UFO or WIP ... Whichever!

This quilt block set has been in the works for a while ... see posts here and here ...

So, the orange nine-patches and the orange triangles are becoming the middle of a medium-sized quilt.

I worked on it, leader-and-ender-style, during another project a few days ago. (More on the other project another day.)

As I may've said, this one has been sort-of in-progress for quite some time. I guess that makes it a UFO (un-finished object) ... I've been trying to get some more of those finished up!

Weather Quilt, Week 2

Here's week 2 of the weather/temperature quilt ... (See last week's post for week 1, and the intro post for my inspiration.)

Again, the quilt is going to be kind of huge ... Actually-Queen-size (instead of kind-of-Queen-size, which is my usual), so that's good.

To help me stay on track, I made a chart that I can fill in and color-code. (This should help me avoid accidentally stitching rows upside-down!?)

In case anybody else ever wants to try a similar quilt design, and needs a chart, here's a link to a (.pdf) download of the chart I designed. It's probably not exactly to scale, but it's close(ish). And it's printable, and free. And it fits on a page. 0

I'm liking that this will be a big quilt top, easily made during just a few minutes each week, in some pretty fabrics that are way better in-a-quilt than on-my-shelf!

Below is another (maybe clickable?) link to the chart. (If you try the links, leave a comment and let me know if/how they work; I'm new at the embedded-pdf thing ... Thanks!)

Week 1, Temperature Quilt Style

The first week of the New Year, in color!

(See my first post about the Temperature Quilt ...)

So far, so good.
I'm still debating about whether it was a good idea to make it 80-something inches wide ... mostly, I think it's a good idea ... Just a little difficult to photograph!

Christmas Stocking Ornaments

(We're still within the 12 Days of Christmas, right? I can still post about Christmassy things ...)

Last month, I made some super-cute Christmas ornaments ... Inspired by a Pinterest idea that I pinned ages ago.

Scrappy on the front, felt on the back, straight-stitched and raw edges, topped with some white fleece that I found with my felt.

These were a fun, quick project, and it was nice to have a few to give away. I always intend to do things like this, but always run out of time.

This year, I happened to see on someone else's tree an ornament I'd made for them in the past ... nothing fancy, but it warmed my heart to see it there. It reminded me that the effort doesn't go unnoticed.

It makes me want to get some little Christmas ornaments made ahead of time to include with Christmas gifts and cards next year ...

Welcome, 2017

There are so many great things about a new year! While I try not to set unrealistic goals, I do appreciate the feeling of a fresh start!

In my never-ending quest to use up more fabric, I have a fun project I'm going to try this year: a Temperature Quilt!

Inspired by this lady's temperature afghan, my mom decided to start a temperature afghan for 2017, in crochet. She suggested I try something similar, and I was intrigued. Since I'm not likely to crochet a whole row of an afghan daily right now, I decided to design a temperature quilt.

My quilt design involves a horizontal quilt row for every week, made of 7 "bricks" (which can be precut and handy in a variety of colors). If I keep track of the daily high temperatures (or look them up online after the fact!), I can put together a week's temperature bricks pretty quickly.

Here's my color/temperature scale:

100s - Reds
Upper 90s - Dark Oranges
   Lower 90s - Oranges
Upper 80s - Golden Yellows
   Lower 80s - Light Yellows
Upper 70s - Darker Greens
   Lower 70s - Lighter Greens
Upper 60s - Turquoises
   Lower 60s - Teals
Upper 50s - Lighter Blues
   Lower 50s - Medium Blues
Upper 40s - Dark Blues
   Lower 40s - Deep Navy Blues
Upper 30s - Light Purples
   Lower 30s - Dark Purples


Here are some of my initial fabric choices, although I've since decided to take out the pink and brown and add in more blues and purples:

My color scale gives me some freedom to make the quilt scrappy, pretty, and use a variety of fabrics, so that I can mostly use what I have. I figure, even if the high temp today is the same as tomorrow, I can use a similar-color-but-different-print, just to keep it interesting.

My design looks like this:

I spent some time looking at temperature quilt designs, and found most of them uninspiring. So I figured out my own layout. Long skinny rows for each week help to organize the randomness. Offsetting the rows and adding a border make it look neat. I'll probably do black prints (or black-and-white) fabrics for the borders, which should set off the colors pretty nicely.

I'm precutting a bunch of colors today ... bricks cut at 2¼" x 12½", and little black squares for the offset-border-edges cut at 2¼" x 2¼". The idea is to end up with a queen-size quilt (80-something inches by 90-something, maybe?).

I've started a daily-high-temperature list, and I might even fill in or color in my graph paper design as I go.

So, I'll try and include some pictures and updates as I make some progress!