I am joining the weekly To-Do Tuesday Linky Party hosted by my friend, Roseanne, at Home Sewn By Us. I find goal-setting to be extremely helpful to get more accomplished, and since I’m always trying to get one more project done, I’m all for a little extra push and/or encouragement.

To-Do for the week of August 27th through Sept 2nd:

1. Sew Mime’s Kitty quilt top – √ Done
2. Cut the colored strips for the Lumen Quilt that I will be making for my step-daughter. – √ Done
3. Make a quilt label for my Tranquility quilt.– √ Done
4. Get my Tranquility quilt bound.– √ Done

To-Do #1

This kitty quilt top was very easy to sew together, especially because I loved looking at the large cuts of the adorable Dear Stella Meow Mix in Insignia cat fabric. It measures about 35” x 42”. I may quilt it myself, or if I decide to send it out, I’ll have to cut it down to 28” x 35” in order for the backing (which measures 36” x 43”) to go on the longarm frame. I’m leaning toward quilting it myself with simple wavy quilting, but I have to admit that I don’t like basting a quilt, even one as small as this one. At any rate, I don’t need to decide anytime soon. This kitty quilt will go on top of the Stargazer quilt I am making for my best friend, Mary. I recently realized that I can’t get Stargazer finished this year if I’m going to get several other projects done before the end of the year, so finishing Stargazer will become an early 2020 goal as will getting this kitty quilt finished.

To-Do #2

I did get the colored Kaleidoscope strips cut for the Lumen quilt I am making for my stepdaughter. The strips are organized by color in gallon storage bags and then all the storage bags are kept in a small Iris scrap book bin. I love these bins, and I have even larger Iris bins where I store my stash by color or theme.

To-Do #3

Below is a pic of the label I made for my Tranquility quilt. I forgot to take a photo of the label before it got attached to the quilt when I machine-stitched and then hand-stitched down the binding and the top of the label. I really like the colorful striped binding and the mandala backing. You’ll see more of both fabrics in the photo of the finished quilt below.

To-Do #4

I got my Tranquility quilt back from Melissa at Sew Shabby Quilting on Friday (Aug 31st) and was able to get it bound the next day with a little meal help from my best friend and some Ibuprofen! Please see my Tranquility Quilt Finished! for more info about this project (and pics of Bug on her mini quilt!).

To-Do for the week of Sept 3rd through September 9th

To-Do #1

Sew eight Fizzy block quadrants for Bee Hive September Queen Bee, Kathy. It was super easy to pick the fabrics this month as she requested that I duplicate the Fizzy blocks I made for Queen Bee Barbara in July which is fine with me because one of my goals this year is to become more comfortable with curved piecing. I may have to try Roseanne’s 3-pin curved sewing technique that she recently shared with us in her Rainbow Ripples Reverse Ripples Pattern post. So far I’ve had the most success sewing curves using Jen Carlton Bailly’s Glue Basting technique.

I had all of the fabrics on hand that I used in Barbara’s blocks except for one of the white low volume fabrics. And Kathy is making it even easier this month as she was requested that we not sew the quadrants together so she can have more control in combining like-colored flowers into pleasing arrangements. Below is a pic of the convex and concave pieces I cut this morning using Jen Carlton Bailly’s acrylic templates (on top of my Quilter’s Planner below. Speaking of which have you ordered your 2020 Quilter’s Planner yet? I’ve bought one every year since 2016, and it is packed full of patterns, tips, stickers, graph paper,  and Project Organization and Planning pages. I absolutely recommend treating yourself to one of these planners). I had fun staging this photo (which I hardly ever do). I included my turquoise Ott lamp with a silly astronaut light plugged into the built-in USB port and my favorite mug given to me last year by Bee Hive swarm-mate, Amanda.

To-Do #2

Since I seem to be in a chatty blog-post-writing mood today, I’m going to give you the back story of why I have decided to start a project in September that is not going to be a Christmas present. I really wanted to make a temperature quilt this year and have recorded daily high/low temperatures for 2019 for the first half of this year. But it’s not feasible for me to make 365 units for a quilt now and through the end of the year (because I have a BIG project looming after Christmas gifts are made—more on that soon!). I was going to use the finished temperature quilt to cover my small black recliner in the living room. It’s currently covered with a boring store-bought grey plush fleece blanket—definitely not something that a quilter wants featured in the living room. (I still hope to make a temperature quilt next year maybe similar to this one by @jskarritt on Instagram).

I’ve been wanting to try out a very reasonably priced longarm quilting service called My Long Arm Quilting Service. I like to try out new longarm quilters with projects that aren’t very sentimental and don’t use super expensive fabric. As you now know I want a quilt to go over my recliner in the near future, but this time of year, I really can’t spend a lot of time or money on it, so that limits my options. Then I remembered a project I’ve been wanting to make for almost a year—Dimension in Dusk which is a pattern by Nydia Kehnle. This pattern is a fairly simple paper-pieced project, and I have made it my September One Monthly Goal to make this quilt top. Please see my September ‘19 OMG post for more info on this project.

In this coming week, I plan to get as much of the fabric cut as possible for this project—hopefully all of it, but that depends on when the fabric I ordered for this quilt arrives. And maybe start sewing some of the blocks. Below are some of the Kona fabrics from my stash that I will use in my Dimension in Dusk quilt top:

And that’s it folks!

Linking up to Home Sewn By Us: To-Do Tuesday Linky Party 4.