It was a good week!

This week I stuck to my plan and worked on each of 4 of my weekly goals.

• personal quilt
• stings/scraps
• bee project
• quilt a guild Outreach top

I didn’t make this quilt top but it’s such a nice one that I wanted to share a photo of it. I quilted it for the Outreach committee of the Palm Beach County Quilters’ Guild and will turn it back in for the next member to bind it.

The quilt top has likely been stored for a while, and I don’t know the original maker, but she did a fantastic job piecing it. It’s uncommon to find a quilt top with five borders that don’t cause issues during quilting, so I appreciated how easy this one was to quilt. Trust me… when shortcuts are taken and borders are added without measuring, your quilter will definitely notice!

Even the backing was pieced well, no doubt due to the attention to detail by our committee chairwoman Vivian.

On Thursday I met with the local bee I recently joined. I’m not typically a morning person, having worked nightshift for many, many years, so I almost shrugged it off and skipped going this week. I’m so glad I didn’t! I worked on my hot air balloon quilt top while I was there but didn’t quite finish it. If you guessed I probably chatted too much, you might be right! 😉

This is such a wonderful group of ladies! No pressure to do anything, no costs, and everyone works on their own quilts. We have a little show & tell at the end of the day so you get to see the quilts that were finished and ready to be donated. Photos are taken to share with all the members later via text. What more could you possibly hope to find in a quilting group?

I did finish my other quilt that I categorize as a personal or bucket list quilt. Even though I’ve never been a fan of Kaffe fabrics, I wanted to try making a quilt with some scraps I had and a purchased charm pack.

While the blocks were on the design wall, I knew I was going to be disappointed in the quilt. I cut my losses, decided to eliminate a column and the border I’d planned to add. I just wanted it done so I could move on. The quilt finished at around 48″ x 68″. I started sewing the binding down by hand last night and finished it this morning. All I can say is at least it’s done and didn’t end up in a drawer as a UFO. That’s always a good thing.

I also made one set of string blocks this week. They’ll be bagged with an index card describing what my intentions are to finish them – namely add sashing with friendship star cornerstones and a border, so I won’t forget.

The next set will be 8″ finished blocks and will likely be set with alternate star blocks. Strings can get a bit messy to work with so I want to continue to make blocks out of all the patriotic strings I have while they’re out. Once that part of the process is done, I’ll make them into quilts.

Once those quilts are finished, I’ll repeat the process with the next category of strings- bright mixed prints.

I generally don’t do leaders/enders when making string blocks because I use leftover bobbin thread, no matter the color, and a very short stitch length to sew them. In this case I decided to start sewing the tiniest leftovers onto adding machine tape as a leader/ender project so I can use up the littlest strings too.

If I only have a few strips, I can always add to them by cutting up some patriotic scraps. I have a couple of ideas that won’t take very many of these adding machine tape strips.

Saturday is our monthly guild meeting with another workshop planned. It’s also the day to sign-up for a log cabin Santa workshop next month. I’m looking forward to the fun workshops that have been planned for the next several months.

I’m hoping to accomplish at least a little on all four of my goals again this week.