Stitching and planning but not many finishes!

One quilt totally finished... binding is on!  The stack of quilts to be bound is smaller but am trying to "grow" the pile without a lot of success.  Five days left in August to complete 4 quilts?

This quilt is a giant split 9 patch made by using 10" squares.  I thought it was a good choice for the large scale daisy prints?
So what else have I been working on?
Well, my orange RSC (rainbow scrap challenge) strips and rail fence blocks for August are made!

13 strip pieced blocks and 44 rail fences. Can cross that off the list and now wait to see what colour is chosen for September. And my orange scraps are ready to be sorted and put away.

I have been working on some blocks that are being sent out by Sparrow Quilting in Edmonton.  So far, there have been 6 blocks released and I have 2 completed with #3 cut and ready to stitch.

I also decided that I better start on a block of the month that is called Heartland Heritage and I have stitched Jan and Feb blocks.  I am obviously way behind but have great plans to get caught up.

And blocks are made for our modern guild bingo game in September. There were specifics as to types of fabrics and colours to make our game boards.  I need to remember to pack some buttons for markers.  The blocks will be collected after we play and made into community quilts.

I have fabric ready to make a sample of my fat quarter block quilt that I will be demonstrating to the Abbotsford guild in September.  Only a couple of weeks away so I need to get cutting and stitching and have my samples in various stages of completion. I won this stack of fat quarters at a guild lottery and have added in a few more fabrics to get the number to 20 which makes a nice size donation quilt.

And, I have pulled out a kit from Connecting Threads that I have had kicking around for a year or more... not sure if it was from last year or previous to that?  Time to get the wallhanging made and an appropriate project for this time of year.

I worked quite diligently this week on my Quilter's planner blocks and got them finished for the rest of the year.  This is one project that I do not want to haul back to Arizona for the winter and don't want to come home next spring and have a half finished quilt.  I made the rest of the blocks and got the setting done and outer border added.  It isn't important to get it quilted, that can wait but you never know if it makes into September's pile of projects.

This panel was in the bottom of the basket that I pulled out to work on the guild's preemie challenge.  I am pretty sure this was a panel from Wed Quilt Diva Dee.  I added an outer border to get the panel to an appropriate size and all it needs is layering, quilting and binding.

I do have my preemie challenge ready for quilting but you need a bit of patience to see it as I don't seem to have taken a picture of it.  Next posting, it will be done!
We finally have rain and this time last week, the a/c was chugging away to keep us cool but today, the furnace is running to warm up the house?  Crazy weather.  Sunshine tomorrow which will be wonderful after a good soaking by Mother Nature but sure makes me want to hibernate.  Autumn is on the way! 

Hopefully, my next post will have some progress on blocks of the month and quilting! 

Tennis, sockeye and not much time bonding with my machine.

Sockeye season is here.  It has been four years since the last run of sockeye and so the sports fishermen are hitting it hard, including my husband.  Of course, catching the fish is the fun part, the work begins when these fish land on my kitchen counter.  I am packaging some in small filets perfect for the two of us for dinner as well as a few larger pieces in case we have company and some whole pieces that I will can later in September when the temperatures are cooler and I can have my doors and windows open.
And, the evenings are getting shorter, much darker much earlier so I am doing more hand sewing of binding these days as I am not tempted to sit downstairs and sew once it is dark outside.

I managed to cut batting to go with a few more quilt tops and figure out which backings would work with each.  They are stacked, waiting for me.

My 'quilts waiting' have diminished in number! That feels good!!

The binding got done on my selvedge mug mats.

And the binding got finished on a quilt that was a kit from Connecting Threads purchased last November. The pattern is called Tabby.

Another quilt that got bound and is now totally finished is a project from last fall by Christa Watson called Modern Puzzle.  This is a free pattern that is on her blog. Great use of a package of 2.5" strips.

My buddy was visiting last weekend and showed me a quilt that she made from the pattern I made last fall (Jan 9th blog) that uses fat quarters.  I had a bundle of fabrics that were 12" wide x the width of the fabric and though that maybe I could make them work in this pattern. This kit of fabric has been hanging around my sewing room for a few years and time to use it!

I am in the process of joining all the squares.  I had to do some figuring to get twenty squares out of the fabric I had and some fabrics got used twice but that is ok because it used up most of the fabric and it will be a bright and coordinated quilt.

Still more quilts to quilt, quilts to bind and lots of blocks to make into quilts.  But am working like a turtle, slow and steady though I haven't done my bonding with my machine for the last 10 days.  Unusual but I have had to do a lot of our garden watering with my husband on the river fishing. And there is a lovely number of packages of cabbage rolls in the freezer.  One day at a time!
I did manage to get the binding finished on this quilt that I made last week from fabrics that were from my friend Dee's stash that she is reducing.  Not too sure why I am adding to my stash but no guilt since this one is done and ready for donation. 

Am off to sew for 15 minutes.  My new plan since I don't seem to be spending entire afternoons sewing like 'normal for me'.

Hot August nights

August began with cooler weather which was a wonderful break from our heat in July but, typical August weather is back with hot days and so far, cooler nights for sleeping but I don't think that is going to last this week.  Hot August nights are arriving momentarily!
Sewing? Quilting? Not quite as much done because I have done some 'other' tasks around the house.  I cooked up lots of ribs in salt free sauce and froze 6 meals after a nice feed for my husband and grandson yesterday.  Today, I cleaned and organized my storage cupboard that contains cleaning supplies, light bulbs, a crazy amount of C cell batteries and other odds and ends.  Plus, my husband took the boat out of our garage to test it on the river so I grabbed the opportunity to vacuum the corners and edges and hopefully, there are few less spiders to weave their webs.  And I washed my side of the garage floor.
No quilting today. But, I do have my orange and brown strips and bits in a basket ready for the Oh Scrap RCS challenge this month.

 And, the binding got stitched down on this Quilt of Valour.  This is made from some of the happy blocks that my Wednesday quilting group made from lots of fabric I took weekly and passing around, hoping they would participate.  And they did!  Enough blocks for four quilts and this is the second one quilted and bound.

And the binding got stitched down on this Autumn strips quilt.  Yes, it looks like the one I finished earlier but it is different though it has the same border and binding.  I made two quilts from one package of 2.5" strips.

These two selvedge mug rugs are still waiting patiently to be bound... soon!

And I brought home a kit from the FVMQG in July to make a blocks for our charity quilting program.  I couldn't stop at one but did stop at two because, otherwise, I would have kept making more and more.  Fun and addictive.

These are two blocks that one of my Wed Diva quilting group put in my basket and when I got home, I had to figure out how to make these.
A bit of a mathematical challenge but instead of working it out on paper, I tried to do it with fabric.  That wasn't a great idea and after making a set of four blocks that didn't turn out quite right, I stopped and drafted the pattern on graph paper and now I have the correct measurements for each step.

Start with a center surrounded by a border.

Slice, rearrange and stitch back together.  Ooops, my seams don't all line up.  Have more fabric cut and ready to make another sample that is correct measurements.
The evenings are getting darker earlier and so that means heading upstairs to sit and watch tv and handstitch bindings.  I got two done last week and hopefully another two this week?