I spent most of the first day of summer sewing blocks for the commission quilt. It was a hot day here, so staying in was a good idea. Work on my house and yard are continuing at a good rate. My yard is a vast expanse of dirt and my bedroom now has windows and a door. I am having 12 tons of base rock delivered today, can you say dust? I am so glad that I am not the one who has to move it all.

Back to the quilting. I need to make 4 more blocks today, I think I can do that.

Four days later…

I have a finished quilt top. I ended up adding another row of blocks to make it truly twin sized. When I cut the borders, I realized that the fabric print was eight inches wide, not eight and a half. Damn, the corner blocks were already made at that point, they are 8 ½”. Striped spacer to the rescue! I really like the pop of color that it adds to the border of this top. The final size is 86″ x 56″ , its for a twin bed.

Other than the quilt top, I haven’t done much sewing on anything else. I need to get some more quilting done on the Mrs. Miller quilt. If I can get the quilting of the HSTs done then I can do the bottom borders. Then I’ll take it off the frame, stitch the Commissioned quilt, and re-mount the Miller quilt turned so I can do the side borders. Thats my plan for this weekend.

With all the quilt making going on I haven’t been stitching much on my Cardinal cross stitch piece. I really want to have it done by August, for a birthday present.

Yesterday I went to a fun sort of thrift shop. Its called Fab-Mo and it is a place to find fabrics and all kinds of things for making fabric art, clothes, quilts, and collages. I spent 30.00 and got a bunch of “needed” things. I had seen in their newsletter that they had gotten in a lot of heavy duty canvas, it was about 50 inches wide and at 3.00 a yard, I splurged and got two yards. I also got some nice webbing, a few notions, a large piece of fabric suitable for a backing, a few vintage calico fat quarters, AND a stamped cross stitch piece that was mounted on a small sized scroll frame. I was so excited by the $3.00 price tag that I didn’t look at the embroidery until I got it home. I’m not sure I’ll be finishing that one anytime soon. Before I left the shop, I asked about donations, and they do take them, then I started cleaning out my sewing room in my mind. Maybe later this summer, I am imagining a great clean-out of bins and books and patterns. I have often thought of selling things, but, after all the time and effort needed to photograph, post, sell and send an item, it really doesn’t end up profitable. For instance, I have upholstery fabric that I’ll never use, that would be one empty bin.

Be Kind.