June 5 stash report

Just before Memorial Day my sister-in-law Kathy and I made a quick road trip to Rapid City to pick up my granddaughter.  Kathy's a quilter too, so we just had to stop in a couple of quilt shops. I enhanced the stash with 5.25 yards of fun fabric. The fat quarters in front are some I picked out to used for more of the car blocks using the Row By Row license plates. The middle row will fit into my Temecula Circa 2016 project.

That wasn't my biggest sewing/quilting purchase this past couple of weeks however. I replaced my sewing machine too and am glad that I'm not counting dollars spent on quilting. But then again maybe I should be.

I used 1.25 yards of the feather fabric to cut 6" squares for my guild. And I dug into some "adopted" stash and finished a very simple large quilt top to count another 4.5 yards used this week. I need to remember to take a photo to post. I plan to donate that quilt top somewhere.  And I'm donating another 5 yards of fabric from that adopted stash to be used for a charity project at guild.

In this month: 5.25 yds

In this year: 61.25 yds

Out this month: 10.75 yds

Out this year: 63.75 yds

Sewing on my new machine

This morning I traded my "dead" sewing machine for a brand new one.  It is very similar to the one I was using so not much of a learning curve to begin with. And the bonus was that my embroidery unit works on the new one too so that saved me a few dollars. And after taking a class yesterday at The Pin Cushion, I'm feeling like I can put that unit on a play with some new skills.

Once I got it home I had to make a few blocks, so I chose the Pears block for our Farm Girl Vintage blocks for this month in Sew Vintage. And I made a new RSC16 block in the June color of aqua.  It sure feels good to be sewing again on a really good machine instead of my old back-up machine.

That's probably the end of my sewing for a couple of days as we'll have 3 of the grandkids tomorrow and then have a birthday party for 2 of the grandkids on Saturday. And I have a guild meeting on Saturday.  Busy summer so far!

Circa 2016

I'm caught up again with making the Temecula Circa 2016 blocks but I can't say that I like how all of them have turned out.

This Fox and Geese block is very cute and I'm pleased with them both.  Each week we do 2 versions of the same block and picking out the colors is half the fun.

But the other set has too many tiny HSTs and even pressing the seams open didn't help them line up. The brown one is OK but I may end up remaking the pink/grey one because it looks wonky to me.

Stash busting

A little stash busting went on today at my house. Over the weekend I let my granddaughter play in a box of fabric and today I was cleaning it all up and decided to do something with some of it.  This box (given to me by a guild friend who was moving) contained lots of 6" wide strips plus partially stitched sections using those strips. There appears to be enough fabric for at least 4 good sized quilts.  

I started with the green and purple collection and now have half of a large top pieced and the other half all organized, pinned into rows and ready to finish.  There is still enough of these fabrics left to add some borders and make binding and still have some left.  And I played with the pink and blue fabrics and made some pinwheels. Maybe I can do a combination of pinwheels and strips. 

I pulled some burgundy and pink strips and blocks to bring to guild on Saturday. Maybe someone else will want to finish that one.  Thanks Mary - hopefully we'll get some useful quilts made with your generous donation.   

And it all started with a little girl saying "grandma, can I play with these?". 

Saturday sewing with help

I got 2 more 3" blocks made for Temecula Circa 2016 and have 4 left to make so that I'm caught up again. I hadn't really expected to get any sewing done this weekend since we have our 4 year old granddaughter here. But she discovered my stash and was having lots of fun "carpeting" my sewing room, so I took advantage of the time in there with her. The picture is pretty blurry but she laid out tons of strips, then picked them up and relaid them, . . Repeat, repeat, repeat. Kept her busy for over an hour. 

Short road trip

I am on a short road trip yesterday and today with my sister-in-law, and since she is also a quilter I didn't have to whine and beg to stop at any quilt shops. In fact she insisted because she needed to pick up one of her sewing machines at one of the shops in Rapid City.  We actually stopped in 3 shops yesterday.  And the shops are selling their 2016 license plates for Row By Row now even though their patterns will not be available until the official start date of June 21.

The purpose of the trip is to pick up my granddaughter Sophie to bring her back to my house while mom and dad finish the packing for their big move east over the weekend. But it also gave me the opportunity to have supper with 3 Rapid City friends last night.  And SIL Kathy went to supper with friends of hers too. She lived here for about 15 years and has lots of friends here. 

And we're stopping in one more quilt shop this morning before picking up Sophie and heading home.

One more row

One row closer to being done with Allietare.

Most likely I will get NO sewing done at all in the next few days. Tomorrow I'm driving 300 miles west to Rapid City to pick up my granddaughter Sophia and coming back on Friday sometime with her. Then over the weekend I expect her mommy, daddy, and baby brother will arrive at some point - after the moving truck loads up their household. They are moving back to Sioux Falls which is only an hour east of us. Yay!!

I did build a little extra time into this trip west to have supper with a girl friend who lives in Rapid City, and I'm sure I'll visit at least one quilt shop while I'm there. 

And when things settle down again next week I have to make a decision about replacing or repairing my sewing machine.  Right now I'm leaning toward replacing it with a new machine which might be fun.