Monday Meanderings 10 - 16 - 2023M

Last week was really a surprise to me.  Usually after 5 days of retreating I'm not all that interested in piecing or quilting. I'm ready to take it easy, read a book or three, and hang out with friends. Um, that did not happen. Sunday I was finishing a quilt and putting away my supplies from retreat.  Then my normal Monday: work out early in the am, breakfast, shower, go to the neighborhood stitching group and attend choral rehearsal.  Tuesday looked like it would be a great day to relax and read and maybe get a little quilting done.  Except. I really wanted to be quilting, so I did. And we got notice that someone at rehearsal had just tested positive for Covid. UGH. Hubby sat next to him so he maintained some separation: eating across the room from each other, wearing masks if we went out, sleeping in separate rooms. And, testing for Covid. I was still hoping that no one brought Covid to retreat. Luckily we've both tested negative every time we tested. 

So this week I spent a lot of time in my studio working on lots of different projects but not all the items on my list were completed.  Let's take a look.

10/9/23

✅Sew the setting triangles on Ombre Log Cabin — Setting triangles on; ready to sew rows together but it’s being retired for a while. Sorry, no picture. 

Plan the Christmas present quilt and start sewing it together — oops no progress on this one. 

✅Quilt a couple of small quilts — 2 small ones done and a customer quilt. See below for a pic. 

✅Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments — all are prepped for stitching. 2 have been started. 

This is my smaller version of Pat Sloan's Traffic Jam.  Quilting is done, waiting on binding. It's about 36" square. Quilt design is Pipe Line and came with my long arm. You can just see the fun marbleized backing fabric I used at the top of the picture.  I haven't decided on binding but it's on my list for this week. 

Quilter Carol brought me this very cool Steam Punk Halloween top to be quilted.  She had Steam Punk fabrics and made her own design.  Great job Carol! 

Sometimes it's really fun to find the right quilting design and see how it progresses on a quilt.  This was one of those times.  She chose Spider Web from My Creative Stitches. See below for a close up. ⬇️ Carol was also brave enough to choose orange thread. It looked great! 

Sharon and I FaceTimed Saturday afternoon to work on the next clue for Malted Mystery -- something I didn't know we'd be doing this week.  Neither of us finished everything even working for 3.5 hours! I prepared all of the pieces for the flying geese in advance and I was able to get all of them sewn, cut and ironed. I still need to trim those down to the correct size. There were also 8 blocks that needed to be made. Sharon focused on the 8 blocks and completed all of them.  I completed 2 of them.  But I still haven't trimmed all of the 2.25" squares from last month's clue that were needed so I'll be working on that and then finishing the blocks interspersed with trimming the flying geese . We have until November to get all of these done.

I've packed a lot of goals into this week although I may not succeed as there is a lot of other things going on. 

10/16/23

Plan the Christmas present quilt and start sewing it together

Continue trimming units and making blocks for the Malted Mystery

Bind a quilt or two

Work on Grands’ Christmas ornaments

Straighten up the cutting table (I may forget this one!) 

Make a couple of placemats 

Guild meeting 10/18/23 and World Singing Day 10/21/2023 

One of the things I worked on today was making a placemat using Pat Sloan's String Bean pattern. (Here's the link to the measurements and here's a link to directions to make this log cabin block.) I decided I could actually use the quilt as you go method for the placemat. This one is my test run which actually turned out well.  I'm going to make more over the next few days so that I can take them to the guild meeting this week. 

The guild is collecting all sorts of place mats to give away at the end of the year. I thought this Christmas fabric looked good as the center. Next I'm trying a kid's novelty fabric but I'll have to come up with my own measurements as I don't have a piece the right size.  But the system worked really well. I think it takes longer to pick the fabric and cut out the pieces then it takes to make the placemat! 

October and November is my turn to receive blocks from Faithful Circle Quilters Equilters. I showed my block here. It's a block from Mary Quilts. Click here to see her instructions. Sharon and Pat W were over achievers. Sharon made hers during the retreat and "showered" me with them when she was done. 

Here are my, Pat W's and Sharon's blocks together. These are going to make great quilts for a variety of people.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the gang sending theirs.  (On the other hand I still have untouched blocks from last year, and several leftover blocks from previous years. EEP!) I have to say I was surprised with the yellow and blue blocks but don't they make a great POP of color? It'll be fun to receive more of these. 

That's it. You know the drill. Please visit these Linky parties to see what quilters are working on this week. 

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musing 

Sew & Tell

To Do Tuesday*

*I'm hoping I remember to link to this one -- I seem to miss it more often than I remember to link up. Sigh. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie