Stitching Stuff: Week 15 of 2024

I'm a bit late posting this morning. I'm a bit dragged out from all the travel.  We spent all of last week in Texas. The big draw was the eclipse on Monday, but we stayed a few extra days to spend some time with Grad Girl.  I shared one of my photos earlier this week. My Guy used his DSLR and a filter.  Here are some of his shots. 

As you can see in the photos, the cloud cover cleared just before totality, but was back before the eclipse ended.  

As we were on the road all of last week, my stitching time was all hand stitching.  Some mornings I only had time to stitch one full length of thread, but that still met my 15 minutes goal. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Apr = 13/13 days
• 15 minute days/2024 = 104/104 days
• Success rate = 100%

So I'm still at 100%.  We'll see if I can keep it up through Friday when I have surgery.  It's been pretty motivating to see if I can keep the 100% through April.  

How are you doing with working in a bit of stitching time each day? 

1. DonnaleeQ 2. Frédérique 3. Deb in Canada

4. Shelina @ High Road Quilter 5. Quilting Gail 6. Dq at Dreamworthyquilts

7. Bonnie in Va 8. Andrée at Quilting & Learning

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To Do Tuesday for the Week of 4/9/2024

The big thing that wasn't on my to do list for last week was to watch the eclipse. We ventured down to Texas so we could see totality.  My Guy had the special filters and such for his camera, I didn't get that motivated. Even so,  I did get a cool photo during totality.  

We'd had mostly cloudy skies all morning, but we got lucky and the sun was in a clear patch for almost all of totality.  This photo was taken with my cell phone with no filters.  My Guy had his DSLR set up with a tripod and special filters. He's not looked at his photos yet, but I'll post a few sometime this week once he's had a chance to sort through them.  I'm sure the got a few cool ones.  

Since we did travel for the eclipse, I didn't get as much done on my to do list as I had hoped. 

To Do List for 4/2/2024

1. 2023 SAHRR: Fabric requirements, start assembly - progress

2. Rhododendron: Work on last 2 borders ✔

3. Wild and Goosey: Work on purple blocks ✔

4. Indigo Way: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

Even though I didn't get as much done as I wanted, three check marks and progress on the fourth is still a good week.  

The plan for this week will need to take some travel time into consideration.  But I'll still have sewing room time after we get home to move a few things forward.  

To Do List for 4/9/2024

1. Butterfly Medallion:  Continue to embroider while on the road. 

I've made some good headway on the next butterfly.  There should be a bit more progress before we get home.  

2.  2023 SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Cut fabric, assemble backing

I worked out the fabric requirements and cutting measurements, but didn't get any farther. I doubt this gets sent out before I have surgery.  I've got a number of things that have to be done before I'm out of commission for a few weeks, so sewing room time is likely to be limited.  

3.  Rhododendron (Bonnie Hunter): Finish last border

The next to last border is attached and I'm working on sewing together the strips for the last border.  

4. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Continue making purple blocks

I won't get as many made this month as last month, but any progress will cut down on what has to be made to finish this up next year.  

5. Indigo Way (Bonnie Hunter):  Continue as leaders and enders

Still working on making the component for the remaining blocks.  

I'm to to the point that whatever I can get done before surgery gets done. What doesn't will have to wait till I'm mobile again. Fingers crossed that doesn't take too long to happen. 

Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric for To Do Tuesday. 

Eclipsing

 

No stitching to show off today.  We're eclipsing. Fingers crossed we get some clearing around noon so we can enjoy the show. If not, I'm going to have one very disappointed My Guy. 

Stitching Stuff: Week 14 of 2024

It was a busy week on the non-quilting front.  The biggest accomplishment outside of the sewing room was getting our taxes completed and sent off.  For once we finished early, normally I'm scrambling to get it sent in the day it's due. 

Even though it was a busy week, sewing room time wasn't too hard to find. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Mar = 31/31 days
• 15 minute days/Apr = 6/6 days
• 15 minute days/2024 = 97/97 days
• Success rate = 100%

So far so good on finding time to stitch each day this year.  It will be a challenge to maintain that with what else is on the schedule later this month.  My goal is 70%, but it's been fun to challenge myself.  Stitching every day has paid off, there has been good progress on a number of fronts.  

How are you doing at working in stitching to your schedule this year?  

1. Julie in GA 2. Gretchen's Little Corner 3. Karen 4. DonnaleeQ

5. Frédérique 6. Bonnie in Va 7. Amanda 8. Deb in Canada

9. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 10. Dq at Dreamworthyquilts

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2024 Quilting Ambitions 1st Quarter Check In

With the end of March comes the end of the first quarter of 2024.  Hard to believe we've hit that milestone already.  It's a good time to check how well I'm doing at meeting my ambitions for 2024.  Quilting Jetgirl has a first quarter linky party to remind us to do just that.  

Here's where I'm at with my ambitions for 2024. 

1. Make Quilts. My ambition wasn't just to finish quilts, I also wanted to focus on making progress with all the quilts on my quilt plan for this year.  

Here's what my progress metric looked like at the beginning of the year. 

Here's what it looked at at the end of March. 

One finished quilt, three others moved to finished quilt tops, and the all the blocks finished on another project. I'm definitely on track with this ambition for 2024.  Fingers crossed I can work those quilt tops into finished quilts before the end of the year.  

2. Learn to quilt.  No progress on this goal as yet.  I was focused on the quilt alongs during the first quarter.  I'm hoping to get moving on this ambition once I've recovered from knee surgery.  

3. 15 Minutes to Stitch (Stitching Stuff).  My one stated ambition was to stitch 15 minutes a day at least 75% of the time. I'm at 100% currently.  That won't last, especially since I have knee surgery in a couple of weeks.  I'll have to switch to hand work for a bit, but I've got some room to drop and still meet my goal of 75%.  

I finally figured out a graph that can help track my success/failure with my 15 minute stitching time.  My worst year for getting in my stitching time was 2014, my best year was 2018. We'll see how comparing my current progress with the worst and best performance works for 2024.    

The other ambition, which wasn't clearly stated at the beginning of the year, is to have the linky party posted each week.  So far I'm at 13 linky parties for 13 weeks.

4. Stash Organization. I've not done much on this front. As I said earlier, my focus for first quarter has been on the quilt alongs.  No progress at all on my scraps, in fact I've gone backwards with my scrap bin where I put all my "in progress scraps". 

So I have some trimming to do there to get it back to empty. 

The "to be pressed tub" is full again. I washed a lot of Halloween fabrics for potential use in the SAHRR, so those all got added to the tub. So it's back to completely full status. 

The only place that I've made progress is the fabric closet. Earlier this year I ordered some wire cubes to extend the wire rack at the back of the closet.  

All the fabrics that were just piled on top of the rack have been moved into empty drawers in Grad Girl's room. That fabric will all need to be repressed and folded to conform to the other yardage in the closet.  I still have some wire cubes left, I'm hoping to clean up the right side of the closet and use them there to further expand the fabric storage.  We'll see how that works.  

In summery, ambitions #1 and #3 are going well.  I've got work to do on ambitions #2 and #4.  Knee surgery will definitely impact second quarter progress, but hopefully not too badly.