What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It was a busy weekend.  We spent some time with the family celebrating my sister's birthday.  So I didn't get much done on the stitching front over the weekend.  Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) is still up on the big design wall. 

Labor Day weekend has been a bit cooler, but it's still been pretty humid.  My Guy took Friday off and we've been out and about a bit.  No big plans for today, we'll probably just chill around the house. It's supposed to be nice today, so maybe an after dinner walk will happen.  

There's been a few good hours spent in the sewing room this holiday weekend.  Most of the progress has been on the 2022 Bonnie Hunter mystery, Chilhowie.

The sashing is all finished and the first pieced border has been started.  I've ...

It's been a so-so year for finishes but a pretty good year for progress on many projects. Just three finishes so far this year, but double that number of projects have moved from a collections of pieces or blocks to finished quilt tops. The latest one to get the final borders added is the 2023 Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Indigo Way.

My borders don't look like Bonnie's, but I rarely keep to her plan at that point.  It's a pretty busy quilt, but the dark blue border calms it all down, so the finished top works for ...

The plan for the later half of the year was to finish a quilt a month.  As of August, I'm 2 for 2.  The 2023 Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR) was finished in July. This month the 2024 SAHRR (Quilting Gail) is a finished quilt. 

Lots of lightening and thunder this morning.  So I decided to sleep in just a bit as I didn't want to turn on the computer in the middle of a thunderstorm.  The extra sleep was probably wise as I was fighting off a sinus infection all weekend. The afternoon naps are paying off as I'm finally starting to feel better, but it also meant that I didn't get all that much done in the sewing room.  

Diatom (Quilting Jetgirl) is up on the design wall. 

The rows are all sewn together.  The horizontal sashing strips have been ...

The weekend was way too short.  I'm retired, but My Guy isn't. We seem to run out of Sunday before we run out of things we planned to do together. The big one this weekend was to get vacation planned.  Oh well, I'll work on it this week and we'll finish it off next weekend. 

One sewing room chore I tackled this weekend was getting Rhododendron (Bonnie Hunter) prepped for quilting. 

There are lots of seams to press. Thankfully there weren't too many loose threads. 

So now it's all pressed, de-threaded and ready to ...

I'm a bit late getting a post up today.  It took a while to shake off the mental cob webs this morning for some reason. Now that my coffee cup is mostly empty, brain function seems to be restored. It was a good week for progress. I went to the guild late night sew this week and made good progress on getting Indigo Way (Bonnie Hunter) assembled.  

The quilt was trimmed up over the weekend and I've started on the borders.  As is typical, my borders won't be the same as Bonnie's.  I've kept the ...

It cooled off for the weekend, but it was mostly cloudy and a bit rainy over both days.  It was nice weather to hang out in the sewing room.  Who am I kidding, I'd say any weather is a good time to be in the sewing room, except maybe during severe thunderstorms.  

My handwork project during our 4th of July road trip was the binding for the 2023 Stay at Home Round Robin sponsored by Quilting Gail.  I finished the binding on Tuesday, but wasn't able to get photos till Sunday afternoon.  Here's the finished Blue Birds. 

This was my first time participating in the round robin. It was such fun and I'm really happy with how the final quilt turned out. All the blocks are made from my blue, green, purple and teal scraps. This quilt is destined to be My Guy's new TV recliner quilt.  He ...

It was nice to be home and be back in my sewing room for the week.  Summer has truly taken hold and it's far to hot to do much outside. At least that's my justification for all the sewing room time last week.  There was some good progress on the second oldest project. 

Another 4 blocks are up on the design wall and 2 more are under construction at the sewing machine.  

Just 9 blocks left to finish the planned layout.  Once the blocks are done, it will be time to spend some time practicing how to quilt ...

Last week required a bit of retooling.  I attended a chemistry conference.  Something that's been off the to do list since I retired.  I had to wear dress up clothes and heels. Plus remember a bit of chemistry and statistics.  It was fun and I'm going to be more active going forward.  I've missed the technical parts of my previous job, joining a couple of the technical committees will help fill that void.  

It was another low key weekend. I can certainly get used to those.  We've got some family stuff coming up soon, so we'll be pretty busy for a few weeks, so I'll enjoy them while I have them.  

Most of this weekend was spent in the sewing room.  I don't think I made up for all lack of motivation I had most of last week, but there was good progress on getting fabrics cut for the guild BOM. I also replenished the black triangles needed for the Wild and Goosey blocks.

On the actual sewing front ...

It was a low key weekend, most of which I spent in the sewing room.  Not all of it at the sewing machine.  There was a fair amount of scrap sorting and fabric pressing. There was also a quick clean up of the desk and sewing area.  Most of the progress at the sewing machine was making a some blocks for Kate's Choice. 

My plan is to all some more of the lighter blocks to the collection to balance out the dark green and deep purples.  

The fabric for the 2024 SAHRR backing was cut and the panels all ...

Wishing those in the United States a very happy Memorial Day.  We didn't make any special plans for the weekend, which is probably for the best as the weather here and in the surrounding states hasn't resulted in the best holiday for many. The worst storms in Oklahoma stayed south of us, all we got was some very heavy rain.  But we were tuned into the local weather coverage for quite a while Saturday night, way past our normal bedtime.  

There's been a bit of progress on the Kate's (Grandmother's) Choice blocks.

Storms rolled through overnight.  There was some impressive, rattle the windows thunder along with them. The storm didn't keep us up all night, but it wasn't the most restful night of sleep I've had.  

We had a wet and dreary weekend for the most part.  I came down with a 24 hour stomach bug Saturday night.  So I didn't get all that much done at the sewing machine.  I'm almost finished with the April block for the guild BOM. 

We were lucky this weekend, the worst of the storms either went northwest of us or stayed south of us.  We did get plenty of the wind and rain. The storms that hit Saturday night/Sunday morning were bad because the worst of the storm came very early in the morning.  Those are nights you make sure you have shoes by the bed and what's going into the storm shelter with you (jackets, water, etc) is located on the path to the garage. We didn't need the shelter last weekend, but we have used it once since the ...

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted a Monday post on just stitching stuff.  The eclipse trip, along with prep and recover from knee surgery has limited my sewing room time.  So my stitching efforts have been focused on my long term travel project.  My goal was one full thread of stitching time each day while we were on the road. The first top wing of the butterfly was finished off last week.  

Since I had to go off my anti-inflammatory before surgery, it was really uncomfortable to manage the stairs, so I kept to the ...

Did you have a family celebration for Easter?  We didn't this year, we mostly just hung out at home for the weekend.  I spent the afternoon in the sewing room working to finish the last border for the Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs).  

The dark blue used in the border looks black, it's just hard to photograph it accurately under the lighting conditions in my sewing room.  This is one of my favorite Meadow Mist Designs mystery designs from Cheryl.  It kept me guessing. I wondered where we going to use those blocks in the last border.   

This ...

I don't usually post twice in one day, but today is the last day to link up with the quilt parade for the 2024 Stay At Home Round Robin over at Quilting Gail's.  The last border strip was added late yesterday afternoon. Last year I didn't finish the 2023 SAHRR quilt top till June. I'm very happy to have a finished quilt top before the end of March this year. 

The prompt for border #6 was a letter or a number.  I decided to go with an hourglass block, which looks like the letter X.  

My ...