April's Accomplishments

 As April winds to a close, it was a busy month with several goals met.

Savvy and Abby have regular play sessions, several times daily. Some happy mud wrestling and lots of chase and tug. He will be 5 months old this week and starts Rally Obedience training next month. He is now as long, if not longer than Sera and about to be as tall as she is. Soon she will be back to being the smallest dog in the house.

I've been out and about, finally remembered to plan to attend our quilt guild meeting this past Monday, then we had a zoom bee on Tuesday.

One Monthly Goal & Projects Half Done

Gus's Camo Quilt (Pecking Order) moved from a pile of blocks to a flimsy in need of borders over the last weekend. What started as, I'll get these stacked and ready to sew together (my goal was to complete the last of the blocks) moved to, "I can get the rows sewn together" to "wow, the center is done." Monday at guild, I auditioned a few borders during social hour and Tuesday night got the first of the small borders cut and pinned. 

I also have a finish - meeting my One Monthly Goal: the Rose Chandelier is bound and ready. I do need to make two small repairs on the back thanks to Savvy who offered to chew on it again while I was binding. After his morning play session, he actually fell asleep on the couch with me while I was stitching. Puppies are cute when they sleep. While not a UFO, this is a new finish for 2022 complete.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Two more penguins joined my waddle this month (it would be a raft if they were in the water). Pink for April.

Teal for February.  Waiting to see the color for May, I'll likely be adding more modern blocks as well as a new penguin in May, possibly two as I need to start making some large penguins as well.

Until next month, Savvy says have fun and play in the mud (or whatever makes you happy).

Linking to:

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2022 - Hosted by Angela at So Scrappy

One Monthly Goal - Hosted by Elm Street Quilts

PHD in 2022 - Hosted by Quilting Gail

Where did April go?

 I woke up Saturday convinced it was the last Saturday in April. Happily we have another week. 

Savvy and his partner in crime, Abby, have been dominating my Saturdays as I have back to back obedience classes with them. Won't schedule that again, especially as it is heating up and harder to manage leaving a dog in the car. I look at the weather each Saturday morning to guestimate if I might accidentally cook a puppy. One more class to go, and if it is too hot, someone is staying home.

Two more penguins have been added to my collection. I accidentally switched beak/foot fabrics and decided I like the contrast better, so didn't rip anything out. These are fun!

I am about halfway done binding the Rose Chandelier.

Sadly, I found two little rips in the backing, likely from when Gus yanked the quilt away from Savvy. I think it caught on the metal crate. So I'll be spending some time this week appliqueing some little hearts or roses on the back to protect the repair. I'm planning to tuck a little fusible web underneath to hold the fabric in place. I also need to make the label.

And finally - I have not only finished sewing corners onto Gus's Camo quilt squares, I utilized a few phone and zoom calls with family, and got everything trimmed an pressed, and have even assembled the center of the quilt.

Next step is to audition border fabrics. In true Gus form, 'whatever you like Mom.' I know the big border will utilize the national parks fabric - topographical maps. Suits the quilt theme quite well. I'm trying to decide if I want an inner border, and if so, which one.

Overall, this has been a productive month, and I'm heading for the home stretch with a finish and a leap forward.

April Goals - Thinking Pink!

Today's quilting journey is brought to you by the Letter P. P for Pink and P for Pissed off Puppy! This is not the face of innocence. This is the face of someone who happily shredded the batting and backing of a freshly pinned quilt.  Thankfully Gus caught him in the act and rescued the quilt before any real damage was done (he spared the top) to the quilt or to the puppy. I can't be certain he won't poop out a pinmoor or two, but no pins are in the puppy, nor is any batting as he left the shreds in the crate with him.  I'm not entirely certain how his crate got moved forward. It is tucked under my cutting table, and I was careless and didn't notice that it was out farther than normal which allowed him to grab a bit of quilt backing and pull in in to pounce on it. But enough on the world's cutest puppy. Here are my goals for April.

One Monthly Goal & Rainbow Scrap Challenge

This month, my monthly goal is a new start, or a new to 2022 start. I pieced the Rose Chandelier quilt in March. My goal is to finish it and gift it at a baby shower later this month. I find that having hard deadlines helps me to meet these goals. 

The  pinks came out of my stash, some of them from my 'what was i thinking stack' and several scraps from last year's foray into pink. Speaking of, I won't be working on my City Sampler Modern Quilt Blocks this month as I have a set in pink. I will be making a Pink Penguin sometime this month.

This should be an easy finish for me as I'm about halfway through quilting the background now. Thankfully Savvy's assistance only ripped parts that will be trimmed off at the end. He did thin some of the batting along one edge, so I tucked some thinned batting over the parts he thinned to repair it.

I found a glorious batik for the backing!

PHD in 2022

A secondary goal for the month is to work on piecing my son's Camo Quilt.  The pattern is Pecking Order from Missouri Star Quilt Company. 

I've been using this as a leader/ender project this year which has solved some of the tedium of adding endless corners to the so-called 6 inch blocks. So-called because when I started cutting them at a Bee Retreat in 2019, I somehow cut them 6 x 5 7/8. But as I can't seem to sew a corner on straight to save my life, I've been gradually trimming them back to 5 3/4 x 5 3/4.  I've been pressing and trimming in batches while on zoom calls with my family - which definitely helps me get past the tedium of the trimming.  I have 32 corners left to add/trim/press and then I can start the process of randomly pairing green and brown blocks together as I piece the rows of the quilt. I found a great camouflage back for this and will use some of the National Parks map fabric for the borders. Gus's request was for a Camo themed quilt, and I think this will meet that goal.

Ravelry UFO Challenge & Table Scraps

I've nominated 9 projects for the quarterly Ravelry UFO Challenge: 

1. Rose Chandelier
2. Gus's Camo Quilt
3. Coastal Pearls
4. Sandy Breeze
5. Country Lanes Runner
6. Daisy Top
7. Celestial Circles
8. Dr. Seuss Log Cabin
9. Dash 

I'll be happy with two to three finishes (most of these are on my PHD in 2022 list). One should be assured - I'm all about the low hanging fruit!

Table Scraps this month incorporates words, so this will be a good month to create a new nametag for myself!

Linking to:

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Hosted by So Scrappy

One Monthly Goal - April Goals Hosted by Elm Street Quilts