Knitting, Sewing and a New Quilt Vault!

 I have accomplished a lot this week, but not not much of it was in the sewing room!  I did do some mending, made a quilt back for a comfort quilt, and sewed a hanging sleeve on a gift.  I delivered 113 placemats to Meals on Wheels organizers on behalf of the Oxford Quilter's Guild and volunteered at the local Christmas Hamper program for a day (this is a weekly event until Christmas).  Today, I cleaned out some of our gardens --cut back dead perennials and filled several brown bags with garden debris and leaves.  Last Sunday, my husband and I installed some Elfa shelving in the closet in our daughter's old room so I have a place to store my quilts. Previously, they had been stored in several piles in various places in the house...the piles would often fall over and looked messy.  Now, I have this:

The shelving is heavy duty and very easy to install, although there were a few challenging moments getting the top shelves in due to the size of the door opening. 

I sorted all of the quilts into piles--table runners, baby quilts, wall hangings, lap quilts, bed quilts in two sizes and older/antique quilts.  The closet door is back on now and so they are protected from the light and dust.  The shelves are fairly close together so that nothing is stacked too high.  The best part...there is still room for more quilts to be added to the vault!  I can easily get out what I want to change the quilts on the beds or walls or tables.  Shelves in this closet have been a dream of mine for quite a while and I am very happy to finally have them in place. 

I had one more modern sampler block to make before putting the quilt together.  I played around with some graph paper and a pencil and came up with three possibilities for my final block. Here is the design that was chosen:

I hope to get this quilt top put together soon, although Christmas gift making is a priority at the moment. I worked on some secret sewing projects as well that cannot be shared here. 

In the knitting department, I made great progress on the project I showed last week. Thankfully, I am getting a little faster at knitting now. 

I played with some red scraps with week and made a table runner.  It looks boring in the middle at the moment, but I am hoping some walking foot quilting with 28 wt red thread will add some nice texture to the white part. 

My daughter is back working on her stitching projects--these were both started a while ago and then set aside.  

Finn wants all of you to know that this particular pillow is very comfortable!

I will link up with Kathy's Slow Stitching Crew in the morning.