October - time to put September behind us and move forward

 My husband's radiation is finished and now he is healing from the ordeal and spending a lot of time sleeping.  For me, time for the caregiver to attend some of her appointments for her well being - today the optometrist, next week the dentist and ongoing C-pap phone appointments to keep me on track.  We are back to playing indoor tennis which is a bonus on a rainy or wet day.  

September was fairly productive.  My heartstrings group chose jelly rolls or 2.5" strips and I pulled out a set of aging blocks, found a pattern from years ago called Honor and it meant adding some triangle corners.  After finishing the quilt top, I realized that I should have use a darker or brighter corner fabric, but the top is done! It is labeled and quilted and waiting for binding.  I used panel on the back which makes it more suitable as a Quilt of Valour. 

While digging around in my bin of projects patiently waiting, I found a really old Bali pops jelly roll and decided that it would be a great time to use it.  My choice of pattern was a Villa Rosa double hourglass.

I won't have enough blocks with using just the package so am adding in more blocks made from strips from my stash of batiks, trying to find ones that have dots.  There isn't a lot of choice but I will intersperse them among the ones that are true dot pops. 

 

The last week of the month is is quilting time and I knew I didn't have a huge number of quilt tops on hangers so was a bit slow in getting started.  Our garden is still producing crazy amounts of zucchini and tomatoes so some picking time was needed.  I also needed to get the grass cut during nice weather when rain was in the forecast.  But, I did get started and now have a stack of them quilted and they are waiting for binding.

This triangle quilt that I worked on during the last modern guild sew in was put together and is one of the finished projects.

I also finished up the brown scrappy strips that I pieced for my monthly rainbow scrap challenge.

These are my brown leaders and enders that was inspired by Bonnie Hunter called oopsie daisy blocks. 

Running Doe chose Buttons as their pattern for the month of September and I was hesitant to get started because I wasn't inspired.  I went through my container of bundles of fabrics, (same one where I found the Hoffman strips) and there was a kit of yellow/pinkish batiks that came in a mystery box and I didn't like the pattern with it so, I decided it was a great way to complete the challenge. 

I did add in a few other batiks and ended up with two tops.  One is slightly smaller than the other but I think they are bright and cheery and need to figure out where to donate them. 

My bruises are fading after my fall but now I have a C-pap machine to contend with.  I would love to say I am leaping out of bed in the morning and my sleep is awesome.  But, I can't.  It is taking some getting used to as I am NOT a back sleeper and love to be on my stomach which doesn't work... so attempting some sleeping on my side and trying to make that work but, I feel like most of the night, I am awake.  The data however, shows that I am sleeping much better and having very few apnea episodes so... time will tell.  

First week of the month.  Binding week and I had great plans to start yesterday and ended up outside in the garden.  Today, I had great plans but, after morning tennis, a noon eye appointment, and starting to write my blog update, the power went out.  The best laid plans went awry.  Oh well... I did search out my lanterns for power outages, plugged a battery operated light into my power bank and just as it was getting a little bit dark (and just when I thought dinner would be a can of soup on my gas range), the power came back on.  

So, working on this blog after dinner, while a chocolate zucchini cake bakes and I will attempt to get one quilt bound before my 8pm sewing curfew.  (self imposed but nice to spend some with my husband before he goes to bed).