Getting Odds and Ends Done

   

In the last week I don't feel like I've done much sewing but I have gotten a few things done. 

 

Nothing new has been allowed into the sewing room. Kinda. I did get a few things done that allowed items to be moved out of the sewing room.

 

Added the border to the Burgoyne Surround quilt. I like it so much better with this little border.

 

 I did a little retail therapy. Backs for two quilts, some just becauses, and fabrics for a new quilt.

The circle fabric is the backing my Threadology quilt. I've already made it and the back and the quilt have moved out of the sewing room.

The burgundy plaid is the back for the Xmas Burgoyne Surround quilt above. I'll get that back made tomorrow and it will also be moved out of the sewing room into the to-be-quilted queue.

The new quilt fabric has been move out and into a project box. The just becauses have been move out to my fabric bins.

I pinned two small quilts that I will quilt on my Bernina because I want to do some custom quilting on them that I can't do on the frame.

I marked and pinned this wall hanging. Hmmm, looking at it I think I should have pinned it more. This will be interesting to quilt as I've never quilted anything using a fancy template before in an area that will definitely show the quilting. The other quilt I pinned is the little tumbler quilt I made a few years ago. I want to do some simple straight line quilting on it with my walking foot.

I picked up a really nice snow flake fabric at JoAnn's (gasp! I know!) and got the red and green table topper cut out. I plan on using it as a leader-ender but I have a feeling I'll end up jumping the gun and just making it. The pattern is simple and the squares are large - it won't even take an afternoon to make the top.

I also got all the clues for Logey Bear cut out.

The first clue for Lucy's Love Notes came out Saturday but my printer decide to take a holiday and only print blank pages. I'll get the first clue for both quilts made after I buy a new printer.

I also got another row done on my blackwork project.

I am about 10 weeks behind on that project and need to give it some serious attention. I keep saying I need to spend just an hour a day on handwork but I never seem to find that hour.

Spreading Myself a Little Thin

 Quilting wise...believe me, I am not thin.

The Project Linus mystery quilt starts this Saturday. It goes for seven weeks. My plan is to do Logey Bear (2019) and Luci's Love Notes (2020) at the same time. I've got my fabric and I'm ready to go.

Except...

I decided to put borders on two quilts that I thought were finished:

I decided I want to make this red and green quilt a little more Christmasy. I have the border and binding cut out I just haven't attached anything.

I added a containment border to this quilt:

I also made the binding for it. Both need backs and tomorrow I'm going to a quilt shop that is going out of business to see if I can find something I like.

At last week's Quilts for Kids meeting I picked up four quilt projects - I already have at least four in process or designed in my head with fabric pulled.

I don't know why but I always seem to pick up the unwanted quilt projects. Both of these quilts are finished they just need to be quilted.

The red is a polyester double knit. The border fabric is tomatoes with faces.

The applique is on a white bed sheet. The seam are all 5/8 inch. I'm pretty sure they were made by the same person. I probably won't do anything fancy.

I also picked up this Quillow: 

I love this fabric. It was already made, it just needed the pillow pocket sewn on - Done! I love how the person quilted this; it is big stitched with white and dark blue in the waves.

Joanne, the project coordinator for Quilts for Kids here, always has a bunch of fabrics donated that can't be used for kids quilts. We can take whatever we want for our own use. I picked up these two fabrics and this partially pieced quilt.

I took apart the partial quilt and found a pretty white snowflake and plan to make a Christmas table cloth quilt using the original design.

All of this added to my 13 other UFOs and 14 other unquilted tops. 

I did have one finish last week. I got the small sports top quilted and the binding machine stitched on.

Back:

I did some tweaking to my quilt frame - moved the take-up rail closer to the backing rail - and had a much easier time quilting this little quilt.

Interesting Week

  

It has been an interesting and fun week. A long time friend, Donna from Boise Idaho, came to visit me for a week. We haven't seen each other for years. I don't think we stopped talking the whole week.

The interesting (and sad) part were all the fires around me. Donna found a quilt shop on her drive in not far from me that was going out of business and was having a great sale. We tried to go there the day after she arrived. After driving 3/4 of the way there we turned around because we could see dense smoke, lots of water tank trunks and the edge of the South Obenchain fire. I decided to take back roads back home to just see some of the pretty Oregon terrain. It was a good thing I did or we would have been caught up in a fire in Central Point.

The next day my brother called to say his mobile home was burned down in the Almeda Drive fire in south Medford, Phoenix and Talent. He is now staying at my mom's house.

I had hoped we could take an overnight trip to Sisters, but there was a fire along highway 242 and the road was closed. We did go fabric shopping in Roseburg. 

 

The air quality has been and still is very bad. This is not fog, it is smoke. The news said at one point visibility was less than 1/2 mile.

 

 

For a while we weren't sure if Donna was going to be able to drive home today as planned. Every road east had closures due to fires. She would have to either go 300 miles out of her way north to Portland, or almost 300 miles south into California. Luckily the temperatures and wind died down a couple of days ago most of the fires are partially contained and some roads have reopened. Donna did have to go home via Klamath Falls which wasn't too far out of her way.

The fun part: we went shopping, sewed, learned new things quilty wise, and talked more. It was wonderful reconnecting.

 

Donna and I started quilting around the same time - I think I was the bad influence and she was a willing victim. Donna brought me a couple of fun cat projects / fabric. I gave her the purple Pam Buda bundle I recently won - I'm just not a purple fan and she loves it.

 

 I was again a bad influence and got her interested in Civil War / 1800's reproduction fabrics while she was here. We both did some serious fabric shopping.

We also went to a lot of thrift/antique/junk shops around Grants Pass. I found the prefect piece of furniture for my entry way. Donna found a ladder to hang quilts (no picture).

We also got a lot of sewing done...well, Donna got some sewing done. I totally forgot to take a picture of one of the projects she brought with her but she also fell in love with a Maple Island BQ3 quilt I made years ago, bought fabric while she was here, and made her own in one day.

 

Next year it will be my turn to visit her. Can't wait!

Busy Week

 

I got a lot done last week. I have company coming to stay a week starting tomorrow so I've been doing a lot of cleaning - which seems to include rearranging and moving stuff around (again). I also managed to hang a few more pictures. I'm still thinking about the others.

I got two small quilts quilted. I changed my mind about how I was going to quilt both of them. Once I did that they both got done quickly and I'm really happy with how both of them turned out.

Temecula Quilt Company's Tiny Tree is finished:

 

Simple straight line echo quilting. You can really see the quilting on the back. I kept the tree really simple, just a couple of lines to hold it down.

I also quilted Kim Diehl's Plain Folk. Originally I was going to quilt Baptist Fan's but I really didn't want to spend a lot of time marking the little quilt. I thought about just quilting the fans freestyle but I've never done that before and wasn't feeling really confident about my ability to do them even after I "practiced" on paper for over an hour. So I just did some in-the-ditch and diagonal lines and I'm really pleased with how it turned out:

 

As you can see I still need to stitch down the binding on both.

I got another leaf made:

Kind of a wonky oak leaf. I Iike the first leaf better (and it was easier to make). I'd like to make the third leaf different but I'm not sure of what shape to make. I think a maple leaf would be really hard to make...what other leaf shapes are there?

I finished a book - actual reading on my Kindle, not an audio book, and started another. I've been doing a lot more reading lately. 

Okay if I tell you a secret will you promise not to tell? I even did some m-e-n-d-i-n-g. Shhhhh.