Fabric Diet: August 2018

Some of the fabric that I ordered this month was for my Sewtopia class with Tara Faughnan.

August was a flurry of work and preparation during the first half of the month and then a couple of  major let-downs in the second-half of the month.

For the first two weeks or so, I spent a lot of time preparing for the Sewtopia sewing retreat in Milwaukee. I cut up 7 yards of fabric for the class with Tara Faughnan, made a swap item, and finished two sets of traveling bee blocks to surprise my roomie (one of the sets of blocks were her blocks and I hoped to surprise her by returning all of them to her). 

Then we got a call that my father-in-law had only hours to live (he's been fighting cancer for 2 years), and I had to cancel my trip to Milwaukee the day before I was set to leave (to stay home to watch my kids), and my husband rushed home to be with his parents.  First major bummer was cancelling my trip. (My father-in-law lived through the weekend...and actually lived for two more weeks after that).

Since I wasn't able to deliver the traveling bee blocks to my friend in person in Milwaukee, I popped them in the mail to surprise her when she got back from the retreat.  When, after a few days, she hadn't received the package, we tracked it and slowly figured out that it had been delivered Saturday while she was gone (it was Tuesday), and had been stolen from the lobby of her apartment complex.  We lost all the blocks for two quilts.  It was the last round for one set of blocks, and the other set was being returned to the person who started the quilt. Major bummer number 2.
The month ended on a very sour note, and I think that's why it's taken me a little while to get around to putting this post together.  Moving on tho...

Works in Progress (WIPs):
I was happy to finish the second memory quilt top in August (above).  So exciting to have an empty design wall once again.

New Projects:
I guess that my prep for Tara's Sewtopia class counts as a new project. I cut 7 yards of fabric in to 6 1/2" strips and had so much fun picking colors (top right) and actually ordering fabric for the project rather than just trying to pull from my stash.  Friends who attended the retreat picked up the class materials for me, and I hope to start the quilt at our "quiltn' sisters" retreat in October.

August is "Back to School" in Colorado, and this year I opted to sew some boxy totes for my 4th graders to use as pencil cases.  I had fun watching them pick fabrics and got a kick out of their choices (top left).

Traveling Bee Blocks:
I was really down-heartened by the loss of two sets of our traveling bee blocks. I felt terrible.  Even to the point that I really didn't want to sew for a while. So many people had put so much work and thought in to their blocks. And now they were all gone - probably in a dumpster somewhere, because what thief wants quilt blocks?  Regardless, below are the blocks I made, and above were all the blocks for made for each quilt.   For Steph's  Norwegian quilt (above right), I made two star-in-a-star blocks that were 16" square, and for Kayla's neon flying geese quilt (above left) I adapted a block by Kristi (@initialkstudio) and made 5 strips of flying geese.  As always, you can check out the hashtag #iwishicouldgotootravelingquiltbee2 on Instagram for more pictures of all of our traveling quilts.

Finished Projects:
Every August my local quilt group hosts a quilt show and I had the project of making the award ribbons again this year.  I've gotten the process dialed in and enjoy making and assembling the parts of the ribbons.  
The other project that I finished last month was my swap item for Sewtopia Milwaukee: an English-paper-pieced pillow. I had made this ring of colorful hexagons to try out an idea for my next epp quilt, and it was tacked to my design wall partially finished.  I was undecided on whether I wanted to make an entire quilt of these rings (or in the layout show in this post), and while I debated with myself on which direction to go with that quilt idea, I opted to make the block in to a pillow.

Fabric Standings
Fabric Purchased: 25.5 yards
Fabric Used: 31.5 yards
Net for the Month: -6.25 yards
Net for the Year: 45.25 yards

When I had to cancel my trip to Milwaukee, I totally tried to make myself feel better by going fabric-shopping in Denver.  That little excursion netted me about 19 yards of new fabric, and then there was the 6 yards that I bought for Tara Faughnan's Sewtopia class.

I used up fabric this month by piecing together a large quilt-back (more on this later), donating some unwanted fabric to my local guild, making the bee blocks, and making a few assorted bindings and quilt backs for the memory quilts.

On to September!