What I’m Working On…

Early in the week, I told myself that I was going to spend all of my extra moments during the day in the sewing room. I have so many projects that are started and need that last little umph to get them to the finish line.

Many of you reading this are going to think I accomplished so much…and I did, but it was out of willpower that I did it. I was so ready to move on to other projects. I wanted these all done and for me to have a clean slate to pull out something new or different to work on. Plus I had the impending birth of my grandson to give me that extra push.

You might remember that I finished the quilt tops for my granddaughters Lucy and Lilly. You might also remember that I took the centers with the panel blocks out of the original quilt and made a note to myself that I would finish these and use them as baby gifts. Well…I wanted the mess cleaned up and I didn’t want to pack those centers away leaving me with a UFO so…what did I do?? I finished them.

If I have to make another quilt in this color scheme or with nine-patch blocks for a little while, I think I’m going to scream. I was so ready to be done with the nine patches and these colors.

I do have to say that I’m super happy to report that my 2 1/2″ bright fabric scrap box is totally under control. It might look like a lot to some of you but it’s actually really good. Previous to making all of these quilts, I couldn’t get the lid on the bucket!

From there I didn’t let any grass grow under my feet. I immediately picked up my True Blue quilt. I sewed all of the extra blocks I made last week. You might remember I was debating about putting on a border or making more blocks. Making more blocks won out.

Here I am putting on the last row.

Next, it was time to get the iron out and start ironing…Can you believe I had FIVE tops to iron??

Here is True Blue.

There are two of these that I will gift as baby quilts…

There are two of these for my granddaughters.

After ironing it was back to the sewing room. My deadline project needed a little attention. Row #2 went on. Thankfully there are only 10 rows in all.

I keep trying to work on this little by little and slowly I’m making some progress.

Next, time to make some backings. I had several blog readers suggest that I needed to somehow make my granddaughters’ quilts different so they could tell them apart. I already planned two different backings. It’s the same print only in different colors. I was able to purchase mine at Quilted Twins but it looks like it’s no longer available.

I loaded the first quilt on the frame and…

Finished it. I did straight-line quilting and think it was a great option for this.

I get asked all of the time…YES. I just eyeball it. It’s not perfect and I don’t even try for it to be perfect.

From there… I did the other matching quilt. I forgot to take a picture of it.

Then I made a giant backing piece long enough to be enough for both of the smaller quilts.

On smaller quilts, it takes almost as much time to load them as it does to actually do the quilting. This way I only had to load backing once. You can see the space in between the two quilt tops.

Here they are coming off of the longarm. Rosie is supervising.

From there, I loaded my True Blue quilt onto the machine. You might remember my saying that I got a nice blue sheet from the thrift store. That is what I used for the backing. Even though it was a king-sized sheet, I had to add extra blocks to the back to make it big enough.

My shoulder told me that I better give the work at the longarm a rest so I did and then decided to start binding quilts.

About 2 1/2 hours later, I had the four of them bound. I took them downstairs so I could take pictures…but it was way too windy for that.

Picture-taking will have to wait for another day.

…and that friends was my progress in the sewing room.

I am absolutely thrilled to have accomplished so much.

Next week I hope to start my newly born grandson’s baby quilt. That will be a crumb quilt with free from pieced ABCs around the border. In the past, I’ve had so many people ask me for tutorials on how I do the ABC letters. I’m hoping to work on videos showing you how I do that.

I am also going to be pulling out my Smores UFO and will work on that…hopefully a tutorial will come for using the ruler for those blocks as well.

There is much to look forward to.