#the100dayproject Day 20

I checked in with you on day 10 of this project to make significant progress on my Hex on a Beach quilt by Tula Pink. I have kept up stitching one block per day and have found a system that works for me.

Every evening I pin the hexagons to a pressing board and it is ready to stitch the following day. I endeavour to stitch first thing in the morning so that it releases me to work on other things during the day otherwise I find I am devoting too much thought to the Hex on the Beach project. Today my block was finished by 9am, we then did some food shopping and I am now finishing the binding on three other projects.

I keep my tools in a handy tin and have pared them down to the bare minimum. we are off to France on Wednesday so I am taking my tin, a cutting mat and five packets of hexagons. A bit hopeful but I would rather take too much hand work rather than not enough.

 This is how my blocks are looking so far. Only a few are stitched together and that is what I plan to work on this evening as I need to release some of the hexagon papers for future blocks. whilst I have five packets ready for our holiday after that I need to prep more hexagons.

I am pleased with my progress in 20 days but I need to sew some blocks together and finish a large block on the top four rows. I am glad to be moving onto reds as I am getting a bit bored of just working with pink.

April BOM progress

The Quilter's Planner BOM quilt is now finished and I was delighted to be randomly chosen as one of the March winners of a $50 gift voucher. I think it may be spent on Alison Glass's holiday range which is released in June.

1. 2019 Perfect HST BOM Block-of-the-Month program with Freshly Pieced

This is released on the first Monday of each month and I have completed the April block.  They are looking good and each month you make extra units for following months. There ae also units for a bonus project which I am not making until I see what the project is.

2. Threadology with Fat Quarter Shop

I have decided to use plain white for the background which I have in stash along with Ombre Confetti by V & Co (also in stash). I am starting to run out of some ombre colours so I will either substitute or look to buy a few whilst at the Quilt show in Nantes after Easter. I am up to date with these blocks and the next block is released today. That will be block 6 of 8.

3. Quiet Play Pattern Club

I have made a little progress on this project but as the fourth month has now been released, I am falling further behind.

I have completed three block out of 12 and need to focus on this project once I have my Trinkets quilt top on my machine for quilting.

4. The Quilter's Planner BOM

This is finished and can come off my WIP list which is pleasing. The striped red and white binding picks out the red from the quilt as well as the navy and white striped fabric used in the blocks.

5. Trinket SAL

I have almost completed the quilt top for this sewalong and the blocks were fun. I think we posted block 25 of 40 last Friday. The sew day coincided with our local retreat so we had a fun Facetime with the designer Alison Glass. Four of us on the retreat participated by I think it would have been more successful for Alison if specific challenges or a bonus block had been issued for the day. I am basing this on the 120+ posts with the trinketsewday hashtag on the day when over 1,000 are participating in the sewalong Facebook group.

This week I need to focus on finishing my TrinketSAL quilt which just needs two plain borders to be attached and then quilted. I was lucky that my husband was happy to pick up the backing from Crafty Quilters for me on a trip into tow on Saturday. That is on my ironing board ready to be pressed and starched. there is also block 6 of the Threadology quilt to sew up. And then I can focus on my Quietplay BOM.

#the100dayproject

I joined this challenge on Instagram last year and it encouraged me to work on abandoned projects. This year I am using it as a way to make progress on Tula Pink's Hex on the Beach project. I bought the fabrics from Sew Hot and collected them at the 2018 Festival of Quilts in August.

I had only sewn a few hexagons together and they are in a large messy block. Since starting the 100 day project, I have cut more hexagons and papers and started top left, having divided the pattern into blocks of 10 to 12 hexagons.

I have called this block A and my current thinking is to try and sew one complete block each day and stitch one hexagon a day to block  A when time permits.

I have cut the plain hexagons using a Sizzix die, again a little haphazard so I have some of all of the plain colours cut. I cut the papers from freezer paper in a smaller size and use a Sewline glue pen to glue baste the edges down, having first ironed the papers to the fabric. The spotted fabric takes a little longer to prep and involves an acrylic template that I designed for my own use which has a circle of the correct size in the entre of the template to enable a fairly accurate centering of the dot in the middle of the hexagon.

I then found an old Tupperware box which is the perfect depth to store my prepped hexagons. 

Last week we had a three day trip to London to apply for visas for China. I am so relieved that our passports arrived back yesterday as we are having a few days in France after Easter for which we need our passports. I digress! I packed ten blocks into a paper sweetie bag each and popped them into this pouch by Sarah Ashford along with the necessary tools to sew whilst travelling. Ten blocks was a bit ambitious to say the least. I completed the last of three blocks on my return home on Tuesday.

Now that I am home I have refined my process a little as follows:
Every evening I take out the following days block from my Tupperware box and pin it on my June Tailor cut and press board so I can pick up the pieces in the correct order.
Then I renumber the paper bag and refill it with another block. Noting down any hexagons that I need to cut.
Each morning I start sewing my block together which takes about two hours
Then I take out any papers where the hexagon is completely surrounded by other hexagons and put the papers in the Tupperware ready to reuse.

Instead of the pouch I have found this useful tin and added a needle threader, my sewing glasses and a needle minder with a magnet which was a present from my friend Pippa.

Now I need to work out what to do next. I will continue with my aim to sew one block a day, but with any spare time do I:
1. Start another block
2. Sew some blocks together and release more papers to reuse
3. Sew some hexagons onto block A.

I am torn. Tonight is Saturday Night Craftalong and I think I will do an extra block and if there is time, sew some blocks together. During the week if time permits, I will add to block A whilst not abandoning all of my other projects in progress.

JMQG rainbow retreat 2019

We had a lovely local retreat last weekend and were well fed by chef, Michelle. we couldn't hold the retreat without her. Kim organised fantastic goody bags, which made our cheap retreat even better value. Our goody bags included:

Rotary cutter and blades from Driffy

Fabric and zips from Hantex

Magazine from LP&Q and Quilt Now

Scrap packs from Sew hot

Sample thread packs from Aurifil

Charm pack from Lewis & Irene

Brother goodies from Crafty Quilters

We also received handmade goodies:

Hexagon template and thread conditioner from Jersey Jane Sews on etsy

Our choice of screen printed panel from Helen Steel on etsy

Needle minder from Pippa

Personalised mug rug from Kim

We did a make & take with Gill on the Friday afternoon and made lavender bags. I had my copy of the Quilter's planner magazine with me but couldn't find it at the time to refer to. Probably just as well as there was a typo in one of the measurements.  I quilted my piece to add texture. Everyone made a lavender bag including chef Michelle. The we were free to ok on our own projects. I made progress with my Quietplay BOM but only finished one simple block.

After a bacon butty for breakfast, it was time to do some screen printing wit Helen. This is my design but the fabric that I printed still needs to be heat set.

Saturday was the Trinket Sal sew day so I competed the six or so blocks that I needed to complete my quilt top. I had pre prepped all of the blocks for speed.

Four of us participated in the Sew day but none of us seems to have won one of the hourly prizes. we did however get to chat to the designer, Alison Glass via FB messenger.

I am usually a lightweight when it comes to late night sewing at retreats but I stayed up until 11pm to get my trinket quilt top finished. I now need to remove the foundation papers, give it a press and quilt it.

Pippa did an impromptu make & take on the Saturday evening and we made magnetic needle minders. Even better the Quilt Now magazine from our goody bag had a template which was just the ight size to mark our fabric.

On Sunday I put together some quilt blocks from the Elizabeth Hartman sewalong and this will become another shoe box quilt for Romania. It need to be quilted this week. Then I just have desert blocks to put together.

A fantastic weekend with local, UK and French friends, fabulous goody bags, great food and two quilt tops finished ready to quilt. I may not have put away everything yet, but I hope to make progress before we head to London on Sunday to obtain visas for China.

Catch all caddy

This caddy had been on my to do list for some time, then I quilted the fabric and cut out the elements and it rested for a while. I thought I would complete it at the rainbow retreat but in the end, I focussed on it over two days and it was done.

I as a bit mystified by how the pockets on the inside went together, but I found a YouTube video and it confirmed that the pockets were open on the bottom. I mostly closed the bottom of the pocket and afterwards I thought that a mesh pocket might have been better. I looked at the Catch all Caddy that Kim had been gifted at a Simply Solids Retreat and hers had mesh pockets.

I didn't put the loops across the ends and I prefer the look. All in all, I am pleased with this finish and was able to take it to retreat last weekend. I think I am going to fill it with duplicates of my most used tools, but only if I have them already. fortunately we were gifted a rotary cutter in our retreat goody bags so that will go in along with the pins I was gifted, amongst other things from my house guest, Pippa.

This is my last finish for Q1 of the finish along.

Q2 2019 Finish along

My oldest UFO has been finished so my oldest is now from 2012 rather than 2010, progress is being made!!

1. TQS BOM Sedona Star from Jan 2012. Not yet pieced together but progress was made in 2018.

2. Tula Pink butterfly from October 2017. I need to move a few blocks and then quilt it.

3. My small world from 2016 which is pieced and partly quilted. This is the April project to finish for the APQS UFO challenge

4. Five impossible things

5. La Fin du Monde which I started as a quiltalong late 2018, but the background fabric got lost in the post, so progress stopped.

6. Tate Modern quilt which I need to start drafting again. I had made some templates but some were wrong and I might be able to use  circle ruler instead.

7. Miscellaneous Elizabeth Hartman blocks - three mini quilts finished so far from the stack of blocks.

8. Geeta Gamma globe

9. HST BOM  - I want to keep up with the blocks each month and finish it in December

10. Tula Pink Hex on the beach

11. Oops I forgot the improv quilt from Poppyprint's class for London MQG.

12. Trinket sewalong - this will definitely be finished in Q2.

 

13. Hoffman Dream Big Panel - I need to load this and practise my free motion quilting.

I have more projects planned on the go than I thought. However I now have no unfinished cross stitch projects, but I seem to have replaced them with knitting WIPs which I will list once this list reduces to under 10.