Looking Back & Looking Forward #10: Wherein There Is A Lot of Whooping Going On

Osteosperum in my flower garden

Life has been so much better this week. No more train wreck. I'm chugging along very well and at pretty good speed, I might add.  My quilting is back on track. My yard is blooming with flowers. The weather is wonderful. I get to see all my children this Sunday!
I have packages being delivered here almost every day. Most of the fabric I ordered came in today.

I'm not sure what the name of this flower is. If you know, you can put it in the comments. Every day I take a stroll around my front yard flower garden. I like to look for things that are coming up, new blooms, and just enjoy my lovely flowers.

Right now, the lilac and the iris are just starting to bloom. I just adore lilacs. Their smell! The tiny little flowers. Did you know that my lilacs put on buds in February, April and November. Crazy flowers. I tell them that all the time. "What do you think you are doing?" Obviously they ignore me because they keep doing it year after year. The only time the buds come out to flower, though, is in April.

It was 10 minutes to sunset when I started writing and there just wasn't enough light to take a good picture.

But I digress...

Looking Back

I did so well this week! Happy dancing is going on all through my house. Everyone else in the house (the dog, the cat and hubby) all think I'm crazy...you form your own opinion.

Goal #1
My conservative goal is to get the yardage package(s) out of the mailbox, open them up and iron the fabric.

This was the orange fabric to make my grandson's High School graduation quilt. I had started out with some orange, but there just wasn't enough variety. For the whole backstory, click here. The fabric all came with three of the five arriving in the mail this afternoon.

I was going to try and hurriedly iron them to make my goal. But I was making split pea soup and had to go in and make the Irish Soda Bread that goes with it. I have a different bread that goes with many recipes I have. See this post for my thoughts on bread AND a recipe for bread.

I vote that I met this goal since 3/5th of the fabric didn't arrive until this after noon.

Here's the new fabric. To hear the accompanying details for this story, click here.

The top four are just different oranges with lots of design. The lower one is  shades of medium orange to burnt orange. I have a couple of other oranges in my first set of fabrics that are a burnt orange so this should work in just fine.

Goal #2:
Chip's One-Year Birthday Quilt
2.  I have the fabric ready and already have the pattern. Since I'll be free most of the next week, my goal will be to cut out the pieces.

Here's the fabric! Isn't it sweet?

I had ordered a yard of cowboy fabric for Chip's quilt, but it wasn't enough. I had to fussy cut all the fabrics and since it was in rows I could only fussy cut every other row. I cut out all the fabric I could and ordered more. It came today.
The blocks for Chip's quilt are 6-1/2" square. You need 20 squares for the quilt.

The picture on the left shows the two fabrics that will be bordering the blocks.

The bonus is that once I've cut the fabric for Chip's quilt, there's enough left over to make a baby quilt. So I fussy cut the remaining fabric and will cut the rest.

The blocks are 4-1/2" square. It needs 20 blocks and makes a baby size quilt.

Below are a couple of pictures of this pattern. The one on the left is a baby quilt made for a co-worker of mine. The one on the right was made by Firstest when he was eight.

Looking Forward:

Next week I plan on putting most of my energy into Firstest's quilt and maybe a little time on a couple of side projects.

1.  Firstest's Quilt:  

     Cut new fabric into pieces.

     Assemble 10 blocks

 2.  Military Mom Quilt (see here for post with explanation of this quilt)

      Figure out and draw up the layout of quilt

3.  Computer chair pillow

     Make cover for pillow

That should keep me busy. Since we are going to a SFGiants game on  Friday afternoon and to Firstest's Court of Honor for his Eagle Scout Award, I may not get everything but #3 is a wish, and any work on #2 will do.

I hope you have a wonderful week with lots of flowers, happy circumstances and joy with the ones you love.

Nyd din dag! (Danish for "See You Later!")

I'll be sharing this post on linky parties. Be sure and jump over to them to check out what other accomplished and fascinating quilters are doing. The Linky Parties are listed by day of the week.  

Looking Back & Looking Forward #9: A Train Wreck

Looking back is definitely not a good thing this week. I got thru lots (as in I don't know the number) of blocks on the quilt for my grandson's High School graduation. At that point I was half excited, half worried about what it would look on the design wall.

 This is what it looked like.

I put the blocks on the design wall but stopped because it didn't look so good. My husband's much better at color than I am and helps me out a lot on designing my quilts. The next day when he got home from work I asked him to come take a look at it. He walked in the room, glanced at it and said, "It's awful."
"That's what I thought," I said glumly.
It's true. I looked at the original pattern and it worked because it was all shades of one color. Mine had three main colors.
Doomed! Doomed I was! Right from the beginning!

 After I went to my bedroom and cried a little, and stared out the window a little, I decided to get on with my life.

The dreadful story is here, here and here.

I've switched to a pattern that I've made twice before. I know it's easy to cut out and easy to make, and quick too. This is a good thing since I've already wasted over a month on the other quilt. The good news is that I can combine the "little" bird pieces from the other one and arrange them into a large hexie. I figure I'll just applique them on some fabric and voila!

The new quilt is this:

The pattern is Gumballs by Debbie Luttrell, who owns Stitcin' Heaven. It calls for 10 different batiks in 1-5/8 yd cuts. The secret to this is to get them all in one color family. I made this one for my TGS. I loved it so much I made one for me too!

Firstest's favorite color is orange, and has been since he was knee high to a grasshopper. So, orange it is!

Okay, doke:

Looking Forward

Firstest's Graduation Quilt:
I had a heck of a time finding 10 different orange batik fabrics. I went to every quilt store in the county, except for Joanns. I ended up with six cuts. I found large orange batik scraps and some yardage and added it in. When it came time to assemble blocks, there just wasn't enough variety. I went ahead and bought some from Etsy and some from Ebay. Now the fabric may not be here until next week, so I don't know when I can work on the quilt.

1. My conservative goal is to get the yardage package(s) out of the mailbox, open them up and iron the fabric.

Chip's One-Year Birthday Quilt
2.  I have the fabric ready and already have the pattern. Since I'll be free most of the next week, my goal will be to cut out the pieces.

That's it for me. I'm a little relieved because I have made the patterns for both Chip and his older brother, Firstest. I think it will be fun from here on out!

Nyd din dag! (Danish for "See You Later!")

Hurry on over and see all the fun going on in the linky parties. Find them in the right sidebar!

Picture of train wreck attribution: http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/

Looking Back & Looking Forward #3

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TGS and I in lovely Patapsco State Park, Maryland, in 2009

I've just come back from Maryland where I went to see TGS* and OSLW for a fantastic nine-day visit. My son was on recuperation leave so he was able to be here all day last week. Bad news for him: he got a bad cold the first day I was here. We still managed to have a great time.

We've were homebodies for the most of the time and I adored. My son plays piano and practices during the day and does some computer programming. OSLW and I have lounged around reading, chatting, playing games, and napping. OSLW has been finishing up her Master's Thesis during the first few days I was here. Congratulations to my fantastic DIL who submitted her Thesis last Friday.


*See the tab "Blog Names" at top to find out who is who in my blog.


I've also been "vacationing" from my blog! My original plan was to keep blogging while in Maryland and I had the time to do it. However, my pictures for posts didn't show up in my computer. Luckily, TGS came to the rescue! (sound of triumphant trumpets!) We (actually he with me looking on) spent time all week fine tuning the laptop. It was hampered by apps that were mulish and causing general mayhem. I think we've got it ready for me to write my blog.

Looking Back
Progress on My Goals whose due date was really for two weeks ago:

Make Alphabet Letters for Poppet's 3rd Birthday by Thursday.

Thursday was the day I went up to Noel Heart's house to celebrate Poppet's birthday on Saturday. I am proud to announce that, for once in a long time, I finished the Alphabet Letters on time! No pictures yet, I can't get the iPhone to spit them out. Grrrr.

Finish Green Rainbow Scrap Challenge Block
I am sorry to report that I didn't get this done. I must claim that being away for two weeks was a bit of a problem!

Looking Forward
Here's what I'm  planning for the following week:

1.  Make BOM block

2.  Figure Out Layout for Military Mom Memory Quilt
     TGS has volunteered to help family of service members who are killed in the line of duty. It is a beautiful offering where one soldier helps a family deal with all the paperwork after someone has died, i.e. getting the body home, filling out papers, etc. They keep in touch with the family to support them for the first year.
     A woman that TGS has supported for the last year has lost her son. She mentioned to TGS that she would like to have a memory quilt made of her son's uniforms. That's where I come in. I have a big box of uniforms, t-shirts, patches, gloves, etc. All different sorts of memorabilia and uniforms. She is going to put this on her son's bed at home so it won't be a cuddle quilt.
    I'm a little in a quandary of how to put all of these things together. Do any of you have experience with this sort of quilt or have ideas on how to incorporate all the different weights of fabric in a quilt?

3.  Start Cutting Out Quilt for Firstest
     Firstest is graduating from High School this year. Wow, that's totally awesome and amazing. He's such a great guy. He has been in Scouting since he was 8 and has so many achievements in the program, culminating in getting his Eagle Scout. He is such a decent person, he really believes and puts into action the Scouting Values. He's so sweet with his little sister, Poppet, and brother, Chip. Chip is just 7 months old and his name is short for chipper because he is jovial and smiling all day. Ever since he learned how to smile, there is always a grin when he sees someone.
    Back to Firstest, I am making a quilt out of his favorite colors: orange and aqua. I threw in some gray and I think it'll be super! I'm dedicated to getting this "event" quilt done on time, unlike all the "event" quilts I made last year!

My goals are pretty ambitious, I admit. Maybe it will help me quilt more! I'm always letting other things get in my way and then I don't have time to quilt. I decided one thing that would help out is to quilt once my husband goes to bed at 7 p.m.; he has a early morning job. It will give me two solid hours of quilting and will accomplish more than if I watch TV!