Lots of Placemats

Happy Sunday! It’s been a full week. We had a Community Service workshop Thursday and Friday at quilt guild. Our workshop participation hasn’t been great, but 10 people stayed to sew placemats, and a couple of people took stuff home to work on. I didn’t take pictures at the workshop, but I do have pictures of what we accomplished. 

We managed to complete 45 placemats which will be donated to Meals on Wheels. Here’s a picture of them all together:

This was two days of sewing. Not everyone could come Friday, but five of us were able to. I posted this tutorial for the group, in case they wanted to an easy self-binding type of placemat. I haven’t tried it yet, but I picked up some inexpensive fat quarters at Walmart the last time I was in there, so I will experiment and see what I can do with the tutorial.

I also had prequilted some yardage as did another lady who has a longarm.

I had pre-made some binding, but it went fast, so I spent most of Friday morning making more. Some people wanted to bind instead of sewing, and it worked out well having everything prepared and ready to go. 

I have a few more quilted and not bound that I brought home with me. I hope to get them finished this weekend, but I don’t know if I will have time. I’ll get them done eventually and post pictures when I finish. 

Summer Challenge

Every year on Memorial Day, one of our local quilt shops sponsors a Summer Challenge. It’s hosted by A Little Fabric Store in Yorktown, Texas. 

This year she’s using one of the potato chip patterns from the class I taught last fall. The challenge runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and as long as you complete a quilt top with a minimum of 20 blocks and send her a picture of the completed top, you are entered into a drawing for a $250 gift card. It costs $10 to enter. 

I paid my $10 online this morning and already made two blocks. 

I will make more than 20 blocks; probably 30 or 36 so mine will be a little bigger. I really don’t have a lot of need for small quilts, but at least a twin size will work well for the groups I donate to.

You don’t have to be local to enter, and this quilt pattern is a lot of fun to make. Here’s a link to the sign-up form if you are interested. 

Weekend Update

 Happy Memorial Day friends! 

I don’t have any big plans for today; maybe some yard work, and if I’m lucky, a nap. 

I got another quilt finished Saturday. It’s for a high school graduation. 

The graduate is a baseball Player who is going to college on a baseball scholarship. Here’s a closeup of the fabrics:

And, the back is balls and bats.

I have to say, I finally went to the doctor on Friday. I am so tired of not feeling well, and just didn’t want to go another week with no energy and not feeling my best. It was Friday evening when I decided to go, and my doctor was already to closed so I went to the walk in clinic. There was a nice NP working there who gave me a steroid shot and a prescription for nasal spray and antibiotics. She didn’t say for sure but said it’s probably a sinus infection. After two months with an ear infection and now two weeks of a sinus infection, I’m hoping I can finally get back to normal. 

Good news! I had some luck locating this fabric I was looking for. 

I kept looking on Etsy using different search criteria and located a half yard of something that looked similar but I couldn’t tell for sure. I ordered it, and it turned out to be the same. Luckily, it said in the description who the manufacturer was and the name of the fabric line. I was able to locate another 2.5 yards on eBay, and I got it a few days ago. 

I started a new quilt last night. I am using a fat quarter pack I had that looks patriotic. I think it’s a good choice for some Memorial Day sewing.

I’m using the Villa Rosa Honey Bouquet pattern. 

I’ve made it before, and it goes pretty fast, but it’s only 54” x 60” so I’ll have to add a border. 

Catching Up

I’m working hard to get caught up on all my quilting. So far, it’s going pretty well, although I volunteered at church on Tuesday so no quilting got done that day. I got this table runner quilted and bound on Monday. 

Then yesterday I got this one finished. 

I have one more to finish for Joycelyn; I got the quilting done, but I still need to put the binding on. I’m going to try and get it done this morning. I have Bunco in the afternoon, and as usual, I pick Roger up at 3:25. After I picked him up yesterday, I took him for his haircut. 

He was in a grumpy mood, but he tolerated my photography. The final look:

I can tell he’s tired. Between school and soccer and video games, I don’t think he gets enough rest, but I try to keep my comments to myself. I don’t always succeed. 

Friday!

Oh gosh, another week is coming to an end. How do they pass so fast? I am still not very energetic, but I did get a quilt top of mine quilted and bound. 

It may look familiar; it’s something I made when I was stuck at home during the January freeze. It was a way to use up some of my large collection of 5” squares!

This is the top. 

It’s always amazing to me how much better they look once they are quilted. This quilt is big enough to meet the size requirement for the foster kids graduation program. It’s 63” x 72”, and the minimum size is 50” x 70”, so I have it labeled and added to my stack of donation quilts. 

Last night I went downtown to DeLeon Plaza for a street dance. There were vendors and food trucks starting at 5:00. 

I met five or six of my friends there. The Spasmatics started playing at 7:00.

I like their music—they play 80’s music, which is my era. There was a pretty good crowd there. 

They played until 10:00, but I didn’t stay that long. I just didn’t feel up to it. I’m glad I went, though. 

By the way, yesterday’s post was super late, so you can go back and read it if you happened to miss it! I’m blaming it on the sinus medicine!

Under the Weather

I believe I have caught a cold. I woke up yesterday with a very sore throat and as the day progressed, I started getting congested. In all seriousness, it could be allergies, but either way, I have no energy right now. I made myself get up and get some things done, but I came home around 4:00 and took some mucinex and went to bed. I got up long enough to eat and feed the dogs and went back to bed.

I did manage to put binding on two quilts. They are both Texas A&M fabrics with Shannon cuddle on the backs. 

This one is a printed panel, even though it looks pieced. She did add the two borders. 

I cut the binding for these on the bias. That is my preferred way to make binding, but lately I have gotten into the habit of cutting it on the straight grain. It is easier to do that way and easier to calculate how much is needed, but the binding never looks as well as it does when it is on the bias. I need to get back to doing it this way!

Scrappy Saturday

I was able to get some Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks done. I finally moved on to orange, and I’m enjoying working on these bright, colorful blocks.

I got two of these finished. 

And, two of these sixteen patch stars.

In my head, I call them the “biggie stars”. The blocks are 16”, so they look really big to me. I should be able to make a good sized quilt with them. Oh, I have a problem; I am going to run out of the background fabric soon. I have looked for more, including online, and can’t seem to find any. There is nothing written on the selvedge so that is no help. This is a closeup:

If anyone has any, I would be happy to purchase it! 

I only got one of these done:

It’s a little uneven on the edges. Not sure how I managed to do that! It’s such a pretty fabric, and I only had a partial strip, but it was just enough to do a block. I will work on more of these smaller blocks next week. I need more of them than anything else. 

I walked to the side of the house yesterday to see what still needs to be done on that flowerbed. My gardenia is blooming like crazy this year!

It always blooms this time of year, but not as many flowers at one time. Look at all these buds!

I can’t remember if I fertilized it or not, but I must have. I don’t go on that side of my house too often.

What I’ve Been Working On

I sat down and got this post written at the last minute. I’ve been working on a few things; most of them aren’t quilt related. I’m trying to get the yard in shape, well mostly the flower beds. We got the good rain last week, and the weeds really took off! 

I got some quilts finished and spent some extra time making binding. 

I did two Texas A&M quilts for a customer, and the maroon binding will go on those. The navy is for one or two donation quilts. I decided I would make some solid colors of binding and keep it on hand for the donation quilts I make. Fabric is getting so expensive, and as much as I like nice fabric, I think I can use the cheaper stuff for the binding, and it will be okay. Walmart has the precut packages of solids for around $6 for a two-yard cut. I bought the navy, also some red, green, black, orange, and turquoise. I prefer the binding cut on the bias—it seems to lay better on the quilt—and I can get enough for several quilts from a two-yard package. Anyway, that is just how my brain works, and it will be nice to have some made up and ready to go. 

When I got tired of dealing with binding, I worked on some potholders. I had seen a tutorial on YouTube for a No-bind Potholder, and I wanted to try it. The first one I made was a little poofy in the middle. 

It’s still cute though. On the second one, I was a little more careful with the center piece, and I think it was a better. 

Like anything, it will get better as I make more. It’s a few layers of fabric plus Insulbrite plus a layer of cotton batting, so plenty thick. I may try some without the Insulbrite and maybe two pieces of batting and see how that works out. 

Last night I worked on some orange RSC blocks. More on that tomorrow.

Scrappy Saturday

Oh my gosh, I have let myself get so far behind! This is the point where I typically get overwhelmed and give up after starting the year with a lot of motivation! My last RSC post was March, and I had done a few red blocks. I found some red hst’s that I hadn’t finished, so I did that first. 

I used the rest of the red squares to make a few of the nine patch blocks. 

Since I didn’t do a collage of the reds in March, I did one last night. Here it is:

I often pick my grandson from school, and they had early dismissal yesterday. The weather was getting bad with rain and hail was forecast, and I wanted to get home and get my car in the garage before the hail started. That gave me an opportunity to work on my pink blocks.

I already had everything cut out and a couple of them were completed, so it went pretty fast. Here are all of the pinks together. 

I think I am ready to move on to the orange scraps, and I will work on that this week—in my spare time! 

Free Pattern Friday

I don’t know if anyone remembers, but I posted a picture of this quilt about a month ago.

The lady that made it said it was a free pattern she’d found “somewhere” and she would look for it when she got home and let me know where to find it. It’s called HoneyBell, and here is a link to the pattern. 

The pattern sample is done in four fabrics plus a white sashing, and the big blocks are cut 9-1/2” square. 

Of course I’m always trying to find different patterns to use my large collection of precuts, so I dug through the boxes and came up with this layer cake. 

The quilt finishes at 61” x 61”, and I wanted mine to be longer. Adding an extra row will make it about 76” long so I decided to do that. That means i need 20 blocks instead of 16. I had to cut a few of the smaller squares from my stash, but I found some blenders that would work.

I think I cut about twelve extra 4-1/2” squares. I’m using black for the sashing. Here are the ones I’ve gotten done so far. 

No sashing between the blocks yet, but you get the idea. I think I’m going to like it! Let me know what you think if you decide to try it.