A Little More Done

I keep meaning to post my progress, but I have been forgetting. I have been busy with spring break; I didn’t go anywhere but the kids did, and I had dog duties. Rosie looked so terrible I took her for a bath and a haircut. 

She looks so mush better now. 

I should have taken Leroy too, but he’s an escape artist, and the groomer is close to two busy streets. 

I got a quilt finished for a customer. She was super pleased with it. 

I believe it is for a heart association auction, and she said she would be bidding on it herself. LOL. 

I made four pin cushions for the quilt show sampler store. I already sold one. I want to make about four more.

I also spent some time working on my UFO lists. One of my January tasks was to put a border on Red Rock, and a February task was to get it quilted. This is where I left it:

And, I got the borders put on, and it’s now ready to quilt. 

As soon as I get a break in customer quilts, I will try to get this one done. I put a wide outer border to increase the size, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s quite a bit wider than what I usually do. I think I just need to get used to it.

What I’ve Been Working On

Oh my, I have been busy. I'm still not very energetic, but it’s better than it was. I haven’t made a lot of progress on the bag I need to make, but I did get the two panels cut out and fused to the Bosal foam.

I still need to quilt them both, and get the construction done. I found some turquoise/aqua fabric I can use for the lining, and I have a zipper to match, so I have no excuse to not make some progress. I know how I want to do the handles, and I probably need to do that step next. 

I’ve gotten a couple of customer quilts done. I got this one trimmed yesterday. 

I like it a lot. I asked her if she would make one for me to enter in my church auction, and she said she would give me the pattern! LOL! I guess I will have to make my own. I’m not sure where I will find the time.

I sewed 13 more pillows for our church ministry. 

Of course, they still need to be stuffed. There is a never-ending demand for these pillows at the hospitals and oncology centers. We make them 12” x 16”.

I also worked on some blocks for the kit I started. 

They are taking a lot longer than I thought they would, but I only work on them in my spare time, so they are low priority for now. 

I’ve been working on some more vintage quilts, but I don’t have pictures yet. They should be finished soon—I hope! There have been a lot of challenges.

There are a few other things I would like to work on if I get time. I’m thinking of doing the 2025 BOM from A Quilting Life, and I have a couple of new kits I want to start. I will be at church today working on lap covers. One of the junior high groups is coming on the 26th to help us tie/tack the comforters. They enjoy it, and we appreciate the help. 

Sorrento

 Sorrento is a free pattern from Robert Kaufman. 

This one popped up in my Pinterest feed, and I liked it enough to download it and read through the directions. It is fat-quarter friendly. Find the pattern here.

A Fast Finish

Sometimes you just need to finish something. I was putting away some fabric and ran across some Halloween fat quarters. I generally don’t do Halloween, but I wanted to use them so I cut and sewed a quick table runner.

It’s pretty cute. I’ll bind it with the same Kona black once it’s quilted. 

I sewed a few more potato chip blocks, but I still need to cut up some more scraps so I have plenty of variety. I keep sewing and sewing on the potato chips, and someday, I will sit down and put them all together. In the meantime, it keeps me busy and doesn’t require too much thought. I actually spent most of yesterday sleeping. I came home early and took a two hour nap. Maybe I’ll have more energy once I catch up on some sleep.

We have our first Lenten meal at church tonight. (First for this year.) We have been reminded by Pastor to keep the meals light. We’re not very good at that. We decided to do salads tonight. I made a pasta salad last night and let it marinate in the refrigerator all night. 

I make this one quite often, and it’s always good. Looking at the picture, it probably needs a little more pasta, but I’m not making changes at this point. Someone is making a green salad, and someone is making a carrot salad, and another lady said she’s bringing a cheese ball (??), and several people are making desserts, so there will be plenty. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

That Time of Year

 

Why can’t we just pick a time and stick with it all year? I don’t know why it matters to me since I have retired from my “regular” job and can sleep an extra hour if I want to. I don’t mind having the extra hour of daylight in the evening since it is Lent, and there are extra evening church activities for the next six weeks. 

I have been busy with some vintage quilts I am quilting. This one is my favorite. 

Sometimes the hand-pieced ones give me problems because they are wonky and won’t lay flat, but this one is perfectly flat. I’m guessing the fabrics are 1950-ish. 

Although, some look to me like they could be 1940’s.

I am definitely not an expert on fabric dating. LOL. 

I also decided I wanted to make a tote for someone, and pulled out this pattern.

I managed to get the patchwork pieced and today I will get out my twister template and get everything cut out.

I plan to use the black with white dots for the main part of the bag. I’m still thinking about how the handles will look. I can follow the pattern, or do handles with a different color binding. Not sure.

Productivity?

This pretty well describes how I feel. I am working and working on staying productive, but I’m just so unmotivated. It’s all a struggle. I have been going to the gym three days a week, hoping that will increase my energy level. It’s only been a week, so time will tell. 

I did manage to get a couple of quilts finished this week.

I couldn’t get the color to photograph correctly on this one. It’s all Kaffe fabrics. I think it shows up a little better in this closeup.

I also finished this jellyroll race quilt and put the binding on it.

The back is the same as the border. In fact, it didn’t have a border, and I used some of the backing fabric to add one. 

I also got three of the placemats quilted.

It’s not much, but I was happy to get something done. 

My grandson’s birthday was Tuesday, and here he is with the quilt I gave him.

The fabric has footballs, soccer balls, and baseballs. I thought he had probably outgrown the last one I made him (Mario Brothers). 

I need to clean house this weekend and do laundry. I ran out of laundry detergent, and I keep forgetting to buy more. Now that I wrote it down here, I will probably remember to get some. 

A Little More

I worked a little on the orphan blocks I want to turn into placemats. Here are four of them. 

I added borders to make them 12” x 18”. 

The forth one took a little more work because I kept making mistakes. 

I still need to quilt them. That’s where the decisions come in. I can put them on the longarm with one large piece of fabric for the back, or I can do straight line quilting on the sewing machine. Either way, I will have to do binding. I can also just layer each placement right sides together with the backing and batting, and sew the edges, leaving a small space to turn the placemat right side out, then add some quilting. The advantage to that method is that it doesn’t require binding, so that’s tempting. I need to make a decision and not let myself get stalled out. This will be an ongoing project, and I will need to make a lot more.

I worked a little more on the kit I found last week. This one:

It’s going slowly, but I have the first row done. 

I have a few more blocks made besides these. Maybe four or five. There are only 16 blocks in the whole quilt, so it won’t be too big. I just want to get it finished.

I have a quilt to get quilted today, but first I need to order a new quilt design for it. I have an idea what I want to do, and don’t have anything in my computer files that match what I want. Tomorrow, I’m taking my stepdad to Lake Jackson for a doctor appointment, so I need to get as much done today as I can.