Down to the last minute!

Bah! I've been meaning to do this for days... So here I am, finally linking up for Rhonda's FAL.
Last quarter I finished 50%! (Ha! That means 1 project.)

This quarter:

1. I hope to finish the other project I set forth in Jan, my Purple Haze Quilt. I did make some good progress on it last quarter - it went from charm squares to a pieced top. I still need to baste, quilt and bind.

2. I joined Sarah's Stained QAL in Feb. I'm at the sashing stage now. So there's piecing the top, basting, quilting and binding to do still. Hidden in that simple list there's also choosing a backing fabric and quilting pattern... Here is my first block:

3. The first QAL I joined was Oh My Stars. I'm still working slowly on it. I highly doubt I'll be done with it this quarter, but maybe... According to when I uploaded this picture to Flickr, I was last actually sewing stars at the end of Jan. How shameful... After that I did at least cut the necessary fabric (and then some, accidentally).

There's about 30 minutes left if you haven't linked up yet!

WIP Wednesday the Second

Ongoing:
Last night I wanted to start sewing the sashing for the blocks of my Stained quilt; I have strips cut from the remnant of Kona black I happened to have (I'll probably have to buy more to finish between the blocks).

23 strips WOF

I pulled out my sewing machine, plugged it in and opened the little attachment case where my bobbins are stored. I only have 4... and they all have bits of other colors left on them at the moment. It seems wasteful to just unravel one, so that's another thing I need to buy.

red, dark blue, light blue and white

Since the first quarter of Rhonda's Finish Along is almost over, I pulled out the pieces for my purple haze quilt and trimmed them all. I started with 5" charm squares cut from yardage, but when I sewed them back together I had some trouble keeping accurate 1/4" seams, especially considering that flannel is prone to more stretching than the typical quilter's cotton.

I think chances are slim that I will finish this quilt by the end of the month as I had set out for myself in Jan, but at least I've made a bit of progress! And I've got one finish in for this quarter anyway.

New:
None!

Finishes:
None.

No Progress:
Purse for me

Stats:
New Projects - 0
Completed projects - 0
Currently in progress - 3 (or 7 if you count the things I have fabric piled for and/ or a few squares cut and/or the pattern cut)

All grown up!

I haven't related this story to you yet, though I have hinted at it.

Upon their arrival I gave my sister-in-law and her husband a little tour of our apartment. He had never seen it before; she had.

"It looks so much more grown up now!" She said when we got to the bathroom (a mere 15 ft from the front door).

(I wish the walls weren't painted dingy yellow...)

That is not actually what she saw, but it is what she was supposed to see! Instead, she saw the liner minus my old rubber ducky plastic shower curtain that I had kept from my college apartment... Clear was a step up, I guess.

Confession: I still kind of liked the duckies even if they were a bit juvenile. I've actually stuffed the old hooks in a plastic bag with the thought that I could remove the rusty metal from the ducks and perhaps turn them into magnets... Not sure I will ever follow through, but I hated to throw them out. And I am using the matching washcloths to this day.

So, that is the tale of my new grown up bathroom. I'm really quite pleased with the results. I tore strips from sheets, then laid them out in a pseudo-random order (pseudo because they are not particularly random, but they are also without a repeating pattern). I sewed all the strips together and then decided that while time consuming, I would finish the seams that would be seen from in the shower. It surprised me how long the ironing took to achieve this... but nevermind. It is done now.

And it is my first finish (of hopefully 2 this quarter) for the FAL!

As explained in my FAL post, in my haste to make progress, I hemed it too short. I thought about trying to take a short cut and not rip out both top and bottom hems, but it didn't take as long as I'd expected. (I did take out both.)

Step 2

I wound up with a 3/8" bottom hem and a 1 3/4" top hem. Originally, at the top I had 3 layers of fabric to be sure the buttonholes would be secure, but the edit down to just two seems to have worked perfectly well.

Since my shower curtain is a bit wider than a standard one so I couldn't transfer the hole placement from the liner; instead I did some quick calculations and marked each with a pin.

Step 3

Then I tested out the buttonhole feature on my machine for the first time. It worked like a charm! I used small pencil marks to keep my starting points evenly distanced from the hemline which were easily covered up by the stitches.

Step 4

And finally I cut the buttonholes and hung it up! Can you see the stitch detailing?