Design Wall Monday 2013 Jan 14

Judy, over at Patchwork Times has a great link-up for folks to show what they are working on.

As part of my 2013 goals, I want to complete projects from the past... aka UFO's, WIP etc... whatever, they are not completed.  I've noted the biggest source of my UFO's began as classes or local(ish) stores' Blocks of the Month (BoM) programs.  I'm in two that began in 2012.  One at Sew Original in Winston-Salem, NC and one at Sew Much Fun Quilt shop which is technically in Lowell, NC, about 1.75 hours away. (For those who know NC, it is about 2 miles from Mary Jo's Fabric Shop in Gastonia. It is also very close to Ikea etc in the BIG city of Charlotte, NC... lots of reasons to go there...)

Saturday, I drove down to pick up the patterns and fabrics.  Sunday, I worked on them.  (Hmm, photo has weird angle.  I was standing on a chair in my office.  It's too dark in my room at home for photos since it's rained all day.)  At any rate, this photo includes one of each months' patterns through month 9; we make two blocks a month. I've chosen to use the same fabric for all the star points Robert Kaufman's Picnic Basics.  Boy I do love this fabric.  Then I'm using red or blue for scrappy backgrounds; they'll finish at 12" square.  I plan on making a large solid star for the center block and adding sashing and cornerstones. I'll end up with a 25 block square picnic quilt. (Hmm, that's a LOT of white for a picnic quilt!)

The shop provides 2.5" WOF strips for the solid center red and white fabrics, plus the first month we purchased Thangles to  use.  Frankly, I'm not a fan; seems like your accuracy should be great, but mine is better not using Thangles... plus, it feels like extra work.  The 2.5# strips from the shop have to be perfect (some have not been) and the paper complicates pinning and sewing for me.  I think I'll start cutting the half square triangle parts using Bonnie Hunter's method  Video tutorial for using Easy Angle rulers.  Tho her tutorial is for flying Geese, the cutting directions work with half square triangle cutting too.

At any rate, one of my January 2013 goals is to get caught up with and complete the quilt made in this block of the month.  I didn't make the trip to Gastonia in December, so I was behind, blocks 9 were December.  I hope to complete blocks 10 this week, which will give me 20 blocks.  That will mean I am caught up.  I plan to visit my grand-daughter who is in college at UNC-Charlotte the last week-end of the month, so I'll pick up February's blocks then.  This month, I may even complete all the back-ground piecing for the last four blocks in the series as well as begin on the sashing and cornerstones. 

Thanks for stopping by... I love to see what others are working on, so follow the link above.  And THANKS to Judy who finds so many ways to keep us motivated & on track.