WIP Wednesday #2 for me

It's a CRAZY month at our house.  Schoolwork is backing up and sewing time is rare, indeed. With 4 different Spring Break weeks, everything is insane. Still, I've managed some progress this week.

Needed a good station for free-motion quilting to move forward on several projects, so Scott put my new table together for me. (That deserves its own blog post when I have time!) I couldn't bear to tape a lunch bag to the new table the way I do at my piecing station, so I sewed up a Thread Catcher/Pincushion doohickey. What should have taken a couple of hours took 4 days! (No sewing time, not bad instructions.) Thank you very much to Elizabeth Hartman of Sew, Mama, Sew! for the terrific tutorial: Weighted Pincushion Organizer. Now I need to sew up a machine cover some day!



As far as quilts go, I finished the LeMoyne Blues Tabletopper and moved on to Marissa's Moment.

Managed to get a lot of the leaves made and will have about 2/3 of them sewn on by tonight.

Heather's home this week!!  She's been meticulously removing the tear-away foundation from her Geometrics quilt. This is a paper-pieced pattern that she started two summers ago before we knew what we were doing, so it was monstrous to work on at first. Once I learned easier technique for working in this style, she whizzed through the second half of her top over Christmas break. Now we're finding that it's a REAL PAIN to remove tear-away. Don't use tear-away interfacing-style stuff for your foundation piecing!!  It's too stiff to leave on - will make for nasty draping, and is AWFUL to remove. Paper. Use paper!  Even normal printer paper is much, MUCH better than this stuff.  She's a real trooper, though, plugging away at it a bit each day.


This week's stats:
New projects - Thread Catcher and Pin Cushion (justified because needed at new station, and used ONLY materials already in-home)
Completed projects this week - 2 (LeMoyne Blues Tabletopper; Thread Catcher)
Actively in progress - 5 (Marissa's Moment, Dad's Wagon Wheels, Devon's What a Hoot, Lori's Butterflies, Heather's Geometrics)
UFO Firing Range - 33 (not counting untouched kits!)

Finishes for 2011 - 4

Completed tops awaiting quilting:

Three charity wheelchair quilts

Katie Loves Christopher

Wagon Wheels West #1- AT Katydids LongArm Studio

Trip Around the World with Mr. Hernandez (Mr. Hernandez's)
Trip Around the World with Mr. Hernandez (Heather's)

Be Attitudes

We Love Kelly

Sailing with the Flying Needles
Wagon Wheels West #2

Poor Forgotten Orphan from 15 years ago