Mariner's Compass Progress

I made a lot of progress this past week or two on the Mariner's compass quilt.  My last update on this, I mentioned that I had to take off the first set of blue borders since I somehow managed to mis-cut the strips and didn't realize until I tried to put the pieced border onto the quilt.  After spending about 3 hours ripping out stitches on ~60" square quilt, I was able to recut the border strips and start putting things together.

As you can see, the pieced border now lines up properly.  ;c)

My husband was out snowboarding on Saturday, so I had most of the day to myself in the house.  I was also up early with him (he left the house at 7am), so I had a LOT of sewing time in front of me.

I was able to get the pieced borders on by about 10 am.

By early afternoon (after a shower and lunch break), I had all the borders on and the quilt top is complete!

I absolutely love it and can't wait to start quilting it.  I know what I want to do with the large setting triangles outside the ribbon border, but I'm not quite sure what I want to do with the center yet.  I have to think about it a little bit before I start doing anything.  I'll leave it up on my design wall to stare at for a while so I can figure out what I want to do.  Over the years, I've found its usually best to let it sit for a week or two to see what I want to do with the quilting.  Then it will just hit me and I'll start flying with it.


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

Stashbusting 2012 - Week 26

A little bit of sewing done this week.  A lot of outdoor work this week. ;-)  We did get the rest of the materials to make a design wall.  And I was able to get the entire center section of the lone star done along with attaching the background pieces.  Here's what the design wall looks like along with the center portion of the star:

A duplicate design wall (same size) will eventually be right next to this one...so my design wall will be 8 feet wide by about 65" tall.

I cut the first set of borders to go around the star (dark blue), but I don't have any pictures of it yet.  That's where my "stash used" comes from this week.

Here's also what the garden looks like now with all the plants in place:

Here are the numbers:
Added This Week:       0.0 yards
Added Year to Date:    15.54 yards
Used This Week:          0.49 yards
Used Year to Date:       14.09 yards
Net Year to Date:         1.45 yards

Go on over to Patchwork Times to see how everyone else is doing.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations