It was so nice to be able to sew with my quilt club again. Our group is sponsored by  Hanover Parks and Rec so they are just now opening up the facilities for limited use. They were even there to take our temperatures on arrival. I'm not sure how helpful that is because my temp was 83 on Saturday. It didn't really matter. They had us set up 6 feet apart and there were only 7 of us there with a capacity of 15.

I spent mot of my time over the 2 days cutting out blocks. You can see that I was a little obsessive compulsive about organizing my workspace. 

I'm thinking of making a king size quilt as a gift for a friend. For that I need 162 blocks. This is 51 blocks cut out and ready for assembly next month.

BI started by making these 18 just to see if I'd like it. You can see here how I'm using the mini gradient effect in the waste fabrics in my windows. I'm using pretty much every green in my stash and I'm happy with how it's looking so far. With these I have 69 blocks at least to the cut out stage. I think you can figure out here that piecing is a breeze. I do try to keep the 3 waste fabric pieces aligned properly.

This pattern is called Club Noir and is in the book Color Quilts For Fabric Lovers by Amy Walsh and Janine Burke. This quilt is the cover quilt on the book. This will be the 4th quilt that I've made from this book! The patterns are just great for scrappy quilts where the scrap fabric has some sort of theme. I'll give my version of Club Noir a different name because that name doesn't fit this fabric. My name will have "green" in it in some way.
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We all stayed at the center as late as possible. No one wanted to leave!

Mom stayed with me Friday night so it was a good opportunity for my youngest brother, SIL, niece and new boyfriend (!) to visit. Mom can't have visitors at her apartment yet unless she needs some sort of medical or personal care help. We though we might go over with a enema one day and tell the guard that Grandma is stopped up and needs help. Wouldn't that be hilarious?
Don't worry, we would probably not to that.

​New boyfriend received approval.

In between all that activity I finished quilting Kim's Garden! This is the last block. I need to inspect the back to make sure I don't need to fix anything and then I can get on with binding. Right now it's spread over the guest bed and it's HUGE.  I'll get a photo when the rain stops and I have some decent natural light.

I'm going to have to switch gears a bit because I realized that I need to get started on Christmas postcards. It's time for some design work followed by some factory work around here.

Yesterday was dyeing day. I dyed about 60 yards including this Sugar Maple gradient. I didn't do much else except talk to my art advisor, Estelle. We talked about my floor cloth project. She is the person who eventually got me to learn to test things before starting big projects. It was a very difficult lesson for me to learn! After doing the test drawing on the florr cloth painted with eggshell paint I was all set to get satin finish paint for the "real" ones but we decided that I need to get a sample and test that too to make sure that the marker will not smear on the shinier surface. I'll pick of a sample jar today to test that out.

Meanwhile I need to get a new project kit together now that the county is letting us have our sewing days again! We will have a small group because some people still aren't comfortable being out but I'm so looking forward to having sewing days again! I like to have a dedicated project to work on there to make packing easier. I've done enough veterans quilts for the year and still have a few of the tops I made to quilt so this will be a totally new bed quilt. I looked through my books and decided that I liked these 4 candidates.

Next I decided on fabric. I've been wanting to make something with either my drawer of green hand dyed fabrics or the drawer of blue. So one of these will be pulled.

I've also been wanting to make another quilt with my coveted waste fabrics.

So I voted on the 4 candidates and this one won. I'll make the frames from the greens and the windows from the waste fabrics. It could look pretty cool or it could be a hot mess. I won't know until I make a few blocks this weekend.

Here are the fabrics that I selected so everything is packed up and ready for Friday!

I changed out the quilt on our bed this week and, for the first time, we are using the spirograph quilt! I love getting to see this every day. It's still a little stiff but will soften over time. It's so nice to finally use it.

I wasn't particularly productive Monday and yesterday. There seemed to be a lot of other things to do. I did get to spend a little time with my friend, Marcy, under the pretense of teaching her ruler work on the longarm. She didn't need the lesson but we had a fun visit.

In between I got the next star points done on both quilts. I've positioned them in reverse color order to see if I prefer one over the other. I don't have an opinion yet except that I'm really happy with the way it's looking. 

Today is dyeing day so you might not hear from me tomorrow because there may not be any progress on any of my projects.

I did not get as much done this weekend as I wanted. I found entirely too many distractions to waste time. But I did make progress on the next set of 4 Mardi Gras blocks. Four more pieces on each and these will be done.

I don't know what the final name of this quilt will be but, for sure, it will not be Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras just doesn't have any personal meaning to me. I might default to Summer Sunset because that's the name of the gradient that the palette comes from and for now I'm going to use that name going forward. At least it will have more relevance than Mardi Gras and will do until I get some inspiration for something better.

I'm hoping to get some better focus and discipline this week and actually make some serious progress on some projects!

Remember way back in August when I started planning my next quilt? I've been wanting to make a quilt based on the Summer Sunset gradient (currently out of stock) for a long time and I've had Vector Quilts Mardi Gras pattern set aside for it for at least 2 years. Well, it's time has come!

TI do love foundation piecing a lot. I started working on this 2 weeks ago and I now have one star point done. This is pieced on leave-in foundation fabric. I haven't decided if I love it yet but I know I will love not having to remove a lot of papers!

For some brilliant reason, when I bought the pattern I thought it was a good idea to also buy the miniature version. What was I thinking?
Well, there are a lot of scrap fabrics from this quilt so why not.....

My plans for the weekend are to bind 2 veterans quilts, quilt more on the vintage flowers quilt and to work on another set of these blocks. I think I'll do them 4 at a time to try to keep my interest up.

I hope you have a great weekend. Mine will be peachy because I won't be watching any news!

Another day in paradise!
​Actually it rained all day yesterday but we makers don't mind that. I got started on the next pair of veterans quilts and made some great progress. I only have 6 sheets of triangles left to stitch and I've already started cutting and pressing.

I made some more crochet progress while I've been waiting for the weather to warm up today. This little blanket will be done soon.
​It's 67 now so I'm off to paddle around the lake for a bit.

My first project is done! I usually avoid panels but I don't mind these digitally printed panels because there are options for trimmed size. I really loved this one even without noticing that the mountain was a flag! Chris noticed it yesterday. It isn't obvious up close but it's really clear in the photo. The narrow border fabric is from a coordinating print.
​I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

It turned out so nice that I'm glad that I made 2 of them!

Next up is this project. It will take a little longer but it will also make 2 quilts.

There will be lots of time for sewing and crochet today because it's a rainy day. The next week should be beautiful so I can take a rainy day.
​For Debbie, the yarn is Mandala in the collorway Narnia.

The mardi Gras quilt is completely cut out except for the large background pieces. I'm not taking that with me. If I get half the star blocks pieced I'll be very happy. I'm taking some scraps just in case I need and extra piece or two. Now all of my projects are ready to travel.

After I finished packing the projects I glanced around my sewing room and saw a complete disaster. I don't wan to come home to that so I spent an hour or so straightening up. The items on the cutting table include the rest of the Mardi Gras fabrics and a couple of projects that I'm pondering. They can wait there quietly until I make a decision.

The sewing table is clean for the first time in months!

I even cleared off a 10" pile of paper and books beside the computer.  Now I don't have to dread walking in here when I get back.

I spent the rest of the day doing a little packing and next I need to get my car crochet project started. I don't like doing the chain and first row in the car. It will be better if I have a little base to kick me off.

is what I'm worked on yesterday. I almost have all the pieces pre-cut for the new quilt. I'm having to create templates (like Judy Neimeyer does for her patterns) but it's totally worth the time. The sewing is going to be (almost) easy.

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!