Goals to help me focus

The hand quilting is almost done on this little piece and then I can put it into the project itself. More to be seen tomorrow I hope. Finishing this is my #1 goal for this week.  I haven't been setting weekly goals this year but I think it's time to start doing that again because my sewing time has become way too random with nothing getting finished.

Goal #2 is to sew another couple of rows together for my Traveling Stars quilt. And on Saturday I dropped off 2 quilts with the long arm at The Pin Cushion, so I should have some finishes coming in the next couple of weeks.

Hand stitching

Sometimes a little handwork is just what I need to relax and think.

This is just a bit of appliqué on a small project.  Hopefully more progress will occur over the weekend.  I'm planning a touch of hand quilting to enhance these 3/4" hexies. 

A patriotic block

My bonus block for Saturday Sampler . . .

June status of the stash

The month of June went by so fast that I'm not even sure what I did or didn't do. Yikes!

I do know that I donated some fabric again to a local lady who makes quilts for veterans at the VA hospitals. There are 9 yards of 6" strips in these 2 rolls. She was very excited about how many quilts she could make with these. And I was very excited that it would be used. 

The only finishes I had were small things - a bag, a pillow, a pillowcase, and a mug rug-size mini. But I'm close to having some bigger things to count. It seems like May and June had a focus on individual blocks for lots of different projects, and nothing finished. That will change soon!

In this month: 7.5 yds

In this year: 68.75 yds

Out this month: 12.5 yds

Out this year: 76.25 yds

I'm still a little bit ahead of the stash but have big ambitions to add some large numbers to that "out" column in the next month or two.

Small finishes

My paper pieced tulip pillow is done. I machine quilted this one, including the modified feather design in the white triangle areas.  I used a stencil to mark the quilting lines and then just stitched slowly along those lines. I'm actually kind of proud of this - a new skill that I've tried out.

Another finish for this week is this pillowcase for my daughter's friend. Those gals just finished a 5 day bicycle ride in Nebraska. I had made my daughter a similar pillowcase for her to take along. So now her friend will have one too.

Paper piecing

I gave a demo on paper piecing at our quilt show on Friday. Now that our show is done I had a little time to sew today and decided to finish the blocks I started for the demo. The sections are all sewn and now for my least favorite part of paper piecing - picking off the foundation paper.  But it's a good activity while watching a little TV.

Monday morning I put the pillow top together and pieced the back. Now my next step is to machine quilt that top and put it together.

Sew-along bag

These bags have been on my radar for awhile because they are so cute. I've been seeing them online but when our LQS showed a sample earlier this month I just had to buy the pattern.

This one was my first one and I got the big zipper slightly off center, But I've decided that is OK. The inside of this little bag has 3 zippered pockets and I was amazed at how easily it went together. This one will be a gift.

I've not been happy with most of the bags I've made before this one because of the quality of my sewing. But I think I'll be making more of these because either I'm getting better or the instructions were excellent.