Busy, But Not Much to Report

It was a busy and fun week again. We had 2-3 days of sunshine and mid-forties temperatures, melting much of the snow and allowing us to get out for walks. It’s always a mood brightened to get out and soak up some rays!

This morning is my second New Owner class for my new Bernina 570QE. I’m happy to report that she (still unnamed, any ideas?) and I are getting along famously, and it’s become second nature operating her. The class of about 8 of us (plus teacher) is a fun group, and we are mostly named Cathy (slightly less than half). That cracks me up because at my Weight Watchers workshop on Tuesday mornings (when younger folk are at work), there are always lots of women named Cathy (and Ann) and men named Tony. We’re all Boomers, naturally!

I did get the Bow Ties blocks sewn together into a 42x48 top. It joins the stack of to-be-sandwiched and quilted stack, now numbering four. Good grief! Didn’t I just do a Finishing Frenzy in November and December? Yes, I did - and I never shared the fact that I finished 24 little quilts in that frenzy. How can there be four more already?

January’s color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is dark and bright blue. My first block for this week was the Split Nine Patch, which I made a couple years ago and absolutely loved. When it works, it works. Here are my 16 blocks for this month. 

Then I got the urge to start whittling away some of the blue strings. I decided to start in the center of each block with a navy string and work out through the various colored strings, ending up with the brights at the two sides. It made an interesting ombre effect, and I was surprisingly able to keep that up for all 56 blocks. Here they are just slapped up (sideways) on the design board. The papers are even removed! I’ll get them sewn together this coming week. 

My friend Ruby brought over a chunk of cute fabric that she’d found at an estate sale and gifted it to me. It had been sewn into curtains and parts were faded. I cut away all the bad parts and was then able to cut over forty 6.5” blocks. I’ll use them as the center in Happy blocks and make two quilts from them. 

I may have enough dark and bright blue 2.5” strips to frame up 20 of them and finish up another quilt top. We’ll see. If not, I can throw in a few other color strips. The bright print gives me lots of choices.

That’s it for today. Keeping it short and sweet (like me! HA!) so I can get to my morning class!! Thanks for dropping by!