January Block Count

Somehow, we’ve already made it to the end of the first month of 2019.  Our month has been so full of illness and accompanying schedule disruptions that I feel a little lost.  At least, around all the chaos, I kept sewing.

January is off to a good start.

• 4 blocks for Great Granny Squared
• 64 for Garden Mosaic
• 2 for Lepidoptera
• 5 “Tiny Tuesday” blocks
• 54 rows of a quilt for my son

That brings my total for the month to 129.

This tally is part of my participation in the 350 Block Challenge.

from the room of Zana’s Ninis,
katie z.

February UFO List

Somehow, I failed to do all my regular posts at the beginning of January, which I blame on bronchitis.  Let’s begin again, shall we?

January 1: 7 projects
Started: 4
Finished: 1
January 31: 10 projects

I’d like to keep to 10 projects for the year, but since we’re at the beginning of the year and that means  lots of scrappy new starts, I won’t get flustered if I have more for a while.

I finished Miss G’s pink quilt.

1. Pillow
2. Scrappy DWR
3. ABC appliqué
4. 9 patches and stars
5. King sized 16 patch
6. Hand pieced hexagons
7. Great Granny Squared
8. Garden Mosaic
9. Lepidoptera
10. Thomas pixelated

from the room of Zana’s Ninis,
katie z.

Stash Report Week #4

This week, I had two yards of necessary purchases.  My pixelated Thomas quilt, being made with 1.5” squares, eats through fabric and thread like there’s no tomorrow.  Already, 3 spools of thread are gone for the year!  Well, in my planning, I failed to realize I had no solid white.  Fortunately, I found a remnant at Hobby Lobby of a 1 yard cut of white.  Next, I used up every last square inch of solid black, so Saturday found me back at Hobby Lobby for a yard of solid black.  Serious trouble is on the horizon if I run out of any other colors, as many of them are not Kona solids and, in fact, I have no idea where/what some of them are.  It’s a good thing this quilt will use around 17 yards of fabric so that my stash report gets cleaned up!

IN this week: 2 yards
OUT this week: 0 yards

IN YTD: 22 yards
OUT YTD: 9 yards
YTD Total: 13 yards IN

from the room of Zana’s Ninis,
katie z.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge: Red Sewing

Nearly the end of the red scraps, but here I am!  I made my four Tiny Tuesday blocks and framed them in a pale gray.  I should have enough of it to frame all my blocks for the year.

The rest of the blocks on my design wall are for the Garden Mosaic Pattern.  I have other red 2" scraps still, but the fabrics were getting too repetitious, so I called it good here.

The rest of my sewing time has been busy with a new quilt for JoJo, which I'll show in a week or two.  It has lots of tiny pieces and takes all my concentration, but it's proceeding nicely,

Be sure to check out all the other red scraps and projects this week!

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.

Stash Report Week #3

and... I finished nothing, so there are no stash changes this week.  I did finish off my first spool of thread for the year.  I have a pixelated quilt in progress, this time with 1.5” squares, so the thread is going to go fast.  At some point, I’ll crunch the numbers to estimate my stash usage for this quilt.  It may not be possible to finish by February 28, but I’m going to try.

from the room of Zana’s Ninis,
katie z.

Complementary Sewing

I finished putting the right-hand wings on my star points, and I'll do the rest another month.

In my scrappy plans for the year, I planned to make two blocks a month from Elizabeth Hartman’s Lepidoptera pattern.  Of course, this couldn’t be a simple plan... First, I don’t carry large quantities of a single background fabric in my stash, and this needed 5+ yards, I think.  I had three of my glow in the dark white, so I began with that, found and ordered a little more, and have been happy with my choice.  I do find that the patterned side is pretty subdued, so at some point,

I will surely sew wrong sides to right and have a funny piece when you see it in the dark!

I’m using a half-yard package of V and Co.’s Confetti Ombré for the blocks.  This is the fabric I bought last April to reward myself for each day’s physical therapy during recovery from broken hand bones.  I want this fabric used in something glorious.  But here’s the issue: there’s no red in this collection!  Instead, I made a complementary green butterfly and a tan one.

The final issue for now (besides the fabric waste, which I avoid in general) was probably the easiest to resolve.  Since the butterflies are different sizes, it was necessary to plan, definitively, where each fabric was going.  It took several rounds of fiddling, adjusting, photographing, and rearranging to get it right, but I think I’m happy with the current plan.  Now I need to hunt down the picture (it’s not on my iPad, so it must be on a camera).  Most months I’ll make two, except for the month I make the center, large butterfly.

I have some additional complementary sewing for the month.  Let’s see where I am with this pixelated nonsense next week!

My final sewing for the week has actually been red.  These are my little units for Garden Mosaic.  I have one more stack by the machine, but I used a good pile of 2” scraps on this.

Next week I’ll be sewing up the tiny blocks hosted by Soscrappy.

from the room of Zana’s Ninis,
katie z.

P.S.  Be sure to check out the red projects this weekend!

Stash Report Weeks 1-2

It’s already been a busy start to the year for stash changes, and of course I failed to post the first week’s stash report.

My birthday is in early January, and this year my husband and younger sister both gave me some beautiful fabric.  I also placed two orders.  One was to Vicki Welsh for hand dyed fabrics for two different quilts; the other was for glow in the dark fabric that I’m using for my butterfly quilt.  I could have waited on the latter fabric, but I needed to order something else from fabric.com, and it seemed silly to pay for shipping when I would order fabric eventually.

Fortunately, I did finish Miss G’s pink wonder.  Where is the picture?  Um... I finished it, she put it on her bed, and I haven’t made her bed neatly since, so no picture exists.  I’m grateful she accepts it!

Stash goals for the year include using 30 more yards than I purchase, so I need to button up my pocketbook and get to feeling better so I can sew more.  By the end of February, ideally, I’d have used up five more yards than purchased, but I don’t foresee 16 yards of use before then.  Yikes!

IN this week: 20 yards
OUT this week: 9 yards

IN YTD: 20 yards
OUT YTD: 9 yards
YTD Total:  11 yards IN

from the room of Zana’s Ninis,
katie z.

Here, There, Everywhere

I finished the last Great Granny Squared blocks.  My original plan was 5 or 6 a month, but this is what my red scraps yielded, so 4 it is.

 I've made a little progress on my Garden Mosaic quilt.  These blocks will be mixed with all the other blocks so the repeat of fabrics won't be noticeable.  The streamlining of block assembly is still a work in progress, but in a few months I'll have it down.

I'm slowing adding the wings to the star components of my 9 patches and stars, but I haven't gotten far here either.  That's fine, as I will also work on these during orange, brown, neutral, and pink months.

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.

P.S. Check out all the other red projects this weekend.

Claret and Ruby

The vast majority of my quilting time this week was spent quilting my daughter's pink quilt.  I had hoped to complete the binding too, but as I'm still under the weather, I ended up sleeping off a migraine instead of stitching.  It's all going to be fine, but this is late winter for me after pushing hard all fall.

I did make a lovely start on my Great Granny Squared blocks (pattern by Lori Holt).  I was surprised to find most of my red scraps were nearly the same color.  As you can see, one block is rather a muddy mess, but since I'm using what is in the scrap drawer, it is what it is.

Somehow, I already feel behind, but I suspect that's from seeing very little red progress since my machine was full of pink!  I've also pieced a number of triangles for Garden Mosaic (that crazy quilt whose name I couldn't remember), so I am doing fine.

My final scrappy progress for the week was puzzling over my butterfly quilt pattern.  I think my chosen fabric will work, but, of course, the collection includes no red!  I'll be piecing in green for these, since there are 4 greens to make up for the lack of reds.

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.