Three Finishes and a Flimsy

My sewing machine has been humming this past week! We’ve had rain, wind, snow and cold, so it’s been nice and cozy staying indoors and getting things done. Mostly, by “things” I mean quilts, but we also had the fireplace insert installed on Tuesday. Here’s a not so good picture I snapped last night . The kitties love their warm beds in this weather! Oops, I forgot to remove the paperwork that the installers left on the mantel. Oh well - real life, right? 

So last week for our regular Sunday sewing session - which we call the Church of Bernina - Ruby was still gone. So it was just Cousin Kim and I. We had decided ahead of time that we would sandwich up (baste together) quilt tops while we listened to NPR in the morning. We got four of mine done. She has three to be quilted, but they’re too big for me to quilt on my machine, so she is having them done by a local quilt shop. After lunch, we sewed for awhile and then spent a couple hours finishing up a puzzle we’ve been working on for a long time. During the afternoon we listened to Christmas music. Ruby doesn’t care for Christmas music, so we took advantage of her absence to play it. We will play some during the month of December, but will alternate with regular favorites as a compromise for all of us. 

So all week I had plenty of quilts to quilt and bind, and managed to finish three of them. So get comfortable and let’s get started!

First up was this blue scrappy one I selected from my box of scrap “kits” to sew up last January and February. In looking through my blog posts from earlier this year, I could find the post showing the selection of the scrap kit, but no pictures of the finished flimsy. It was in February that we listed the old house for sale, and I had to disassemble my sewing studio and design wall for showings. And then we packed and moved in a short period of time, so it got buried. 

Here is the Blue and Brown quilt. Catchy name, eh? Hehe. It measures 41x53.5” and is quilted in a basic stipple. The backing is part of a blue sheet that Ruby had given me.

This quilt is the start of a new pile of donation quilts for Quilts for Kids. Here’s what the backing (striped sheet) looks like.

Next up was my October Rainbow Scrap Challenge experiment with my few black-and-bright scraps. To them I added solid blue, then some red and gold. Meh.

This bright little number was quilted with loosey-goosey-loops (my “technical” name for it) and finished at 40x49.5”. The navy starry backing, shown below, came from the fabric haul my friend Pat gave me last May.

The third and final finish for the week was my Stay at Home Round Robin quilt (SAHRR) from earlier in the year. I love this little quilt!

I quilted it with vertical serpentine stitches and bound it with the same blue striped cotton sheet as the first quilt shown above. It finished at 45x50.5” and will also be donated to Quilts for Kids.

Man, it feels so gooood to be back in the saddle again with my quilting!! But wait! There’s more! 

I had ordered some fabric several months ago to make this wall hanging or table topper for my friend Maureen.  She had given Bruce and me a cute antique side table and me some clothes. I had made her some jam and given her a cookie jar she loved that matched her collection of Americana art (a Mammy cookie jar), but wanted to do one more thing. So here is the flimsy. 

Maureen is also very much into Asian decorating, and these greens are her colors. I ordered the fabric on Spoonflower. The crane fabric was cut into a panel size. I added a stop border of plum and a wider border of a matching Japanese wave fabric. The green piece pinned to the left will be the backing and border. That’s on the docket for the coming week, along with the fourth sandwiched quilt to be quilted. 

If I get those two done, I’ll be happy, because this coming week is going to be a busy one with the HOA board. We have our regular business meeting on Monday and the Annual Meeting next Saturday with all the residents, and I have a small presentation and a couple poster board displays to prepare. 

Today Bruce and I are having a Barnes & Noble (book store) date. Our closest B&N moved to a new location that is even closer to us. We like to go for coffee and to read magazines, so we’re excited to do that in this new location. We’ll likely start our Christmas Shopping (gift cards) there as well.  

Life is good!

Linking to Scrappy Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.