What I’m Working On…

I had a busy week in the sewing room…it was mostly chasing deadlines.

Last week I think I told you that I was working on quilts for the school Gala Fundraiser that they host each year. Every class has to make a project and donate it to the fundraiser. It gets auctioned off and the money raised goes towards helping with extra things the school needs from money to supplement a field trip to new playground equipment. It’s a great cause and I was happy to help with it.

Carver, my grandson, teacher’s message parents and asked if anyone had any ideas on what to make. Kalissa said something to me about it and I said I would be willing to help make a handprint quilt. I cut the blocks. A mom added the names to the blocks. Then Kalissa and another mom went to school and helped the kids put their handprints on the squares. Then the square came to me and I had to make them into quilts.

This is the quilt for Carver’s section.

It’s been a lot of back-and-forth getting the blocks. For this quilt I have the kids’ blocks but not the teacher blocks so it was on hold…we managed to get it together thank goodness because I found out the other kindergarten class needed me to make their quilt too.

I got the top together early in the week. Carver took it to school so the teacher could okay it…then later in the week I got it put on the longarm. I had made the backings while I was waiting for it to come back from school. Here it is on the longarm.

The black fabric Kalissa picked was the perfect fabric. I ended up putting a frame around all of the blocks to make them stand out. I used up all of the solid color scraps I had leaving out browns, tans and blacks. Being the fabric had circles in it I decided to do a loopy quilting motif. I did my best not to run over the kids’ names or handprints.

I used a variegated thread on the top. I ended up liking it.

I got that one through the longarm and bound on Saturday. Then I started the quilt for the other class. I was originally told there were 20 blocks so I sent to lay it out in a 4 x 5 setting. I had all but the last row made and found out it was wrong. There isn’t a helper in this classroom so there are only 19 blocks. UGH. Had I known that from the beginning, I might have laid it out differently but I ended up coming up with this layout. It isn’t my favorite but with the supplies I had, the time I had, and the resources I had, it’s about the best I could do.

The center block is a Trojan head, our school mascot.

I finished putting this together yesterday. Kalissa is going to send it to the teacher today. Hopefully, she will give it an okay. Then I can load it onto the longarm and get it finished.

The Gala is on the 17th of March. I have enough time to finish the longarming and binding this week and still get the quilts to them by Friday so they can make it into some of the publicity posts. WHEW! I’ll be so happy when they get out the door and on their way.

The thing for myself that I worked on was more leader and ender blue and white nine patches. I ran out of strips so I started sewing a few more of them together. I like having them by my machine to feed through while I’m working on other projects.

I’d really like to get another quilt cut out and use that for a leader and ender too….kind of like I intended for the Iowa Hawkeyes quilt and then Kalissa asked if we could donate it to the inclusive park fundraiser.

I’ve been thinking about seeing how much John Deer fabric I have and making a John Deere one for a fundraiser.

Mary from Country Threads Chicken Scratch blog pulled the UFO number for the month and it’s #6. Oregon or Bust is the quilt I will be working on. Last year I cut up the shirts needed for this but didn’t make any progress in getting it cuta Bonnie Hunter quilt.  It’s from the book Scraps and Shirttails II.  I have long wanted to make this ever since I found Mary from Country Threads version.

I collected shirts for several years as Mary’s version was made with only blue and orange 100% cotton upcycled shirts and I wanted to make mine like hers.

This is really more of a kit so there is no way I will get it finished in the month of March but I do plan to start on it. I have to take care of Anders, my grandson, on Friday so if I have the Gala class quilts finished, maybe I can work on cutting this out while Anders is napping. Fingers crossed!!

I really do want to get to this quilt. I promised a blog reader that I would swap shirt fabrics with her once this UFO was called. Of course, I have lost her contact info now. If it’s you, please email me again at joscountryjunction.com. I don’t know what I have for time but I’d really like to FINALLY make this quilt!!

…and that’s what I’m up to my quilting world.