Blue Sampler

   I sewed sashing onto the blue sampler blocks today.  I have been looking through my stash for a suitable blue border with no luck.  A friend offer me the chance to look in her stash, but while I was out running errands I decided to buy fabric for the border.

I also bought a blue piece for the outer border of  the string heart quilt so tomorrow will be border sewing day.

String Border On

  The string border for the string heart quilt is on and I like it.

I plan to add a 2" plain blue outer border which I hope will calm this quilt down a little.  I have searched my stash and I don't have a large enough piece of anything that will do so I will have to shop.  That makes 2 quilts for which I need to find a blue border fabric.

String Border

Today was sew day for my church sew group.  I worked on a string border for my string heart quilt.  I have all the corners pieced and 2 border pieces.  I am piecing onto lightweight non-fusible interfacing.  After piecing, I will trim the border panels.  Here you can see some of the progress.  It is bright.

Bonney finished a quilt for the VA hospice unit.

Next UFO

    This evening I searched my stash for suitable sashing and border fabrics for the blue UFO blocks.  

I like this blue floral on white which could be sashing.

I also sort of like this blue texture fabric and it would do for the border.

However, I am not keen on the two together.  I’m still looking. 

Finishing Up Projects

    One more UFO finished.     

     I participated in Hancock Fabrics BOM in 2004 and the finished quilt is on my bed. Since I made the quilt I planned to make pillow shams to match.  I made 2 more blocks but got no further.  I had all the leftover fabric and pieces in a box.  I finally pulled it out.  Today I Free-MotionQuilted the tops and added the back so I now have 2 finished shams.

Here is a photo of one top with quilting.

The FMQ shows up much better on the muslin backing that is on the inside of the sham.

Each block on the quilt has a different quilting design so I continued that on the shams.

Comfort Quilt Finished

    Yesterday I free-motion quilted an adult comfort quilt for GCQ and today I finished the binding.

I pieced the top a couple of months ago.  It is made from scrappy 3 1/2" squares and 2 1/2" strips.   GCQ usually makes adult quilts from 5 1/2" squares.  I wanted to do something different, and one day we cut a few strips and squares from color groups of fabric scraps.  This design goes together in 12" finished squares for simple construction. 

After the Holiday

    It was wonderful to have family here for Thanksgiving, but it was too short a visit.  Here is one photo from the holiday. 

      Before company arrived, I used scraps to make a tablet cover which will be part of a present for my mom.  I had seen some directions on the web but did not follow them strictly.   

        Today was almost back to normal.  No shopping madness for me.  The house was quiet.  In the afternoon I pulled out a BOM kit from 2004.  The first BOM that I participated in was in 2005 with the quilt group at the Harbison Hancock Fabric store.  I bought the previous year’s kit on sale but did not make it.   Now all the pieces for the 12 blocks are cut and ready to sew.  I don’t have plans for them, but they are closer to being in a quilt.

Wednesday Progress

    I feel really good about the progress recently to finish up projects and find homes for orphan blocks.  Today I took 3 small quilts to share with my church sewing group.  I also took several orphan block projects.  At church we found 2 green blocks to add for a total of  21and Beverley kindly took home the blue, green, yellow and brown blocks to put together that quilt top. 
I laid out the blue and white blocks at church.  With input from the group, I divided them so Joan took part to make a small quilt and I kept the rest for another small quilt. Here you can see some of them.

      I could not talk anyone into taking the children's blocks so I will work on them sometime.  They also gave me suggestions for the border of my string heart quilt so hopefully soon I will work on that, but probably it will be after Thanksgiving. 

Orphan Blocks and Scraps

     I struggled today with what project to work on.  I have MANY WIPs.  Orphan blocks called me.  When I organizing recently, I pulled out a few 12” orphan blocks from MTC classes and border pieces left over from a quilt finished a couple of years ago.  Brown, blue, green and yellow were the predominate colors so I pulled left over strips and squares that blended.  I placed the border pieces on the diagonal and added triangles to 2 corners to create several blocks.

     I enjoy free piecing so that is what I did.  I now have 19 blocks.  I think I know where one more green block is.   With a simple border, this will make a nice size lap quilt to finish about 59” by 68”. 

I feel good about what I accomplished and I cleared out some scraps. 

Here are some of the blocks.

More Fabric

  This weekend is the Veteran's Day Sale at my local fabric stores.  I made a New Years Resolution to only buy fabric I needed for a specific project.  I have been doing REALLY well until Thursday.  Thursday was the first day of the sale and I visited JoAnn Fabrics.  They had their clearance fabric 50% off plus I get an extra 10% off with my VIP card.  I came home with 48 yards of good quilting cotton fabric.  Most will go for my church group.  Several pieces are 6 or 7 yards so they will be good for a quilt back.  I have spent many hours the past few days washing and ironing.  I still have about 14 yards to iron.

    Yesterday and today we had beautiful weather so I had to take some time to work in my yard.  In the photo you can see where I stopped mowing so that I could rake pine straw instead of letting the mower bag it with the grass.

     There are many quilt groups collecting for Sandy relief.  Here is a good one. I hope you can help in some way.  I plan to.

Sewing Non Quilts

      I have been busy sewing the past several days but not quilts.  I hate shopping but really need some new clothes.  I also thought my mother could use a new fall dress.  I went through my patterns and drawers of fabric and came up with a skirt pattern I wanted to use and fabric for a dress for Mother.  I had to buy fabric for my skirt.  Mother's dress is finished.  My skirt has the hem pinned up but not sewn.

     Sometime ago I saw adorable sock monkeys on Bumble Bee Bliss blog made out of unusual socks (not the usual sock monkey sock).  I bookmarked her directions.  She has a great tutorial at

http://bumblebeebliss.com/2011/12/27/sock-monkey-tutorial/

I had bought some cute pink and white knee high socks so tonight instead of hemming my skirt, I made my first sock monkey.  Here it is in progress.

She does not yet have eyes but I love her.  I will be on the look out for more socks.