Two Finishes and a Schnibbles!

I got the binding on Randy's Orca/Green Bay Quilt and snagged it off his bed for a picture. He loves it and is happy to have the very old and sort of holey strawberry quilt off his bed!
I also got the binding on Suli and Diegos' wedding quilt for their June wedding. Both these quilts still need labels, but other than that they are done!
Today Kathy, Becky and June (along with Phideaux) came over to sew. We really had a nice day of gabbing and sewing and ate some Papa Murphy's pizza too.
I was working on my Summer Day Schnibbles quilt...trimmed up all my geese yesterday and today.
Sewed them into blocks and trimmed those up too. Then sewed them into a top.
And added borders to it. It is a sweet little quilt and I am pretty sure this one will be for Randy's daughter Rachel's first baby. She lives in Norway and is a few months pregnant. No idea if it is a boy or a girl, so I think this little quilt will be a good one to send her!
So another finish for April's list...Whoot, whoot!

Orca--err--GREEN BAY is Quilted!

Ros absolutely, positively outdid herself with the quilting on this quilt! She did a football panto all over and then surprised me with this:
GO PACK GO!
and GREEN BAY PACKERS! I was not sure who it was meant to be for and I was working on another (Bonnie Hunter, Smith Mountain Morning) for Randy because he is long overdue for a new quilt. Then I got the bright idea that he would like this....now that I see it quilted I seriously doubt I can give it away! LOL...this is going to be hard to gift! Ros Atwood, quilting extraordinaire you rock! I really needed this pick me up this week...lots of changes happening here that I am trying to handle...more on that later.

Orca Bay is a Flimsy!!!!!

Linking this up for Bonnie's linky party! I can't wait to see all the other Orca Bay quilts. So far I haven't spotted one in my colors...usually I follow Bonnie's color scheme but this time I didn't and whew, it all worked out!

Zoe couldn't resist posing on the quilt as I took pictures. Really hard to get a good photo of this HUGE quilt in the house at night...tried the bed, having my oldest son hold it and finally clearing a space by the front door. Tomorrow I will do my best to drag it out on the driveway in the sunshine for more photos. Worth every minute and all that unsewing. Thanks again Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville, from your number one fan!
Orca Bay/Long Lake/Green Bay. Ros said she might quilt it with a whale panto in commemoration of Orca Bay but I am wondering if she has a football panto, LOL! I should also say this is my UFO for Judy's number one draw...so other than getting a backing and binding together I have just about met that February goal! (Ros sent me this football panto, I think it is a winner!)

Edit * got the new pic on top though it wasn't too sunny when I got home!

Can't wait for the next Bonnie Hunter mystery! Thanks again Bonnie, from your number one fan!

Orca Bay Sans Borders

Worked for five or so hours on Orca Bay (so far) today and got this all together. Hoping the borders happen after the SuperBowl in time for Bonnie's link up tomorrow! Wasn't too much unsewing as this went together so that was good. I am loving it now that it has turned into something! The borders are done and waiting for attachment!
Forgot to Mention that BJ gifted me some sock yarn yesterday (yippee) and a belated Christmas present too!
This little tree is so cute I hate to take it apart and sew with it! Ros gave me a huge stack of magazines which I have been paging through, but my picture didn't turn out so no pic!

Hope to post again later with a completed Orca Bay!

Orca Bay Kind of Day!

No avoiding it, today I had to figure out how to make my Orca Bay (aka Long Lake though I have had several people tell me I should call it Green Bay and that is growing on me!) work. My flying geese blocks were too big for the Ohio star blocks...so DJ and I started ripping off the wings and re-trimming (uh read that I skipped a bit of the directions and didn't cut them to size the first time around--UGH!) and then resewing wings and putting the blocks together. This was a painstaking process and there was much grumbling (just ask Ros and BJ since we sewed over there all day!). Eventually I decided I could just open up the tops and sew the middle seam a quarter of an inch and I was good to go.
Ros showed us her very cool fish quilt. BJ suggested the orange inner border and I think it really makes the quilt! Ros used scraps and made a backing for it that is great too. DJ really liked it.And BJ (show off LOL) proudly displayed her Orca Bay top which is complete sans borders. It is FABULOUS and BJ said it all went together super de duper well for me. This did not perk me up, but since it is her first Bonnie Hunter quilt I am glad it was smooth for her. Me thinks she reads the directions better than I do!

BJ made her borders today but didn't get them attached yet (I might catch up to her yet, HAHA!) She and Ros both worked on a block of the month from crafts.com or something like that. After seeing them deal with it I was really glad I didn't add that onto my to be done list for February!
Ros is doing hers in batiks.

She also made the bag on the right to replace the one on the left. She stores her plastic bags in there.
Ros' BOM blocks. Two for January and two for February. Somehow I didn't get pictures of all of BJ's!
Ah finally row one of Orca Bay comes together.
Row two was faster. I did this in rows because it was challenging to figure out how to lay it out. BJ helped with advice like the yellow blocks corners will point to the dark blocks, etc.

Row three was as far as I got at Ros. It really went slow for me, but it was a lot of forward progress.
DJ and I came home and I got another two rows on. Now it is halfway. WHOOT WHOOT!

I then took a break from the blocks and pieced the border. Unfortunately I did two halves backwards and DJ is currently helping me unsew them. I will get them back together and then if I still feel like it I will keep working on the blocks. I really want to get this one off my UFO list because I have lots of other stuff to keep me busy in February and I am impatient to get to it!

Orca Bay Clue Seven is Done--Mostly!

Fabulous mail I received today (and my Fairy Tale charm packs from a few days ago). I am stocked up on thread for awhile.
This afternoon after Becky's grad party (congrats Becky!) DJ and I finished our Hulu marathon of "Once Upon a Time" and then started "Terra Nova" which we like too while I sewed and sewed and sewed and OMG sewed the rest of clue seven. I did these flying geese in sets of ten, sewing, ironing and cutting off the dog ears...127 flying geese (which I think may be too big but I am not really going to double check and depress myself at this point). I still have to do the four hourglass units to officially say clue seven is done, but go with it. I need to feel progress.
Look at that stack of geese coming along...
All of my pieces look like they may turn into a quilt top finally! I honestly feel like putting this one away for awhile til its UFO number comes up. Usually when I get to the end I can't wait to finish, but I have a feeling I am going to need to adjust those flying geese and I just can't even think about that now.
Here is what it is looking like when I lay it out. I love the colors and I am not sure I have the yellow squares going the right way. Just wanted to get an idea.
Tomorrow I heading to a co-worker's house to teach her to sew a baby quilt for another co-worker. Then I will be home to watch the Packers play! Might get back to finishing up knitting my socks..it has been awhile.

Clue Six is Done!

Something came up for June so I wound up sewing at home today..but since I had hauled all my stuff down I set up shop in the living room and we finally checked out Randy's Hulu and started watching "Once Upon a Time" which is pretty good as I had heard. Meanwhile I sewed for FOREVER finishing up the light blocks of clue six (Ohio Stars) and then ran upstairs to iron and trim them and while the iron was heating up I cut out the half blocks for Pink Lemonade. You can see some of that to the left in the picture above. I got all ten of those sewn up though they aren't ironed so pic will wait til tomorrow on that.
Then I whipped up (hahahha as if...whipped up) all the dark blocks. I did put yellow in the centers and I hope I got them all right. Funny I did block by block on the light ones and did plenty of unsewing because I was grabbing from the wrong pile all the time. When I did the darks I just did assembly line sewing and it went much smoother for me. I like the immediate gratification of doing each block but it sure slows me down!
So happy they are done (though the darks need ironing and trimming up--they are done lol) and since I already have about half of clue seven done I can proudly say I am on clue 7.5 of Orca Bay!

NYE Mystery 2011 is a Flimsy

Kathy came over today and we working on the NYE Mystery for 2011. I got my top together and am undecided on what to do with the borders for now. Glad to have it done, this is the first year that the flimsy wasn't together the same day as the mystery and I felt bummed about that!

Kathy has all the units you see here done and now just needs to assemble the blocks. I love her colors though she is worried it is too much white.

It has been a month of joining all kinds of stuff in blogland and so I decided to jump in on Angela over at http://superscrappy.blogspot.com/2011/12/rainbow-scrap-challenge-2012_22.html for her Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Luckily her rules are flexible and I don't have to use scraps unless I want to! The color for January is red so I thought I would jump in and pick a block to make in every color of the rainbow as we go. It is always nice to find myself with a "bonus" quilt top at the end of the year! I looked through my Quiltmaker magazines at all of the Bonnie Hunter blocks for one that was good for only two colors (neutrals and the color of thhe month...) and I came up with the same one Amy did! http://skattebo-skattebo.blogspot.com/2012/01/rainbow-scrap-challenge-january-red.html if you want to see her blocks. I have copied Amy successfully before and she doesn't mind so I am doing it again! Here is my first block in red. I didn't follow the directions right the first time (what, me?) and had to redo half the blocks so that I was sewing on the half line instead of cutting on it so that it all fit together (now I have four extra small flying geese to stick in the what do I do with this unit box) and this block is called "Jack in the Box" and I love how it looks!I also put together a few more bow ties and then constructed another block.

DJ and I also got this spray basted and pinned so I can get to quilting it (this is the UFO Challenge for January)!And (s0rry for the blur) this is also spray basted and pinned. This is on the UFO list, so it will be that much closer to done when its number comes up!
I also sewed a few more light blocks on Orca Bay and trimmed them up. It was a nice day and I am happy with getting in lots of sewing time this weekend!

And Another Clue Done, Another Clue Done, Another One Bites the Dust...

I had several songs running through my head today while endlessly sewing Orca Bay clue five! The first one you may recall from Miss Sherri and Lambchop I made a few word substitutions but it goes like this "this is the clue that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend...some people started sewing it not knowing what it was and now they sew forever just because this is

the clue that never ends...." that little ditty is hard to get out of your head and since I sewed at Ros' today with her and BJ they didn't really want to sing it along with me...

I managed to sew several of these babies incorrectly and some even made it past my first quality control and got another black triangle sewn to them before they were discovered (nine of those to be exact) so I had to do a bit of unsewing and then I came home and resewed and cut thirty more triangles (counting is apparently not my strong suit, I had too many hst's and not enough triangles!) and whipped those babies together. So the next song that came to me was "Another One Bites the Dust!" that at least got the other one out of my head! Clue five is done WHOOT WHOOT WHOOT WHOOT. That is seriously one long clue (made longer by

the fact that I sewed 102 of them to the clue seven light triangle as I went along).

When I arrived home I was excited to see that my prize from the SewCalGal's Christmas Quilt Show. It is a really pretty quilty Christmas ornament from http://www.quiltedinclay.com/
It is the limited edition 2011 ornament which sold out, but they have some really neat looking stuff.

The above picture is from their website so you can see the detail, it is very sweet! Anyway, after finishing off clue five with not a whole lot of help from DJ and Bug (we were watching Hangover Two)...
I decided to lay out the pieces so I could get a sense of what this quilt will look like. I am thinking I am going to want to put yellow centers in the dark blocks as some others have done. I like it though!

I managed to sew up eight more light colored stars, press and trim them before packing it in. We are watching a few more movies this evening and chilling.

DJ made us French Onion soup (so good!) and I whipped up two drawstring bags for my knitting. I looked online and for 20 bucks I could buy one but for fifteen minutes of my time I could make one! I didn't like the size of the first one for my sock stuff so I hacked off the bottom for number two and it is perfect. I will be making more of these because I know Hannah is going to want one in purple. It makes a nice gift for a knitter. Been thinking about joining that Christmas all year group...this may be my first project for that. :)
So Orca Bay update: Clues 1-5 are done, clue six is in progress (10 total blocks done, all parts cut), clue 7-102 blocs done, 127 flying geese to go....it is getting there! WHOOT WHOOT, again, I can't help it!