No Excuses

I really have no excuse as to why I haven't been blogging.  I could say that things have been tremendously busy (which is partly true), but it has felt like blogging was more of a chore for a while than something I enjoyed doing.  Sometimes I think that as things get crazy at work, it makes me want to post more as I do it at lunch and its a good break from thinking about work.

In that vein....here's what's been happening the past few months.

1.  I've been working on Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery quilt, En Provence.  I completed the first clue right on schedule...and promptly got behind.  The second clue used the Tri-rec's tools, which work well, but I'm not a big fan of making the blocks.  If I'm really careful, then things work out well, but its hard to be really careful when you have something like 150 of these suckers to make.


My test piece came our perfect!


So it was on to mass-producing them as much as I could.  The other pieces on the ruler on the table are from a second quilt that I was making in between En Provence such that I didn't go COMPLETELY mad from making the same blocks over and over and over and over.



Ooohhh... the first stack of 20 all complete!


Then it was on to the next clue which used purples (yay) and were four patches again.  Much simpler to make and you don't have to be as careful, which is nice when making this many of them.


I did have a "cutting frenzy" Sunday one weekend and cut out everything for the remaining clues that I had gotten behind on.  All of them are prepped and ready to be sewn, which makes things a bit easier sometimes when you only have 10 minutes here or there to sew.


2.  Heat Wave -- this is a pattern by Judy Laquidara.  I love the pattern and purchased the fabric a LONG time ago.  I've got the center section done as well as the strip borders added to the quilt.  I do have one more pieced border to add.  I think in the end, this one will be a fun quilt.


Here are the start of the blocks for the pieced border.  The pattern is a snail's trail block (or monkey wrench).  The blocks will look great when they are done, but they are a bit tedious to sew.  Start with four patches, add a triangle, press, add 2nd triangle, press, add 3rd triangle, press, add 4th triangle, press...then do it all over again for the next round of four triangles.  All in all, I think there are 4 rounds of triangles on this one.



3. Since its winter and I like spending time by the fireplace I've been working on my cross-stitch a lot as well.  The first picture is from the tail end of December (note the box with the wrapping paper remnants in it).


This next one was at the end of January and I had a full additional page completed on this row as well as finished up the first page on the row.  The end picture will be awesome, but its definitely a labor of love.  There are a total of 42 pages on this one, and I'm on page 9.  I have quite a ways to go!



4. FINISHES!!!  I actually finished two quilts...finally!  A co-worker had a new baby last summer and I decided that I was going to make a quilt for the new baby.  I didn't know him very well when his first son was born, but I didn't want the older child to feel left out, so I opted to make two quilts.  Both quilts use the exact same fabrics, but use completely different patterns.  I wanted the quilts to be different (since no two children are the same) but I also wanted to tie the two brothers together, so I opted to do that with the fabrics.


Both quilts turned out well.  I like the string-pieced one a bit more though.



So that's the run down of the big things that have been happening.  I have a mini-vacation coming up next weekend where I am flying down to Orlando, Florida with one sister such that we can both visit our other sister for the weekend.  It'll be a fun girls' weekend.  :)

One of the things we plan on doing is kayaking with manatees.  I did it last year when I went to visit my sister in Florida, and we used a 2-person kayak.  However, I found a place this year that has 3-person kayaks.  The best part... that particular location is called the Three Sisters!  It was destined for us to do it. LOL

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm this winter!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Quiltville Mystery - En Provence

Its been quite some time since I last posted.  I had a loss in my quilting mojo for a while and didn't enter my sewing room for more than a month.  The year has gone by quickly and its December already.

The day after Thanksgiving, Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville started up her yearly myster quilt, En Provence.  I didn't participate last year, but decided this year I wanted to.  Its helped me want to get back into the sewing room.

Clue #1 was posted Friday, November 25th.  Its a fairly simple clue with 221 four-patches of neutrals.  Here's my first two pairs to make sure the ended up at the correct size:


As I was pulling strips from my bin of pre-cut strips from other projects and then sewing them into pairs, I ran out of thread on my prior thread cone.  It was a pretty hefty cone at 2500 yards of thread, but nothing like the Big Bertha of cones that I have next up.  Its a whopping 25,000 yards of thread.  I'm curious to see how long this thread cone lasts me.  Its from Superior Threads and I was able to get it on sale earlier this year.


I didn't have enough time to completely finish all of the four-patches.  I honestly don't know how some of the ladies keep up with the clues... other than that they may be retired and not have to spend 40-60 hours a week working for corporate America.

I was able to finish (and press) 100 of the little buggers.


And another twenty sewn and ready for pressing.  Only 101 left to go!



Hop on over to Quiltville's Mystery Link-up (for part 1) to see how the other quilters are faring so far.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Wildflower Fields Completed!

Two years ago, Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville had a mystery quilt that I participated in.  The pattern is called Orca Bay and Bonnie's colors were blue, red, black and neutrals.

I chose to use fabrics completely from my stash and opted for greens, purples, yellows/pinks and neutrals.


There were an amazing number of pieces to this quilt, as is typical with Bonnie Hunter quilts.  I don't think I would recommend one of her patterns to a beginner or to someone who solely does hand-piecing.


It was actually hard at times to make sure that I had all the right pieces because there were so many.  I think it was something like 300-400 little purple triangles.


The center blocks finally started coming together as Ohio Star blocks.  Both light and dark versions of them.




And finally some blocks up on the design wall to see the overall pattern.


Piecing done!!


Quilting done!!


And finally....

Completely bound and ready for use!




The photo above has the overhead light on while the photo below is just the natural light coming through the windows.  The day was overcast so I decided to do both pictures.



It was a fun quilt to make and despite it being a bit "crazy colored" in the beginning, the quilt turned out really well at the end.  My husband even likes it and initially he called it the "ugly quilt".

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Stash Busting 2013 - Week 35

Last week was a good quilting week.  I mostly stayed inside, despite the nice weather, due to the poison ivy rash I had.  Sunblock made the skin feel like it was burning, so I had to stay in or risk getting sunburn on top of the poison ivy rash. Yuck!

But because I stayed in, I was able to finish quilting Wildflower Fields (the pattern is Orca Bay by Bonnie Hunter).  I even made the binding and have it all machine-sewn on.  I sew the back of the binding by hand, so it will stay in the partially attached category until the weather gets cooler and I want a quilt to cover up with.  :-)  There's no way I'm sitting with a heavy quilt on me when its 85-degrees out!



The next two photos show the quilting detail a little bit more.  I used wool batting on this one, so its a bit puffier than standard cotton batting.




We also finally hung the Lone Star quilt in the foyer.  I did not block this quilt at all, just machine washed and dried it and it hangs perfectly straight!  Yay!  It really fills the space on the wall really well and we love how it looks up there.  You can easily see all the texture that the quilting created on it... even when you're 15 feet away from it.


It is a bit difficult to get a picture of it on the wall as I'm either off to the side and at the some level (i.e. standing upstairs) or I'm under it taking a picture from below.  Either way... it looks really great hanging on the wall.  Since it wasn't terribly difficult to hang (had to use two ladders and one of the ladders was on the stairs), I may enter this one in a quilt show during the up-coming year.  We'll see if I find anything that I want to enter it into....

So in terms of stash busting, I was able to count a lot of fabric this week because of the backing on Wildflower Fields.  I also counted the binding since there's only the hand-sewing left to do.

So here are my stash numbers:

Added This Week:       0.00 yards
Added Year to Date:    5.86 yards
Used This Week:          6.48 yards
Used Year to Date:       14.85 yards
Net Year to Date:         8.99 yards

I'm in the black by almost 9 yards of fabric.  I love using backings!  :-)

Check out how others are doing with their stash over on Judy's blog.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Wildflower Fields

The one good thing about the poison ivy rash that I picked up was that it gave me more time to sew.  Once I got past the first week of intense itching and sitting with an ice pack on my arm constantly, things weren't too bad.  The only issue was that when I tried to put sunblock on, it felt like my arm was on fire.  So sunblock was out...  Since I burn easily anyway, there was no way I was going to get sunburn on top of the poison ivy!

Since I was "stuck" inside, I decided to buckle down and finish the quilting on Wildflower Fields and just get it done.  This quilt is a pattern called Orca Bay from Bonnie Hunter.  I made this while Bonnie had this is a mystery quilt, but now you can purchase that pattern through one of her books.

Here's the quilt about 3/4 done through quilting:



And a close-up of some of the stitching.  I used Superior Threads bottom line in the bobbin and king tut in the top.  The King Tut was a variegated purple-ish colored thread.


Somehow the purple/pink colors of the thread mixed well with all the colors on the quilt.




I also decided to use wool batting on this quilt.  Its my first time using wool and I think I may use it more often for some of the quilts when I want the quilting to stand out a bit more.


You can see the texture from the quilting and wool batting in the next few photos.




It took a longer than I expected to quilt this quilt, but its done now....which means I'll be able to count the backing as stash used this coming weekend.  :-)


I still have to trim the quilt and add the binding to it (a solid green), but I really like how this quilt turned out.  I'm in the process of getting caught up with my quilting and turning out some finishes.  This will only be my 2nd finish this year as the Lone Star quilt took up most of my quilting time earlier this year. 

It feels good to get some more finishes done.  :-)


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Whirlwind

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind for me.  I'm not quite sure how it got to be Friday (almost) already.  The past week or so has been primarily taken up by work items.  My work is going through a re-structuring....again.  By the time everything falls out, I will have had 6 managers in 6 years!

Part of this re-structuring is also some "de-layering", which essentially means that anyone above an individual contributor level needs to re-interview for our own jobs.  We have 15 people at the current level that I am at, and only 8 positions open.  In light of this, I decided to post for one of the new, open manager positions.  It took me several days to decide whether I even wanted to post for it.

At this stage, I've had the interviews (today) and I'm absolutely beat.  The interviews weren't especially long or difficult, but the whole stress of the situation seems to have taken its toll on me.  My quilting mojo is completely gone and I have very little desire to even get into the sewing room.  I'm hoping that now that the interviews are done and everything is essentially out of my hands, that I'll get some of that mojo back.  I'll know in about another 1-1.5 weeks whether I am selected over the other 3 candidates.  The other 3 have at least 5 years more experience than I have, so I'm not feeling quite so confident now about my chances.

Anyway, last weekend I did play with some new fabric in my sewing room.  I purchased a scrap bag just before Christmas and I'm going to make some fun and funky place mats with it.  I'm cutting the pieces into 4.5" lengths and varying widths.  Then those will get sewn into 12.5" long, strip pieced sets.  Everything will get sashed and the end place mat will be about 16" x 18".



Some of these fabrics are really fun, while some others are pretty ugly (see pieces being held up on the right side of the picture below).  I'm going to use Bonnie Hunter's method.... if its ugly, just cut it smaller.  :-)


I'm also thinking I should have taken a piece of advice from my cat over the weekend.  She had it right.... curling up on a soft blanket on a chair in front of an open window in the sun!


This weekend we're traveling a bit to visit my parents for Mother's Day.  Each year we visit them and with my siblings, we make a trip to a local garden center and buy my Mom more plants than she knows what to do with. :-)  Its a combination of Mother's Day and birthday for her.  Plus, my younger sister's birthday is also next week, so we'll celebrate that, too.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Make-A-List Monday... on Tuesday

Whenever there's a three-day weekend with the holiday on Monday, I get all screwed up in terms of what day of the week it is.  This time is no exception. :-)  Actually, I think it may even be worse because I took Friday off from work to make it a four-day weekend.

I was able to get some sewing done, but not a huge amount as both Saturday and Sunday were spent a my parents' and my inlaw's for two separate labor day gatherings.

Here was the plan for last week.

1. Post on Wednesday with project progress.  Work was crazy busy, so I didn't do this last week.
2. Finish adding the final borders to Wildflower Fields.  Finished!
3. Post about Quilt #6.  Finished!
4. Post a picture of the current needlepoint project. Oops - forgot to even take a picture.  I did finish the "page" I was working on and am onto the last page for the first row.  There's 42 pages total!  The first row when I'm done with it will have 30,000 stitches.  That's a scary number!.
5. Post for Stashbusting Sunday.  Wasn't home on Sunday, so I didn't get a chance to post.


So here's Wildflower Fields all completed (except final quilting and binding).

Closer picture of one of the corners.

I think it came out way better than I thought it would.  The pictures really don't do it justice as the colors are very vibrant in person and they just don't show up as well in the picture.  I can't wait to get this on the frame and quilted!

So this week, I'm not even going to attempt to be adventurous as its probably going to be another busy week.  In no particular order...

1. Post for Stashbusting on Sunday.
2. Quilt more of the Beginning Sampler and post photos of quilted blocks.
3. Design quilting motif for Lone Star wall hanging.
4. Trim "leftover" bits from other quilts into usable pieces.
5. Photograph needlepoint and post picture.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Wildflower Fields

Late last year, I started a mystery quilt pattern from Bonnie Hunter called Orca Bay.  I'm finally getting around to finish it.  This has been a labor of love and sometimes of annoyance.  It took a very long time to make all the string blocks and triangles.  There's too many individual pieces to count in this quilt.

Here's how it was at the start of this week with the center pieced and the inside border on.

I was finally able to get some time after work on Thursday and put the last borders on to finish this up.  While I still have to quilt it, I'm really happy that the "hard part" is done now.  It came out a lot better than I had thought it would.  I liked all the fabrics I originally picked (all from stash with a few supplements when I ran out), but didn't dream that it would look this good.  The pictures don't do it justice.  My husband thought it was ugly for the longest time, but now that its together, he thinks its pretty cool.

Closer picture of one of the corners.

I have a simple pantograph pattern of daisies that I think I'm going to use for the quilting.  Since its so busy, I just want something that will provide texture to the quilt.  Now...on to the next project. :-)

 Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 29

I was on vacation this past week and got a TON of stuff done.  Not much of it related to actually using fabric though.  We've spent the majority of the week doing projects around the house that have been lingering.  Somehow we can never get enough done even on weekends due to being at the office for 50+ hours a week (each of us are working 50+ hours a week).

We finished hanging my design wall in my quilting "studio".  We made it out of 1/4" thick plywood, 3/8" thick cork board, and a fabric design wall from Keepsake Quilting.

This is the first quilt up on the design wall.  Its Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay pattern.  With the colors I've chosen, I'm calling it "Wildflower Fields".

We also painted and assembled a very large trellis for the front of the house.  Its about 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide.  It will give plenty of space for our clematis to start climbing.  The brown thing on the garage is the trellis.  I don't have any pictures that are closer up.

Our plants are all doing well with the little bit of water we've been able to give them.  We're actually getting a little bit of rain right now so we have every container available outside to try to catch as much of the water as possible.  We definitely need the rain as the grass is definitely well past the crunchy stage!

On the quilting front, I've been cutting up some scraps to use in future quilts, but it doesn't get counted as stash used until its actually being sewn into something.  I've also been working on quilting a quilt on my frame.  I have it about halfway done now.  I can get 5 passes done in a single bobbin filled to the brim with Bottom-Line thread from Superior Threads.  The quilt is from Judy's book "Weekend Quilts".

Here are the numbers:
Added This Week:       0.0 yards
Added Year to Date:    18.54 yards
Used This Week:          0.0 yards
Used Year to Date:       19.72 yards
Net Year to Date:         -1.18 yards

Still in the black and hope to stay there!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at UpstateNYCreations