Moving things forward

 Wednesday morning was finally an awesome opportunity to just sew. No work projects assigned, no interruptions, no appointments.  It felt great to just be creative.

A couple of non-stitching tasks happened first of all.  I cut a set of binding strips for one of the latest Quilts of Valor ready to pick up from the quilter.  The bench pillow is now sandwiched, and ready to quilt.  I'm still trying to decide exactly what that quilting will look like but I have some ideas in mind.  And I pinned 2 pillowcases (for granddaughters), so they could be sewn this week.

The pieces are ironed onto the Saturday Sampler block.  This one will be the centerpiece of this year's quilt, and is larger than the other blocks made so far. This is 18 x 21. There will be some embroidery added to the sewing machine to show thread looping around. There was a curvy decal to iron onto the top area of the machine in the pattern, but I replaced it with flowers cut from the fabric I used in the dress form block from a couple of months ago.  The blanket stitching still needs to happen, and since I'll be using black thread it might be a perfect time to quilt that pillow top while black thread is in play.

Autumn Wonders block #8 has a very interesting visual impact. I wasn't sure I liked it on paper, but I really do like it all finished in red, white, and blue.  This design made me think of sergeant stripes on a military uniform. 

The parts for the fall colors version are cut, but I just didn't get to it yesterday. 

A final decision hasn't happened yet on the outer border on the tree skirt.  I'm still leaning toward the red with the gold dots, as it seems to anchor the whole thing a bit more than the floral.  It will be only about a 3" border so that the tree skirt doesn't get too large.  The floral might be lost a bit if it's too narrow.  The tree skirt is already 38" across without that outer border.