Still counting..and cutting (stash report week 16)

Howdy ya'll!


Boy, I wish we could move back to farm country.  All these trips back home to clean out Grandma's house make me really homesick.  


However, after being here 14 years, my back yard is enjoyable.  All the hard work is done, years ago we added another patio, a dry creek bed, and built 3 big retaining walls for erosion control.  One thing is sure - DH and I agree that our next house will not be on a hill - we want a flat yard!  

Some mint

And with food prices so high, I want a vegetable garden.  I love my flowers but some edibles would be great.  By a garden, I mean a plot as big as my current suburban front yard, enough to can or freeze from, you know, for use over the winter.  Right now I can grow a few things in pots to eat over the summer but its only the herbs that I can really save for winter use - good thing my 5 yr old likes pesto on his spaghetti!  Oh well, like Grandma always quoted, "if wishes were horses, beggers would ride."

It's Bingo time!  I've never played quilt bingo before and DS wanted to join in.  I finally got our cards all done this week.  You can check out more info on playing here and there's still time to join in the linky party.


Yesterday, after a great class at the gym, the sun came out.  It rained here most of Friday and was still at at it yesterday morning.  I truly thought I'd see an ark floating down our street after hearing all the rain Friday night.  "We" planned to power wash the deck and outdoor furniture this weekend - thank you, Mother Nature for taking care of that chore, especially after I moved the furniture from the front porch to the yard for a good shower - LOL!

The sunshine also made me want to "do" something that did not involve sitting at the sewing machine.  So, I set my 6 ft table up near the patio door and grabbed all that fabric from Grandma's house that I washed and pressed a few weeks ago.  There just isn't much space here for stuff to sit and I've been moving these piles around - it disrupts my creative and/or productive chi. 


So, a with a few episodes of Sherlock playing on Netflix.com (new episodes start next month! - apparently I am quite the Anglophile - and what is it with the British being so good at murder mysteries?),  I started counting and then cutting into all that fabric.  The total for yesterday, see that's not all of it yet, was 31 yards!!  Really??!!!




How many of you have a problem cutting into fabric that's more than a fat eighth?  Boy, I do - so I decided to overcome this "affliction" and make these piles into something I can use.  Most of this is fabric that Grandma picked up at Joann's or Wal-Mart or that someone gave her.  Here's an old dress that was in her fabric pile - haven't cut into that yet!

I've mentioned that I'm going to make a charm quilt with all these fabrics using a tutorial from Wedding Dress Blue.  Well, my quilty friends are gonna make one too, a group project.  We're supposed to get together and have a cutting party since 3 of us have GO! cutters.  Using the GO!'s for squares are much easier using scraps than larger pieces so I started cutting strips that can be subcut for use with the dies.

The piles above are 5" squares and 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 4"-5" strips.  The larger strips can be used for the 2" and 3.5" dies very easily.  The other strips are just usable sizes for future projects.  I ran lots of the scraps through the Baby for some 2" squares.


I'm not done!  I stood at my cutting table for about 6 hours yesterday. 

I had one teensy incident where I didn't retract the blade before contacting the knuckle of my other hand.  Nothing serious, just in a bad spot.  A little neosporin and I'm good to go today.








So, here's the updated numbers.  I'm going to keep a separate line for Grandma's fabric just so I'll know what I purchased versus what I inherited.


Used this week: 0.33

Used year to date: 15.9

Added this week (purchased/won): 0
Added this week (inherited/gifted): 31

Added year to date (purchased/won): 19.181
Added year to date (inherited/gifted): 31
Added year to date total: 50.181

Net used for 2012: -32.281

Please click over to Patchwork Times and see other stash reports.

Have a great week!