What I’m Working On…

I had a super busy week in the sewing room.  I did early morning sewing on most days and then did a HUGE bunch of sewing on Saturday.  We had enough rain that I didn’t have to water the garden.  On Friday I had picked all the produce from the garden that I could.  I decided that housecleaning, paperwork, email, and writing blog posts would just have to wait a day as I needed a big full day of sewing…and that is exactly what I did.

I have so many projects going on right now.  I am feeling a little overwhelmed.   In order to get a hold of my sewing room again, some of these need to wrap up…so that was my goal.

I have a couple of days off coming up and I want to focus two of those days on getting Eli and Emmett’s (my twin grandsons) baby quilts started.  There are so many projects going on right now, I just can’t start another one…so, SEW JO SEW!!  Get these projects a step further…

First off I pulled my County Fair top out from under the stacks.  I’ve had the top done but not ironed and not trimmed.  I’ve put this off as I hate trimming up odd corners and sizes like these.

I always dread it so I put it off.  Silly I know.  It really isn’t that hard and to date, I’ve never done it wrong, so why do I fret??  Who knows!

I am very happy with this top.  For those of you who need a refresher, this is quilt comes from the book  Scrap School: 12 All-New Designs from Amazing Quilters put together by Lissa Alexander.


I settled in and did the squaring up…

Here it is…

After it was squared up, I cut inner border strips.

My next project was to work on my leader and ender and project.  I’ve been sewing this a lot as I’ve been working on my quilt along blocks.  This came to me as a UFO from Ray….who got it from someone else.

The quilt is in Iowa Hawkeye colors and has an Iowa Hawkeye print in it.

The original quilter was only planning on making this 12 blocks wide.  I’ll be donating this to a benefit and want it to be bigger hoping it will draw more money.  I decided to add to what was there.

Here you can see I added more to three of the six rows that were started.

Rather than rip the rows apart, I opened the seam about 2″ long.  Then I sewed together partial strips and added them to make it the width I wanted.

I ended up getting a lot done.  In fact, it is a top.

Even though this was supposed to be a leader ender project, I gave up and sewed on it full force.  As I said earlier, I want to get some projects out of the sewing room and finished.  Also, the benefit is coming it August so I want it done for that too.

I ended up needing to cut more blocks to get it as big as I wanted it.   I actually had enough blocks but I didn’t have the variety I needed.  Being I had some leftovers, my plan is to make another quilt like this.  I need some more Iowa Hawkeye printed fabric.  I had some but it was all sewn up into masks last year.  I’ll have to ask Kelli if she has any.  I think hers got sewn into masks too so we’ll have to see.

Gray isn’t an Iowa Hawkeye color but the original creator had it cut and was using it so I kept up with it.  I actually very much like it added into the quilt.

I didn’t worry about block placement.  If blocks of the same print touched when the rows were sewn together, I just let them touch.

I need to find a backing and get the quilt on the quilting machine so I can get it bound.  It will need a bias binding so I’ll have to find fabric for that too.

There are lots of Iowa Hawkeye fans in the area so I’m hoping this brings in a good price.  I’m so thankful for the person who donated it to Ray and for Ray for passing it on to me.  It’s going to be great!

I worked on my American Quilter’s Stitch Along.

The quilt along is hosted by Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings.  You can find her blog HERE.  The pattern is being offered for free but Lisa is asking that people make a donation to Hogs for Heros for use of the pattern.

I started on week three so had to play catch up.  We’re now on week five.  This is the latest block.
I forged ahead and got all of the needed stripe units made so once I get the blue block done each week, all I have to do is add the already made stripe units.  That really helped me clean out a lot of mess.  This is all in one tote now.

Here are all of the blocks so far.

I really love them.

I also worked on my Red Sampler quilt along.  This week Lori Holt, the host, from Bee in my Bonnet gave us four 12″ quilt blocks to make.

I had watched Lori’s latest video on Youtube…this one.

and found out the blocks that would be up next and I cut them out early so I was sewing on them before they officially came out.

I got those blocks done and I got the house block done too.  That one wasn’t released yet.  I put the borders on all of the blocks too.  Once the quilt along is completely revealed I’ll be able to quickly get the blocks sewn together and into a top.

The next blocks were released today so I’ll be happily working on them.  The quilt along comes to a close at the end of July so I’m tickled that this is coming to a close too.

I did some cleaning and organizing too.  I cleaned up so much of the latest stuff I’ve been sewing on.  I’m happy to have a bit tidier of a sewing room.  I still have a long way to go in being cleaned up again but I’m happy with the progress that these three projects made in the last week.  WOW.  What a lot I got done this week.  I’m so happy that I really made a big dent in the quilting room…oh, and I got two charity quilts finished and bound.  I’ll have to tell you about them later this week.