Remember this?

A couple months back I posted progress on some of my WIPs. This was the state of one of them -- just a pile of chosen fabrics.

Last week I turned it into this.

Hopefully this week I'll turned it into another finish. Probably I could have finished it this weekend except for the fact that I was glued to the computer entering all the wonderful giveaways from Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day. So fun. I hope I won at least one, but if not, I found some great blogs! Hope you had a fun weekend!

Two finishes and a start.

So I haven't been able to get on blogger for over a week now. It keeps telling me it cannot display the webpage. I was even unable to leave comments on other blogs and missed out on entering some giveaways as a result. =( I assumed it was because of my slow internet speed, but that hasn't been a problem before. Then I thought I might have a virus, so I updated my virus definitions and scanned. Nothing. The download took 5 hours (seriously). Maybe my virus hightailed it during that time, seeing the writing on the wall. Anyway, now I can blog. Whatever. I don't get it, but I'll take it.

This is an older line called Princess Boutique. The finished yet unbound quilt has been hanging around for quite some time. I finally bound it, and it will be going to one of my friends who is having a baby girl. Seriously, I know 7 or 8 pregnant people right now. These hangers-on are going to come in handy.

Close-up.

Back.

This I-Spy quilt was pieced by a girl that I have watched for the last four summers (minus the one where I had just had baby #7 and was trying to sell my house). We never had enough time to work on it since I always had 10 or so kids running around. I quilted it for her last summer, and it has sat unbound at my house since then. So now it's done and in her hands. She's 14 now, and this quilt is small, but she doesn't seem to care.

This is the back. Cool, no?

Now for the part where I hang my head. Old Red Barn Co.'s Dana is hosting a quilt-along. You all know I can't resist a quilt-along, so I joined. Yes, I did. It looks like a quick/easy quilt, and I'm using up some stash, another worthy cause (besides finishing stuff). I'm using a combination of Robyn Pandolph's Tickled Pink and some Provincial Garden (South Seas Imports, I wanna say).

So you can do the math. I finished two. I started one. I'm at 74. I HAVE been doing other stuff too, and I'm very close on a few more of those quilts that need binding. And I made a purse. And I had to alter 5 quincenera dresses. 4 more to go. Oh, and I made two sets of cards for card swap. And then there were field days, band concerts, choir concerts, awards assemblies, play practice (the actual play is tonight), a trip to NASA/Houston, end-of-the-year church activities -- I'm sure there's more, but my mind is blanking out on me. May is really busy around here to say the least. Hopefully blogger will continue to be my friend, and you can see what I've been up to. Now I'm off to clean my house before the card-swappers arrive. Have a fun day! (And by that I mean, "Get in your sewing room, girl!")

Piles . . .

Of books I got from the library and need to read . . .

(Two weeks to read them all?)

Of fabrics in my cupboard that need to be used . . .

(Don't think this is the whole stash. This is just the part I am not ashamed to show.)

Of mending . . .

(Some of these might just end up in a denim quilt!)

Of cards for card swap . . .

(One more set to go.)

Of quilts to be bound . . .

(Two are done, eight more to go now.)

I opted not to show you my piles of dishes, laundry, and bills. You didn't want to see those anyway. Anything piling up at your house?

One-a-day Quilt Along

So the reason I have so many quilt tops that aren't finished -- well, the reasons are many and varied, but one of the main ones is that I can't tell myself no. I see some project I want to do, and then I just do it. Just so you know, this was included in the 75 WIPs. I had already started this when I counted. Amanda Jean had a great idea to just do one nine-patch a day, and then in a couple of months you would have enough to do a whole quilt top. So I am actually caught up (till tomorrow when I will have to do another).

No, a girl can never have too many patriotic quilts. Seriously. I'll let you know if I ever get there. I just love the colors, and I love the Fourth of July. It's my second favorite holiday (after Thanksgiving) -- or maybe it's tied with Thanksgiving for first. Either way -- can't have too many patriotic quilts.

Plus, I have so many patriotic scraps that I have got to use them up somehow. = )

This week . . .

I think most of my posts will find me slightly hanging my head for a while. I found six baby-sized quilts that just needed binding, so I figured I could finish them up in one week. Not so. I did, however, get all the bindings made for them. (The blue is for two quilts.)

This one I already had the cutest checked gingham premade binding, so I started sewing it on Thursday night. Naturally I would start with the most difficult. This quilt is scalloped, so it's slow going. And now looking at it, I feel strongly that I need to add some more rows of echo quilting in that white border.

Hopefully I can finish all these next week. No time today -- church party for the kids this morning, 2nd grade ocean project due Tuesday to basically finish this weekend, lawn to mow, house to clean, eggrolls to make, party tonight at my house with a few of my friends. Oh, yeah, and I really, really need to go get on the treadmill for a little bit.

Geese in the Forest BOM

So I have never really done any paper piecing before. I was always a little afraid of it. Plus, having to rip all that paper off the backs -- too much time investment for me. Well, when I saw Anina's BOM, it was too cute to pass up, and her paper piecing method is better than the sew-along-the-lines one I had always seen. She tells you to fold the freezer paper back on the line and sew along the edge. It works!

I am WAY behind on this one, but I finally have enough blocks to show on here. We're in month 4, and I haven't completed any sets. There are six for month 1. I have four. There are 27 for month 2. I have four. There are ten for month 3. I have two. There are ten for month 4. I have one. I was thinking I might put this on the back, but there is no black anywhere in my blocks. I'm trying to reconcile this. I had considered just making a few of the triangles black. My oldest daughter suggested I put a black border around the quilt top and then put another border of the bright fabrics. She also suggested that I do the background of some of the blocks in black. I don't really want to do the background in black on any of them, because then you would notice the negative space. Anybody have an opinion on how I should proceed?

True Confessions

Don't worry. You won't have to scrub your eyes or your brains after this post. It's not THAT kind of confession. I may have mentioned before how I mostly have had to hand-quilt my quilts. A few years back I got a walking foot, so I could do straight-line machine quilting. Just this past Christmas I got a machine that has a darning foot so I could do stippling. This has made things go faster.

I thoroughly enjoy piecing quilts, so during the hand-quilting years I stored up quite a few quilt tops. QUITE a few. Here is a glimpse of not even half of them. (Yes, I'm sharing a closet with two of my boys.) This is the first part of the confession. Here is pictorial evidence of perhaps a third of my backlog.

Most people get stressed out by this, but typically I have not. I have just been going along my merry way enjoying the process. Well, a couple of days ago I took the time to count -- yes, COUNT -- just how many quilt tops or in-progress tops I have in my sewing room. I did not include what is in bins in the garage, although I suspect that there are half again as many out there.

Okay. Here's where I actually got stressed out. When I counted all the quilts, tops, and in-progress tops in my room, the number was 72. Yes, 72. Since then I have unearthed a few more, and I can't remember if I counted them or not (I should have tagged them like sheep or branded them like cattle!), so I'm putting the number at 75. 75!!!!!! This is the first time that I have become a little overwhelmed with all of this. (A little, she says?)

So here's the plan. I was trying to focus on finishing anyway, but now it has become imperative. My plan is to whittle this number down to at least 35 by the end of the year. I also want those 35 to all be to quilt top stage. Impossible, you say? Yeah, me too, but that's the goal. So I'm now going to keep a running total on a sidebar of how many finishes and how it has reduced my total project number. I haven't decided yet how to deal with the stuff in the garage or what is going to happen with all these people who are having babies. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So to work on this whole finishing thing, I started with the low-hanging fruit. These two tops have been done for a while, and I already had their backs ready to go, so I sat last night and pinned both of them to be ready to quilt. I had to piece the batting, so it took a little longer than it normally would have, but they are still ready to go. A boyish one -- so my boys can now fight over the only one that doesn't have flowers on it. I'd better find and finish some other boyish ones. Because you KNOW that I cannot start another quilt. I don't know how I'm going to do that. People have too many beautiful ideas that I want to duplicate.

A baby-sized quilt with Sandy Gervais fabric from a few years back -- Spring something or other. My second daughter wants it, but I think it will have to go to the next person to have a girl. My daughter is nine. This quilt is really too small for her. I know these don't count as finishes, but it's progress. Hopefully I can sustain it. Wish me luck!

Saltwater Taffy

These colors just kind of make me think of saltwater taffy, so that's what I'm going to call this quilt. These are the blocks from the Oh, Fransson! quilt-along. I did mine a little differently than she did -- made it a little longer. She put six of the blocks on the back. I only have one left to go on the back, because I made the extra row.

I haven't put the back together yet. These were all from fat quarters and a few scraps, so I don't really have any coordinating yardage. I'm sure I can find something that's close, though. Gotta use up that stash! I actually love how this quilt turned out, and the blocks went together very quickly.