The dog days have come and gone, officially ended on 8/11. I’m ready to cruise into fall now. I have a few finishes to post this time. First is the Cross stitch piece “Heaven and Nature” designed by Teresa Kogut. I stitched this over a period of 7 months, starting at the end of January 2023. During that time I also stitched on and finished Pilgrims Progress (Longdog Sampler). Both of these are now framed and on the wall. The Pilgrim I had professionally framed, I started to do it myself, but the straight border wasn’t staying straight. I tried pinning and lacing, but there was too much surface area to get it to even out. H&N was a bit easier, I laced it and only had to tweak it a bit. When I placed the design on the linen, I started a little closer to the left side than I should have. It was about and inch off center, so I only had about 3/4 of an inch to pull around to the back on that side. It all worked out though. Oh, and I started on Consider the Lilies. Another huge sampler, I’ll be doing a SAL with Jo Kramer, of Jo’s Country Junction. It’s a pretty loosely scheduled SAL, one page a month for the next 24.

In my last post I was celebrating the last Dwelling themed quilt. I spoke too soon, and there is to be one more made with the scraps. Sigh. I have all the star blocks made for another Skylights pattern. I am going to try to get the square block pieces cut this week.

I other quilting news, I threw this top together last weekend. It started as a fat quarter pack of Liberty fabrics I got on sale some where. The pattern is by Busy Hands Quilts, called Whimsical. I had seen this quilt a few times and liked its simplicity and ease of using scraps and such. All about the placement of the HSTs. I used the Accuquilt 3 ½” triangle die and it got cut up in no time. The borders are a little different, as I ran out of FQ’s I searched and searched for an appropriate or matching Liberty print to no avail. I did find this pretty magenta one, but only 3/4 of a yard was available, so it’ll be the binding. Another impetus for making this pattern is a set of quilting designs that I got from Wasatch quilting last month. In the August Masters collection are two sets made just for this quilt. Its the quilting that makes the quilt right?

August also brought me another commissioned quilt. A beautiful sampler quilt from the late 1980s. The maker started hand quilting this one, but for whatever reasons folded it up and put it away for a while. I am going to machine quilt the rest of the blocks and borders and she will finish hand quilting the center. Getting this on the frame took a bit of engineering. The backing isn’t square, thankfully it is large enough with plenty of extra on the sides. I put it on long-ways so I can quilt the long borders first. Plus one side had the selvage still attached, hooray for straight edges. I may have to turn this one, but the borders are made of Celtic knots, so with some careful measuring and placement I may be able to do the horizontal top and bottom vertically. Once I got the backing attached to the leaders, I had to smooth out the quilt and batting from the center. Lots of rolling back and forth, so there can be no folds in the backing. Although the batting is a thin-ish polyester, it is cooperating and adding enough pouf. Yesterday I stitched in the ditch around the first six blocks and did a bit of cross hatching in the background of the one with the lace cameo. I am planning on doing one inch grids in each block background and some quilting of the blocks motifs. The hand quilted center is done this way. Thankfully this is a well made quilt and the only stitching I had to remove was the basting threads.

The Q24 was kept busy these last few weeks too. I quilted the Sparrow quilt and the Batik Christmas tree quilt. I was looking for something when I came across the binding for the Botanica quilt. I had thought I finished that one. No, I did square it up, just didn’t bind it. I bound the three of them over a couple of days. The Botanica is a queen size, I warmed up with the two smaller ones first.

Two weeks ago, I loaded up my car with a bunch of fabric, books and notions to go to Fab-Mo. They are a non-profit organization that fosters fabric and fiber arts in the community and schools through outreach. They get donations and grants from all kinds of places, and try to keep those supplies from ending up in the landfills. All kinds of fabrics, leather scraps, carpet and wall paper samples, ceramic tiles, upholstery fabric, all kinds of trims and even some yarn. About once a month they have a sale, I have attended this before, to make money to further their outreach. I donated a bunch of stuff, but you know, I could probably do more.

Be Kind.