Scientific Quilter

This is the time for everyone to report in for their actions of the last week of the March-A-Long.

For those new to the blog, this is a 15 minute per day challenge where YOU (and I) attempt to do some ‘quilty stuff’ each day.

You can chose to use my daily format for reporting in, or just give a general synopsis. Did you make your goals for the week?

Comment below or use the inlinkz tool below. I will leave links open until the end of March. If you have a March A Long blog post, link it below.

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This past week for me was completely recouperation week, and I enjoyed every introverted minute of it!  Just my kind of style, albeit slightly lonelier than last week.

For each week that you participate in the March A Long, I will put your name in a drawing to receive at least Leah Day’s beginning Free Motion Quilt book patterns called from Daisy to Paisley. This drawing will be done at the end of the month and now I have to go find my stack of items I’ve been thinking about giving away.

I’m counting the week from Sunday through Saturday. How was your fourth quilty week? Here’s mine.

March-A-Long Week 4 – Scientific Quilter

Sunday, I rested. And I listened to an audiobook, and I sewed down triangles, and strips, and triangles, and strips. At the end of the day I actually got organized on the sewing table which helped out the rest of the week.

Monday, I did sew a few strips down this day, getting a lot closer here to getting done.

Tuesday, I sat down for at least an hour and knocked out the remaining strips for the hexadaisy project.   AND someone from the guild came over and dropped off two trash bags full of some kind of fabric.

Wednesday, I think this day I worked about 5 – 10 distracted minutes on my embroidery.

Thursday, I ripped out all the paper on the back of the hexadaisy quilt pieces, and then placed them on my design wall. I am sure that just the placement on the design wall took 15 minutes alone.

Friday, I promised I was going to work on quilting, but in the end just got my bags of the donated fabric into my room, and actually did not look at them at this time.  I promised myself to work 30 minutes on Saturday instead – and to work on the final embroidery piece for the LAST BOM for the guild.

Saturday, well that is today, and this morning it was way more interesting to do dishes and laundry, and food shopping, and cleaning up my desk than doing the embroidery. I got myself so worked up over this embroidery thing that I haven’t put any effort into finishing it.  BUT to count for my 15 minutes, I spent about 45 minutes going through both bags of fabric, organizing into trash, give to the garage sale for the guild, small pieces to iron to keep, and large pieces to wash and then keep.  One fabric was worth the whole sorting thing as I love it and there’s about a yard of it. There are other ‘nice fabrics’, and other fabrics that are low quality, but I like the pattern of, and other fabrics that are probably exciting for other people, but I just can’t get into them, but I am going to see if they’ll round out my stash in any way and become practice projects or something.

And maybe I’ll embroider and do my stationary bike type of thing at the same time if possible. Who knows.

And then tomorrow is the gathering all the emails and posts together day, and I do have some Easter plans, but I will work on getting your reports up to speed as well.

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Here are a few photos of this week’s progress and things I’ve been doing. Actually most of the pictures are heavy towards the beginning of the week.

Now here’s a chance to inLinkz for the last week of March.

This is the time for everyone to report in for their actions of the third week of the March-A-Long.

For those new to the blog, this is a 15 minute per day challenge where YOU (and I) attempt to do some ‘quilty stuff’ each day.

You can chose to use my daily format for reporting in, or just give a general synopsis. Did you make your goals for the week?

Comment below or use the inlinkz tool below. I will leave links open until the end of March. If you have a March A Long blog post, link it below.

***

As you may have noticed there was no podcast the last two Sundays, unlike my original plan, we’re just going to have to have march a long at the end of the month. Or maybe tomorrow and the last week.  SO busy this week!  Slept in MANY hours today, and I still feel like I need to rest.

The past week things were much more social than I ever expected, but also much more fun than sitting at home by myself.  Today has been a chill out day for me to recoup. Hopefully I won’t also need tomorrow to recoup too.

For each week that you participate in the March A Long, I will put your name in a drawing to receive at least Leah Day’s beginning Free Motion Quilt book patterns called from Daisy to Paisley. This drawing will be done at the end of the month and may include more things, such as charm packs or other quilty items yet to be determined.

I’m counting the week from Sunday through Saturday. How was your third quilty week? Here’s mine.

March-A-Long Week 3 – Scientific Quilter

Sunday, I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. At the end of the day I folded two different papers I made for paper piecing. I did make an effort, but only worked about 5 minutes towards anything quilty, except to put out the blog post at the end of the day surrendering any further progress.

Monday, being my birthday, was also a bust when it came to quilting. I DID however, go on a “birthday walk” and I did however, eat my very first Japanese dinner cooked in front of me. The chef was very animated and kept calling me “pretty lady”.  Joking around with him was also a lot of fun. Maybe I need to make a Japanese inspired quilt, based on his performance.

Tuesday was the big day that my dad & brother came to town. As soon as I got home (had to really work to leave on time) we went to a downtown adventure of catching up with family even when there were big puffy flakes of snow coming down.  Pizza, window shopping, and later in the day ice cream.  So no quilting this day either.  I think the AM I may have laid out some aqua and pink fabrics to use for one of my hexadaisy quilt patterns. Or maybe this was Monday afternoon??

Wednesday was my only day “at home” but I used that cooking.  I also started collecting my quilting things to go on a “small trip” for the next two days, and I picked out the fabrics I wanted to use for my 2nd hexadaisy quilt.

Thursday, I visited my close by friend which we try to meet once a month. I love having a sewing day on a schedule, even on an otherwise busy week, and I am pretty sure she needed distraction from things going on, on her end. I started cutting down the fabrics for my multicolored hexadaisy quilt to manageable pieces (prior to paper piecing).  I also determined on this day which seams were dark and light, drew out my color map for the hexadaisy project, and actually sewed a few seams down for some of the red blocks for the hexadaisy quilt.

Friday, Jackie & I were able to meet for the afternoon for a day of sewing talking about sewing and trying to sew some things.  Actually this was quite out of the ordinary, but also quite familiar at the same time. It was nice meeting a new / old friend who there is enough familiarity and also enough strangeness to ask each other about their lives still.  We showed off our stuff, ate, discussed many things, and she showed me how to use an embellisher.  So I made a needle book (picture below).  Also very fun & new.  Total quilting time was probably not as much as food time or chatting time, but if there’s a next time, which I hope there will be, there will probably be less setting up time involved.   But also this was very fun time even when not sewing directly on projects!

Saturday, well before I posted I actually wanted to sew a few things, so I worked on the hexadaisy paper pieces, I have almost all of the red based blocks done, most of the orange blocks done, and am starting on the yellow blocks. This is going faster today as I have my groove or am better at finding it today.

Here are a few photos of this week’s progress and things I’ve been doing. The needle book is purple with red purple corners, but the color isn’t turning out very well in the photo below.

Now here’s a chance to inLinkz for the third week of March.

This is the time for everyone to report in for their actions of the second week of the March-A-Long.

For those new to the blog, this is a 15 minute per day challenge where YOU (and I) attempt to do some ‘quilty stuff’ each day.

You can chose to use my daily format for reporting in, or just give a general synopsis. Did you make your goals for the week?

Comment below or use the inlinkz tool below. I will leave links open until the end of March. If you have a March A Long blog post, link it below.

***

As you may have noticed there was no podcast last Sunday, and I explained why in the previous post. I will be faithful in attempting to do a podcast tomorrow (Sunday) but may not also appear, some of the reason for that may also be evident in the previous post.

We may just have to postpone the full reporting in podcasts until near the end of the month when things calm down a bit. But I will try, and maybe we’ll get a stealth podcast in there one of these days in March & surprise you all!  *** Sneak attack!***

For each week that you participate in the March A Long, I will put your name in a drawing to receive at least Leah Day’s beginning Free Motion Quilt book patterns called from Daisy to Paisley. This drawing will be done at the end of the month and may include more things, such as charm packs or other quilty items yet to be determined.

I’m counting the first week from Sunday through Saturday. How was your second week? Here’s mine.

March-A-Long Week 2 – Scientific Quilter

Sunday I went through all the notes for the march a long (quilty related), and started attaching my fabrics to the back of the freezer paper for the freezer paper method of applique.  Once I got into a groove this went quite well, but I did not spend only 15 minutes, more like an hour and a half doing this as it’s meditative & I was listening to the end of an audio book.  I also cleaned up my desk enough to see the top (and hey its a week later, and what happened to it?), but this lead to thinking about several long forgotten projects.

Monday I continued pressing down applique until I was able to get most all of the fabrics done except for like 1 set.

Tuesday, I had some extra time which I devoted into making caramel corn with peanuts (like cracker jacks) to take to the guild and to eat while quilting this week.  Uh… I prepared some new paper piece patterns for a few new quilts, and during the quilt guild meeting I learned about quilts from the speaker, and did some hand sitching down on the trim on my periodic spiral quilt from a year ago. And took pictures of other people’s quilts, as per usual.

Wednesday, I cut out the paper pieces for Hexadaisy pattern that I bought on Craftsy, started folding 1 section. I have enough pieces to make 2 quilts, one for guild auction, one for me.

Thursday, I really only pre-folded pieces of freezer paper pattern for Hexadaisy.  But there are like 5 folds in one piece, 3 folds in a 2nd piece, and 7 folds in the last piece. and each piece I have 24 of (to make 2 quilts)

Friday, I cut out some paper piece patterns for a “new old” quilt called crystal treasures, a pattern I got from Quilts with Style magazine 3 years ago that I saw when cleaning up my room on Sunday.

Saturday, well it’s still early yet, or it is. Work today kept me from posting this earlier. And tonight is another commitment, so we’ll see how I can get things done before it or not.

Here are a few photos of this week’s progress and things I’ve been doing.

Now here’s a chance to inLinkz for the second week of March.

This is the time for everyone to report in for their actions of the first week of the March-A-Long.

For those new to the blog, this is a 15 minute per day challenge where YOU (and I) attempt to do some ‘quilty stuff’ each day.

You can chose to use my daily format for reporting in, or just give a general synopsis. Did you make your goals for the week?

I am attempting my first linky party with this too. I will leave links open until the end of March. If you have a March A Long blog post, link it below.

I know it’s short notice, but people who leave comments/links before tomorrow AM will be included in the report in tomorrow’s (Sunday’s) podcast.

For each week that you participate in the March A Long, I will put your name in a drawing to receive at least Leah Day’s beginning Free Motion Quilt book patterns called from Daisy to Paisley. This drawing will be done at the end of the month and may include more things, such as charm packs or other quilty items yet to be determined.

Also feel free to download and/or use my day graphics (saved as .png). I am starting to learn how to use EQ7 and so its kind of fun to take a tiny bit of time playing around with the site.

But first this year’s logo:

I’m counting the first week from Sunday through Saturday.  The first two days of march were not in a full week of their own, so they’re kind of bonus this time.

March-A-Long Week 1 – Scientific Quilter

Sunday I ripped out pieces of paper on the back of my ribbons weave quilt borders.

Monday I took an old (~2 year old) EQ7 picture outline and labeled it with pencil. For applique.

Tuesday, I figured out how to print using my printer on freezer paper. I found by taking the freezer paper, ironing it to a plain piece of paper, and very forcefully and fully taping the paper down on the leading edge with painter’s tape to help it get into the printer without loading issues.

Wednesday, I sat and stared at all the freezer paper pieces I printed on Tuesday and wondered exactly how to make the whole thing work on applique because I didn’t allow for space to ‘turn under’ the applique edges, and overlapping pieces to keep continuity of the design. This was all “mental work” for 15 minutes. And I even dreamed about paper piecing the entire thing.  Seriously.

Thursday, I went to my friend’s house, and armed with fresh pieces of freezer paper, I made the decision about which pieces would be on top of my applique, and then made the hard choice of tracing all the applique again onto new fresh freezer paper pieces that DO have space around the edges for overlapping. Then I sewed down the borders of my periodic table applique that has been sitting in time out for a year.

Friday, I completely poopooed the 15 minute idea, deciding to exercise and go to bed early instead.  I had done more than 15 minutes on Thursday to make up for this.

Saturday, today, I picked out some fabrics that may go with the applique I was cutting out on Thursday. Then I got out a fabric piece for a completely different applique project that I purchased just after my Sunflower Patio Dreams quilt was appliqued down.  This project is called Wildflowers and is the basis of the flower design on my nametag I made several years ago.

I then tried to go to quilter’s cache, and did not find it loading for me, and then I went to EQ7 and drew out the garden maze sashing that I always envisioned for the wildflower quilt.  I don’t have the border fabric picked out yet, nor the garden maze sashing fabrics picked out, aside from the colors, but I DO have a limited amount of fabric to use for my applique background blocks and am in the process of cutting it out right now.

I also spent about an hour writing up a story about my Star Struck quilt, and sent the quilt off in the mail to its lucky recipient.

Here are a few photos of this week’s progress and things I’ve been doing.

Now here’s a chance to inLinkz for the first week of March.