Piling up

Quilt tops are piling up around here. Productivity is increasing, and the wheels of progress are turning. What the end results may turn out to be, I don’t really know, just that it feels good to be moving forward and finishing things. Could be the uncertainties in the world lately that are fueling my personal need to get things done, or spring fever or maybe just a way to channel energy and stop worrying about things not in my control.

The winter village quilting is finished, still needs binding. I would do it today, but my current project, Seasons Study is taking up all the work surface. The last two days have been spent making blocks and pieces for this kit. I really like the prints, flowers and mushrooms and forest-y things like twigs and cones. The pop of teal is nice too. The kit had plenty of fabric, so there may be a throw made with the scraps. The kit came with border fabric long enough to not have to piece the four outer borders, and the border print repeats eight times. There are cats cradle, four patches, HSTs, and snowball blocks in this pattern. Today I am hoping to get the larger units together.

I finished a small quilt for my SILs cat this week. I forgot to get a picture of it before I sent it out to her. I used the extra Sparrow block and a scrap of backing/batting to quilt it up. I think it turned out to be about 26 inches square. The cat, Puc, was making himself a bed out of the table runner my SIL got from me in December. This is all fine, except that the runner was on the dining room table. She was amazed that that Puc got on the table, as he never did in the past. I told her about the cat and quilt symbiotic relationship, she probably thought I was a bit weird, oh well. Puc got his own quilt though. *Update* Puc loves his quilt.

I found a nice backing for the Sparrow quilt on sale and I’m waiting for it to be delivered. I ordered three backings, the other two are for the Ellipse quilt and Seasons study. I got the Eclipse quilt top together this week too, it needs ironing/pressing. This pattern was relatively easy and if you are proficient at sewing curves a quick project. There is also very little waste in cutting and squaring up the blocks. I used two 10″ square layer cakes and had two left over blocks. The scraps from the initial cutting of the arcs were not even a good string size piece.

The cushion covers and pillows got finished and sent out too. I tried to order the pillow forms from Joann, but they were out of stock. I ended up getting the same product through Michaels, with a coupon and other discounts, shipped direct. The forms will probably get there before the covers. I am very sad about Joanns closing, I hadn’t been shopping there as much in the past few years. I haven’t been sewing as much apparel or other things, and the store was always such a mess. I just went there when I needed notions or craft supplies when I couldn’t get them online. It’s been a slow weaning, I don’t want to go and participate in the liquidation sales. I certainly have enough fabrics and notions here.

Shabby Fabrics notified me that the first BOM kit for Blooming Beauty has shipped. They are in Idaho, so it’ll be here soon. I need to empty a project box for it, I think I have one somewhere. I like to keep all the instructions in a binder, with all the scraps and finished blocks in an ArtBin satchel. I also need to get the constellation blocks into some kind of container. The backing fabric for it is on a bolt though, so it’s a bit hard to keep it all together.

I started a new cross stitch project. I know I wanted to finish the Fabulous houses first, but I had an idea and I wanted to see if I could make it work with needle and thread. It started with the pattern I bought last year, Miss Bingsley’s Library. I wanted to make it for someone special, who just finished renovating a manor house. I thought I could change the house on the pattern to look like her home. It morphed into a new project, I drew out the house on graph paper and gathered up some threads. I think it’ll work out, so far it looks okay, I was a bit worried about the proportions, but luckily manor houses are pretty straight forward and symmetrical.