Productive and relaxing

We had a great weekend here in Virginia. I hope you also did where you are. Before I share some photos of our outdoor activities I'll share these two veterans quilts that I finished. 
I'm not a huge fan of working with panels but I admit that I see the appeal. They make quilting making really fast if you aren't too distressed about them not being perfectly square. In the end, I love how they turned out.

This one was harder to work with because of the landscape orientation. I was also running out of my stash of patriotic fabrics so my options for the top and bottom borders were limited. It turned out much better than I expected and I'm not al all hesitant to donate this one. 

I quilted it with my current favorite and super-fast Woven Wind pantograph.  I think this makes 6 veterans quilts for the year so far. Now I need to start cutting kits from the patriotic stash that I bought in Paducah. I only have 2 kits left from the previous stash to sew together and I'll get started on those this weekend.

We took advantage of the great weather on our little neighborhood lake. It's not a very big lake but it's close by and there's rarely anyone on it except for lots of birds, turtles and fish.  Whenever we have to move we will both miss this quiet little lake. We have no plans to move anytime soon.

While I did my 2 laps around the lake Chris had some great success ad fishing Friday night. We went back last night for another peaceful hour.

One of my favorite things on the lake is this tree branch sticking out at one end. There is always a Cormorant perched on it. I never see any other Cormorants around, just the one.

This was sunset Friday night. The lake was perfectly flat and calm. There's nothing more relaxing than a paddle around the lake, unless it's late July 95 degrees and 95% humidity. Then you can't pay me to go out there just to be a buffet for the mosquitos. But, this week, it's perfect.

I also had a few sewing sessions to work on my scrappy HST project.

I have about 120 little triangles left to sew together before I start making them into 4-pathch blocks. For the small amount of time I spend sewing on this, it's progressing well.

This week I'll work on planning Groovy 3. I've got the new sun prints done and am trying to decide which ones I want to use. I'll take some option photos and share those Wednesday.