Garden Party and other finishes

Garden Party pillow sham version is finished!

After working so long on another scrappy quilt, I decided I needed a quick finish

for the Bonnie Hunter class I took a few days ago.

This will be a useful pillow sham to match another quilt made with these fabrics.

It took 12 posey blocks and 6 path blocks plus 10 half paths and 4 quarter paths.

I quilted it just like I would have if it had been a full size - stitching in the ditch 

on my sewing machine.

I love the trimming step so much.

I stitched the edge just to keep it from stretching.

Zip! The excess is gone.

Neatly trimmed and ready for a pillow back.

I made a simple envelope back.

Here is the inside quilting pattern from stitching around the blocks.

It made one continuous line and came back to the starting point.

How neat is that?

I decided to bind it just like a quilt.

Here is the binding before ironing.

Made from scraps.

TaDa... Bound and finished.

Sewed binding to the back and top-stitched down on the front.

Ready to share Monday at quilt guild.

Tueday I joined a small quilt group - Allison Wells Quilters.

They meet every week and I happened to attend their program meeting.

Each person was given a zip bag of scraps and instructions for making a block.

Here is mine.

Next project - birthday dresses for Miss Ava.

I hope to make 3 dresses before her birthday.

She liked the pink fabric and chose the blue dress on the middle pattern.

I'm using eyelet for the ruffle.

The green stripe will be the sailor dress with a white collar.

If there is enough fabric left, I will use the pink and green for a reversible top.

In other news, my sewing space got an update with the new shelves on the left. 

I love sewing here with the added light from the window.

Hope you have a great week end.

Thanks for the comments, Wendy.

I love linking up with your party.

Bonnie Hunter Class

Wednesday I took a Bonnie Hunter class at the Old Man River Quilt Fest in Vicksburg.

I decided to make a pillow sham using leftover fabric from a quilt I finished but haven't used.

Below are my blocks. I need the four corners and then will add borders to make it the correct size.

Below is the finished quilt. It was a block of the month at a local quilt shop.

The pattern is Jamestown meets Ramblin Rose - log cabin blocks and sampler blocks.

We had a black cat who liked to sleep on this bed. I didn't want to have black cat hair on this, so I didn't use the quilt.

The colors are not today's hot colors but I still like the quilt.

There were sooo many scraps leftover.

I will have enough to make two pillow shams.

I want to get the pillow sham finished before our next Jackson Quilters meeting.

Hoping for time and motivation to get it done.

Flimsy Finish

Yea!!!! My version of Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune Mystery Quilt is finished.

I added two rows and changed the final border.

I like it.

I mitered the corners of the final border.

The green triangle border was a bear to sew. 

I think the borders will be wavy because of the stretchy triangles.

Another view. I think this is twin size or a very large lap quilt.

Here are the reasons I took some time off quilting.

Wish I could see them more but trying to enjoy the short time we have together.

It is hot, hot, hot.

Bonnie Hunter is coming to town.

Tomorrow I will take one of Bonnie's classes. 

After all the piecing I've been doing, I have decided to make something small

from the blocks I finish in her class.

Happy sewing!

Holding pattern

A houseful of company is not my ideal sewing environment. So this past week I enjoyed children and grandchildren and set the sewing on pause.

I added one side of the triangle border before company arrived.

The border hasn't been pressed so it wouldn't lay flat. See a big toe keeping one corner down. :-D

Can I just say I have made enough pieced bits for this quilt? 

I bought several pieces of yardage to audition for a final border for this quilt.

It came down to the paisley below...

or the blue flowered at the bottom.

The whole quilt is so orange that everyone agreed that it needed cooling off. The blue will be the final border. My daughter saw the original Good Fortune quilt on Bonnie's blog and said it really needed the pieced border. But she's not the one who will finish it. I'm going with the blue flowers.

School is starting this week. Now retirement gets real!

Blocks into rows

All the blocks are finished! 

The red/orange have 4 different orange fabrics with various red/neutral 4 patches.

The blue/greens had four different green fabrics in each block except for a few.

I put them in stacks so I could more evenly divide them into rows.

These are the rows stacked together. Some have 3 blue/green with 4 red/orange. The others have more blue/green than red/orange. They will be alternate rows in the quilt top.

Yes! The rows are sewn together. Today I will iron the seams in opposite directions and sew the rows together. The original pattern is 7 blocks by 7 rows. I added two rows to make a more traditional size.

Hope I have time to link up with Wendy's Peacock Party.

Blue and green blocks

The photo below shows all the sewing I have done this week. It doesn't look like much but it is progress toward my Good Fortune finish. I want to make my quilt a little bigger than the original, so I am making a few more of each block. All of the red/orange blocks are made.

These parts are ironed and ready to assemble into the blue/green blocks.

This week has been busy with errands with mom and volunteering at my former job.

Our neighborhood pool has been a yucky green, so my morning swims have been curtailed for now.

This week-end we are driving into the tropical storm that is expected to hit the coast. Our grandsons are visiting their other grandparents in Pass Christian and we have been invited to come for a party.

It might be a hurricane party!😲 Lots of rain and wind but we will be far from the actual storm center.

No sewing this week-end but I may get some crocheting in. 

Can't wait to see those grands.

How was your week?

Quilting break is over

The hat was the last piece finished. To cover the seam joining the crown to the brim I first used ribbon but it didn't have enough stretch.

There was enough of the brocade to cut a bias strip. It worked much better and was like sewing binding on a quilt.

The sleeves have ribbon closures.

Ribbon attaches the sleeves to the doublet, too.

Here is the singer, all decked out in hat and doublet. Can't wait to see it with shirt and pants.

My other non-quilting project was these bucket hats for my grands and their cousins. Each hat has a different ship centered on the crown. 

Now I'm back to working on my Good Fortune quilt. I made the half-square triangles a little bigger than called for. While I sewed the costume and hats, I had time to buy a set of Bloc-Loc templates and have them delivered.

On to trimming 200+ of these. It is very time consuming and boring so I will be watching some BritBox as I work.

How was your week?