Stash Report Week #10

March 5-11, 2010

It was tough, but I managed not to buy any fabric this week.  I just got an email from Fabric Depot not even an hour ago that I found very tempting.  I even added some items to my online cart, but fortunately, I closed it before purchasing anything.  There are some beautiful fabric lines out there now - particularly Verna by Kate Spain and Martinique by 3 Sisters.  But as nice as find them, I have enough projects to work on.  My UFO list isn't getting much smaller.

I also didn't get much sewing done this week.  My quilt bee started their sampler last week and our talented teachers (Janet and Jan) taught all of us how to draft a pattern, resize it, make templates and hand piece.  Wow!  They were busy.  And for all their efforts, I managed to finish my first ever hand-pieced block.

6" Mill Wheel Block

I'm pleased with how it turned out although hand sewing all the pieces did result in some frayed edges.  I also see from the picture that I would have benefited from a pressing cloth.  The middle square has a shine on it from the iron.

Other than this lone block, the only other stash I used was to make 6 different blocking cloths.  Janet showed us one during bee and I thought it was ingenious!  Why didn't I ever think of it?  It would have come in handy so many times.

I hope you can see the different markings on it.  This one is for a 6" finished block.  I've labeled the usual divisions of this block - 1.5", 2" and 3" as well as the diagonals.  Next time I need to square up a block this size, I can pin this blocking cloth to my ironing board and then pin my block to it to square it up.

In all, I made one for 6", 8", 9", 10", 12" and 15" block sizes.  I'd like to make one for 16" blocks, but I don't have a big enough ruler yet.

This project didn't use a lot of fabric - only about 1 yard of some canvas I had left over from making leaders for my quilting frame.  But I believe every bit counts.

(Here they are hanging up ready for me to use)

I would have liked to have gotten more quilting done, but every time I sat down at my machine, David showed up.

I find it impossible to free motion quilt when he's lying on top of the quilt.  Maybe I'll have more luck next week...

So to summarize...
Purchased-this-week: 0 yards
Used-this-week: 1 yard
Purchased-to-date: 63.25 yards
Used-to-date: 128.5 yards
Net used: 65.25 yards

Until later...