more twinkling

My good friend Lorrie at SewMod had me over for a sewing fun day last week, so I was able to crank out 10 more of my Twinkle blocks. My tally is now 14 done, 28 to go! Each block seems to go together faster than the previous one, even with the initial partial seam required from this pattern.

Here's a grouping of pink blocks:

Some magenta/red blocks:

And lastly some purple ones:

Have any of you reading made this pattern before? I'm not a fan of repeating the same block construction forty-two times, but since every single fabric is different, I haven't become bored yet. I've stuck with my plan of only working on these blocks when I'm away on a sewing outing, so that probably also contributes to the lack of boredom.

Lorrie and I are planning another work day this week, but I'd really like to make some headway on my SewMod row quilt, so I think I'll tackle that. I've got some pretty elaborate machine applique borders planned, and the shapes are already traced to the fusible webbing. All I need to do is buckle down and commit already to the fabrics to use. Having Lorrie around always ramps up my ability to make quick decisions. I'm not sure why that is, but maybe it's because she's the speediest quilter I've ever seen! You should head over to her blog and see the fun quilt she's making now from a Cluck, Cluck, Sew pattern with Art Gallery and Kona solid fabrics!

And I apologize if this posts with double spacing between everything. Sometime since my last post Blogger has changed, and I can't quite figure out how to insert single-line spaces between photos and text paragraphs. Everything I used to do produces no spaces, and inserting HTML break codes produces double spaces. If you've had this problem too and solved it, please tell me how!

jumping from here to there

At my February Breakfast Club II class, I asked all the students to count up their UFO (UnFinished Object) projects and bring the oldest of those projects and their total count to our March class. For a project to qualify as a UFO, it has to have been started - meaning some cutting and/or sewing has taken place. It doesn't count if you've just got all the fabric gathered and a pattern selected. That's a future UFO, and a whole different story...

So of course I had to count up all of my own. My total? Twenty-three. I was prepared for a number much higher. And actually, only five of those are actively being worked on right now. So that proves I do have a very little bit of focus, after all ;) And don't panic - I'm not going to show you photos of 23 UFO's - I'm just going to highlight the oldest and newest ones.

Most recently added to the UFO category are these 4 completed blocks from my "Twinkle" quilt project...

You may remember that some time ago a very sweet friend of mine actually cut all the large pieces for this quilt from her stash and gave them to me. Then I hemmed and hawed over which fabrics to use for the star points and center squares. As you can see I finally made those decisions (Art Gallery Oval Elements in Mood Indigo and a Kaffe shot cotton in Apple) and chose this as my traveling project to work on when my SewMod group meets for sew-ins. So forward progress will be slow, but at least it's progress! Four down, thirty-eight to go!

My oldest UFO? It's either this hand-pieced sampler...

Or this "Thru Grandmother's Window" block of the month hand applique (1 of 4 completed, 8 more to go) which are both circa 1997, but I can't recall which class I took first...

I did manage a couple of finishes during my hiatus. Both were Breakfast Club II class projects so there was a deadline - hence the "finished" status! Most recently graduated from "UFO" to "finished" status are some bright batik placemats...

And a table runner using the new Maude Asbury Calypso fabrics...

So how many UFO's have you got? What's the oldest? Do you think you'll ever finish it? Right now I doubt that I'll finish that sampler (it needs to be hand-quilted), but there's a good chance the hand applique will some more progress one day.

Happy Weekend to you all!

displaying my quilts

Whoa! That was a longer break than I had planned! I have been sewing, but kind of jumping around from project to project without making any real forward progress on any of them. But I do have a few things planned to show this week.

We've been planning a re-do of our living room, and just this past Saturday we got the walls painted. They were some variety of boring beige (with a more hip-sounding name that I can't recall, courtesy of that lucky-duck with the paint-naming job. Who does that job? How does one get that job? Sounds like a pretty good gig to me... but I have strayed off topic...) Now the walls are light, bright, and the color of whipped butter. The room faces north and was previously so dull and dreary that no one ever used it, but this new color is so lovely and inviting :)

Since I've made quite a few bright quilts, my husband decided to make a custom quilt ladder to display them in our redecorated living room...

Pretty amazing, right? The entire ladder is 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall. Each rung section is 2 feet wide, and they are spaced 18" apart to allow a large section of each quilt to be visible.

Just in case you want your dear someone to make a similar one for you, it was built with 1" x 4" by 8' maple boards stained lightly and covered with polyurethane. Each of the four dowels is 3/4" diameter by 48" long. It simply leans against the wall, and the weight of the quilts keeps it steady. The dowels are inserted into holes in the maple boards and secured with small screws drilled into the back of the maple boards.

I'll show you the rest of the room once all the furnishings are in place. It's going to see a lot of use from now on!