I like an "and then" day. It means that I didn't waste too much time and got lots of things accomplished. After my morning torture exercise session Marcy and I delivered the veterans quilts and then we stopped by a local yarn shop on the way home. I didn't buy anything! Yay! But it was good to see a shop open.

After lunch I headed to the sewing room and was going to put the last stack of patriotic fabrics away but instead I decided to challenge myself to quickly make a veterans quilt top out of it.

I don't like working with printed panels like this. By "like this" I mean panels with printed borders. They are impossible to get square. I had a fat quarter of the same blue used on the panel that I could use to camouflage the wonkiness of the panel print. I didn't have enough to go all the way around so star cornerstones seemed like a fine plan. And then I started looking for the next border. I had 2 half-yard cuts of the red and tan stripe. That seemed a fine choice.

By this point I had decided that there would be two more borders in blue to hold everything. That means that there are 3 remaining borders: blue, something else and blue. So far so good.

The blue round got star cornerstones to tie in with the first blue border. For the next border I had 4 fat quarters of tan prints. I cut 4.5" strips from the 4 fabrics and then sub cut those into random chunks. I didn't want to have to measure out blocks to fit the border exactly. Random chunks solved that.

Finally one last blue border and this was done in just a few hours. I had a half yard of the red stripe left so I cut it into binding strips.

This is the rest of that panel. I don't think I'll be using it in future quits. I just don't think it will be very uplifting for a veteran dealing with a  cancer diagnosis.
​And then the power went out.

We had a great summer storm around 5:30 last night and that knocked the power out for almost 2 hours. I got my lantern from the basement and added a lot more rows to my blanket. I'm almost halfway through the first ball. 
And then the power came back on.

So before heading to  bed I decided to clear out 2 big bags of batting scraps and make some dog beds. I'll drop these off with my friend tomorrow. Everything about these is about turning trash to treasure. The fabrics are all free giveaways and I use thread that I don't use for anything else anymore. It only took about an hour and a half to make all 4 of these.
Today is another day full of options and I don't really have a plan. I'll just see what I'm in the mood to do next.

Today's post is a summary of the past few days of work. I needed to get the piles of patriotic fabrics off the floor so I decided to devote a few days to just working on veterans quilt stuff.

I have a total of 7 quilt tops that need to be quilted. One is going to Marcy to pair up with one of her quilt tops and I hope that some of the other quilters can take some of the others at our meeting next week. But I did get these 2 done Sunday after I finished my own veterans quilt that I shared Monday. I know that Betsy made the one on the left because tiny blocks in repro fabrics are her signature. Her quilts are always precise! The one on the right is similar to 3 that my Mom made a few months ago but I don't think she made this one....I'm not sure. We'll figure it out Tuesday at the meeting.

​After I finished these it was on to a couple of days of cutting kits.

I purchased 2 of this panel with a coordinating fabric for borders and binding. I pulled lots of hand dyes that coordinated and will create a wide border of 2: strips around the bordered panel.  think they will go together really quickly. I cut all of the pieces so I can just jump right in to sewing.

These are a couple of fat quarter sets that Anne gave me. I saw that block on Alycia's blog and thought it would be perfect for these fabrics paired with white. I've had this roll of triangle paper for probably 20 years. It looked like it was finally ripe and ready to use. I cut the white and print chunks and I'll be ready to go to make enough HSTs for 2 quilts. I think it will look really cool.

These fabrics came from 2 kits that I bought on sale. They are all half yard cuts. I dithered over about a dozen ideas, including the one in this photo that was ultimately rejected. I wanted something that would use all of the fabric. In the end the answer was a rail fence. Everything got cut into 2.5" strips and should come together really quickly. There's enough here for 2 quilts also.

While we are on vacation I usually have a couple of hours of sewing time every day so these can easily get done in 18 days. I'll take one other new project that I'm planning. 

I have one other set of fabric that is a set with this panel. The panel has other parts to it but they are too "memorial-ish" to give to veterans dealing with health issues. This one will be a series of borders and I'll work on it here because I'll need to cut as I go and I really prefer cutting on my big table.

The kits are packed and ready to go. 

Here's the current stack of 19 finished quilts! Marcy and I will deliver them to our VA hospital contact tomorrow.  

After 15 years of owning a longarm I finally did the one things that I knew would happen eventually. I ripped a hole in a quilt by accidentally putting the needle down as I moved the machine to the other side of a quilt.

Yesterday was dyeing day but I finished early and had time to get this veterans quilt loaded and could have started quilting. But after I got it basted on I was moving the sewing head from one side to the other to change the bobbin and accidentally hit the needle down button and I ripped a hole in the quilt! 

I've been luck because this hasn't ever happened to me in 15 years. I knew it would get me one day but I'm happy that it was one of my own quilts.

Luckily it didn't rip the backing at all so i was able to repair it with it still basted. The rip was on the white and red fabrics. I had some leftover white so I patched it with a little hand stitching and slipped it under the seam. For the red I fused a little patch of another red fabric under the rip and whip stitched it together through both layers. I finished it off with a little Fray Check. From a foot away you can't even see it. I'll put it back on the machine this afternoon after my clay shooting lesson this morning. I hope I don't melt in the heat.

On the crochet front my blanket is coming right along. It will eventually have 4 sections of turquoise and 4 of the variegated. I think I will finish it off with a navy border. I do like working with the Hobby Lobby yarn. I expect it's a lot like Red Heart.

My plans for the weekend are to stay inside and stay cool. I want to start planning my vacation sewing projects, get this veterans quilt done and maybe get the flower quilt back on the frame for the last of the quilting.

Two more veterans quilted and BOUND! 
​It's way too hot to be outside so I'm staying in and doing my projects. Yesterday it was these 2 quilts.

Both of these quilts are my Blockade quilt pattern. They go together so fast and there are so many options with color layout. I haven't gotten tired of this one yet.

This one is made with scraps from my Paula Nadelstern fabric stash. The quilting doesn't show on this at all!

Both of these are true trash-to-treasure quilts made with leftovers from other projects. I'm really pleased with this one. It uses the same Blockade pattern but with a completely different effect.

The backing is a grayish purple and I quilted it with my fastest pantograph, Woven Wind. the quilting doesn't show well on either of these quilts so it didn't matter what I used.

I have one quilt back that's only big enough for one quilt so I'm going to get this one loaded and quilted tomorrow.

Today is dyeing day so I don't expect to get much done. This evening I might have time to start doing some planning for my travel projects.

Yesterday was dyeing day so I didn't have a lot of time for my projects but I was able to get this top together after dinner. I didn't quilt on the flower quilt but I will today and might have the fist pass of ruler work done by Saturday. Then I'll take it off for a few days and quilt some veterans quilts.....if everything goes to plan.

One day last week I spent about 45 minutes on hold with Direct TV and the consequences of that time arrived in the mail today! Yarn for 4 more baby blankets. I love the Mandala yarns for baby blankets. The Mandala Ombre is something new to try and the Red Heart is for a gingham blanket. If the gingham blanket goes well I think I will try an adult version. But these will keep me busy for a couple of months.

​Today I'm running errands and then it will be back to quilting!

and this is why. One of our neighbors cut down some trees and offered the wood at a great price. Chris brought home the first load Wednesday and I needed to get it all stacked before the second load (the piles in the photo) arrived yesterday afternoon. The wood in the back is leftover from last year but the 3 stacks in the front are what I did yesterday morning in the blazing heat. After this I completely forgot about the blog and everything else other than the fabric dyeing I needed to do. I'll have more to stack this weekend after Chris splits the rest but we'll be pretty well set for this winter.

It's not all work though. I'm making a little progress on the vintage flower quilt and I got all these blocks made for a veterans quilt. The Ikat fabrics are leftover from a quilt that Anne made and I did replace the darkest fabrics that were too close in color to the dark purple. There's almost nothing left of the Ikat fabrics so this was a good use of them. I think it's going to look fine. I'm dyeing dark purple for the binding.

I also might need to make a baby quilt so I played around in EQ last night to come up with something simple that I could use as a go-to baby quilt blanket. This one would be based on a 4" finished square and I think could be a really nice and quilt pattern. I think it would be really sweet in feedsack fabrics with a white background. I also have a set of really bright plaids that would look good too.

I'm also getting ready to cut a bunch more veteran's quilt kits. While I was at Anne's we took a break to visit a couple of nearby quilt shops. When I was there for tiling I bought the fabrics on the left and they have already been soaked and are ready to press and cut. When we came back to grout she had bought me 3 more FQ packs as a gift! I'll get these soaked this weekend and then I'll be ready to start planning some more quilts for our veterans.

This weekend I don't have any big plans. Aside from stacking wood I hope to stay inside and I hope the air conditioner doesn't break! My plan is to finish a crochet blanket that I'm working on right now, finish the veterans quilt top and make some serious progress on the vintage flower quilt. 

We had a fabulous time in the Great Smoky Mountains last week. We did some really nice hikes and took a day to drive out to Cades Cove to see the old settlement. It was in Cades Cove that we spotted our first 2 bears. Every time you get in a big traffic jam in the park you can be sure that there's a bear somewhere nearby! The first one was in a field but the second one (above) was along the side of the road. You should be able to tell from the poor quality photo that I was a distance off and using zoom. I made sure I was behind 2 other people in case she decided we might look tasty. As we were passing a stupid teenager got out of her car and got entirely too close. People (not her parents) tried to tell her to back off but she wanted her photo. Luckily it turned out fine but it was still really stupid as this bear had 2 cubs with her.

Out last bear sighting was the morning we left. Chris was inside about 4 feet from the door when he saw a bear come up on the deck. It looked around a bit but didn't find anything interesting and then left. I expect that it still smelled the remnants of the chicken on the grill. But it was fun to see it so close up.

I'm a pretty horrible passenger so I've learned to keep myself busy on car rides and this is the project that I worked on this time. This one is really easy and this yarn is almost bulky so I use a larger hook. Both of those things make it good for a car project. I used a skein in each direction. I'll use most of the 3rd skein to finish it and then I'll use the rest with some white for a border but, for now, this one is getting put away until I finish the Crow blanket.

​Speaking of the car ride, we found a fun podcast to listen to called No Such Thing as a Fish.

It's called the Crow blanket because that will be the baby's last name. I worked on this one in the cabin in the evenings. It can't be a car project because it requires a lot of counting to keep the rows even. But I made great progress at the cabin and only have one block of yellow left to do. The yarn is Stylecraft Special DK and I really love working with it. After the last yellow bar it will be about square and then will get several borders. The pattern is a popular one (on Instagram) called Hugs and Kisses. It's usually done as a chevron but I wanted straight stripes. It's possible that this gets done in the next couple of weeks.

By the time  I got home I was tired of crochet and wanted to sew. I had quilted this veterans quilt before I left so I got the binding put on this pretty quickly. 
These are blocks that I was going to make into a wall hanging a couple of years ago but I lost interested. I'm happy that I could salvage those blocks into a veterans quilt. The batting was a freebie too. A few months ago we got a deceased quilter's stash. She had a design wall made from quilt batting. I hate to throw out good batting so I washed it. It was still covered in threads but it was clean and it was perfect for a dark quilt with a black backing! You can't imagine how many threads are trapped between those layers! Recycle and reuse.....

After that was finished I started making blocks for the last of the precut kits made from the Paula Nadelstern scraps. I still have a bin of scraps that I can sew together into crumb blocks if I want but I also have 3 more veterans quilt kits cut out so I have plenty to keep my busy for a while.

I'm still pondering my next big project but until something inspires me I'll continue making veterans quilts. I know how much they are loved and wanted by "our" department at the VA and I sure have plenty of fabric!

This week I will get one of the vintage flower quilts loaded and make myself start quilting. I've got to stop being paralyzed by how to quilt my quilts. I'm just going to load it and start doing something. I have no plan.

I didn't have anywhere that I needed to go yesterday so I was able to focus on things that I wanted to do.

I got this quilt top together. It was originally going to be a wall hanging but I wasn't happy with my plan so I remade it into a veterans quilt and I quite like it! It's a little bigger than our normal veterans quilts so I made a separate back for it and might get it quilted tomorrow. I worked on this off and on with quilting Mom's scrappy quilt.

I was able to get her quilt quilted too! I really love this quilt. She's quite a master of scrappy quilts.

The back is more of a deep golden yellow but the camera washed it out. I only took this photo to show that I quilted it with a very easy pantograph called Woven Wind.

Today is a haircut and some chores. I might get the veterans quilt loaded and started but that's probably it on the creative front.

My quilt club, like yours, has not met since March. We've had a few small driveway meets and kept in touch through our Facebook group but nothing is better than time together. Today would have been our normal meeting day and Becky suggested that we have an outdoor get together in the picnic shelter near our meeting place. We had no idea how many people would show up but we had over 20  people once everyone arrived! After 3 months you can be sure that we had an epic show and tell! 

I had 11 veterans quilts already collected before the meeting and now I have 22 to deliver this week! I know that the VA has a procedure for making sure the quilts are safe. I would expect that they will isolate them somewhere for a week before using them.

Added to the stack is this quilt that I made and got bound yesterday.

I quilted it with my favorite wavy crosshatch. It's perfect for quilts that are all squares, especially when the squares are less than 6". It quilts up so fast! I had to quilt fast because I quilted this one with the next one and I wanted to get it back to Gwen at the meeting yesterday.

This is Gwen's fun scrappy string quilt. These string quilts always look great.

I quilted it with free-motion "straight" lines. That's also some fast quilting so these were done Monday evening and ready to deliver yesterday.

Today I have some errands to do in the morning but this afternoon I'll either be piecing the next veterans quilt or quilting one of Mom's quilts. I'm still trying to get a focus on my next big project but that inspiration just hasn't happened yet. It will eventually and in the mean I'm enjoying the veterans quilts.

I am really flailing around for an idea for my next quilt project. I don't have a specific need in mind and don't really have any patterns or ideas that I've been hot to try. So until inspiration strikes I'm happily sewing and quilting veterans quilts and that's most of what I did this weekend.

I miscalculated the number of 4-patch blocks I would need for this quilt TWICE! Seriously, how hard it it to count blocks? Fortunately I had tons of leftover 2.5" print blocks so I only had to cut black squares. this quilt is on the frame for quilting now.

My project this week will be to put this veterans quilt together. These are blocks that I had planned for a wall hanging that I eventually decided that I didn't like so they are going to be a veterans quilt instead.

This veteran's quilt was made by Ellen and I got it quilted last night. Quilt club is going to have a picnic meeting Tuesday at a picnic area near our meeting place so I'm trying to get some things done to deliver there. Then later this week I'll get a stack of quilts delivered to our VA contact.

This week I want to get 2 more veterans quilts quilted and the one at the top bound so it can be delivered this week. I'm going to spend a couple of days with my SIL so I'll take my crochet to do there. I'd like to get the grey/white/yellow blanket done by the end of July.

I also started another crochet project! Chris and I are taking a little road trip soon and I need a really simple project to work on in the car. This yarn requires a bigger hook (I) than I usually use so it will be perfect. I had to get it started before the trip just to make sure I'll like it enough. I like it just fine.
​While I was at Hobby Lobby buying that yarn I also got some lobster hooks to finish off these crochet marker beads that another SIL made for me. I know that I should have gotten silver but they didn't have this size in silver. The gold will be just as functional as silver and they will be very cute stitch markers!