As usual I don’t have much as I would have liked to show you today. I took a bit of time for myself and some pampering when the girls were being watched (pedicure and new haircut…) – but now that that is all done maybe I’ll accomplish LOTS in the next week!? lol…we’ll just have to see what happens…
Boxed In and the Mystery Quilt:
I have decided to combine these today since very little progress has been made… 
As I’m sure you’ve notice – the borders are still not on the quilts. I don’t have enough room on my basement floors to properly lay the quilt out and measure so I can put the borders on correctly. So, it’s going to involve a lot of up and down my stairs…I’m still mentally preparing for this. Hoping to get it done tomorrow…. One thing I did finally do was measuring so I can at least get the first set of strips ready for pinning. It’s a start at least!
Block-A-Palooza Quilt
Blocks 1-15 are complete! Block 16, aka the last block, will be posted tomorrow and then next week we find out how they want us to do the layout. I had such a fun time with this quilt along – I hope to start with the Patchwork Squared Modern Solid’s Quilt Along starting on March 28th – but we’ll see what baby thinks about that…
the Bloom Quilt:
Before I talk too much about this I have to apologize for all the terrible pictures. I layout my progress on Tuesday nights after the girls go to bed – I fear if I didn’t wait until they weren’t around my yoyo’s would be scattered all about the house… As I start actually attaching them to the quilt (and the weather gets nicer) I’ll hopefully have some better quality pictures to show you. 
I actually managed to make some progress with this quilt. I did the machine stitching of the binding so now I just have to sit down, relax and hand stitch it to the back of the quilt. I’ve been working really hard to get a lot of hand work ready just in case I have to go on any bed rest of any sort. I’m feeling great and all my levels (ie blood pressure, etc) have been just fine…I just like to be prepared. 
Because I’m a super dork – I have now started a spread sheet to keep track of my progress on the yoyo’s. There are six sizes of yoyo’s which I have ‘1’ being the largest and ‘6’ being the smallest. As of yesterday I have:
- size 1 – 13
- size 2 – 6
- size 3– 28
- size 4 – 32
- size 5 – 20
- size 6 – 29
TOTAL: 128 From the looks of the quilt layout I’m going to need at least double that to really fill it in…still a bit of work to do but it doesn’t feel too bad when you only make it a goal to do 5 yoyo’s a day.
The Matryoshka Project
A few weeks back I was contacted on etsy about possibly making 55 Matryoshka Doll ornaments for someone to use as wedding favors. After checking my fabric to make sure this was a possibility I said yes. Last week, I started to work on them (I have until the middle of June but I’d really like to get these done before baby arrives – just one less thing to worry about). 
The first step was to cut out all the dolls from the fabric – I used my ‘mini’ rotary cutter for this.
Next, cut out the backing from some hand-dyed fabric. The customer didn’t want much variation on the back so I had to fussy cut around some of the more ‘textured’ portions of the piece I chose. It ended up working out just fine.
The next step – machine sewing along the outline of the doll, adding in the ribbon as I go. I have 20 done like this so far…just 35 to go. Then, to just snip on the curves, flip, stuff and hand stitch…not too bad right?
The Secret Project
I made a lot of progress on this one this week as well. I just have to add the borders and send it off to Barb for quilting!
Project QUILTING – Flying Geese
Here’s a picture of the Project QUILTING Challenge Piece – 3 Geese. I’ll be blogging more about this once I hear the judges critique. In the meantime, visit the voting post and be sure to caste your vote for your favorite project this week!
Goals for this week:
- getting the borders on the three quilts (mystery, boxed in, and surprise quilt)
- finish machine work on the matryoshka ornaments
- make a patchwork kite (or two) for theGlitterWorkshop
- stay on track with my yoyo goal
- get a good start on the final Project QUILTING challenge right away
- start work on two owls I have custom ordered
- finish packing my bag for the hospital
Oh my goodness Kim, you are a quilting madwoman. I mean that in the nicest way of course. I am just amazed at all you have accomplished. The projects are varied and all quite wonderful.