Crossing things off my list...

Yesterday, the Elgin Piecemakers had  a sewing day at a local church. Sixteen of us gathered to sew and several worked on charity comfort quilts for adult chemo patients at our local hospital. Pat and I had a jelly roll, donated by Pam at Mad About Patchwork for our project. Here is the quilt top we created. We hope this will brighten someone's days as they have their treatments for cancer. It will be quilted shortly with a flannel backing.

Debbie and Diane had a second jelly roll of the same fabric, again donated by Pam. Here is what they did with their jelly roll:

It was a fun day and I will try to do another blogpost about it later this week.



After we finished our quilt top, I worked on catching up with blocks for my mystery quilt. I had to make a few more rail fence blocks and trim the hourglass blocks.  Then, I made 72 HST's and now, I am all caught up!

I am hoping to get a couple of quilt backs pieced this week so that I can start a new project next week. I am trying hard to stay away from my stash so that I am not inspired to start my Scrappy Trips quilt before I finish off the projects on the list. The stash is just so tempting and it is calling my name loudly... I will resist and stay focussed!

This morning, there was frost everywhere and we had to stop the car so I could get some pictures:

 

 

I could have spent an hour or more taking pictures before the frost melted away, but we were on our way out for breakfast and we were already late. Maybe next time...

I picked up the Outhouse quilt at the quilter's house on Wednesday and finished hand sewing the binding down on Friday night so I could give it to my FIL today. Cathy did a great job on the quilting--Tractors!



 

 

Here is the completed quilt, held by my capable quilt holder, my husband.

 

 

My FIL loved his quilt and was quite amused by the outhouses!  It is wonderful to bring a smile to someone's face with my quilts! 



The Outhouse Quilt

I bought this fabric at a quilt show a few years ago because it had birdhouses on it. When I got home, I opened up my fat quarter and found that it also had outhouses on it. I was a bit disturbed that I had purchased outhouse fabric and put it away, until this past weekend when I was looking for fabric for a quilt for a family member who grew up on a farm and was very well acquainted with outhouses! I decided to use this fabric as my focus fabric for the quilt.

I picked out some greens,

and some tans,

 and some browns.

(I ended up taking out that gold fat quarter!)

I used my GO cutter to cut out about 100 tumblers and then arranged them on my design floor.

 I sewed the tumblers together on Monday night and tonight, I cut and added two borders.

 (That is the toe of my shoe at the bottom of the picture!)

I also pieced the back of this quilt. I used some farm fabric across the center of the back.

This quilt is ready for the long arm quilter!  I will likely add my label before I take it to her so that it will be quilted in. 

 

I have a list of projects to make or finish before starting a new fun project for me... I would like to make a Scrappy Trip Around the World Quilt!  There seem to be lots of people working on this quilt right now.  In the meantime, I have some baby gifts, some pillow cases (gifts), the backing for Swoon, my Great Granny Square blocks to assemble, GGS backing, and the backing for my Sewing Baskets quilt.  Sew much to do, sew little time!

I have also decided to keep track of fabric in and out of my stash this year. So far this year, I have purchased 8 yards of fabric and used 10 yards.  At least that is more out than in!  We will see how the year unfolds...