Monday Meanderings 6 - 3 - 2024

Welcome to the new month, the 6th month of the year.  I spent the last three or four days in May getting some finishes.  Here's my goals list for last week.  Not as good as I hoped for but not all that bad either. 

5/27/24

Make some placemats (3 -4) -- ✔️ One done, more to come. 

✅Bind Knuffle Bunny quilt -- finish #2 for May.     

✅Pull out a block set and plan a top -- 9 big blocks make a decent size quilt. 

✅Quilt one of my quilts  -- quilted and bound. 

✅Sing in local community show -- I'm glad it's finished but I did have a lot of fun. 

I used an old orphan block for this placemat.  Surprisingly, I even found a piece of the fabric that was in the pinwheel and used it to surround the block.  I've had it ready to quilt and finish for about 3 weeks and finally did it this week.  I have enough of a pretty fabric with flowers and pots on it that I'll be making several more  placemats in the coming week(s). I may just do a regular binding on it. The pink above just looks like too much for the overall placemat.  I know I made it smaller than the pattern called for but it needs to be even smaller.  

The blocks below are called Picket Star and were designed by Preeti Harris who blogs at Sew Preeti Quilts. If you click on the link and then scroll down just about to the end you can find her tutorial for Picket Star.  I used it as the block for my round for FCQ EQuilters a year or so ago.  I have already made one quilt from the blocks. You can see it as a top here.  (Hum, I wonder if I've actually shared the finished quilt yet? It didn't come up in a search of my blog.) 

I'll be sewing this together this week.  I will probably figure something to add to the top and bottom to make this into a rectangular quilt. The blocks finish at 17". On the first quilt I used some smaller squares separated by white fabric at the top and bottom to make it rectangular.  (I still have 4 star blocks left. Hum, maybe a baby quilt or I could just make 3 more blocks...decisions, decisions!) 

Here's what I hope to work on this week. 

6/3/25

Make some more placemats (2 - 3)

Quilt and bind one of my quilts

Start sewing Picket Star blocks together

Continue cleaning up cutting table

Cut scraps into squares, rectangles, and bricks 

I think all of that is doable this week. I have my regular stitching group on Monday afternoon and one morning get-together this week and the rest of the week is free. Wopee! 

Last week I took advantage of a $4.99 a yard sale on Keepsake Cottons at JoAnns. I have had great success finding decent fabric in the Keepsake collection to use for backings. I check them carefully to make sure they are higher quality.  This time I bought 5 backings and one piece to recover my big ironing board.  The cute, bright, colored, speckled one is for the ironing board.  I think it'll make me smile every time I iron some fabric. Hum, that bright green on the far right is an odd color. It went well with the quilt it will be backing... I hope I still like it when I start quilting it! I didn't write down which piece went with each top. I'm not sure where the geometric green one goes. Maybe I can tell by size.

The light turquoise at the far left has already been used on my Wiggle Time quilt. Pictures to come!

I've continued to succeed on my 15 minutes of stitching.  Sometime I'm long arming, some stitching on the domestic sewing machine, some knitting, some planning, some processing scraps or ironing fabric.  But I am having fun doing what I love to do.  I just realized I've been calling May April all month long.  I've checked the number of days to June 2 and it is correct. Hopefully I'll continue with the right days for the rest of the year. 

W/ending 6/2 — 154 days in to 2024. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/May = 5/5 days or 31/31! 
• 15 minute days/June = 2/2 days
• 15 minute days/2024 = 147/154 days
• Success rate =95.4% 

Not bad!  I foresee June as 30 of 30 days of stitching. July might have some non-sewing days. We’ll see what happens as it gets here. 

It's time to do a little reading.  I'm in a cycle of reading happy ever after books. I'm still reading The Ministry of Time but I keep putting it down and thinking about it. I like to think I am savoring it but I'm not so sure I am.  It is a remarkably different book.  But I wonder if it is as good as I anticipated since I can put it down for days, if not weeks? 

I hope you can spend some time checking out quilting blogs around the internet by using these Linky parties: Oh Scrap, Stitching Stuff, Design Wall Monday, and Monday Musings.

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie