This past week I put together the Licorice and Lollipops quilt top. It went together very smoothly. There is so much variety in the fabrics that I didn’t have to spend much time playing switch a block. The bonus quilt, made with the left over triangles, is another story. I made the 52 blocks easily enough, pressing all the seams open takes a bit of extra time. Now they are up on the design wall, every time I look at it I find a switch that needs to be made. I am hoping to get this one together and off the wall this weekend.

I have been doing other things too, I got a lot more sewn on the baby sampler, so many thread changes. I sometimes feel like I spend more time burying threads than making stitches. I am happy that this is a smaller piece though. I think I am about half way through, I will need to graph out the name, so it is centered. I winged it with the birth date, and got lucky. Nobody likes to frog ‘over one thread’ X’es.

I made a set of matching bucket hats for an uncle and his niece, Fourth of July is next week, and they’ll be together. I also made two really cute dresses, the trim and rick rack are from old stash, the prints were too. Not me though, sadly I am holding down the fort, well not really sadly, as I will be enjoying a short at home retreat. There will be lots of sewing and early meals and maybe a little firework viewing. The nights lately have been cloud filled, so my view is limited. I’ll probably only be able to hear the booms from the five or six different towns displays near by.

The first of the two custom quilting orders has begun, it’s a simple heart panto that I have used often. The customer wanted smaller hearts, with the biggest being around four inches, so this simple panto now takes about twenty minutes per row to sew. Thankfully she isn’t in a hurry to get these quilts back. It looks pretty though, and really makes this simple jelly roll race quilt look finished.

I had a quilt customer contact me yesterday, about making up some kits that they had bought and where to learn how the make better quilts. I am a little stumped by the last question. There is so much out there to learn from it must be overwhelming, I need to find a few websites to lead them to an easy path. I think Bonnie K Hunter is a great teacher, then there is Eleanor Burns, I wonder if she still has tutorials available. Maybe Creative Grids, I think they have a bunch of tutorials. I’m going to look at Fat Quarter shop too, I know they do a lot of videos. I am pretty sure this person is just starting out, maybe they have a quilt shop near them.

The custom cushions are finished, along with a matching table topper. I ended up serging the edges, because the fabric kept unraveling in a most annoying way. They are done and packed up for shipping tomorrow.

Be Kind.