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

More Needlepoint

While I have been doing quilting lately, I've also made a lot of visible progress on my current needlepoint project.  Here's where I was 2 weeks ago:



I had 2 days where I was off work due to being sick.  During my waking hours, I ended up doing a bit of sewing.  On the 2nd day, I started feeling better in the afternoon and put in some quality time with my needle and thread. ;-) 

Just a short week after the 1st photo was taken, here's where the project stood:


Another page completed in the pattern!  Yay!  There are 42 pages in this pattern and with completing the current page, I was just shy of being 1/3 of the way done with the project.  Here is a close up of the section I completed:


Its really coming along nicely and you can see the shape and detail of the bridge now.  There's still a lot more to go, but any progress is good progress. hahaha :-)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Patience is the Name of the Game

There are times when I am the most impatient person in the world.  Standing in line at the store.... waiting for quilting fabric to arrive :-) ...

But then there are also the times when I can't believe I have the patience to do the things that I do.  I've done cross-stitch since I was about 14 or 15.  I got into it when my older sister (11 years older) was doing it and showed me the great pictures she was working on.  It also happened to be that I picked it up during summer break one year when it was rainy and dreary the entire summer.  I needed SOMETHING to do!

My latest project is a picture of Monet's Water Lilies (at least one of them).  I've been working on it for over a year now and the early prediction was that it would take 6 years to complete!  Yikes!  I need to get moving some more on it to make sure I keep up at the 6 year pace as I've been falling behind.

Here's what it looked like on February 9th:


And here it is as of yesterday (April 4th):


There's definite progress being made, but not nearly as fast as I would like.  I'm trying to hold off on doing the blue for the bridge until I get more of the green done.  On the back, the threads cross over the unstitched areas, so the blue stitches will help anchor the longer thread lengths across the back.  I try not to make the traveling spaces too large, but I also don't want to start and stop a million times.  So sometimes I'll also take a few extra loops on the back to help anchor the longer travel lengths. 

I'll have to take a picture of the back sometime.  My husband said he was tempted to ask me to make one of these twice so that we could frame them next to each other... one with the front showing and one with the back showing.  Sometimes the backs are as much a piece of art as the fronts!


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Needlepoint & Bento Box

Most evenings, my husband and I get home from work and end up watching a little TV to unwind from the day.  I'm rarely able to just sit there and watch TV.  If I don't do something, I usually fall asleep! 

When I don't have binding to sew onto a quilt, I do needlepoint.  I started in high school and have gradually increased the complexity of the pictures that I sew.  Last year I completed a rendition of Starry Night.  Now I'm working on Water Lilies by Monet.  Here's how far I've gotten:

And a close-up.  I've finally gotten a start of a bridge. ;-)

This past weekend I also made some progress on the Bento Box quilt.  Here's the blocks up on my design wall:

The batiks are all from a 2.5" strip pack that I picked up from my LQS last year.

I'm really liking the purples and greens together.

Sunday, I was able to spend some time cutting the rest of the strips to get them ready for piecing.  I love the looks of the stacks all neatly arranged and ready to sew.  I'm a bit OCD sometimes. :-)

I've already sewn the two stacks on the right together and they are ready for pressing.  Maybe I'll make some additional progress on it this week.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Make-a-List Monday

The past week has been a fairly good week in terms of getting things done.  I made good progress at the beginning of last week, but petered out a bit at the end.  We did have a bit of snow come down on Friday with the N'oreaster that came up the coast and battered NYC and Boston.  Since we're quite a bit inland, we didn't get as much snow as they did.

These first pictures were taken at about 8am on Friday morning.  Just a little dusting on the ground:

It didn't really snow heavily though on Friday morning.  This is what we had by about 2 in the afternoon.

The snow did come down at a good clip during the night though as we woke up to 10" on Saturday morning.

This last picture is from Sunday morning.  The sun on Saturday afternoon melted a little bit of the snow that was left on the sidewalk after shoveling and the sidewalk is now perfectly clean. :-)

It was nice to see everything white again though.

So here was the list from last week:


1. Rinse out blue marks from Lone Star quilt and photograph. All the marks are rinsed out.  When you look at the close up pictures below, it shows all the straight-line stitching.  I plan on doing more custom free-motion quilting in the open areas, but I want to get the other borders done and then come back and fill-in afterwards.

2. Start quilting outside cream border on Lone Star quilt. Not done. :-(  I got lazy.
3. Post photos of needlepoint and coffered ceiling progress. Done...sort of.  I do have photos of both the needlepoint and coffered ceiling, but I'm going to spread them out through a few posts. :-)

So this coming week, I hope to get a few more things done and log a few more posts.
1. Mark the border quilting for the large outer border on Lone Star.
2. Post pictures of needlepoint and coffered ceiling progress.
3. Post pictures of Bento Box progress.
4. Post review of tea maker. :-)

Hope everyone is having a great Monday!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Stashbusting 2013 - Week 2

First stash report of the year for me since I missed last week.  I've been doing a fair amount of quilting, but its detailed quilting on a quilt and not using much fabric.  I did start another project (not that I need another one), but its using fabric completely from the stash...so its good, right?  :-)

Here's what I've been quilting.  This is a close-up on a triangle section.  This same pattern is used in four larger squares, which I'm in the process of quilting right now.  Its a lot of starts and stops, which always increases the amount of time to actually quilt something.

This is the fabric for the new project.  Its a jelly roll I bought last year in green and purple batiks.  The white is a sparkly white fabric that I had in my stash from a little over a year ago.

Before cutting all the strips, I wanted to make sure everything would work out, so I just cut the fabric for a single block.

And the finished product.  I have to fix the seam on the top right block, but I think it came out well.  Now I can start doing the other blocks.

In the meantime, I've been doing some needlepoint during the evening while watching TV.  Its relaxing for me and the end picture is awesome.

Here's a close-up of the section I'm working on now.

So here are my numbers for the first part of 2013...


Added This Week:       0.00 yards
Added Year to Date:    0.00 yards
Used This Week:          0.14 yards
Used Year to Date:       0.14 yards
Net Year to Date:         0.14 yards

Go on over to Judy's blog to see how everyone else is doing.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations