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.

Pink Lemonade Little Quilt Step Two Done!

Last night I made my ten half blocks and today I got them ironed and laid them out to get an idea of what things will look like. I don't know if this is the cheddar background I will use yet, but it is the biggest piece (other than solid) that I have onhand.
I am liking how it looks so far. I am almost out of double pinks since I used TONS of them in Double Delight I think it was so I will put that on my shopping list lol.

Speaking of shopping I grabbed up two charm packs online the other day...with doing a year of Schnibbles it is always good to have some extra charm packs on hand! I can't remember the line at the moment but it was fairy tales and I thought it was cute.

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!

Pink Lemonade Little Quilt

Lori over at Humble Quilts http://humblequilts.blogspot.com/ is posting this little Pink Lemonade reproduction quilt from one that she has (or has a photo of). I have been watching several blogs as people are following along...like I did with her last three little quiltalongs! I always think I will find time later, I save and even print the steps and figure I will fit them in somewhere. Then at midnight last night (after a day of prepping for teaching--done and housecleaning) I though I would "just cut out the pieces" after all I have a good selection of fabrics perfect for this that I rarely get to play with. Then I thought I would sew just one block...the one I had the half square triangles all made up in my orphan basket (only those had the right colors!) so I did that one--it has different pink background fabric but that is okay because so does the original.

DJ was playing a videogame and since I was happy to sew on she was happy to play on..so I kept on sewing! Sort of happy accident I cut too many of the colored fabrics so some of them got sewn too for the next step they will become half blocks.

I had to lay them out on top of some cheddar so you can see where it is going. These blocks make me smile. I love simple, quick and easy, and I love them. Thanks Lori for getting me on it! Now off to take CJ to two doctor's appointments and then stopping at the college to do a few things and then I am off to June's to sew Orca Bay. Gotta go pack the car!

January UFO Challenge is Met!

Worked all day, had a healthy dinner when I got home (trying....lol) and then I quilted and bound this baby all by myself tonight. Wasn't easy because I went around all those snowball blocks and used my new machine which doesn't have a wide throat! But it is done and bound in all different scrappy colors (which you can't really see in this pic) but I was happy to use up leftover bindings from my drawer!
Here is the crazy backing that says "love" all over it. I think DJ's six year old niece in Virginia will love it!

Cheddary Challenge Progress

Whenever my little basket of scraps gets low I fill it back up...I am really enjoying making these little bow ties and admiring them on my design wall all year long!
Today I finished off my ninth block and put it on the wall.
It isn't very big yet, but I love the variety of scraps. Bottom row in the center is the "ticket" in at the National Storytelling Festival that I had to pin to my shirt all weekend. Several of the blues in there are my grandma Nan's scraps that I inherited now that she is gone. The Mary Engelbreit black with flowers reminds me of sewing with June and loving her dark background fabric so I had to buy this similar fabric. So many memories and so much enjoyment from Bonnie's Cheddary Challenge! The purple is my daughter's favorite color (and looks like I need to scare up some more purple!).
I can't wait to check out all of the links on Bonnie's blog tomorrow so I can see how everyone else is coming along with this challenge!

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!