Progress on Grand Illusion

I am actively working on two quilts at the same time - Blueberry Hill and Grand Illusion. That does not include several quilt projects set aside until I can focus on them.  Having two very different projects going allows me to switch back and forth when I get tired of one or the other.  Nope, focusing on only one project just isn't my cup of tea.

The center of Blueberry Hill is nearly finished. It's at a point where I need to lay out the final rows before sewing, so will need to wait until I can dedicate a few hours. Therefore, I switched to working on Grand Illusion. I had decided to change from dark green pieced sashing to light green, allowing the blocks to stand out better. Check out the difference:

  Ugh, a hot mess.

Switch to light green....

Much better!

I have to pause a moment and brag about my daughter. Her prom was last Friday and she looked so beautiful!

Appreciating Life

Unlike Twitter fanatics, I don’t fantasize about sharing my entire life with the public. I like to live my life quietly and privately….to an extent. In my free-form web searches for new quilting patterns, I found myself wishing more quilters would share their designs, finished projects and also share tips to help us improve our quilting skills.

Then I found myself enjoying the stories fellow quilters included in their blog posts. One quilter is also a nurse who shared her experiences with unnamed patients, how they inspired her to appreciate life. Another quilt shared her struggles with weight loss in an unusually uplifting way. Other quilters who support charitable activities such as Project Linus or Quilts of Valor and share pictures and stories of those who receive their donations. Such amazing people!  And many of them actually read my blog and post occasional comments which never fail to encourage me. Thank you, my friends.

So when I decided to share my quilting activities, I also wanted to give others a glimpse into my other interest – aviation. People tell me that my face glows and my eyes sparkle when I talk about being a pilot. Hopefully my enthusiasm for flying comes through when I share this part of my life. [OMG flying is so much fun!].

So what have I been up to since my last blog?

Sewing . Mocha Swirl is back from being longarmed, but not bound because I need to order a bit more fabric for the binding. I finished the last of the neutral string blocks for Blueberry Hill and now need to focus on the remaining broken dishes blocks before beginning on the string – yes, string – border.  I am struggling to resist starting a new project until I finish more quilts in progress. Maybe I can sneak in a wall hanging to satisfy that urge.

Gardening. It’s spring. I planted peas several weeks ago and they are already 5 inches tall. Last weekend I planted nearly all of my garden with green beans, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, beets, lettuce, spinach, onions, cucumbers and summer squash. The plants enjoyed three spring showers this week.

Flying. Ah yes. Freedom of the air. I got back into the air with some landing practice early April. Last weekend my hubby and I flew along with a friend to a nearby town which happens to have a great seed store near the airport. We celebrated our purchases with lunch then flew back home. That’s why I own an airplane. It’s satisfying to have the freedom to take a trip “on the fly” [pun intended]. We are planning a flying trip this summer and I hope to have plenty of stories and pictures to share.

Reading. I am not a paid reviewer, but I do subscribe to BookBub which notifies me of free or discounted books to read on my electronic devices. I have posted several reviews on Amazon, both favorable and well, warnings not to waste your time.  The funniest one I read this month was Death of a Dapper Snowman by Angela Pepper.

 

Cooking. My daughter’s boyfriend and I have perfected recipes for arroz con gandules and flan. Now for a related side note.  I have ordered many specialty spices and blends from Xxxx for many years. However, after their owner published several preachy essays fixated only on one very inaccurate viewpoint, I have decided to boycott the company. That’s my choice. I am not sharing their name because I do not want to encourage sales of their products or invite people to try to change my mind.

Motherhood. It’s my daughter’s senior year of high school, she just turned 18 and this is prom week. Emotional rollercoasters, drama and angst.  ‘Nough said.

Working. Too much work, not enough vacation. That needs to change soon.

Exercise. Not enough.  That needs to change soon, too.  [Andee, keep pushing me with your Fitbit stats!]

Family and Friends.  I try to keep up with family news with regular calls, texts and emails. I trade emails with friends. But I crave more face-to-face social interaction.  One of my goals is to cultivate more friendships and plan more outings to improve our social life. Now I have a party invitation and an open coffee invitation from a new female friend. I also met a local female pilot I would like to get to know better. And I hope YOU, dear reader, will post a greeting on my blog. I promise to post more often on other’s blogs, too.

All in all, I am fortunate in my life and health. We live in an amazing age and are fortunate to enjoy so much freedom. Let’s count our blessings and face our challenges with hope.

Sandy

Becoming an adult

Yesterday was my dear daughter's 18th birthday. Supposedly she is an adult now, but I will always think of her as my baby girl. She has such a bright future. I am so proud of her!  My most recent advice to her was "Just because you Can doesn't mean you Should."  Please share your words of wisdom or advice in a comment.

Earlier this week, just before March ended, I finished my two yellow blocks for my 2015 Rainbow Scrap Quilt designed by superscrappy.blogspot.com. I can't wait to start on purple blocks for April.

Last weekend I dropped off three quilts with North Star Longarm Service, one of which was the humoguously, gigantico king-sized Celtic Solstice. I am so excited that one is nearly finished!  My longarmer Cindy was in awe of the number of pieces in it. Bonnie Hunter's quilts are so detailed. There are a few die-hard quilters who finish her mystery quilts right away. Thank goodness there are an even greater number who, like me, need a BIT more time to finish up. Like, a whole year.

Again, my theme for this year is Perseverance.  I am really trying to finish up some of my UFOs. This week I am working on Blueberry Hill (Jamestown Landing design by Bonnie Hunter). OMG - this one is like a marathon!  I have decided not to do a string border and simply find a nice blue stripe for the outer border. IMHO, a string border is just asking for an unraveled nightmare with so many seams on the outside edge. Yes, I could stay-stitch the edge but there is still a risk. Besides, I am saving my blues for Bonnie's Smith Mountain design. Or maybe I'm just tired of sewing strings. Anyway, check out the progress....

 I am proud to report that I need only 18 more string blocks and 17 more broken dishes blocks to finish up.

Celtic Solstice by Spring

The weather in my area has been brutal lately. Gray skies and cold temperatures made me want to sit by the fire and just read instead of sew.

So, let me catch up on my bloggin'.

On February 28, I missed sewing so much that I took a few minutes to finish my two pink blocks for February's Rainbow scrap challenge.  Not bad!

I recently traded emails with a fellow blogger and confessed that I was afraid to show my quilting space. My hubby had gifted me this nice cabinet which a friend recently assembled. I promptly filled it up and still had four bins of fabric leftover (well, five actually). I figured people would think I was showing the Before picture when this is really my After picture. This is the picture I'm not afraid to show.

We got EIGHT inches of snow on Thursday, March 5th. Snow can be pretty and although my area has not been inundated with as much snow as Boston, I'm really tired of it.  On Friday most of it melted in the sun.

Remember my frustration on Celtic Solstice, coming up just a little bit short on border fabric? After waiting a couple weeks, I decided to look for different fabric and made the trek to my new favorite quilt shop. Aha! Found a good substitute!  And check out the pieced border cornerstones; I changed my mind and created a broken-dishes block which fit so much better with the blue and orange triangles. FINAL BORDER IS ON!  The backing is ready to go, too! Boom - as of today this 14-month project is ready for quilting!

Call for Stripes

After a year of starts and stops, Celtic Solstice is nearing the finale.  I made the various parts for the missing (ahem miscounted) blocks.

The parts were assembled into 10 beautiful blocks.

The beautiful blocks were laid out next to the finished rows. Yikes! I need ONE more! Oh yeah, I needed 61 in total, not 60.

Thankfully I had a few parts left over and quickly assembled the final block.  Hallelujah!  

Today I finished the middle, then began on the borders.  

A quick burst of creativity resulted in four small corner units that became labels.

Final border to go.  Oh no! I don't have enough strips of green striped fabric to go around, even without mitering the corners.  I have about 425 inches of green stripe but I need at least 444 inches. How can that be? Oh yeah. I had originally planned to make the queen size for which I would have had plenty of green striped fabric for mitering the corners.  But now that I biggie-sized into KING, there just isn't enough and the fabric is no longer available. It's the perfect green coloring for this quilt.

Ok, calling all quilters.  Does anyone have any extra Connecting Threads "Holiday Elegance" dark green stripe fabric they might want to sell or trade?  I need a 3.5" strip 42" long (selvage to selvage) or at least 20 inches of a 3.5" strip.  

Please, oh please!

On a higher note, the weather cleared enough last weekend to go flying! A bunch of us flew to an airport about 45 minutes flying time south. We enjoyed a nice lunch and tour of the local airport museum dedicated to WWII memorabilia. We even got to climb inside a B-25 under restoration.  It was a glorious sunny day and I made a perfect landing coming home. The glider club even rated it a 10!  Nice finish to fun day.

Say it isn't so

Full of energy and resolve, I began assembling KSCS (king-sized Celtic Solstice). Wow, that's 121 blocks to sew together, plus three borders. Okay, I can do this.

Goodness, this quilt is wide. It stretched across the entire open area in my bedroom. Each block is being placed so that the dark corners are different blue prints. Looking good!

Had to take a break and see what it looks like with the modified orange triangle border. The green squares look like crystals, so I wanted the orange border to appear crystalline, too.  

Continuing the progress. I'm excited!  I'm finally getting this one done! Just a few more rows to go.

Oh no!  I only have five more crystal blocks but around 15 more stars. Where are the rest of my crystals? Could I have miscounted? Nooooooooooooooooo!  

After a frantic search and wallowing in mixture of disappointment and despair, I decided to persevere. Yep, my word for 2015.  I have eight full rows ready to sew together, so that's what I did.

Now I am resigned to digging out all those remnants and *gulp* make 10 blocks with chevrons and birds-in-the-air units. That's 80 half-square yellow/orange triangles, 40 chevrons, 40 birds-in-the-air, My hubby's reaction? "You've made them before, you can make just a few more." He is still alive. 

See that blank corner? I'm thinking I want an orange square on point with blue corners. Or maybe a little star made of several orange prints. We'll see what I am in the mood for, after making those last 10 blocks. Perseverance.

Beginning my own RSC

As a break from assembling these large Bonnie Hunter quilts, I decided to start a RSC15 quilt (Rainbow Scrap Quilt from superscrappy). Each month we will make blocks in a different rainbow hue and play with a different mini-block pattern for the center of the stars.

Check out my January blocks:

These are SO much fun!  This month's color is blue and I opted for navy blue. My plan is to use solids for the Sawtooth Star points and prints for the mini-blocks inside the star. Make this quilt with me!