SYLVIA'S BRIDAL SAMPLER

This week's block is N-9, Broken Dishes.

QUILT INSPIRATION

Sunrise over Whitefish Bay this morning.  -- Picture compliments of Village Fabrics and Crafts, my favorite LQS.    They live a few miles south of us on the same shoreline.  As she commented,  perfect inspiration for a variegated yarn or a batik fabric.  Nature is the BEST inspiration!

SANTA'S WORKSHOP OPENS

A wonderful box arrived in the mail from Fabric Shack, one of my favorite on-line shops, both for prices and service (no affiliation).   These cute Camp Woodsy panels will be the center of camping quilts for two of my grandsons.

Christmas is only 100 days away!  The count begins :)

AIMING FOR PROGRESS

There are now two more lessons finished on my Aiming for Accuracy Quilt-Along quilt.  The units with friendship stars, 9-patches, and hourglass, are new.  They are spread out on my queen sized guest bed.

 

These are the last two actual units.  From here on out, it's putting everything together -- spacer units, sashing, border, etc.  Yippee!

 

Here's my updated chart.

 

 

 

This picture shows what happens when you have dogs, and must use a bed top for a design wall.

 

 

Have a super weekend everyone.

 

 

 

 

GEESE HAVE LANDED

The flying geese from my last post have landed and are encircling Debbie's round robin.  It is now on its way home to Arizona.  She's planning to quilt some lovely feathers in the open space.  I can't wait to see it completed.

This block is a Buddhist Pinwheel.  The random look of the placement is actually very controlled.  The light, medium, medium-dark, and dark colors are in a certain placement.  The monks meditate while stitching this block.  The strange color placement took all my concentration!  No meditating here.  In order to stitch this block, I cut the triangles and then made the hourglass sections.  There was no way to quick-piece and have the color placement correct.  The hour-glass blocks finish 3" and then the border brings the block up to 12".

This block is going into a small block lotto, and was requested by Tricia, the winner for this month. 

THE GEESE ARE FLYING

Autumn is in the air here in Upper Michigan.  The geese are flying in my sewing loft.

 

But the view still looks just like summer!

 

 

The fall winds have picked up here though, and especially inland a bit, the colors are starting to turn;  -- all signs of the season changing.

 

 

 

ROWS ARRIVE

My rows are back home.  This will be the start of a sports-themed quilt for my grandson, Devon, and I made the top row.

The pennants, snowballs, friendship stars, and football field, were made by other participants.  Now, how to put it together?  Hmmm...................

WORKING ON..............

Lately I've been finishing up swap commitments.  Cutting it close with the deadlines makes me uncomfortable, so I'm ahead of the game this time.

Here's the next, and final round, for the medallion swap I'm in.

 

This is Debbie's beautiful quilt.  I love her colors!  The first gals have sure done a super job.  Hope I can do it justice.  I think I know what I'm adding, but ideas and thoughts are welcome too.  It's at 62" right now.  Hmmm.............

 

 

 

 

Here's a row I just made for our row swap.  Terry has a sewing room theme.  I enjoyed doing the hand embroidery.  The thread on the spools is made from strip set extras from another project.  I thought it was a great use of them.  This was the last round for me to work on, and my rows are in the mail to me right now also.

 

MEDALLION ROUND THREE

A while back I posted a photo of Leigh's medallion quilt and asked what you thought I might do with it.  I really appreciated all the ideas.  For most of the summer I thought I'd go with the dogtooth border suggestion.  But in the end I decided to make a quarter-square-triangle border. 

Here it is now:

 

And here's a refresher of what it looked like when I received it.

 

 

Lynda, the stitcher before me in this swap, left her blue border large, so I could trim it how I needed to fit mine.  Did that ever help!  I trimmed to a multiple of 5, 35.5" to fit seven 5" blocks per side.  Using an odd number per side allowed me to keep the pattern going in the corner blocks.

This is really fun to do and I know it stretches my quilt design skills.  But, I have to say I feel a bit like "Check" one more off my list.  This is due Sept. 4, so nothing like cutting it close!

I have 3 other swap commitments this year -- one more medallion which I'll share soonest, a row swap final row, and stars for Bea's swap.  Once those are done, I'm swearing off swaps for a bit.  I have soooo many UFO's and so many projects in process that I want more time for.  Oh, and a new Quilter's Book Club to read and quilt.  And Jennifer Chiaverini's Loyal Union Samper group will start their BOW in Oct.  I need more time!

Hope you, too, find some time to stitch this Labor Day Weekend (at least here, in The States).  It's a labor of love :)