Placemats!

We had a charity sew day at our quilt guild meeting yesterday. We had our business meeting in the morning and stayed after lunch to sew. Actually we didn’t have a very good turnout yesterday, and only eight or nine of us stayed to sew. One of our community charity projects is sewing placemats for Meals on Wheels. I found some instructions from Shabby Fabrics for self-binding placemats. Nice because they don’t have to be quilted or bound. Here’s the prototype I made. 

I did add fusible interfacing to mine, and some of the ladies used fusible fleece which seemed to work well. I took a few pictures—not many since there weren’t many of us there.

We were able to complete 12 at the meeting

and someone brought three more that they had made at home. 

Janice sent me a picture of a placemat pattern she bought, and it’s really cute.

I want to get one if I can find it. 

Catching Up

I spent the weekend playing catch up….both with my projects, and with some customer obligations. I finished three table runners: Two Christmas ones

and one for Halloween. 

These will either go in the quilt show Sampler Store or will be donated to Luther Fest. Of course, I want to keep the Christmas ones, but I’m trying to resist! I already have table runners, so I don’t need more. That’s what I keep telling myself. 

I got a couple of customer quilts finished. One for Martha

and one for Diana

I’m happy I got so much done on the weekend, because yesterday was not too impressive. I sort of fiddled and putzed all day. I watched a lot of YouTube videos trying to get some inspiration, and ended up not accomplishing very much.

Speaking of yesterday, how often do you see a house going down the street?

It was really interesting to watch. There were some AEP bucket trucks both in front and in back.

They were picking up the power lines so the house could pass under them. It was quite an operation. 

Progress

I’m happy to say I’m over whatever illness I had and am feeling much better. I’m still a little run down and tired, but it’s getting better. I had brought some kits home from church to work on, and I’m glad I had something simple to work on while I was sick. I didn’t have a lot of brain power, but I was getting bored with doing nothing. I got three pieced. 

They are 60” x 80” will be layered with batting and tied with crochet thread. These are for Lutheran World Relief. 

After I started feeling better, I did a few things for the quilt show sampler store. 

I thought these were cute. Two potholders and a tea towel.i want to do another set for the church fall festival. I have some cute chicken fabric that I can use to make a few more sets. 

I got a couple of customer quilts done Thursday and Friday. 

The notches quilt is the one Donna pieced on our cruise. Now it’s quilted, and she just needs to bind it. 

I got another one quilted and bound, but she picked it up before I could get a picture. It’s the same panel that I did for her sister last year. 

What A Week

It seems like everything has been a challenge this week! It started Monday evening when I hit something in the street when I was driving home. I think it was a piece of concrete. There was someone in the lane beside me and someone in the oncoming lane, so I had no choice but to hit it. One of my front tires went flat immediately. It had a big gash in it. I should have taken a picture of it, but I forgot.My tires are “run flats”, so there is not a spare….you drive on the flat until you can get it repaired. I was at Discount Tire when they opened Tuesday morning, but it still took all day. It’s okay; it’s fixed now. In fact, I had all four replaced. The tread was low on the back ones, and I decided better safe than sorry. 

I got Betty’s quilt finished Thursday. It’s huge! 

I’m glad to have it done and back to her. She texted me yesterday and said she had finished the binding. She also commented on how heavy it is. Yes, it is! I had noticed that. It is for her nephew, and he will love it if he likes those weighted blankets. 

I got the borders finished on this one

and, it’s on the frame now. I would have liked to have been finished with it, but I caught a cold or the flu or something, and I haven’t done much for the last few days. I fact, I stayed in bed most of yesterday. That’s not like me, but I was just too tired and weak to get up. I did get up long enough to feed the dogs and let them out, but immediately went back to bed. I’m hoping I can kick this fast; I have a lot of things on my calendar for this coming week!

Not Quite Finished

I’m making a quilt for a church raffle—not my church, but one in another town. I had a small start that I needed to add borders to,

and I have taken way too much time working on borders. I got bogged down on how to make this one fit, and on how to turn the corners, but I finally got it done. 

I knew I wanted a little more color, so I added a narrow border of red and then started working on eight inch pinwheels to finish it. I got confused and thought each side needed eight pinwheels instead of ten pinwheels so I didn’t have enough blocks when I started putting it together. 

Needless to say, I spent part of the weekend cutting and sewing pinwheel blocks. I think I got them all done…

I’ll find out for sure today when I put the last border on.

I have quite a few customer quilts to photograph, but I need to get them trimmed, and I have put that off. 😕   I also want to get a few small projects done for the quilt show sampler store, but that hasn’t happened either. This needs to be my week to stop procrastinating and get things done. My taxes are due at the CPA on the 15th, and guess what? I have put that off too. I said I was going to get the taxes done early this year, but I kept saying “I’ll do it next week.” The deadline is here, and it has to be done. Ugh! Who wants to work on taxes when they could be sewing?!

Poppy Blocks for Kerrville

Good morning friends. I’ve been busy sewing poppy blocks. 

One of our local quilt shops is doing “Hugs from Texas”. Last year she collected quilts for North Carolina after hurricane Helene. I donated three finished quilts, and I’m sure others donated many more than that. The quilt shop owner (Connie) rented a u-haul truck and drove the quilts to North Carolina.

This year, we had the flooding in Kerrville, Texas. It happened just last month, and it was very emotional for me because of the deaths at Camp Mystic. My granddaughter went there and was planning to apply this year to be a counselor but missed the deadline. Anyway, Connie has assembled a team of volunteers to make quilts for the Kerrville residents who have lost everything in the floods. She is making videos of the blocks and quilts that are being sent to her. Here is the latest one.

The poppy blocks are 12”, and not difficult at all. If you want to make some, message me, and I will send you the instructions. You can send finished blocks (or quilts or quilt tops) to me, and I will deliver them to Connie.

Collage Quilting

A few weeks ago, some quilt guild members taught a collage quilt class to the area 4H kids. There were about 15 of them there, and it was a three day class. I think nine of them finished their collages, and a few of us instructors took them home to quilt. I took three of them, and I got them quilted yesterday. 😀

Aren’t these great?!

Here’s more detail of each one. A cow:

A flamingo: (There were some contrast issues with this one, but she was only nine.)

And a chicken.

I got them trimmed, and I’ll pass them off to another guild member who will bind them. These will be in our September quilt show. I hope it will inspire the kids to pursue quilting as a craft. 

I’ve been working on borders for the quilt I’m making for the Refugio church. I came home early to make some more pinwheels, but I noticed the house looked pretty bad, so I started cleaning instead. Today, I will finish the cleaning and then make pinwheels.