A finish to brighten my day

This week, yet another member of the family was admitted to the ICU for COVID19 treatment.  This makes three.  We are hoping that yesterday's plasma transfusion does the trick and she recovers quickly.  I've been finding it hard to breathe lately, but I know it is just anxiety.  Just, I've had enough, you know?

So I turned to that which gets me through all the moments in my life when I need to calm my thoughts - quilting.  My color words quilt has been languishing for months now, basted and ready for quilting.  In fact, the recipient is already a month old now!  So this weekend, I cleaned my machine and put in a new needle, and quilted it.  I'm a hand quilter, new to machine quilting, so simple wavy and straight stitches for me.  I like how it turned out.

Then, after sewing the binding onto the front, I headed outside to sew the back down in the sunshine.

I even remembered to make a label and attach it when I attached the binding.

It will go out in Tuesday's mail - I hope the mama (and baby) likes it.

I'm linking up with Oh, Scrap and Monday Making.

The Home Stretch!!

The Community Quilt came back from the quilters and Oh!  What a beauty!  It always amazes me how the quilting can really make a quilt sing!  Since I am a hand quilter and don't have experience "sending out a quilt", I didn't realize it would come back all trimmed and ready for binding.  BONUS!  So yesterday morning, I made a scrappy bias binding, thinking that a scrappy binding would play nicely with the scrappy top.  I'm getting better and better at making continuous bias binding - practice makes perfect!

To make the binding, I picked a couple of fabrics that I had less than a fat quarter of, but at least a square of 13", and used them all up.  Man, that feels good!  Although I'm going to miss this fun fabric!

I picked up the quilt in early afternoon, and used the time before my kids were done with school to sew the binding to the front by machine.

You can see some of the quilting here.  I think she called the design she used "Blooming Feathers."

Then I spent a lovely evening working on sewing the binding down to the back by hand.  In some ways, this is my favorite part of making a quilt!  So easy and relaxing and SO CLOSE TO THE END!

Binding Clips, how I love you!!  Those metal snap shut barrettes served me well for years, but these binding clips are just THE BEST!

But, of course, I can't just work on one thing at a time, so my leader and ender for the day was Block 10 of the Westering Women BOM, Rocky Mountain Chain.

I didn't cut off the points on the right in real life, just in my photos.

My fabric placement is a bit different than suggested, but I really like how this one turned out!  And HURRAY!  No Y seams!  Thank you, Barbara!!

Oh, and one last little bit.  This is a bit of bragging, but so much has been going "wrong" in my life these days, I want to focus on what is going "right" even if to do nothing more than cheer myself up.  When I picked up the quilt from the long arm quilter, I met her at our Monday quilt group.  When I came back from putting the quilt in the car (after showing it off to everyone there, of course), she was raving about my piecing, how row after row was exactly the same size and how she never sees that.  Again, having never sent quilts out for quilting, I didn't even realize this is important.  She said that if she graded construction on a scale of 1-100, she'd give mine a 95.  A for the day!!  Whew!  Putting blocks together made from over 60 people with different levels of experience was a bit challenging, but it worked out.  I guess taking the time to square up my blocks at every step is worth the trouble after all (although when I am doing it, I am grumbling the whole time, wanting to rush ahead with more piecing).

Have a great day, everyone.  And no matter what happens in our Presidential Election here in the US today, remember that we here are all united in our love of quilting.

I'm linking up with Monday Making and Oh, Scrap!