April One Monthly Goal Finish

I finished my April One Monthly Goal: Cheddarback last night. It was a fun block of the month/sew along. Part of the fun was how challenging some of the blocks were to accomplish. I rearranged the lower corner blocks so the darkest blocks would be at the bottom--just looked a little better to me. 

I used my Easy Fans pantograph to do the quilting. 

I think this is one of my favorite blocks (not just because it's blue and white). I would love to make a whole quilt from this one. 

Another favorite, but I probably would never make an entire quilt from this one because of that square in a square (my nemesis).

And lastly--the Cheddar Back!
Linking with One Monthly Goal HERE

Sweet William Progress

If things were normal right now, I would be busy getting ready for quilt camp. But they aren't, so instead I'm leisurely binding my One Monthly Goal quilt (Cheddarback) and slowly working my way through my Sweet William applique blocks. And, (it goes with out saying) making masks. Sigh. 

Here's a few of the most recently finished baskets. All of my baskets have been set up with the applique so it's just a matter of stitching them down. I've been doing that in the evenings and can get at least one block done depending on how many pieces there are in the block. You can see that some blocks are much more simplistic than others. The good thing is that now I can put away the fabric bin for Sweet William (and Cheddarback if I'm feeling ambitious) to make room for something new!
I hope you are all finding things to do in your happy places!  

A Little Afternoon Delight

The Quilt Show released part six of the BOM mid-March in addition to part three  at the beginning of March. The idea is to give us some busy work since we are spending a lot of time at home.
And what is the busy work, you ask?

We now have the measurements to make the double nine patch blocks.
There are 64 blocks needed for the quilt. The block finishes at 6.75". My plan was to work on them at my spring retreat, but that has been cancelled. My new plan is to make the small nine patch blocks as leader/enders since I have all year to get them done. 

 Before I started cutting strips, I re-finagled my leftover four patches (from the shoo fly blocks I made in month one of the BOM) and pieced them into nine patches. Both the four patches and the nine patches require 1.25" squares, so  just needed to add more squares.

I was really itching to have more piecing to do and was so tempted to join Bonnie Hunter's Unity quilt along--I love me a medallion quilt!  But really--I just needed  something to work on at my sewing machine. I opted to stay focused (for now), and have been spending a little time each afternoon working on the little nine patches. I have 82 made and need a total of 320.

 These are all the applique blocks I have finished as of last week on the design wall. I'm glad I finally put them up there because I can see now that I need to add more pink and green. And yellow.

 I've made a template to help trim the blocks. The blocks need to be trimmed to 7.25" and this makes it pretty easy to situate on the block, mark around with a pencil and then trim up using a ruler and rotary cutter. 

Only one more April block left to stitch down!  

Amazingly, I have not purchased anything quilt related since our "lock-down" began. I admit to having spent a bit lot of time browsing online and filling carts, but have resisted pushing that tempting Buy Now button.  Soooo, this was a fun little package to get in the mail: a nifty shirting from sweet Janet.  
Thanks again, Janet! 

No progress to report on my April goal--I haven't been able to motivate myself to start quilting Cheddarback. I thought I was waiting for a sunny day to add better light to my sewing room, but today is beautiful and I'm still not feeling the urge--lol! 

April One Monthly Goal

I usually listen to an audio book when I walk my dog Willow. A lot of times my mind wanders and I have to back up a few minutes to hear what I have missed. Recently I won an audio download of My Dark Vanessa read by Grace Gummer. It was a disturbing and sometimes maddening story, but I never had to rewind it--haha!  Needless to say, Willow and I had some very long walks for a few days!
After finishing that book, I listened to The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. Derek Jacoby does an awesome job of reading this Sherlock Holmes take-off. Anthony Horowitz wrote some of the early episodes of Midsomer Murders, so I expected this story to be a bit more "cozy" than it was. There's a lot of despicable stuff going on but, of course, Sherlock neatly ties everything up in the end (I don't think that's a spoiler, as that's what he always does, isn't it?).

For my April One Monthly Goal, I had chosen a completely different quilt, but then the final parts for completing Cheddarback were released early. Gay at Sentimental Stitches has been posting the patterns as a block of the month for more than a year and now it's a little sad that we are at the end. 

Part 14
I did a little "pick and choose" when deciding which blocks to make for these last two sections. 

Part 15
I had already made the letter blocks and thought I better fit them in somewhere before I ran out of room. 

My top is all put together and loaded onto the quilting machine. You can see a peek of my "Cheddar-backing" in the above photo. I had pieced the backing and made the binding last week in anticipation of being so close to the end, so I am  ready to go!
My goal for April is to get Cheddarback quilted and bound. 
Linking with One Monthly Goal HERE