I hope your weekend was as good as mine! We had sewing days Friday and Saturday and in between I worked on my nephew's wall hanging and made really good progress on all fronts.

I took 2 kits to sewing and finished both! Each is based on a panel and I have no idea where these panels came from. I don't enjoy working with panels because they are never square but I do see the appeal. I got two quilt tops made in 2 days! I used a lot of leftovers to finish them so I didn't have a ton of options for coordinating fabrics. This one was really awkward because the orientation is landscape and it was almost to our max width for the quilts so I just had to add strips to the top and bottom to bring it to 60" long. It will have a blue binding. 

I added some hand dyed borders to this one to bring it up to size. I'm really please with both of them.
It doesn't look it, but both are 48" x 60".

​The rest of the weekend was spent working on the wall hanging.

After sewing Friday I came home and cut all of the 1" strips for the wall hanging.

I spent Saturday afternoon and evening Preparing the backing and batting. I decided to mark my pattern right on the batting with washable markers. I'll mark the spike lines to follow and will align the middle seam of the strip on the spike lines. I marked the top and bottom edges so that the print part of strips do not run off the edge of the quilt.

I marked the spike lines and then arranged some strips to see if I liked it.

I made a couple of changes to my spike lines and I was ready to go!

I got started quilting/piecing yesterday and I'm 30% done. I sure love the channel locks!
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Pretty much every update this week will be on this quilt. I want it done with the sleeve attached by Friday night!

Yay! Today and tomorrow are the monthly sewing days with Country School Quilters! I've got 2 quilt kits ready to go. Both of these are simple so I expect to get one finished and the second underway. Soon I'm going to have to get busy cutting out all the patriotic fabric that I bought in Paducah and get more kits ready.  Sometimes I take my sewing machine to the beach vacation and I'd need a project for that. But this year I have another plan!

I have had a small itch to try fly tying for a long time. After making those tedious ornaments for almost 30 years it seems like this is something I might be able to do. I've no interest at all in fly fishing and neither does Chris but his friend, Mike, loves fly fishing. He was visiting last week and I mentioned that I was interested. I even took him on a tour of my sewing supplies and we found some things that he could use. This week he sent me a tool kit and a kit to tie some flies! I'm taking this to the beach (with my crochet) instead of sewing. I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos to prepare and I'm excited to give this a try. I have no idea what I'll do with the flies but I can worry about that later.

Also related to beach planning is the quilt project that I started yesterday. I mentioned this one many weeks ago but it stayed on the back burner until I could finish the wedding quilt. My nephew requested this wall hanging for his music room and I'm going to try to get it done by next Saturday so I can deliver it to him at the beach. I didn't really want to make an exact quilt from this book but he fell in love with this one so I'm making it for him. I'm going to make my version wider, about 4 feet, by 3 feet tall.
​I got started yesterday.

I had about 3 yards of this fabric and the same of some black so I was ready to go. I've cut the fabric on both sides through the black area. I will not use the middle section at all.

If I had used the middle section I would have seamed it to have the center of my strip the bright yellow. Instead I just used the cut off edges, trimmed off what I didn't need and stitched the 2 long pieces together.

This fabric will be cut into 1" strips so I used a very tiny stitch length to, hopefully, keep the seams together as I piece it on the longarm. Remember when I made these placemats to practice longarm piecing?

Hey look! I emptied another cone of thread! I bought the Wonderfil in Paducah to try out. 
I am using black thread for this project because there really isn't a substitute for black thread on black fabric.

I added to wide pieces of black to each side of the center strip.
Yes, I could/should have pieced it as a tube like traditional Bargello.
Yes, the way I'm doing it is incredibly wasteful of fabric.
​That's just how it has to be. I have some sort of allergy to traditional Bargello. I did it once and hated it. I hated breaking apart the tube because I kept doing it wrong. The whole thing was exceedingly stressful.
I decided to just do it this way. It's more logical to me.

Next step is to cut this big piece into about 100 1" strips and then set up the longarm and plan the wave pattern and then just a lot of flip-and-sew on the longarm. I really don't think it's going to take an excessive amount of time but we'll see.

I just could not leave town knowing that I had more binding to do when I got home. When I travel I have to prepare a lot of my food to take with. Between kitchen sessions I focused on getting this done. 

I am thrilled with this quilt! This is the second Antelope Canyon quilt that I've made. I really like this pattern by Laurie Shiffrin. I do not know the couple this quilt is made for very well. But I made a quilt for the groom's sister and wanted him to have one too. I searched their registry to come up with the color theme. 

The quilt is made of 4 blocks. 4 very big blocks! 
I used 8 steps of the Black Shades pack and 4 steps of Indra for the fabrics. The background is the lightest shade and I used a controlled random pattern of 6 steps of black for the arcs.

I quilted it with the Woven Wind pantograph. I love this one because it keeps the quilt nice and soft and it's really fast to quilt.

The groom is an avid hunter so I selected a winter camouflage print for the backing. I know that if they don't like the front of the quilt that they will love the back!

I do not worry about what happens to my quilts once they are gifted. I don't like to gift them with any sort of responsibility. I will let them know that if they want to let the dogs play on the quilt that I'm OK with that.

​I'm happy to end April with this big finish! 

The weekend is here and my first order of business is to spread a truckload of mulch today. It's supposed to get into the 70s today so my car might even get washed too! But I started this morning getting the second set of bottles out of the kiln. I upped the top temperature for this one and I did get better definition on the slump on the tree image. The blue bottle is a Bombay sapphire bottle and the dark brown one is a Bailey's Irish Cream bottle. I got a little bit of kiln wash transfer on the Bailey's bottle that I cleaned up with vinegar. I started a new set up this morning with a little lower temperature to see if it helps with the kiln wash transfer.

This week I also finished dyeing this custom quilt back for a friend. She wanted pale shades of Carolina Blue. The color isn't quite accurate in this photo. I think we picked a color that's very true to Carolina Blue.

I'm also making progress on the wedding quilt binding. I do a couple of thread lengths every morning and I'm about 60% done. I'll keep plugging away at this.

Usually in the afternoon I get some time to sit and sew half square triangles. I'll need 90 big squares and 90 4-patch squares for a veterans quilt so I have a long way to go. It's nice sewing to do while I'm listening to a book.....right now it's a really long book!

This is what I expect my weekend to be like. I hope you have a great one too.

This weekend started off as a weekend of chores and this was the biggest one.  We love having a woodstove. It saves us a lot of money in the winter. But it's messy! I'm lucky that we have this in the basement. I know that people still heat homes with woodstoves and I don't know how they keep their homes clean with an active woodstove. I sweep every day but at the end of the season it takes several hours to clean everything up. I hate doing it but I'm glad to have it all tucked away for the fall. Because I don't go near this corner except during fire season, I didn't notice that the chimney sweep left their drop cloth last year. I have it ready for them to pick up tomorrow.

After that and a few other chores, I dyed some quilt backs for veterans quilts. They are soaking now and I should be able to load a couple of veterans quilts later this week.

Finally I got around to some sewing. I pulled some light gray fabric and cut a bunch of triangles and started sewing some blocks together. 

I'm not sure how I will use these blocks but Mary sent me an idea of alternating blocks with 2" and 4" HST blocks like this. This would make a nice veterans quilt top. Mary has all kinds of great quilt ideas for charity quilts. If you aren't familiar with her, check out her blog. She has a great library of free patterns on her sidebar.

​I also made some progress on starting all of my new crochet projects and will share those later this week.

Yesterday I got the binding stitched to the front of the weeding quilt and now I'm doing the hand stitching. I decided to hand stitch this binding since it's a wedding gift. The wedding isn't until June so I can work on it a little each day. 

When I get near the end of a project I start to get excited about starting something. Often that's multiple somethings. This weekend I'm starting quilting and crochet projects I think.

Since we are going to Paducah in 2 weekends I don't want to start anything really involved. I hope to get inspired there for a new "big" project. I'm thinking that I'd like to do a new foundation pieced project. Meanwhile I'm going to focus on a couple of simple projects. First is Groovy 3. I'm thinking I'll dye purple for the sashing of this one. 

This weekend I think I'm going to cut a bunch of light gray HSTs to sew with these. I don't have a set plan yet, I'm just going to cut and sew. There might be a big quilt in here or there might be a veterans quilt or two. Who knows. It will be fun to do whatever it becomes.

​Where the startitis is really kicking in is on the crochet front.

I have 2 projects underway. One is this t-shirt top. I've been holding back on it because I'm worried that it's not going to fit. I had to have a little chat with myself and remind myself that sometimes we have to make a pattern a couple of times to get it right and it's OK if I end up unwinding all of this.  I'll try it on in a couple more rows to get an idea. If it fits I just have a lot of boring linen stitch ahead of me. That would make it a good travel project for Paducah.

I also have the Moogly CAL blocks underway. This will be block 11. These blocks are kind of hard so I can't work on them non-stop. I do a couple and them put it away for a week. I've got no plans for these blocks so I'm in no hurry.

​But I really want to start a new blanket. I pulled out 2 options.

You might remember this blanket that I made in December for Chris. I liked it and the yarn so much that I bought yarn to make a blanket for each of my 3 brothers. I want to get started on a new one but I'm a little worried that I might get hot working on it. That thought led me to think about a baby blanket.

Option 2 is this yarn that I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby last summer. I saw a very pretty baby blanket pattern on YouTube and worked up a little swatch to test 2 different hook sizes. This one would also be a good travel project. The pattern is mindless once you get going. Actually, aside from the Moogly blocks, all of these projects are mostly mindless, just how I like my crochet.

I like bot of these projects and I've decided to go for it and start both. I'll work on whatever project moves me at the time.

​I've got lots of options of things to do this weekend!

Things have been really busy around here so far this week. I've spread a couple truckloads of mulch, we had quilt club meeting, I have a ton of dyeing to do and lots of other random things. But I did get to the basement and get the wedding quilt quilted! The goal is to get it bound this weekend and then I jsut have to make a label.

The only other thing I've done is getting a chemo hat made. I started this at the club meeting Tuesday and finished it when I got home. I love working with the Lion Brand Feels Like Butta yarn for these hats. It makes them soooo soft. The pattern is the Amazing Grace hat and I love it. 

I didn't realize it until I uploaded these photos but everything I worked on this weekend was blue and gray! 

The biggest accomplishment of the weekend was getting these two quilt tops put together while I was sewing with Country School Quilters on Friday and Saturday. Before I went I laid out the strips for the border on my design wall. I had them organized and ready to sew on Friday. I got all the strippy borders together Friday and Sewed the three borders to the panels Saturday. I made two of these quilts a couple of years ago and I'm glad I found more of the panel to make 2 more. I like this one a lot. 
I probably won't quilt these until May.

Back at home I got the backing sewing together for the wedding quilt and got it loaded on the longarm. This photo was taken before I finished basting. As of this morning I've started quilting and want to get this one wrapped up this week.

Aside from my normal dyeing schedule, I don't have a lot of external commitments this week so maybe I can get al lot of thigs done! 

Now that I have my sewing room back again and and the Antelope Canyon quilt nearing it's end, I need to think about my next projects. I don't like that feeling of being lost without several projects underway! The past couple of days I spent some time pondering what's next.

I have the Antelope Canyon quilt to quilt along with a few veterans quilts. But once those are done I'll be working on this wall hanging for my nephew. All of the piecing will be done on the longarm and I have plenty of time to get it done by the May 20 deadline. That's when I'll see him at the family beach week. I think this one is going to be fun to make.

I have these ice dyed blocks that I've made over a couple of years and I'm feeling like a new Groovy quilt would be a fun new project. I'm thinking of doing one with one of the bigger Crystal fabrics as the center and use these blocks around it.

This week I also prepared a veterans quilt kit to work on this weekend at sewing with Country School Quilters. The 2 new quilts are basically a copy of the quilt featured in this post. I bought 2 more of the same panel because I liked this quilt so much.

Then I think I will work on some ideas to use all of these scraps that I cut up in February. 

I've started playing around in EQ to see if I can come up with some ideas for the HST triangles. I doubt if I'll use any of these but I'll keep playing until I come up with something.

​At least now, I have some things to work on.

I intended to get these blocks done this weekend but time just got away from me. I did have some allergies to deal with Saturday so that slowed me down. Then we had to get the guest house open for guests that are coming this week, then yard work and laundry and I finally sat to sew yesterday afternoon. I got a few more rounds on the blocks and I am madly in love with this quilt! I can't wait to see it finished.

While our friends have been here I have been crocheting a lot as we watch TV together in the evenings. Laura and Chris watched Witcher and now she's making him watch Bridgerton. Watching his reactions is entertainment in itself! Ian and I moved our evening cribbage and backgammon games into the TV room so I can be doubly entertained. Ian is the master at cribbage. I've only won 2 rounds but, so far, I own backgammon.

​Anyway, after game time I do some crochet and have mostly been working on my Moogly CAL blocks. I have to admit that I don't enjoy it as much as I expected but I am learning a lot of new techniques and stitches so I'll keep at it for a while. When I get the new batch blocked I'll share some photos.

​This is Laura and Ian's last week so we have a lot of activities packed in!