Finishing Frenzy Interrupted by Turkey!

Well, apparently I cannot keep up a breakneck finishing pace for more than three weeks without pausing to enjoy some refreshment, LOL. This week’s guest star was Tom Turkey, with supporting cast of cornbread dressing, cranberry relish and pumpkin pie. YUM! But it was all carefully prepared and consumed within my weight loss plan, so it’s all good. The bonus - and truly the best part of the week - was seeing family again after several reclusive weeks. Let the Holiday Season begin!! 

While I didn’t get as much done in the studio as I’d hoped, it was still a pretty good week. Here we go.

My friend Ruby asked me to show her how to free motion quilt. After she watched me quilt a little quilt a couple weeks ago, she was ready to try on her own. So… she quilted this cute patchwork quilt that I assembled from 25-patch blocks sent to me by Catherine in New Jersey (no blog).  I showed all the blocks back in June HERE. You can read the backstory there, too. 

Isn’t it cute? Ruby practiced her stipple and did a great job. Then I bound and labeled it. It finished at 39x49”.  Here’s the pieced backing.

Catherine had sent more 25-patch blocks. The two brown ones are already pieced into a quilt top that I will show next week as a finished quilt. Sorry, I didn’t get any photos before hanging it up in the To-be-Quilted line.  There were several pink blocks as well, and they’ll be used in a quilt the next time we visit our pink scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC).

Speaking of the RSC, my other finish for the week was my Crumb Tumblers quilt. Making crumb-pieced tumblers, alternated with solid-pieced tumblers, was one of my 2022 RSC projects. This month I added a brown row at the top and a gray-to-black row at the bottom to give it proper length.

Again, this was quilted in a stipple, which is my preferred pattern for string, crumbs and wherever there is a lot of small piecing. The finished size is 40x48”.

Both of the quilts are for Quilts for Kids. At this time, I’m totally out of QFK labels, so I’ll be making a trip over to my friend Sandy’s house (our chapter President) to deliver about a dozen finished quilts, five quilt kits and to pick up a couple dozen more labels. 

The next pic is the quilt top I put together of brown strings and scraps. It’s basted and next in line to be quilted.

And these are the remaining bullseye courthouse quilt blocks that were another RSC project for this year. This will be the 3rd and final quilt from these blocks. Right now, they’ve just been arranged on the design wall, waiting to be sewn into a top. 

That’s it for the quilting, but I do have one more share. This week was Cousin Kim’s birthday. As my gift to her, I bought her a cute blue bowl and filled it with chocolate and a gift card to Beans and Brews. Then I used a plastic plant saucer (the kind used under a planter to catch water) to make a lid. It was tied on with twine.

Next came the fun part. I went out to the yard and foraged any potential decorations, such as cypress, rose hips, holly, coneflower heads, berries, colorful leaves, dried hydrangea and even a dried rose. They were then hot glued to the plastic top to make a dried arrangement. No paper wrapping - yay! 

Best of all, she loved it!!

Have a great week. Linking to Scrappy Saturday/Rainbow Scrap Challenge and Oh Scrap!