Sue

Finally finished this WIP. The jelly roll is from Riley Blake & supported autism research. It was given to me by the hubster for my birthday when I first began quilting & has waited for the “perfect” project. At the beginning of my Covid isolation I decided to pull it out, just pick a pattern, scrounge up background fabric & sew it up. I finally got it quilted last fall in a cute puzzle pattern & got the binding on & hand-sewn. It’s destined to be a 2022 Christmas gift. “Twists & Turns” is from a free tutorial by Melissa Corry and is my 100th quilt.

RSC2021 flimsy done! This is the re-designed Plus quilt I did without a pattern. I had a different original idea but didn’t like how it was going halfway through the year, so unpicked a lot & put it together like this. It’s made exclusively from 2.5″ scrappy squares. It’s hung in the closet with the ever-growing pile of tops to be quilted.

And here’s what my quilting partner & I are doing in our weekly virtual quilting group: Cookie Cutter by Jaybird Quilts. Without knowing it, we both took a class for this quilt (at different quilt shops) in summer 2018. One day a few months later I mentioned something about this quilt & how I was scared to get it back out & do the cutting & sewing. Then she said she had it, too! Hilarious. We’ve been dreading it for years now & after finishing our large hexie quilt, I got it out & started looking through the instructions. I realized that in the time that’s transpired, we’ve done everything in the instructions in other quilts! So we are pounding out a color set each week & they look great. With holidays, we expect to finish sometime in January! Hers is solid, mine is prints by Tula Pink.

I haven’t been posting, but I have been sewing during October. Because I got off track with the monthly color, I went off doing my own thing. But here’s an update on my RSC progress, plus some other stuff. I sewed together the top for the zig-zag quilt inspired by Diann at Little Penguin Quilts. I drooled over this last year when she was making it & I’m so glad I did it this year. I decided it’s a big enough lap quilt without any borders, so it’s in the pile for the quilter. Yay!

I also sewed the top for Brick House, which becomes my third top done for RSC2021! I got the idea for this quilt from Sylvia, who was inspired by Jo’s Country Junction, who found the idea originated with Julie of Me and My Quilts. Again, a quilt I coveted in the past & got around to sewing this year. So cute & scrappy.

This friendship star block is a direct lift from Deb A. I saw these blocks last year in the RSC link up & determined that quilt was in my future. I made 2 blocks each month this year & put them up on my design wall. After mulling it over, I decided I want it larger & need 8 more blocks. So this project will continue in 2022 where I’ll make 1 block/month & finish it off then. I love how sparkly it is!

In honor of my friend who passed away at the end of Sept after her third fight with breast cancer & for October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I bought the new Riley Blake fat quarter bundle for this quilt. I pulled out an old pattern that I’ve never made called Helter Skelter by Abbey Lane Quilts & just pounded through it. It went to the quilter at the end of October. My plan is to finish it off & save it for a friend or family member who needs it.

My quilting partner & I made this modern hexagon quilt this month over FaceTime. We also sewed the backing & binding together so it’s ready for the quilter & finishing when it’s quilted. This was a fun challenge to get those hexies lined up. When I showed it to my husband, he asked me why there weren’t blocks in all that open space on each side. I tried to explain modern design but he just asked if we were keeping it or giving it away, cuz it’s not his favorite. I said, gifting.

Also this month, I made this top as a favor for a friend to give her son for Christmas. I used my stash & she bought the backing & is paying for the quilting. The pattern is Dual Screen by A Bright Corner & it’s in his college colors. The pattern was just released & I bought it, so it was in the set of possibles I sent her. She liked it the best, so I was able to make a brand new pattern! It’s also at the quilter right now.

And a flurry of sewing down binding & movie watching has gotten me three finishes this month. “The Beehive” is slated for a Christmas gift & is from an old FQS Sew Sampler box. The fabric has been in a project box for years waiting for the perfect person. Now it’s made & ready.

This is the Festival of Trees 2021 auction quilt to raise money for Primary Children’s Medical Center. It’s in honor of my brother-in-law, an Air Force pilot who died in the line of duty. I’ve been doing a quilt for him for several years now, since it got too hard for our extended family to do a large tree. His widow adds books & my niece adds a small tree to the mix & we pick a theme each year that has something to do with his life. This year it refers to him being in a high school production of “The Wizard of Oz” with a sister. Fabric collection & free pattern are Jill Howarth from Riley Blake.

And this is “The Farmer’s Wife”. My husband gave me the book several years ago for Christmas, & my quilt group started working on it. We did one or two blocks a month so it took us a very long time. Theirs are done in traditional repro fabrics, but of course, mine is a bright modern rainbow! I actually love this way more than I thought I would while we were making the blocks, so I think another rainbow sampler is in my future.

Finishes! The shade from the tree makes the background look blue but it’s really scrappy white & cream. LOL This is the King-size Irish Chain quilt using the tutorial from Melissa Corry that I’ve been working on all year for RSC2021. Because it’s a Christmas gift, I went ahead on my monthly colors to get it done & to the quilter. But I worked on it monthly for the first half of the year & many of the RSC gang was very encouraging. It was large to piece & so big to hand sew the binding. I had to put it on a kitchen chair in front of me to hold the bulk while I sewed it. It was too heavy & bulky to keep on my lap. The binding is black Confetti Ombre by V & Co. & it’s really fun.

I finished the binding on “Pumpkin Patch” on the last night of September so it’s in the orange month. This was fast-tracked because it’s for me & I want to snuggle with it this fall. I bought the fabric on August 10 & hammered through cutting & piecing it, got it to the quilter, then binding done quickly. So happy to have it done & proud of myself for doing it so fast with all the other projects going on. And I ate breakfast this morning with it draped over my lap while reading & eating! Happy dance!

Orange plus blocks. These are from the partial top I’ve been ripping apart to re-envision into a whole new design. They are all weird sized because I left some gray around some of them whenever possible while ripping because I now have an idea of how I want to lay them out & I need “sashing”. No idea how many I actually have or need, so when I lay them out, I may need to make more. And the last row for the super fun zig-zag quilt from Diann at Little Penguin Quilts. Will sew rows in October or November & think about borders.

Orange is probably the final color for several of my projects. Next month I will start laying some of these out & seeing if I need more of anything. The friendship star blocks were inspired by Deb A. & I love how they turn out. The middle column are 4 resized Cozy Stars from the Pat Sloan QAL called Cozy Things. The tall columns are for the Brickyard quilt inspired by Julie of Me and My Quilts. I have orange blocks for two more RSC projects to finish up during the last few days of September coming up.

Here’s my big accomplishment for the week: I finished up the final week, Week 8, of the Clear Sky Quilt Along with Andy Knowlton of A Bright Corner. I kept up each week & this week I put together the flimsy. Although I did each block with scrappy white backgrounds, I used the same fabric for the sashing. Turns out I didn’t have enough for the borders, so I cut what I had left into sashing size for a stop border & made my own pieced border from leftovers. I used up most of the Lori Holt aqua & brown chunks I used as the basis for the quilt, so that was good, & the rest can go into upcoming scrap quilts.