrappy Goodness......

Sewing before and after work I've been able to make progress on the current scrappy critter quilt and it is finally to the point where you can tell what it is going to be. 

Only more7 rows left to add to it and it'll be done.  I

I've also started the basting/quilting process on the flamingo.    You can see that I've got the quilt draped over my little cutting table (24" wide by 36" long").   I've got about 30" by the width of the quilt basted and waiting to be quilted.   Once that is done I'll baste more of it and then quilt that part.   Will be cross-hatch quilting it.

Once both of these are done I plan on raiding all of my binding scraps to make scrappy binding for them.

As I get closer to finishing the top for the snail, it's time to think about what kind of critter I want to work on next.   Any ideas?

Gratitudes:

1. It was a wonderful 62 degrees outside this morning when I left for work!

2.  Dinner out tomorrow night with a friend from England is on the plan....woohoo.....

And the winners are.....

And the winners of the copies of Vol. 14 of Quilts from Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks are -

Elaine, Chris B, and Grace T.    I've emailed them and am waiting to hear back from the with their mailing addresses.   If I don't hear back then I'll draw another name.

Gratitudes:
1.  Payday finally got came for me

2.  The temps here are finally cooling off!

Weekend Progress

I had a great time sewing and doing other related quilting related activities over the holiday weekend.   First thing up was to actually clean in the sewing room because it was driving me nuts, not to mention it was getting hazardous to get to my thread totes.

Still have stuff that didn't sell on ebay to get rid of but I've made a lot of progress and it looks much better than what it did.

This is what I pulled out of the brown scrap basket on the shelf of my cutting table.   Yes, it was overstuffed!   And there were two final bags of scraps from the row-hopping as well.  All that is now in their proper bags and in the scrap totes........and I have no more room in them so I need to sew more, and sort thru them to get rid of more.

One of the projects I worked on is actually for me - I know shock of shocks...lol.   All blocks are now finished for my hankie butterfly quilt.  I used 8 hankies in the blocks.

The center block is a very lightweight linen fingertip towel that I folded to fit the block and then appliqued down.

Closeup of one of the completed blocks.  The grey fabric it is resting on is a mottled grey that i'll be using for the sashing and border.   Will bind in more of the green.

Backing will have 4 more hankies that didn't work for butterflies on the front appliqued to it.   One of them I'm going to send off to an online friend to embroider the label onto.   Will have to back it with some fusible interfacing to make it work for the embroidery.

 I then added the top and bottom borders to this quilt.   Thinking about adding a final border around it to add a little more size to it.

And after cutting a bazillion 2.5" blocks from my green scraps with no discernible difference made to the amount of scraps that I have, I've started piecing the next critter quilt for sale.   This pic shows the first 16 rows together - halfway done.  from here up is a mainly the WOW background, so it should not take as long to piece as this part did.   (Some of my WOW's are in strip-sets for faster piecing.)

I started with 3 stacks of the green squares that were almost 3" tall and stacks of WOW's in squares and strip sets and am now down 1 stack of the green and have made a dent in the WOW's.   But have enough cut for another quilt.

Gratitudes:

1. Lots of visits with friends coming up this week and next with friends from Austin and England being in town

2. For a dentist who will let me reschedule appts so that I can see friends who are in town only over night.

Block 8 - Colette Has Been Released

Block 8 of the Teddy Bear Block-of-the-Month has been released.

Meet Colette who is dressed in her new school dress and eagerly waits to go to her first day of school.

This block is sized to work for a 10-12" block.

The block can be downloaded from here on Craftsy.

Have fun with it!

Gratitudes:
1. Abundant design inspiration to keep me thinking and planning for future designs

2. For finishing up projects and being able to send them off to their new homes