How many projects do you have on the go?

Sorry, my photography isn't the greatest, but I wasn't really up to running around finding the perfect shot yesterday.  Feeling better today though.

So here's what I got up to on the weekend.  My big blue and white quilt made an appearance - I finished putting the borders together (not attached yet) and started the applique on one of them.  I'm using machine buttonhole stitch on raw edge fused fabric so it doesn't take too long once you have everything in place.  The trickiest bit is laying out and stitching the bias strip so that it's smooth and even.

I finished the background of a quilt I'm making for a friend's little girl.  This started off with the one pink Dove in the Window block I made for a block game we had for our guild.  My husband kindly pointed out that 'there are lots of big blank spots'.  Don't worry, darling, I'll be filling them in with pretty appliques of birds, butterflies and flowers!

And I appliqued all the signature blocks onto the back of the 21st quilt and it's now pin basted and ready for quilting.  Next decision - how to quilt it.  I'm thinking a simple diagonal grid as that's fairly 'masculine' and if I start to free-motion I'm inclined to flowers, spirals and 'girly' patterns.

Last but not least, I used my new pink rotary cutter (how opportune that my old one gave up the ghost after six years of hard labour just as Olfa brought out their pink cutter to support breast cancer research) and cut a whole quilts worth of Old Maid's Puzzle blocks.  I'm calling this my night duty quilt as I wanted something simple that I could just sit and chain piece on night duty.  I'll keep you updated as I go.

And Julia - I stayed in a little kitchen cabin which was $60 a night winter rates.

Don't slurp your soup.

I have a lunch guest. This is King Theodin, who completely lost his head when he tasted the soup and found out how good it is ;)

Soup is a favorite standby in our house at the moment. Fantastic winter warming food, and the kids adore it. Yesterday, at their Grandmother's house, they had a choice for lunch: soup or pie. They chose soup!
Today’s recipe: take the water from boiling the corned beef last night, add a couple of left over potatoes cooked in the same water, a cup of dried split green peas, some frozen chicken stock, chopped fresh pumpkin (the kids won’t touch it normally), a few big spoons of leftover spaghetti bolognaise mince and simmer for a few hours till mushy. Add extra water to the thickness you like and serve.  Leftovers make the best soup.
After lunch, the first job is to find some glue to re-attach Theodin’s head. The second job is making loads of bias tape for my big blue and white quilt and the third job is starting to appliqué the signature blocks onto the 21st quilt.
Thank you all for your thoughts on whether the 21st quilt is big enough. I’m still undecided, but leaning toward leaving it just as it is. So I figured I’d work on the back until I’m sure.

The back of the quilt so far - you can tell we are having lovely weather this afternoon!

Gone the way of the moa...

I bought a fat quarter pack of Moda Lumiere de Noel fabrics today, 50% off.  Normally I would be jumping with joy at finding such a deal, but the fact that our local quilt shop is closing down, hence the discount, has tempered my mood today.

As soon as the kids and hubby were out the door today I knocked off the housework and animal feeding as fast as I could, just so I could spend a good chunk of time with quilting.  And it made a difference - I really felt like I got 'into the groove'.  (Sorry, this post is full of cliches!)

The photo above has my plan for the 21st quilt.  This is how I work out my layouts - on grid paper that I print out (thanks google). 

For the quilt I cut lots of 4 1/2" blocks and got people to sign them.  However, everyone was getting tipsy so most people ignored my requests about leaving a space for a seam allowance, plus there are plenty of lewd comments that H might not want on the front of his quilt.  So I'm making a pieced top, with blues, browns and creams and the back will have all the signed squares appliqued to it in a grid format.

I also managed to bust out these two 8" blocks.  They are part of my first row for a row-by-row round robin that I'm organising for our Guild.  There's something about star blocks that I really like. 

Now it's evening, the kids are in bed, I don't have any books to read, so I'm making myself a peppermint tea and getting back to some piecing.