What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It's cold! I know we have it easy compared to those north of us, but once you get past a certain point it's all just cold.  It's -1 F at the moment.  We are supposed to get up into the teens today. That's a heat wave compared to our high of 5 F yesterday. 

The one good thing about the cold and snow is that it's a very good reason to spend most of Sunday in the sewing room.  I spent most of the morning cutting scraps and yardage for the Just Two Charm Pack ...

 The 25 B blocks for Indigo Way are finished.   

I put the A's and B's on the design wall.  I really like busy designs but my initial impression is that this is TOO busy.  

The pattern calls for 20 half blocks for the setting triangles.  I've made four. 

I've told myself firmly not to rush this -- let the blocks sit for a while.  An entire quilt of just A's and/or just B's would look pretty good.   

With Grad Girl here this last week, it's felt like vacation.  We've had our shopping day and our girls lunch. So it was a nice week on the family fun front. But the consequence is that there wasn't as much time in the sewing room and that shows in the progress on last week's list. 

To Do List for 01/02/2024

1. Indigo Way: Continue clues 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and start 8 ✔

2. Malted Mystery: Finish clue 6, start clue 7 - progress

3. Betty: Start cutting fabrics ✔

4. Scrappy Butterflies: prep backing - no ...

It's been a busy week. Grad Girl and I spent one day in Tulsa and then another in Oklahoma City.  We had fun, but it did impact my stitching time this week.  I managed my 15 minutes every day, but sometimes not much more than that. It's OK, she heads back to school tomorrow.  I'm glad we had a chance to hang out so much while she was home.  

All I have to show for the week is a bunch of pinned pieces at my sewing machine. 

At the top is the last of pieces needed to ...

This will be my 6th attempt to achieve a PHD in quilting projects.  I've yet to manage that.  I doubt it happens this year either, but I won't know unless I try.  There are new hostesses for the PHD in 2024, Sharon Anderson and Susan Hatcher of Ms. P Designs USA.  Here's my list of this year's UFOs for the PHD in 2024.  

My strategy this year is to work on a new quilt or a quilt that needs the blocks assembled plus a quilt top to be finished or a quilt top to be assembled ...

We are already a couple of days into 2024, so it's definitely time to review my progress on my PHD projects this year and link one more time with Quilting Gail's PHD in 2023.  It definitely wasn't one of my more successful years in terms of finishes and my report shows that. 

I was able to add one more finish before the year ended.  That brings my total for the year to 3.  Not stellar, but it's one more than I finished last year.  I'll take an incremental increase. I finished three of the small ...

It's going to take me a while to get the 2024 part of my dates right.  That's always the trickiest thing about the new year. I need to pay bills today, so I should get lots of practice on that.  

At any rate, I'm starting my first to do list of the new year with a completed last to do list from 2023. 

To Do List for 12/26/2023

1. Indigo Way: Continue clues 2, 3, 4, start 5 and 6 ✔

2. Malted Mystery: Finish clue 5, start clue 6 ✔

3. Melodic Mystery: Finish hand stitching ...

I'm a bit late posting this week's to do list.  We went to my family's for the holiday.  All of us came home yesterday with headaches, sore throats, and runny noses.  My Guy and Grad Girl have fevers, I don't. Up till then, the holiday had been a good one.  Fingers crossed this is a short lived virus and we'll all be back to feeling good soon.

Since I felt the best, my first back home assignment was grocery store duty. That was followed by a  run to Walgreens as afterwards we discovered that both ...

Less than a week till Christmas. I've got gifts to wrap and some laundry to catch up on before the holiday, but that's about it.  My Guy is off work till after New Year's.  Grad Girl will be home this weekend.  All that to say I'm not sure what this week is going to look like in terms of "at home time".  So this week's list will be a bit looser then normal.  But before I get to this week's list, here's how it went with last week's list. 

To Do List ...

I was going to post on Wednesday. I was going to post on Friday.  But things happen.

To make a long story short, I've been figuring out how to adapt the household layout to S's limited mobility and particularly to his advancing dementia.  He wrenched his knee last week so going down to the basement family ...

Only two Tuesdays left in 2023?  December always seems to speed by.  I'm definitely not ready for the end of the year.  My holiday to do list has just about preempted my quilting to do list, but it is that time of year.  Even so, I didn't do too badly with last week's to do list. 

Ornaments are hung along the trail at Lyons Woods.  Once you see one you see another, and another.   (I will pay this wonder forward. I have a box of ornaments (rummage sale purchase) that I'll hang along another trail.)  

The Lake County Women's Coalition steering committee combined business and socializing with a luncheon meeting Saturday.  Plans for the Women's History Month luncheon in March are well underway.  

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I used Deb Tucker's V-block Trimmer to make the second units for Indigo Way.   More accurate than Tri-Recs though it takes a bit to figure out how to flip ...

I spent a lot of time in the sewing room over the weekend, but don't seem to have much to show for it.  Here's the last round of chain piecing sitting by the machine.

In addition to stitching this week, I finally made a serious start on my Christmas shopping and decorating.  All the wrapping stuff, paper, boxes, bags, tissue paper, has been pulled from it's various storage locations and assembled in Grad Girl's bedroom. The 3 foot tree is up and decorated.  That definitely went faster then the 6 foot tree I normally set up. Hopefully that means it will come down much faster. I ususally enjoy putting up the tree, but getting it down was always a chore (we won't discuss the longest I've ever left the tree ...

Hard to believe it's December.  Just one month left to reach all those goals we crafted so carefully last December. One of my goals was to play along with Quilting Gail's PHD in 2023 and do better than I did in 2022.  I'm linking up to the November PHD Update with a report that looks better then last month's. 

  

I finished a second quilt in November, which puts my PHD performance on par with last year's in terms of overall finishes.  In addition to the finish, there was good progress on several other projects. 

I'm still in recovery mode from Thanksgiving. We spent the holiday in Texas with Grad Girl. We had a lot of fun, but that drive back is just long.  We didn't get back till early evening yesterday.  At least this trip, My Guy and I could share the driving duties.  Even so, it's a long day in the car. 

Because of the holiday and our trip, last week's to do list was really simple.  

To Do List for 11/14/2023

1. Butterfly Medallion: Take a few stitches ✔

2. Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday ✔

Keeping it simple ...

Photo taken at the state park.  I stopped on the way home from church but I didn't take a walk!

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I've made many of the Quiltville mysteries.  I was greatly disappointed in two of them Grand Illusion and Rhododendron Trail) and skipped their immediate successors, Allietare and Chilhowie.  Those turned out to be designs I liked. 

I have a hoard of South African indigos but ...