A start and a finish

I finished sewing together the Community Quilt top and sent it off to the long arm quilter.  I'm going to the fundraising dinner and silent auction for Project Horizon where it will be offered up, and I plan to bid on it for myself - well, for a family member.  Part of me hopes it sells for more than I can afford, but part of me hopes it stays within my price range.

It measures 64.5" x 80.5"

Meanwhile, I made the mistake of visiting some blogs...I love blogs for the inspiration, but I'm too darned ADD to stick with just one project from start to finish without getting distracted by other possibilities.  Have you seen the Charming Plus Quilt Along?  Yeah, I started that, too.  I was cutting up scraps that had been donated and thought "why not cut them into the sizes needed for the quilt along?"

I haven't sewn the blocks together yet...

My goal for the end of this week, though, is to get caught up on the Westering Women BOM.  8 blocks done, two blocks to do to get caught up.

Starburst

I have two design walls, but all my photos lately have been taken on the floor!  Time to clear up room on the design wall!  Rather than pull things off and put them with my other UFOs,

My smaller design wall has had these left over comfort quilt blocks on it since June!

I took the time to FINISH something!  Woo hoo!

I think I should have switched the yellow and green blocks in the lower right corner.  Is it worth unstitching?

What on earth took me so long?  I love this quilt top!  At 50" square, it seems a good size for a new baby.  Hmmm...who do I know who is pregnant?

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

Bored silly with my shadow quilt

I know that I really wanted to make a shadow quilt, but man! Working with just 3 fabrics is WAY out of my scrappy comfort zone.  Despite the fact that this quilt is small - just 33.75" x 48.5" - it took me much longer to finish it than it should because it just bored me.  Don't get me wrong, I like it, I just didn't like making it.

I put the seed packet panels in alphabetical order, or so I thought.  One is out of order, and I took it out and put it in wrong AGAIN!  Oh well, that's where it is meant to stay, I guess.

I imagine I'm not going to much enjoy quilting it either, so this will get done on the machine rather than by hand so I can get it done and move on to something else.

To keep me going while I finished this quilt off today, I started a new scrappy project.  When I peruse quilt images online during my lunch break at work, I keep finding myself drawn to this quilt:

Image credit

I've never made a strippy quilt before, so I thought, why not?  I pulled out 5" squares and made 4-patches, then cut some white 5" squares in half diagonally to make the setting squares.

You know the method of making 4-patches by sewing down two opposite sides of 2 RST squares, cutting in the middle, rotating RST, and sewing down two opposite sides again?  LOVE IT!  Especially the fact that it gives you TWO 4-patches!

This is much more my speed!  I hope to make significant progress on this quilt top this weekend.

Plotting and scheming

I haven't been sewing much, because I've been sucked into the wonderful world of online quilt stalking.  Oh, the beauties I have found!

I want to make one of these like Sew Katie Did.

Photo credit: https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/sew-katie-did-1230333/double-trouble-take-two-4144533705

I saw a partial photo in a magazine of a quilt called Scrap Tease, so I went online to see a whole quilt, and fell in love with this version.  I would gladly tackle partial seams to make this!

Photo credit: https://kaholly.blogspot.com/2015/11/alyof-completed.html

Forget sleep - I want to go down to the sewing room to start this fun quilt RIGHT NOW!

Photo credit: http://selvageblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/modern-scrap-quilt-2-camelot_7.html

Did I miss this Dear Daughter quilt-a-long because I only have sons?  No matter - I'm tempted to buy the pattern and make it anyway!

Photo credit: http://www.rebeccamaedesigns.com/homesweethome/chapter-9-dear-daughter-quilt/

Ack!  Gotta get off the computer and get into the sewing room!

Chimney Rock Block

I was determined to catch up on my Westering Women BOM blocks before the new block was released today, and I did it!  I did the re-drafted (read: no Y seams!) version of the block, and while it isn't perfect, I'm quite pleased with it.

But, considering my aversion to Y seams, can you imagine my dread when I saw September's block, which was released today?

image credit: http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/09/westering-women-9sage-bud-for-fort.html

I'm redrafting it, no question!

Shadow Play

A couple of weeks ago, I followed along with the Shadow Block Mini Quilt Along, and I've been itching to give a shadow quilt a try.  I have a number of panel sets that I thought would make good focus blocks for a shadow quilt, so I pulled one out

and started cutting and sewing.

I didn't have much time to sew today, but I got enough blocks sewn together to get a sense of how it will look.  I'm accustomed to using white or cream backgrounds, so this golden houndstooth (?) was a stretch for me, but so far, I'm liking it.

I think I have 19 of these panels, and the blocks I am making finish at 5" x 6.5" so it won't be a very big quilt,  just a wallhanging.  Hopefully I can finish piecing it tomorrow.  This seems like a good candidate for me to try free motion quilting.  If this works out, this might be a good gift for my mother, who is quite the gardener.  We'll see.

I'm linking up with Monday Making (even though this is Sunday) since I'm sure it's what I'll be working on tomorrow, too.

I DID IT!!! (and I'll be happy to never do it again)

I've enjoyed participating in Barbara Brackman's Westering Women BOM.  Well mostly, anyway.  There have been two months so far where the block included set-in seams, so I've skipped those months.  I'm a wimp, I know.

But in light of my recent victory over my fear of machine quilting, I decided to suck it up yet again and give those Y seams a try.  First stop, March's block, Sweet Gum Leaf.  Lord have mercy, that block nearly killed me!  I labored over it all day long! (well, in between helping customers and restocking yarns and paying bills and all the rest that goes on during the course of a day in my shop)  But still, just one block to show for my day!

It isn't perfect, but it is done.  I can safely say I'll never make an entire quilt out of that block.  At least not without redrafting it to include all HSTs instead of those blasted parallelograms!  And even though I typically do needle turn appliqué, I sewed that stem on by machine just to be done with it!  Tomorrow, I'll give the other block I skipped a try, August's Chimney Rock.  You can bet the farm that I'll be doing the version WITHOUT set-in seams!

In other news, I shipped out 4 of the projects that I adopted out for the Quilty Adoption Event last weekend.  Congratulations to:

• "Miaismine" for winning the Tropical Fish project
• Christina P for winning the Snails Trails project
• Kelly O for winning the Christmas Stars project
• Jackie for winning the Flannel 9 Patches project

I've emailed Anonymous at valekort at yahoo dot com as the winner of the Scrappy Spools project, but haven't heard back.  If I don't hear back by the beginning of next week, I'll choose a new winner.  Thank you to all of you who volunteered to take some of these projects off my hands.

Since I've divested myself of 10 projects in the last 6 months, I couldn't help but throw my name in the hat to adopt someone else's orphans.  I scored these pieced setting triangles.

Photo credit: http://quiltyfolk.blogspot.com/2016/09/quilty-orphans-up-for-grabs.html

Woo hoo!  I love the idea of pieced setting triangles, but doubt I'd ever take the time to make them.  Now I don't have to!  I do have to come up with a project to set them with, though, and the prospect of that just excites me!

Have a great weekend, everyone!  Tomorrow is my 45th birthday, so I'm having a 45% off sale at my shop, you know, to ensure that I won't be sitting there sad and lonely at work on my special day.  Last year it was a blast, people there all day long.  Hopefully tomorrow will be the same.