A picture says a thousand words!

Need I say more?  The Shark Select team swept the St. Patrick's Day weekend tournament Squirt division with five straight wins. Though they attempted to give us heart failure in the final game - down 0-2 within 90 seconds of the first puck being dropped. They persevered and won 4-2.  A very happy, very sweaty Gus is in the red pants, front and center.

I'm so proud of this team!

Quilters Academy Volume 3

I'm getting excited. Just got notice that my preorder of Volume 3 has been shipped from Amazon - three weeks earlier than predicted. Of course, this also means that it will arrive while I'm away next week.  Especially as it appears to be coming by turtle post...  Still it will be nice to have something to look forward to when Gus and I return from Spring Break!

Friday Night Sew In

So here I sit in Chesapeake,VA with two overexcited hockey players. We won our first game of the tournament this afternoon and then headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings where 15 kids wreaked some minor havoc.  I know that I tipped REALLY well. We then had a splash fight in the pool - I was the only parent brave enough to go in the water with them. I miss the hot tub from last year!

I'm going to try to get some sewing in on my hand-piecing project in the morning as we've got lots of time at the ice rink tonight.  Right now I'm waiting for my husband to arrive with the parents of my second player who is hanging out with me.

Hopefully everyone is getting great work done tonight. I'm with you in spirit.

Interlacing Circles

This weekend was much more productive than I'd originally hoped it could be.  I'd been putting off cutting the strips for the celestial teal and the yellow as both started at 2 yards, which is a bit longer than my ironing board and I didn't want to end up with v-shaped strips due to not straightening the cloth correctly. Ironically, the only V I found yesterday is a red strip, which is from the smallest piece of yardage.

Gus was supposed to play hockey at 11:45 on Sunday, which effectively blocks out most of the day for other activities. He got invited to a sleepover on Saturday night with some hockey friends and when the game got canceled due to large holes in the ice (a fuse blew on the compressor overnight), I suddenly earned a few extra hours - so I started cutting strips.  By the time I left to pick up Gus,  I had all of my strips cut. 

After dinner, I started pressing the creases back out of the strips to kill time before picking up a new trainee at the airport (work stuff, yes on a Sunday night).  Fortunately I checked his flight online and found that it was delayed - so I sewed the strips for the A rail blocks.  Then I checked again, and found that I had time to sew the B rail block strips.  Another refresh on the screen earned me time to press both sets of strips... and the next refresh got me started on the strips for the 9 patch blocks.  Haven't pressed those yet as I need to figure out which direction to press them...  I finally left for the airport at 11:30 p.m. (yep you read that right - got home at 1:40 a.m.).  I would have started cutting the strips into blocks for the rails - but have overstressed my right wrist due to all of the pressing and cutting yesterday.  I absolutely must replace  my ironing board now.  I've bent one of the legs and the 30 degree downward angle definitely stressed my wrist while pressing yesterday. Will need to ice it again when I get home - as I am right-handed and my wrist is not happy typing either.  Ah well, live and learn.

Project Updates

As March roars in like a Lion - a rather fickle one I might add, 81º one day and 46º the next, which makes it very hard to plan - unless of course one is headed out to hockey - where we know the rule is dress for the rink. Slogging across a parking lot in 80º+ weather with a bundle of blankets... but I digress...

 The binding is complete on the zebra/lion baby quilt and I need to make a label for the back and stitch it one. Something to keep my hands busy during the playoff games this coming weekend.  

Only three more weeks of ice hockey season!  By next season, I may even have a quilt of my own done to bundle under, along with the no-sew blankets.

The final seams have been sewn for Asian Nights. I do need to photograph it and probably press it one more time before storing for the upcoming lesson on borders.  I'm happy with the outcome, and also happy to move on to other projects.  Holding it up, to show my husband the other night gave me a better sense of the size - knowing the dimensions is all good and well, but actually feeling/seeing what 64 inches means in length makes a difference - and helped me to not overdo the changes in store for Interlacing Circles.

The fabrics for Interlacing Circles have now been washed and pressed and I've cut the first 12 strips (red & purple).  I decided to call it a night before finishing prepping the yellow and celestial as both fabrics are two yards long, so it is taking me a bit longer to be certain that they are squared prior to cutting.

Now - if you have the book in front of you, you may be wondering why I'm cutting so many strips.  This is one of my favorite patterns, and I've taken some liberties with it - firstly enlarging the finished block size from 3.75 inches to 6 inches to accommodate the suns and moons from the Laurel Burch panel, and to add a few rows to expand the quilt to lap size. The pattern as written is about 27x27 before borders. My variation is headed towards being 54x66 before borders.  Thankfully Harriet & Carrie are careful to teach drafting throughout the book, so after "cheating" and creating an excel spreadsheet in which to lay out the colors, I used the copy/paste function to add rows and columns until I found a combination that sings to me. The navy squares will be the fussy cut pieces from the panel and the large navy border, may end up a bit wider based on the repeat of the focus fabric for this collection - which will also be incorporated into the backing. After looking at Leslie's variation, I decided to add a third border - which hopefully will float the design like the solid teal does here. The teal is the celestial scatter fabric. This will be a fun one!