This certainly took a lot longer than it needed! I spent way too much time stressing over the quilting plan instead of just quilting. I probably spent more time thinking than actually quilting, like usual. I started in the middle with the blocks and worked my way out with each border. By the time I got to the yellow and blue borders it went really fast. It's now trimmed and ready to deliver to Becky for binding and label. 

This one started as a quilt kit that one of our members bought so you might recognize the pattern or kit. It will be donated to out local food bank and they will use it for a raffle fundraiser. We make a quilt for them about every other year.
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The quilting doesn't really show on the quilt very well but I was able to get it to show by laying it in the foyer and opening the front door for some side light.

I used white Wonderfil Master Quilter in the top and Superior Bottom Line in the bobbin. I didn't have one thread break on the whole quilt.
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I dyed the backing for this quilt and tried my best to match the blue in the background of the outer border. My fabric turned out a little more purple but I'm still happy with it. The back is the main reason that I wanted to do some custom quilting. I knew it would show on this side.
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Here's a close up of the back. I can say that I have finally reached a point where I am happy with my feather quilting. For once, it wasn't stressful quilting feathers. That's a big win!

Now I'll return to the regular programming of quilting veterans quilts. I have a really bright one loaded to quilt this weekend.

The weather here was spectacular this weekend so I got a lot of leaf blowing done. We're expecting the wind to kick up today and tomorrow and hoping that it blows a lot of leaves to the edge of the yard for us. It was lovely to be outside but I also spent some quality time inside working on the quilt. It's really close to being done.  This is a peek at the back of the floral border. You can't see the quilting at all from the front. Most of the quilting will only be visible on the back and I'll share that when I get it off the frame.
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This is pretty much the only quilting that will show. I'm pretty proud of those feathers!
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I'm working on piano keys in the last, wide border. To make sure I'm staying square I draw some square-up guides about every 6 inches. If I get off square it's only a tiny adjustment that isn't noticeable. One long side and 2 corners are done. This one is only a day or so away from completion!
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I said that the weather was beautiful and I took advantage with a long walk in the neighborhood Saturday. 
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I think I mentioned last week that the red trees (bushes) are the most spectacular this year. They are all bright red but the golds are beautiful too.

This lovely bunch was along the road in front of our place. Then I came home and got out the leaf blower.
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We also watched a lot of football and I finally finished these 4 hats that I've been working on for a while. These might look ugly to you but they are the elementary school colors for my brothers grands. I will gift them at Thanksgiving and I hope they fit! I also hope they like them.

​The pattern I used is Crochet Baby James Beanie from Daisy Farm Crafts. It says baby but it's for all sizes and is a really nice pattern with video instructions too.
The yarn is Herrschners Worsted 8 MVP. It's a 4 weight in school colors. It's not my favorite style of yarn but the school colors I needed were there and it's really nice to work with.
I use a 5.5mm (I) hook.
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Speaking of crochet, my brother made me this yarn bowl on his 3D printer. Pretty cool, huh?
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Yesterday afternoon we had the windows open and hear a lot of birds. It was a giant flock of grackles migrating through. It was a perfect scene for Halloween week.

Today we are going to vote and then run some errands but I hope to have time to finish the raffle quilt.

Yay! The blocks are quilted! I finished the last 6 star blocks yesterday and today I'll move on to the floral border. I expect it's going to involve feathers. Whatever I do, it will not show.

The only other thing I accomplished yesterday was blowing more leaves. That will be a daily chore for the next few weeks. We have 10 trees over 50' tall in the yard and they drop massive amounts of leaves. I work at it a little each day and eventually I'll have a 4' wall of leaves at the edge of the woods.

This weekend is about watching football (crocheting), quilting and sewing blue blocks and that's about all.
I hope.

Last night we went to a farewell part for a friend moving to Florida so I spent part of the day making deviled eggs, a great Southern party favorite. I can't eat them so Chris did the quality control for me. We didn't bring any home so I think everyone loved them. In between that and picking up sticks in the yard (it was  LOT of sticks), I got to worn on this quilt a bit. This is a fundraiser quilt that our quilt club is making for the local food pantry. All I accomplished yesterday was getting the SID work done around the borders and blocks but it was something. I hope to spend a lot of time with it Saturday.

Today is my knit/crochet group in Ashland and, by the time I return, the fabric I need for the sashing for the Paula quilt should be in the mail. So my weekend will be the Paula quilt and the raffle quilt and football. That should be about all. Sounds pretty perfect.

If you are in the US, I hope you had a great 4th of July celebration. We had our celebration over the weekend with a visit from one of my brothers, SIL, niece and Mom. SIL needed some dresses hemmed and she was duly impressed with the efficiency of the serger coverstitch. She said she calls that stitch the "store bought stitch"! LOL! 

She had texted me a couple of weeks ago to ask how to set up her machine to hem dresses and I suggested that she just bring them to me. I'm glad I did because they were all knit and really needed the serger. It only took about an hour to do 5 dresses and that included changing thread twice and machine settings twice.

The rest of the weekend I worked on quilting this quilt. This is one that Mom made that I started quilting months ago. I started quilting the stars and then got hung up on the background. It was in time out for a few months, I think.

I had decided that I wanted to do some sort of floral motif in the background and sashing and that's why I too Bethanne Nemesch's Blooming Botanicals class. It was an outstanding class and I learned a lot and I even quilted some flowers. But I also learned that I don't really like quilting floral motifs. I like ruler work, feathers and fillers.

I decided that I wanted to get this one done before we leave for Maine and set a deadline of next week to get it finished. That would leave me time to get the Goldfinch done before we leave too. 

I work really well with deadlines.
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After several days of chaling out ideas I finally decided to return to my roots of ruler work and feather motifs. This design allowed me to do the quilting in continuous rows. It also isn't too dense so, hopefully, the quilt will not be too heavy for my niece. We didn't know it was going to her until she saw it this weekend and loved it. Mom is thrilled.
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The pattern has a nice secondary design. The quilting isn't perfect but no one will look too closely.
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The backing fabric matches better than what shows in this photo. It's a backing fabric that I bought for another quilt and decided that I wanted something lighter. It had been hanging in the closet for a long time and I'm glad Mom liked it for this quilt.

I've also finished a crochet blanket and started a new one. I'll have those to share tomorrow.

My weekend got off to a great start with my quilt club. We sewed together Friday and Saturday and I worked on my next veterans quilts. Months ago I cut a bunch of kits and this was the one I pulled to work on next. I cut enough for 2 identical quilts. Right now I'm in block mode and am sewing them into rows as I go. I need a total of 8 rows. I have 5 done and 3 more to go and then I can out it all together.
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But, for now, it's all packed away until our June sewing days. I may be able to finish both tops that weekend.
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The rest of the weekend I made some good progress quilting the firefighter quilt. My original plan was to quilt it in black but I realized that black thread would kind of ruin my gradient black. I switched to red thread and I'm so glad I did. The red looks much better from the back and the front. 
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I stitched in the ditch all of the borders and all I have left to do is the quilting in the black border and the outside border.
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I also have the table runner left to do. it will not fit on the backing I have loaded so I'll find something and get this quilted as soon as the big quilt is done. Might as well bind both at the same time.
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Finally, all of the vacation gift placemats are officially done with the dyeing of this napkin to match one of Mom's placemats. They are all packed and ready to take to the beach.

This week I want to finish quilting the firefighter quilt and then I'll spend most of the week getting things ready for the beach. I also have voter precinct training Thursday and I have to buy a new microwave. Ours decided to revert to being just a very large clock.

There are lots of photos from this busy weekend. For once, I think I got more done than I planned.
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I try to exercise every day and my exercise one day was stacking the front row of wood. It was good exercise for sure. Chris brought home another truckload of logs and he hand split every piece of the wood in these stacks. That was even better exercise that I'm not capable of.  I'd say that we are officially ready for next winter and it was nice to get this work done before it gets too hot. Do you think that my stacking methods say anything about my personality? 
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This is all the soap that I made last Thursday. I think I calculated that it's 10.5 pounds (of oils, it doesn't include the water). They will be ready to remove from the molds today or tomorrow and then will cure for 6 weeks.
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I love these silicone molds. They make the unmolding process so easy. I have them in a lot of different shapes and even have this mold that makes 1" squares. I use these little soaps for travel. They are small enough that I don't mind leaving the wet leftovers in the hotel.
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Does this look familiar? I quilted one just like it in March. I wrote all about these special quilts in this post. Since the fabrics are heirloom, she decided to make an extra one just in case there's another baby in the family in the future.
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I quilted this one exactly the same as the last one. I got it finished late Friday so that I could give it to her when we went to an arts festival on Saturday. 
Saturday was a perfect weather day to walk around and arts festival. There were lots of beautiful things there but I was able to avoid bringing anything new into my already overstuffed house.
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Saturday morning I sewed all of the placemats that I cut out Wednesday and I was able to get them loaded and the quilting started Saturday night. I finished off the quilting Sunday morning and got 8 of them bound and finished by the end of the day. I have 2 more to bind and 1 left to quilt and bind.
When I quilt them I don't worry too much about the backing. I try to use up older fabrics from my stash and was very happy to use this metallic printed fabric that's been around for years and that I'll never use in a quilt. My batting is flannel from old sheets. It's just the right "heft" for a placemat but not too fluffy. They don't' draw up as much in the wash either.
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The first set I finished is the fish print set. I'm so glad I found these prints and finally did something with them. The shibori fabric has been in the stash for a long time too. These fabrics were clearly meant to be together. 
I still need to dye napkins for these and will do that this week.
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Here are all the sets that are on offer to my family. I decided to let the ladies make the selections and I texted them this photo yesterday. I had their selections within an hour. My oldest brother's wife picked the leaf ones, the youngest brother's wife picked the turquoise birds, my niece picked the pink/purple stripes and my nephew's wife picked the fish print. I knew she would pick one of the fish prints. The other fish fabric ones will go to a friend of Chris' that he deep sea fishes with every year.

I finished 2 of the 3 sets that I cut out for myself. Each of these are sets of 2, limited by the size of the focus fabric that I had to work with. The focus fabric of this set is a glue resist fabric that I dyed the very first time I dyed in 2008 when my friend made me dye fabric. I've always loved this fabric and was "saving" it. I had 2 previously dyed napkins in my stash that worked perfectly with these.
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I finished off the weekend with this set made from a fabric dyed using dextrin resist. They are already in use at our kitchen island, where we eat all of our meals.

I have one set left to bind and have one of Mom's left to quilt and bind. Then I realized that I need to make a set for my middle brother. He and his wife don't go to the beach but the still "need" a set. I don't think she would like either of the sets that I have left but I have an idea for some that I think she will like. I'll probably work on those after vacation.
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This cold (or whatever) has been supremely annoying and the most annoying part has been my low energy level. Chris (and even my doctor) has had the same complaint. But that all changed yesterday. While I still have a little sinus symptoms left my energy is back.

For the first time in 2 weeks I did my full exercise routine yesterday and I didn't even want a nap afterwards.
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Then I got busy dyeing fabric. After that I did some laundry and still had some energy left.
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So I went outside and stacked wood. I still have more to do but Chris has to replace some supports for the next row. Otherwise, I would have finished that last little bit. In this area we fill 4 rows and this one is row #2.
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After dinner I started quilting the veterans quilts that I loaded Tuesday. I'm using the square spiral pantograph because that's the one that was on the machine and it's a fast one. I have about 10 veterans quilts to quilt so they are all going to get some sort of fast treatment. After I finish those I have a baby quilt for Mom, the fireman quilt, a large fundraiser quilt for quilt club, Mom's big quilt that's half done and the big Judy Neimeyer quilt that I pieced last year. There's a big backlog so I'm going to try to focus on quilting for a while and get through a lot of these quilts.

Today I'll try to finish this pair and get the next ones loaded before I head off to have drinks with two friends. It's a beautiful sunny day here so I'm going to plan to go out and get a little vitamin D around noon.

I am so excited to share this little project. It's got a backstory so have a seat and I'll tell you all about it.
 
My Mom's Grandmother, Flora, was a quilter and we got all of her UFOs. I've quilted many of her tops and those have been gifted to various family member in Mom's generation. Mom has made several quilts from her blocks and I've made a few myself. My favorite project is this one, where I saved the quilt she made for me using blocks from her UFO pile.

This is another of the Flora quilts. It is a baby quilt for my cousin's first grandchild. There's probably a good chance that this might be her only grandchild. 

Flora was best known for her double wedding ring quilts. She made them for every newly married couple. When she died in 1968 she left a pile of arcs. Mom has tried over and over to fit them together for a DWR quilt but the arcs weren't consistent sizes. After a group discussion in quilt club, she decided to applique them to blocks. She's made two veterans quilts with them and still had lots left over. Once we found out about the new family arrival coming in May, she decided to make a baby quilt with them. She folded under the raw edges of each arc and appliqued them to a square of fabric.  I think it made a great design.
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I was a little stressed about quilting it but I needed to get it done before I leave for the beach Sunday.  There's nothing like a deadline to make you stop dithering and get to quilting. I haven't had an opportunity to quilt feathers in a while so I had a great time quilting this little quilt. 
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Mom's mother's, my Grandma Dove, favorite color was light purple so I dyed the back to match the light purple colors in the blocks.

So when the baby receives this gift it will be labeled that it was made by his/her Great-great-great Grandmother, Great-Grandaunt and First Cousin twice removed. I think that's pretty cool. We hope that the baby will actually use the quilt and not put it away to "save" it.

There's another project for the baby that I'm doing and I'll have that to share in a couple of weeks, I hope.

In other news, I got the binding on the placemats! I still have to dye some matching napkins so I'll save this project to save until the napkins are also done.

I'm packing projects for the beach getting ready to leave Sunday. I'll be back on Monday with a beach report. We aren't expecting really great weather so there should be lots of sewing and crochet with a great view.

I spent a lot of hours the past few days getting a presentation ready for my quilt club. I try to commit to doing one program each year and this year I put together a presentation of some of the veterans quilts that we have made, hopefully to give people ideas for new quilts. I did the presentation last night and if you have time to kill and want to see some of our veterans quilts, you can see the presentation here. 

After I ran through it in the morning I had a few hours free and decided to load and quilt the newest placemats. I'm so glad to finally have my machine adjusted because it quilted with the trilobal polyester threads perfectly! I'm also really comfortable doing any adjustment on my machine now so it should never be frustrating again.
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I found a leftover backing strip that was the perfect width for me to be able to load and quilt all 4 placemats at the same time. I've mentioned this before, but I'll say again that I use old (clean) flannel sheeting for the batting on placemats. I don't like my placemats to be puffy. I want them beefy and flat. The flannel works perfectly and I have a closet shelf of flannel available for free.
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I started with ruler work in the chevron. I just love ruler work. It's my comfort blanket of quilting.
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My other quilting crutch is free-motion filler so I decided to do fillers in the gray background. I did a different filler on each placemat. This is the first one and it's one that I turn to often.
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The second one is this one that's called coffee bean. It's a lot of fun to stitch.
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The third design is one that I've never done before but it was a lot of fun to quilt. You stitch the line first and then do the crossing stitch back and forth. Super fast.
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This was the last one and my least favorite. Placemats are so perfect for practicing because any crappy quilting will likely be covered by a plate or spaghetti stain.

Today I will load and start quilting the baby quilt and will try to get these trimmed and pick a binding fabric.  In a few weeks I'll dye some napkins to match.
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On Monday I went to Hobby Lobby to look for some fabric for a quilt project that I'm going to take on vacation. I actually did buy 3 yards of fabric (at 40% off) but a stroll through the yarn aisle revealed that they were having a 75% clearance! This even usually happens in June but, for whatever reason, it's in March this year. Last year I only bought 2 different yarns but I got a few more this year. The big pile on the left is a yarn that's exactly like Lion Brand Feels Like Butta. It's perfect for chemo hats and it was .99 a skein. I got all of it except white and gray because I have plenty of those colors. The red and blue are acrylics for donation blankets. The 2 in front are a 1 weight. I want to try crocheting with a 1 weight yarn but it's often kind of expensive and I think my chance of success is 50/50. These were only $2.50 so if the project is a fail I won't feel so bad. 

No more yarn needed! I did finish another of the big blankets. I'll try to get a photo today to share tomorrow.