Design Wall Monday

Currently on my design wall is a baby quilt I am making for a friend of mine. This quilt is from a kit called Salt Water Taffy. I spent an hour today arranging and rearranging the blocks to keep from having too many darks or brights in one place, or too many of one color in one place. Every time I fix one problem area, I create another.


My husband came up and took a look at it and his only response was "That's bright". I asked if he saw anywhere where I had too many of one color together. He said "No you pretty much have a technicolor yawn there". Thanks, sweetie. I appreciate your support. But he went on to help figure out what was going on with the battery backup for my TV and DVR in the sewing room, so I won't complain too much.

Even if the quilt is bright, I am loving the batiks in this kit. This one is my favorite. I'm thinking I need to find a couple yards of this fabric. It just makes me happy.


So it is the end of January already and I still am an awful blogger. I did not accomplish everything I hoped to in January but here is the rundown.

These were my goals for January

1. Make demo blocks of the Stars 2009 BOM for the January business meeting
2. Write up instructions and prepare templates for teaching the January work night
3. Finish 2 other Stars BOM (2009 BOM) blocks
4. Finish the Underground Railroad borders
5. Finish quilting 1 charity quilt for the quilt guild (turn in Feb business meeting)

I got the stuff done that I had to do for the quilt guild. Not that I had a choice on that. It was either get it done or look bad in front of the whole guild...which turned out to be 5 people this month. I got one of the two extra Stars blocks done. I trimmed all the bunny ears and squared up the blocks for my Underground Railroad border, but they are all still sitting in two neat piles next to my sewing machine.

On Friday I got an invitation to my friend's baby shower in Colorado at the end of February. I won't be able to fly out for the shower, but it did kind of make me feel like I'd better get to work on her quilt, which was one of my goals for February. I've got all the blocks pieced for the Taffy quilt. I will try to get the top pieced, and the whole thing quilted by the end of the month.

Oh, I also was having so much fun with those batiks that I made a little pin cushion with scraps. The heart pattern is the same pattern I taught at our guild work night. The inside of the heart is pieced with scraps and the outside of the heart was reverse appliqued. For the pin cushion I experimented with machine applique using a zig zag stitch. It didn't go well. But the little heart is kinda cute anyway.

Update: I almost forgot to say that you can see what other people are up to this week by going to Judy's weekly design wall posts

January Week 1 Update

My plan for this week is to work on the Stars Block of the Month demo blocks. I will make one complete blocks and make a few other blocks to show how to do different steps to assemble the block. Our guild business meeting is next Monday, so this is my priority today.

I also will start working on writing up instructions to teach the January work night. This is a small valentine's day project based on an article from the "Hearts Alive" article in the February 2009 Quilter's Newsletter. I signed up to teach this last year when we were setting up our guild calendar. I have the final quilt complete (except that I want to frame it), and I have some demo blocks done. This needs to be done by the 4th Monday of this month for our guild work night. I've tried to plan in some hand or design work each month. I can do that in front of the TV with my husband. Then I don't feel like I'm ignoring my husband so badly.

If I have any time left over this week, I'll start catching up on the 2009 BOM blocks.

Next week I'll let you know how I did, and post pictures of the completed blocks.

To do list for 2010

I am not much for resolutions. I do have a few things I want to work on this year though. Things like losing weight, exercising more, trying to keep the house clean enough that I feel like I can have company more often, cook more often, spend more time training the dogs, and spend more time quilting. All this will dramatically cut into my Facebook time. I log into Facebook and all of a sudden 2 hours of my day is gone.

I have several quilt projects that I'd like to finish this year. I've seen many blogs with bucket lists, or UFO lists. I love the idea, so I thought I'd start my own and mark of what I get accomplished this year. If nothing else I can see what I've completed. Hopefully I'll post a picture with each completed project. So without any further ado here is my 2010 To Do List as I see it right now. I'm breaking it out by what I want to accomplish each month (I am resisting the urge to create Gantt charts to plan this thing). I'm sure I'll end up pushing some things off to another month and working on others early but this is my initial plan.

2010 To Do List

January

1. Make demo blocks of the Stars 2009 BOM for the January business meeting
   
2. Write up instructions and prepare templates for teaching the January work night
   
3. Finish 2 other Stars BOM (2009 BOM) blocks
   
4. Finish the Underground Railroad borders
5. Finish quilting 1 charity quilt for the quilt guild (turn in Feb business meeting)

February

1. Bind 3 charity quilts for my quilt guild by the Feb. business meeting
   
2. Do 2 more Stars (2009 BOM) blocks
   
3. Finish 1 more Tree of Life Block of the Month Quarter block
   
4. Start Jo's baby quilt
   
5. Choose pattern for a quilt for Kate and start to gather fabric
6. Make sure the guild meeting minutes/books are ready to turnover to new Secretary
   

March

1. Finish Jo's baby quilt (including quilting and binding)
   
2. Start Irish Chain quilt for my cousin Gina
3. Finish 3 more Stars (2009 BOM) blocks
4. Piece and quilt one small charity quilt for guild
   

April

1. Finish remaining 2 Stars (2009 BOM)blocks
2. Assemble Stars (2009 BOM) top
3. Continue Irish Chain quilt
4. Start on setting blocks for the Pansy quilt
5. 2010 Guild BOM

May

1. Finish Irish Chain quilt and send out to be quilted
2. Finish Pansy Quilt top
3. Piece and quilt one small charity quilt for guild
4. 2010 Guild BOM
5. Finish 1 more Tree of Life Block of the Month Quarter block

June - may have some traveling this month

1. Start piecing Kate's quilt
2. Finish 1 more Tree of Life Block of the Month Quarter block
3. Start quilting or send out Underground Railroad

July - May have some traveling this month

1. Finish 1 more Tree of Life Block of the Month Quarter block
2. Continue Kate's quilt
3. Piece and quilt small charity quilt

August

1. Start quilting Turning 20 quilt
2. Finish piecing quilt as you go quilt (from 3 years ago!!!)
3. Finish Kate's quilt top

September

1. Either quilt or send out Kate's top
2. finish binding on Kate's quilt
3. finish binding on the quilt as you go quilt

October

1. Decide and start on any home made Christmas presents

November

1. Christmas Presents

December

1. Christmas Presents

Notice that the end of the year got kind of lean. I figured I should give myself a little wiggle room in case some of my earlier projects run long, and because I am not yet sure what I want to do for Christmas presents this year.

My plan is to post weekly updates on what I've accomplished and what I plan to do. Probably I'll try to do this on Mondays with Judy's What's on your design wall updates.