slow progress

I feel like I spend a fair amount of time in my sewing room every day, but never have much to show for it.  Maybe I'm not in there as long as I think?  (maybe I'm distracted by fur-babies?)

Since my last post, I've worked a fair amount on the sheep quilt...getting all the cornerstones made and figuring out how they all look nice together:

...with help, of course.  (...there may or may not have been a bit of catnip spilled in this spot the day before...)

And then on to actual construction of the top!

It got GREEN really fast and it's hard to tell there are two different fabrics in here, but the sashing pieces are a different print than the background and borders.  And the sheep still need legs.  I think I'm going to do that before I quilt it - so soon.

It's about 76" square.

Once this was done and cleaned up, I decided to pull fabrics for the first of three baby quilts.  The former coworker with the little one already here.

My first pull is this:

I have since ditched #1, #2, #9 and the grey.  I've purchased another pink, subbed in another blue and am currently on the lookout for a few more good yellows.  I love #7, but can't get myself to like #8 in this quilt and have another yellow selected, but am not sold on that one either.  We're getting there, but I want to start this project!

Setting this aside, I pulled my stash of yellows, as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for this month is yellow.

Fairly pathetic, which explains my difficulty in the original fabric pull for the baby quilt.  I'm on board to purchase a few new fabrics for the baby quilt, but just can't seem to find the right shade of yellow.  I'll be visiting a quilt shop or two this weekend, as it's family reunion weekend and having a mom and two aunts who quilt, you know where we'll be!  Maybe I'll have some luck there?

Anyways, I got to work cutting my yellow cat parts.  I've found it works well to cut all 13 cats parts, keeping them separated between pages of a book, and then sewing as I find time.  This way, the mess is all taken care of at once and I can clean off my cutting table and have it for further construction needs.

While I had the yellows out, why not cut for the wonky stars, too?!

I have these little bins (they have a Christmas thing on the side...) that fit the little ziploc bags perfectly.  One has all yellow parts, the other is more random.  This works really nicely, as the bags are a bit slippery and hard to stack in a neat pile.  When I'm ready to sew, just grab one and go!

Yesterday I sewed a few cats and a few stars.  I'm still behind on the stars, but I'll get there.  Forcing myself to make them is going to make me hate the project and abandon it.  With 60+ stars made and a vision of beauty in my head, I don't want it to go away!

Tonight, once I'm done with the blog and paying bills, maybe I'll head back up to the sewing room and make a few more cats and stars...

And one last fun photo - I got some new shoes!

I don't know that they'll be comfortable enough to wear to work all day, but they're definitely fun weekend shoes!  (And even if I do break them in enough to wear all day to work, I'm afraid I'd spill stuff on them and ruin them and don't want to do that!)

Happy quilting,

Katie