Sunday, February 27, 2011

Not bad for three days of work

I just finished this lovely baby quilt last night. Rail fence has to been one of my favorite patterns. I made this for some friends who are expecting a new arrival any day now. This is made from Kate Spain's new Central Park line. It's such a delightful, springy line and a much needed visual break from the three days of snow we've had. I'm actually looking forward to mud.




I pieced in a section on the back both to stretch the fabric, but also to bring in more of the yellow from the front. I quilted it in straight lines. Not to exciting, I know, but it will hold together. I hope they like it.





Saturday, February 19, 2011

February UFO finishes



Hi All,

Here's my February finish for Judy's challenge. I quilted and bound my Amy Butler pinwheels quilt. I used a fusible batting which works great for quilts of this size (36ish x 45ish), and I quilted it in random straight lines. I hate marking quilts. It's time consuming and I'm not very good at it. Usually the end result doesn't look much like what I marked either. This was a lot of fun to do and I just kept going til I ran out of thread.

Here's a detail pic.



And here's after washing.


And the back:

I also crossed the squares table runner off the list.


I decided I didn't want to finish the whole thing. It was another test project, so I just finished it up as a table mat. It has gone to live in my laundry room under my bucket of detergent.


My other goals for February are to finish the Tennessee Waltz quilt top and get it ready for quilting and to make 5 more Subway blocks. I'm close on the Tennessee Waltz. I just need to do the borders. You don't get to see pictures until after the recipient sees it, sorry. I've got three of my Subway blocks done, but I ran out of white squares, so I need to cut more of those. It should be no problem to finish those up this week and next. I've also got a baby quilt and Christmas presents on the to-do list too. Whew! Well, that will certainly keep me off the streets for the foreseeable future.

Ta!
Ann

Friday, February 4, 2011

UFO Challenge Month 2

Here's the next project I've chosen for the UFO challenge. Yes, I know I'm marching to my own drummer here. This is another quilt like the last one in that I got the top finished and set it aside. It just needs quilting and binding.


Here's a couple of detail shots. I bought one of those Lil' Twister templates and a charm pack of Amy Butler fabrics, and was just playing around. I had a blast playing with it, and it deserves to be finished.





I'm also going to cross this one off this month too. This is listed as the squares table runner. Only...I don't want to finish it. The sashing is tedious, and the fabrics were leftovers from another project. I was just playing around with my Accuquilt GO! cutting squares. Well...that part was fun. So, I'm going to finish what's together as a table mat and call it a day. It's about 16" square. I've already dispersed the rest of the project into the scrap pile, the stash closet, or the trash.

I'm also working on two other long term projects this month. One is Tennessee Waltz. That one's a gift, so I won't be putting pictures up. My goal is to have the top finished this month.

My other project is my Subway quilt (pattern from Elizabeth Hartman at Oh Fransson!). For Judy and Chris, here's how it looks with the second row finished. I've put a couple of chunks together....partly so it would take up less room. I'm done with the dark green squares now. I really like how the blue and orange lines look next to one another. Hmm...maybe I'll make a blue and orange quilt. No...must...focus.



I'm still looking through all the UFO finish posts. Way to go people! More than a hundred UFOs finished!

Keep warm!
Ann

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Obligatory Blizzard post


Snow-mageddon. Snowpocalypse. SNO-MG. Yea, that pretty much says it.

The snow started on Tuesday around 2 pm. It quit this morning around 11:30 am. Overnight we had thundersnow and 60-70 mph gusts. Our house shakes when it blows that hard. Very hard to sleep between that and the roaring wind. We finished up with 25". Parts of the driveway and yard had drift of 6-7'. We chopped down the drifts with a shovel, then the snowblower removed the snow. Rinse repeat. Why would we do it that way? This is why:


This is the driveway before we started. Most of it was 2-3 feet deep with a couple of 4' spots.


This is the middle section of the driveway and the part that was blocked from the wind. It's about 2' deep.



This is the front walk during shoveling:


This is the public sidewalk. Yes it's under there. That stone wall is about 3 1/2' tall. The whole sidewalk in both directions is drifted in.


This is the biggest drift over the driveway coming in at nearly 5'.


The big drift with snowblower.


We took a break at that point to warm up and get something to eat. We had been shoveling for over 4 hours. Past the big drift was another 2' deep section, then the rest of the driveway was 5' deep all the way to the end. I looked out the window when i heard the snow-blower start up again and saw this:

Thank you so much, city employee, whoever you are. He was going along our street and clearing out the end of everyone's driveways. His 10 minutes probably saved us another 2 hours with shovels and the snowblower. If he had gotten out, I would have kissed him.

Right now I'm going to go take the world's hottest shower and hope I can move my arms tomorrow. I've pulled out my next UFO, so stay tuned for that post.

Ta!
a