Scrappy Sunday w/Stash

I'm making progress on my Scrappy Strip Stacks with only 2 more full blocks and 4 half blocks to go.  I need to dig into my odd length strip bin and cut some more as I've used up all of the dark/medium value strips I had from the swap. This is such a fun pattern (Strip Stacks by G.E. Designs) and makes a quick top. I've got my blocks laid out quickly to give you a peek.

Paris Flea Market by 3 Sisters is at the top of my all-time favorite fabric list so I've been watching for sales to add to my coveted stash. When Moda re-released this collection earlier this year I was thrilled! Hancocks of Paducah had a 20% sale not too long ago so I added these pretties.

A little bit of clicking around at Beaver Creek Quilt Company added these goodies to my pre-cut stash and pattern collection during a store wide sale.

I've got one stubborn stretch of wallpaper remains to go but it's going to take a while to get my upper body in motion today - think I'll have to do a bit of reading (my hands are too sore to do much in the quilting room except tidy up) first. Off to find my bottle of Aleve...

I'm linking up Scrap-Basket Sunday@Kim's Big Quilting Adventure, Sunday Stash@Finding Fifth and Design Wall Monday@Patchwork Times.

Oh My Aching...

Hands! Which look NOTHING like this at the moment.

Taking down wallpaper is an Evil Task.  After hours of work I am looking at this...

Little bits of stubborn wallpaper backing.  And this...

A skin of paste from the border adhesive.

A putty knife or rubber tipped gloves just do not work as well as fingertips to give those edges the nudge they need to peel off.  The ONLY thing I am thankful for is that I didn't paper the entire wall 11 years ago! And, I've already promised myself a paraffin wax manicure/pedicure as my Wallpaper Removal Reward.

Hopefully I will move on to spackling tomorrow and priming on Monday.

May Goal Setting

I've updated my sidebar with my May Goals. Basically I want to finish 5 UFOs (1 for every Friday in May), start a NewFO, catch up with "And Sew On" blocks for April and May, do my blocks for RSC13 (May is bright blue!), finish one WIP and get moved into my new quilting room.

I'm going to give my 2013 goal of learning FMQ a rest in May so I can focus on keeping up with my UFOs and getting my quilting room set up. In June I'll be ready to make it a priority again.

Two of my UFOs are lap quilts that just need binding - Shabby Strings and Watercolor Spring. Come Sail Away is a Project Linus top that needs to be quilted and bound. Thimbleberries Jacob's Ladder (wall quilt) is at the needs borders stage and Easter Stacked Coins (lap quilt) needs to be assembled into a top. All very doable I think.

Shabby Strings, Watercolor Spring, Thimbleberries Jacob's Ladder & Easter Stacked Coins

Come Sail Away

I'm choosing Shabby Strings as my finish for "A Lovely Year of Finishes".

Last night I was so sore from stripping wallpaper I could hardly move! The paper is coming off pretty well, but the border adhesive is nasty. This morning I went to town and bought some ZIF gel which is working better but still a lot of scraping going on. I'm hoping to have one clear wall by the end of the day and finish up on the weekend. The upside is that I am having ample time to think about what to put where!

I have a Pinterest board that is chock full of wonderful quilt rooms and fun projects if you have some time to kill or just enjoy looking at pretty things like I do.

First on my want list is a design wall and a large cutting table. I have my eye on this table as my prototype and will need to make a trip to IKEA and enlist a friend's husband who is a handy man to help me out. Isn't it great? 4 feet by 6 feet means I could baste most of my Project Linus quilts on it easily. I love the casters so I can push it against the wall when necessary. And, the storage! IKEA has all kinds of baskets, bins and even drawers that fit these shelves.

You can read all about it HERE at IKEA Hackers blog.

For my design wall I'm going to follow THIS tutorial from Cut to Pieces. I haven't decided if I'm going to attach it to the wall or just lean up against it. Our floor boards are kind of tall and the wall I want to use has a drop header so it's not a normal height wall.

I'd better get back to scraping!  I'm linking up to Nothing But UFOs in 2013@A Passion For Applique.

April in Review

It's time to say goodbye to April! We had more snow showers in April than rain showers but hopefully now we are on track for lots of green in May. It seems like the month flew by and I'm having a hard time accepting that we are 4 months into 2013 already.

UFOs:

1. Bright Blue Strings, 2. 9 Patch Novelty, 3. Scrappy HSTs, 4. Pastel Tulips

I met my goal of finishing 1 UFO each week which makes me happy. And, I finally faced my fear of machine applique so that finish is very satisfying!

QALs, NewFOs and Other:

1. April Crossroads Blocks, 2. April Showers Mug Rug Blog Hop, 3. April Birds in the Air Blocks, 4. Strip Stacks - Blues & Browns, 5. Strip Stacks - Scrappy, 6. Knit Scarves - 3 UFOs, 7. PIcnic from "Scrap-Basket Sensations" by Kim Brackett, 8. Colorwashed Hat Trick, 9. Wallpaper Stripping

Lots of new sewing went on in April and it was a nice change of pace from being totally focused on my UFO Collection. A snowed in Sunday had me pulling out my knitting bag and finishing 3 UFOs.  A LOT of my spare time was spent daydreaming about my new quilting room. The wallpaper is coming down and I hope to be priming and painting next week!

I also took the time in April to create my UFO Collection page on the blog and now I have even more motivation to keep those UFOs moving towards the Finish Line.

My April Goals ended up looking like this:

1-April Showers Blog Hop-DONE!
2-UFO#1 Nancy Halvorsen Table Runner-DONE!
3-UFO#2 Bright Blue Strings-DONE!
4-UFO#3 9 Patch Novelty-DONE!
5-UFO#4 Scrappy HSTs-DONE!
6-NewFO Project-Hat Trick*
7-RSC13/And Sew On Blocks*
8-Threadbias QAL
9-FMQ Practice Sessions,3 Blocks,1 Quilt*
10-Strip Wallpaper*
*In Progress

I'll take it! Now it's time to pull out a fresh sheet of paper and make some goals for May, a process I always look forward to. I'll post about them later.

I'm linking up to Fresh Sewing Day@Lily's Quilts and The Year of The Finished Project@Never Too Hot to Stitch.

Under the Wire

The last of April sewing is done. Here is my Hat Trick for April Vintage Schnibbles with borders attached.  I'll be binding it with the green floral I used for the inner border. I'm really happy with how this top turned out and can't wait to get it quilted, bound and on the table!  This is also my April NewFO for Barbara's challenge over at Cat Patches.

My last UFO Finish for April is this table runner from the book "True Friends" by Nancy Halvorsen. This is my first heavy duty applique project and I can happily say that I've overcome my fear of machine applique! These fabrics are really hard to photograph... I find these nighttime photos actually show the colors best but they are so much prettier in person.  I'll try a few different places around the house tomorrow and see if I can do better.

Once I finished my first stem I was thinking NEVER again... but by the time I turned my first corner after doing three sets of stems and leaves I had decided it's not so bad and started to relax a bit. My Juki F600 has a beautiful buttonhole stitch and I learned a lot about pivoting on this runner! 

I quilted in the ditch using cream Aurifil thread along both sides of the applique sections and followed the diamonds in the patchwork center. After all of the hours of applique I wanted that to be the star.

This is my April Finish for "A Lovely Year of Finishes" and I'm linking up at the last hour.
                                                      
I'm also linking up to Wednesday UFO Report@Patchwork Times.

Monday Monday...

Guess what? I think spring has finally arrived in Northern Minnesota!

I'm keeping busy but it's not all quilt related. I wouldn't go so far to say I've been spring cleaning but let's call it spring sorting/organizing - going through drawers, filling up some boxes for donation and re-arranging what's left starting in our main floor living area. We have lived in this house for 11.5 years which is our longest stay anywhere and it desparately needs a top to bottom purge. I've been thinking about doing for at least a year so hopefully all that "planning" will pay off!  LOL

I've been listening to the "Prey" detective series by John Sandford and have really enjoyed sewing along with them. My library's audio collection had a gap where I had to request the books (I'm reading them in order) and I binged on these over the weekend plus one of the Virgil Flowers series on my iPad.

As much as I love the audio books for convenience I can read them SO much faster! Now I'm back on track with the audio versions on my iPhone and ready to tackle wallpaper removal in my new quilting room while Lucas Davenport solves more crimes.

My husband found a young family through school to take the bunk bed that was in this corner and they came to pick it up yesterday. I've got some bins laid out to store the last of our daughter's "treasures" in until she comes home in a few weeks for one last sort through. This will be my design wall - a nice big one so I won't have to resort to crawling around on my design floor anymore.

You can see 2 of my 4 imminent quilting tasks - add the borders to my April Schnibble and assemble these Strip Stacks blocks into a top. Task #3 is my Nancy Halvorsen table runner... I'm letting the applique get to to me and to borrow Nike's phrase I'm going to have to "Just Do It"! Task #4 is to paper piece my April block for "And Sew On...". I'd best get off the computer and get to work.

I'm linking up to Design Wall Monday@Patchwork Times.

Birds in the Air - In Color

Last week I played around with some layouts for my Crossroads blocks and this week I did the same with Birds in the Air blocks.

One Chevron layout (I will most certainly have one of these at the end of the year!):

Three Diamond layouts:

 I find it interesting how moving the white space totally alters the top!

Here I just did a quick mix of the colors... I would probably switch the middle blocks to alternate pink/purple with orange/green.

It's been a great month of green and I'm looking forward to a new color next week!

I'm linking up to ScrapHappy Saturday@soscrappy.