WIP

Completed:
Christmas Mug Rug - actually did two (but will count it as one finish)...I'm calling them lame and late. ;-) (HA!) They are so small, I just did a quick quilting job on my domestic with my regular foot. Sometimes I wonder, what I am thinking? The top one used the backing fabric as my design motif which is laid out in offset squares, so just quilted on those lines. The second one I quilted from the front around the stocking motif and in the ditch between the 4 fabrics. These are scraps given to me through someone who got them from another person who had closed their fabric shop long ago and was trying to clean out old fabric samples. I like the 'old world' style to them. One of them is going to the person who selected it in the mug-rug swap, and the only one left for me to pick in the swap was the other one ;-) At last night's guild meeting, I gave them both to the person. She liked them! yeah!

Extras
I decided to use every scrap of this bright floral fabric which was used in some blocks I made for a quilt guild project last year. These pictures are both sides of the 'mug rug'. I get really stumped when dealing with something so small. WHERE do I quilt it? On my domestic or my long-arm. To change my domestic over to doing real quilting is just annoying (not really hard, just annoying), so I started off trying to hand-hold this on the long-arm and move the long-arm too...well don't try to imagine that picture. I ultimately put the channel lock on both vertical and horizontal and moved the mug rug around to get these loops just as I would have on a domestic, but on the long-arm. OH BOY. It didn't help that I had a quilt loaded already and I was doing this in the remaining margin and the back handles were hitting the side. DOH!

I gave it to the recipient of the latest quilt that used the original fabric, last night at quilt guild. Just for fun! This should surely brighten the recipient's day when using it! She had not been able to attend the December meeting, given her medical situation, which is when we did the mug rug swap. I hope it is the thought that counts with this.

I'm including a photo of the finished quilt too--it was a group project--along with the recipient from last night's guild meeting. So glad she is back with us! We call them hearts and flowers quilts. There is a committee in our guild and when a life altering event occurs, we try to whip one together. Sometimes it takes us a while, sometimes they come together like magic. One of our newly minted guild officers for 2012 had some subdural hematoma's just after Thanksgiving. When her friends didn't hear from her for a couple of days, they checked on her and found her on the floor! CHECK ON YOUR FRIENDS! I was working on some blocks for our Dec. block lotto which should have been a 'light' background....but I found a fat quarter of these gerber daisies in my stash and just thought WOW! These would be so great. When this life altering event occurred and it became evident we were on task for another hearts and flowers quilt, I suggested instead of me submitting these blocks to the lotto which was to be turned over to hearts and flowers anyway, and since I was in such violation of the original idea of the lotto blocks, that we just use them as starting points for the latest quilt. I had 24 blocks in all which was a great start to get going. The stash of collected blocks had some loud / bright blocks too and we were able to put this together. The striped inner border was out of my stash, and the outer border came from donated stash of a deceased quilt guild member (Trudy Y.). I volunteered to quilt it and put the same bright green -- minkee backing on it which I still had in a charity project / stash from several years ago. This was a good cause! Jan E. is our committee chair and was instrumental in getting it put together--including fixing some of my hastily pieced blocks that were NOT the right size, DOH! Thank you Jan!! She always has such a can do spirit--so appreciated!

I also got the binding done on this class project from Linda Taylor's class at MQX-West 2011. This wasn't on my list, but had been quilted and was awaiting binding. When I used the binding fabric on that mug rug, it is what I typically use to bind the class projects, so went and grabbed it from my long-arm room and got it bound as well! YEAH! Another one completed!










Progress this week:

Charmed Network - Terrain Version quilting in progress

Got the quilt loaded yesterday onto the long-arm machine, thinking I'd get it done and take it to guild last night. After finishing the Habitat for Humanity quilting yesterday morning, I just didn't have time, so pushed on and got some other things completed (see above!) So...this is what is on my list today!

BMCU Mug Rugs - tops are finished, one has some quilting done on it, but am little bit torn on what type of quilting to do...on my domestic (these are small pieces) or on my long-arm just because writing a word is easier to do on the long-arm. I may end up doing a mix ...the straight stitching with a walking foot to outline the mountains on my domestic, then take them to the long-arm to write the initials of the credit union in the lower portion.

Skill Builder Sampler - this is a photo of both blocks so far since I didn't show you what this was last week. If you follow Lee at all, you'll recognize these blocks since she is working on this quilt-a-long too. I'm way behind the rest of the group, but fun to add them to the flickr group anyway.


Started:
Alaska Shop Hop 2007 - fun to get something new going! It appears there will be lots of trees and stars! This block is called Whispering Pine and was from Quilts of Many Colors in Wasilla, AK. I went to Alaska for the first time back in 1995, but returned in 2007 to attend a friend's wedding in Seward. I discovered a quilt shop while hanging out in Seward for a few days and their State Shop Hop was underway. I cannot imagine that anyone is physically able to get to all of the shops that participate. It motivated me to try and get to other shops in the locations that I would be during that trip which included the Anchorage area and north to Denali. Wasilla is on the way! I don't think I actually made it to this particular shop based on the information I found today on the web, but for all the places I didn't get to, I called and had them ship me the block! More than one way to accomplish a shop hop. Each block had to be purchased (they weren't giveaways), so add some shipping and it arrived in my mailbox back at home. With my recent cruise to Alaska in 2011 with my husband's family and my parents, my motivation was renewed to get this out and try to make it.



Untouched this week:

• EQ7 BOM layout --well, I did some research and sketching...any details may have to wait until the March 1 deadline for the contest ;-)
• Oddie's Wild Nature
• BMCU Table Runner
• McCall's Mystery
• Rose of Sharon Bird Block
• Snowflake/Blizzard Quilt

Awaiting quilting:

• WWVQG 2006 Basket BOM
• Charmed Network - Eva version ----but I must tell you, I'll be teaching the class at stash Feb. 16 with follow-up classes on March 1 and another TBD. yeah!!

STATS
Completed: 3
In Progress: 12
To start: 5

Are you going to Ireland in June? Join me!!

More WIPs at the linkup on Lee's Freshly Pieced blog. Happy WIPping ;-)