Category Archives: Year of WIPs Challenge

2017 Year of WIPs Challenge results

I think I did rather well in my challenge. Below are the finishes I had, and the last photo is my slow-growing family room Sampler Wall.


My February OMG!

This has been a great month for me. I have settled back into the routine that affords me piece of mind. My housework isn’t suffering, the laundry’s always caught up, I’m cooking more often, I’m getting a lot of time in my sewing room (although it still needs a major sort out), I’m reading more, and Mister and I are back to spending evenings together (when he doesn’t have last minute homework) visiting, or watching our favorite shows (while I stitch). We finally have an appointment for the pad and carpet to be repaired downstairs, and replaced upstairs. My stitching friends will get a laugh when they hear that the bedroom carpet will be Platinum colored.

As to the sort out in my sewing room, I finally dug through the huge box of scraps given to me by one of my friends.  So many beautiful pieces of fabric, and so many 1/2-yard pieces as well.  I still have the bag to go through, but the bits have been pulled for the scrap basket I use for Wild and Goosey, and the rest has been folded neatly until I get some cutting time for charity quilts.

Speaking of charity quilts.  Today is the last Saturday of the month, and this is the day that I have dedicated to working on charity quilts.  One Saturday a month, for at least 3 hours.  For the first quilt, I’ll be making 10″ paper pieced string blocks starting with a neutral in the middle.  It took me longer than expected to go through the above mentioned box, so I’m not getting to sew 3 hours today, and will carry that over to tomorrow.

Here’s where I stand this month:

February goals

Baby Quilt – 1) finish step one; 2) cut background for step two
Lozenges – Make a minimum of 20 lozenges with February RSC17 colors (10 black/10 neutral corners)
Farmers Wife – Make a minimum of 4 blocks

Baby Quilt – This item was for my One Monthly Goal link-up.  I am beyond thrilled to say, that not only did I finish Step 2, I finished the quilt top! The longarmer has been contacted, and the backing should be pieced by tomorrow evening.

Lozenges – This item was for my Rainbow Scrappy Challenge.  February’s color was Teal.  I made a total of 29.

Farmers Wife – not only did I catch up, but I’m ahead of the game.  It has helped me satisfy my love of paper piecing. As I have gone through the scraps hunting for the perfect piece of fabric, I have been sorting them into colors (and ironing some of the worse off pieces) as part of my sewing room sort out.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much accomplished!

For stitching, I have made progress on Death by Cross Stitch, and finished a 2nd round on An Expression of Gratitude.  I spent more time than anticipated on Death because it was just too easy to keep going while getting stuff around the house sorted after the water break, dealing with the contractors, and the repair to the walls.  But, I’m back to my rotation, and will probably move on to Houses of Hawk Run Hollow by tomorrow evening.

I am linking up to Elm Street Quilts and soscrappy.

 

 

Let’s do this 2017!

I am so happy today is the end of 2016, and I am very much looking forward to 2017. I have penciled in some ideas, set some not-too-lofty goals, and am crossing my fingers that I, my family, and friends have a healthy, happy year.

I have selected a word that I think best represents my goals for 2017. If you follow me on Instagram (link in the right column) you will have already seen this, but here is a tidbit of how I came to select that word:

…I have always felt as long as I make positive progress, no matter how small, I will succeed. And it goes hand in hand with my “think happy thoughts” and “stop saying, start doing” from past years…

I will progress forward in 2017.


To help with that I have made some minor tweaks to my blog. Still more changes need to be made that will happen with time, but most of it is just adjusting some info in the tabs up top.

Most of my goals for the year spin around my quilting and stitching. A few, in no particular order, are:

Attend my Girlfriend Reunion in Vegas – This is my new year beginning.

Maintain my daily routine to the best of my ability. If there is interest, I’m more than happy to post more details. I will say that my daily routine keeps me very time- and guilt-free to sew and stitch a lot.

Stay the course on my Year of WIPs Challenge – I am so, so happy with how much progress I have already made since starting this on October 1.

Set up my Scrappy Planner (by Lori Holt) – While I do use my phone/computer to keep appointments and send me reminders, I will always be a paper and pencil gal, and I love having a written plan for housework, quilting, stitching, menus, travel, etc. This particular planner is designed by a scrappy quilter and I’m looking forward to seeing if this will be the fit for my lifestyle, I am hoping it to be.

Finish all the way to binding En Provence, Midnight Flight, Swoon, Kristen’s Quilt, and Kristen’s Baby Quilt.

Attend my quilt chapter Spring Quilt Camp – I did not attend a single camp in 2016.

Attend more quilt chapter meetings.  In June I was selected to be the co-recording secretary, from July to end in October-ish.  The other person decided to drop out to spend more time with a soon to be born grandchild, so I agreed to stay in the full capacity. I may consider asking to stay an additional year.  In any event, I am making a concerted effort to attend more meetings (they are about an hour drive away from me).

Attend my annual June cross-stitch get together – this year in Nashville.

Post one quilt-related goal a month on my blog – This is a new-to-me event. The link with more information is in my left sidebar.

Flosstube – this is a biggie for me. It will be a learning curve and a put myself out there curve. While “flosstube” is a specific cross-stitch “term,” I intend to include my quilting.

Continue to try one new recipe a month – I succeed at this easier that I thought I would when I started it way back when. The key to my success is always keeping breakfast-for-dinner available for those recipes that fail so bad it immediately goes into the garbage disposal, or in the outside garbage can. I am never afraid of trying something new since I know I have a standby in case it is not “eatable.” 😀

Whew! Reading back over that sounds like a whole lot, but it is really not. The hard part for me will be staying the course and not letting my ADD/Squirrel!!! tendencies get in my way.

Last, but not least, I have a huge decision to make about a volunteer position that takes up a lot of my time, and sometimes mental energy, January-May every year.

I have volunteered for Phoenix Comicon in one capacity or another for 4 years. I have also volunteered for the smaller Phoenix Fan Fest, at a different time of the year, 2 different years during that 4 years. While January-March is mostly my spending an hour twice a day, once a month, driving back and forth to downtown Phoenix (and the gas!), plus spending 4 hours in several meetings (we’re up to 6 hours, now), April-May is all of that plus up to about 20 additional hours a week on the computer dealing with staffing issues, and last year emailing back and forth with artists/vendors regarding staff discounts/donations. Then there is the time and the money I have spent during the convention itself to make sure I am doing the job the way my Manager, Directors, and the Convention owner want it done for the convention to be successful.  I can safely say it was not rare for me to put in 60 hours from 8 a.m. Thursday to Sunday 9 p.m., and this past year my new position had me there starting 9 a.m. Wednesday, however I did leave around noon on Sunday.

Major changes are being made in the business (because that is what it is) that many people, myself included, are not happy about, so they are going to have to convince me that those major changes, which do affect me, are worth the amount of time I devote (and the money I am already spending). Right now I am feeling like I have been kicked in the teeth, and am questioning why I ever bothered to get involved. There is a meeting this coming Saturday with the owner and I will make my decision after that.

Since I have always been one to make a contingency plan, I have pretty much decided what I will be doing with that time if I they cannot convince me. More on that later.

So, now I am off to sew together the parts I cut out for En Provence Part 6.  I know I have been remiss in posting progress photos here, however you can find them on my Instagram.

Enjoy the rest of your 2016, and if it is already 2017 where you are, Happy New Year, and I hope it brings you every wonderful thing you want.

Hello to the middle of December

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and right now, except for one tiny glitch, I can say that’s true.

I have been very productive with needle and thread, both at the sewing machine and in hand.

Yesterday was one of my twice-monthly sew-togethers with my local group and I worked mainly on my Bonnie Hunter Step 3 4-patches.

Here’s my progress photos to date.
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Part 1: 221/221
Part 2: 100/100
Part 3: 10/168

Today should see the finish of my purple 4-patches.

When I’m caught up on my Parts, I am cutting/preparing for the Midnight Flight class I’m taking next month. There is a class info sheet that tells us how much to bring to class (instead of enough for a whole quilt) so I’ve been pulling fabrics and cutting. I am taking more than I need so I can hopefully swap some with other attendees. I have my constant red cut, and changed the orange to a yellow. I’m also not including any purple and using blues only. I think I may be buying a couple of 1/4 cuts before then as I’d like a little more royal to go with my navy.
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As to my stitching, I know I said in my last post that I was going to do a separate post about my Year of WIPs Challenge status, but I think instead of spending more time on this computer writing a post, I’ll just do a photo update in my dedicated tab up top. I am still loving the 10 hour rotation with the focus being on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. I am now spending less time stitching than before, but I knew that was going to happen so chose the number of WIPs accordingly. So far I think I made great choices. The bit success right now is that I finished And They Sinned. Woohoo!

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She’s a big girl! That countertop is 5 feet long 😀 If you click on the picture, it’ll turn right side up, but it was hard to get it to focus because of the size.

The glitch I first mentioned is my HarleyQuinn had to have surgery this past Monday to remove a large hematoma from a back leg. She has 3 layers of stitches (because her skin is so thin) and the layer I can see I counted 7. While she was under the doctor went ahead and removed 7 other places and all but one of those just required 1 stitch (the other one required 2). So now we’re nursing her. Pain pills, anti inflamatory/pain pill, liquid antibiotics every 12 hours. No overactiveness, which means carrying her up and down the stairs. In other words spoiling her more than usual, which is a lot already.

This picture is of her staring at me the night before because she’s starving (she’s always starving, just ask her).
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and here she is all snuggled up between dad’s legs after we brought her home. She was drunker than Cooter Brown, and we worry she’ll flop herself off the sofa.
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Today she’s back to her sassy self, and is more work to keep her from dancing and prancing. She’ll have to have 24/7 babysitting until the stitches are removed. We do have a care-collar for her, but if we keep her with us she shouldn’t have to wear it. Fortunately Mister is out of school, and neither of us have any plans to be anywhere together that can’t be cancelled or rescheduled for a later date.

Year of WIPs Challenge

And we’re off!  I did get brave and created a YouTube photo video.

Here’s what I settled on for stitching, along with the progress photo as of Sep 30.  Click to see full photo.

Scarlet Letter – Gratitude

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Mirabilia – Fairy Moon

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Examplar Dames – And They Sinned

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Carriage House Samplings – Houses of Hawk Run Hollow

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Mirabilia – Garden Verses

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Goode Huswife – Book of Spells

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Blue Ribbon Designs – An Expression of Gratitude

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Plum Street – Hurt Not the Earth

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Scarlett House – Coverlet Candle Mat

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Little House Needleworks – Needleworker

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This was actually my plane project for last week’s trip since it’s on 30 ct.

Mill Hill – Log Cabin Quilt

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This was my first project to work on. I finished 10 hours last night.  Love how it’s turning out but ended up having to unstitch  about 2 hours worth because of mixing up the blues.  Blah!

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For now I’ll focus on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow and stitch it every 4th project.  I’ll be creating a tab at the top to track progress.

Now I need to figure out what I want to stitch on next!

My quilting buddies are returning starting this week and I’m looking forward to returning to sewing with them.  I’ll decide on my quilt/sewing WIPs once I figure out how often I’ll be sewing.

WIP Challenge 2016-2017

I did something that has caused me to dig through this:

I know if I start digging through here I will soon have 50 WIPs.

My BFF mentioned a few days ago that she was going to participate in a WIP Challenge, where you finished 12 or so WIPs.  I didn’t fully understand how it would work since it was starting October 1, plus I have some huge WIPs and know I can’t stitch 12 of them in a year (on top of the sewing I want to get done) so I sort of filed it away in the back of my mind.

I was watching her latest flosstube and she brought it up again so I went hunting for more information and became intrigued.  I think it’s completely doable!  The gist is you stitch 10-15 WIPs by the end of December 2017.  The boss lady of the challenge states that as long as they have 1 stitch in them come October 1, 2016, they’re WIPs.

I wanted to divide my 10 items by older WIPs and newer WIPs, so my list looks like this right now:

  1. Scarlet Letter – Gratitude
  2. Mirabilia – Fairy Moon
  3. Examplar Dames – And They Sinned
  4. Carriage House Samplings – Houses of Hawk Run Hollow
  5. Goode Huswife – Book of Spells
  6. Blue Ribbon Designs – Expressions of Gratitude
  7. Plum Street – Hurt Not the Earth
  8. Scarlett House – Coverlet Candle Mat
  9. LHN – Needleworker
  10. Mill Hill – Log Cabin

Houses of Hawk Run Hollow and And They Sinned are my two largest WIPs.  I had already decided to go back to rotating through 4-5 projects at a time, and now I’m trying to decide if I want to go back to stitching in 10 hour increments on a design and then switching out or stitch for a week on something and switch out on Monday.  Either way I intend to focus on Houses or ATS.  So my weekly rotation may look like this:

  • Oct 1-2 Book of Spells
  • Oct 3-9 HOHRH
  • Oct 10-16 Needleworker
  • Oct 17-23 Expressions of Gratitude
  • Oct 24-30 Book of Spells
  • Oct 31-Nov 6 HOHRH
  • Nov 7-13 Coverlet Candle Mat
  • Nov 14-20 Gratitude
  • Nov 21-27 Fair Moon
  • Nov 28-Dec 4 And They Sinned
  • Dec 5-11 HOHRH
  • and so on until HOHRH is finished, then move ATS into that spot

Now that I have it written out this may be the better way to go.  If I decide to do the time version it’ll be something like

10 hours HOHRH
10 hours Book of Spells
10 hours Needleworker
10 hours Expressions of Gratitude
10 hours HOHRH
10 hours Coverlet Mandle Mat
etc…..

We’ve been paired off with another member of the group and required to send monthly post cards as a way to encourage and get to know each other.  I’m also excited about this as I’ve been sort of considering writing to someone once a month as a way to communicate.

Now I just need to figure in some quilting/sewing time and pull a couple of large WIPs and small WIPs and do my own quilting/sewing challenge during that time too.

And, I need to get this all down in my journal by September 30.

 

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