OMG, It's Month End!

Time to wrap up all my August sewing and share it with you. I got a bit more done in the last few days, which is satisfying.

First, I finished my OMG - One Monthly Goal for August and am linking up to Elm Street Quilts and the August finish party. My goal was to complete the Firefighters Quilt this month, and OMG helped motivate me to get 'er done!  Here is the finished quilt, which measures 44x56".

The 12 panel blocks were not the same size, and unfortunately the way I set this quilt up rather accentuated that fact. But the kids won't care, and hopefully the firefighters who judge these quilts won't either. All the quilts made by our Salt Lake Quilts for Kids group will be displayed at Nuttall's Fabrics (our local Bernina store and the #1 Bernina dealer in the country) in their soon-to-be-opened Murray store. But that's not even until the end of October - National Fire Prevention Month. And then the firefighters themselves will judge. The firefighters will keep the quilts on their trucks to pass out to kids for comfort as necessary. Win or lose, it's a great cause!

I had to add a Red Cross (get it?) to the back because I didn't buy enough of the firefighter backing.

And this shot shows a little of the free-form flame quilting I did, which was a first for me (as you can probably tell, LOL!). Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

So that's the Firefighter Quilt, which was not only my August OMG, but also Goal #4 from my 3rd Quarter Finish-Along list, which you can see HERE.

Finally, I have my recap of Rainbow Scrap Challenge sewing for August. The color this month is/was light to medium (and bright) blues.

I finished about 45 blocks. They included 2 Beachcomber crumb blocks, 1 row of selvage tumblers, 4 selvage four-patches, 6 Cracker blocks, 4 Anvil blocks, 8 Garlic Knots, 2 International Sisters (oops! forgot to include those), some bitcoin blocks, 8 nine-patch variation blocks, and 9 string blocks (3 @ 9" and 6 at 6").

If you want to see more blue scrappy sewing goodness, hop over to Angela's So Scrappy blog for Scrappy Saturday. I'm looking forward to just chilling in my chair with a cup of coffee and checking out all the fun sewing that's been going on in August.

And speaking of chilling in a chair, here is another picture of Bruce with his trusty sidekick Alfalfa. Alfie is the self-appointed morale officer.

I luvs laying on my Dad....

What do YOU want?

Have a great weekend!

One Monthly Goal (OMG) for August

For the month of August, my sewing goal will be to finish this Firefighter Quilt for my local Quilts for Kids group. We had our August meeting last weekend, so I won't be able to turn it in until our September meeting at the end of September. But I'd love to knock it out ASAP so I can concentrate on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks in light blue this month. And I have 8 quilts for QFK to quilt before the September meeting, although two are done already. There is no shortage of projects here!  

So this is what the Firefighter quilt looks like now:

First I have to border the blocks on two sides with the Dalmatian print. Then they will get either red, blue or orange (ombre orange fabric left over from Saguaro Sunset) and then white (which is up on the design board but not very visible). Once the 12 blocks are bordered, they will be set with the colors running diagonally, like above. I'll see what the size is at that point (I'm winging this), and then perhaps add a border or two. And I have some cute fireman fabric for the back. I plan to quilt flames onto it; I've even been practicing.

So, all in all, a do-able goal. 

I may be unable to post for awhile. Bruce's begins his first arm surgery tomorrow (we have to be there at 5:30 a.m.!!) If I don't respond to your comments, please understand. But we're hoping that things will go smoothly and settle down into a home-care-and-surgery routine. Fingers crossed that the next 4-6 weeks fly by relatively uneventfully. 

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts and the OMG August goal-setting post.