A good weekend

This weekend was great weather for staying inside and quilting. I kicked off my weekend by quilting two more lap quilts for donation. You might remember that I said I was going to use the lap quilts as my practice quilts for my botanicals quilting class. Well, I just couldn't put leaves and flowers on quilts with a fish print backing. 

I had 3 yards of this fish print and that meant that was enough for 3 quilts but when I was getting ready to load the quilts I realized that the fish would be swimming in the wrong direction so I had to turn the quilt tops and that limited me to 2 quilts, which wasn't a problem. I can use the extra top on another backing fabric.
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Free motion waves were the right answer for these 2 quilts and I think they turned out really cute. I expect that the charity will allocate these to be kid's quilts.

I originally bought that fish fabric to make a quilt for Chris but I was never really inspired to use it. Now with the 2 lap quilts done I had one yard of the fabric left and decided to start some placemats so that he will at least get SOMETHING from the fabric. I was even able to use 2 more fat quarters from that bin of tester fat quarters for the yellow and gold accent pieces. The dark blue was a 1+ yard piece from my stash and I had enough for the edges and binding.  I'll work on these a little at a time and might have them done in a week or so. I had enough fabric to make 8 of them so I'll probably send 4 to my nephew who also had the fishing "disease", as they call it.

I was getting ready to start making some more lap quilt tops and that required me to move this mending project for the 50th time. Instead of moving the pile again it seemed time to actually do the mending.
I dyed a vintage tablecloth and napkins in 2015. You can see them on this page if you scroll down to the "Other Projects" section. I am still very proud of that project and use the tablecloth and napkins once or twice a year. They don't get a ton of wear but they are old and are showing their age. The napkins, especially, won't survive that much longer. The edges are wearing and the ladder hem stitching is ripping. I can't do anything about the frayed edges but I can do a quick fix of the broken ladders - by machine, of course. I'm not about to do hand stitching.
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I played around with my machine stitches until I found a stitch that was good enough and then dug through my vast thread stash and found a perfect match.
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It's not perfect but it's serviceable and my guests won't notice. I'm sure of that! At least, for now, they are back in the drawer and off my sewing table. I can start some more lap quilt tops.
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I did get on with practicing my botanical quilting and forgot to take photos of the first 2 quilts. I have the third one set and ready to go as soon as I decide on exactly what I want to practice next. 

I also did a good amount of crochet this weekend too and I'll share my progress on that later in the week. I was too lazy to take any more photos last night while I was writing this post.