3 down and 14 to go

 

I bought a nice grey stripe yesterday for the cuff of the Winnie The Pooh pillowcase, to make a total of 17 kitted up.  After work yesterday afternoon I dug into the pile and started sewing. So Including the Pooh pillowcase, I've gotten 3 made. And I've pinned 2 more that are ready to sew.  These are always good for some random sewing when I just need to sew SOMETHING, but don't have time to focus on anything big.

 

I'm in love with that Pooh fabric - so cute! 

Prepping pillowcases

 

I spent a couple of hours in my sewing room this morning - not sewing, but prepping a lot of pillowcase kits.  Sixteen of them in fact.  These make good quick projects for those times when I just want to spend a little time sewing.

 

The 4 kits in the back actually include 2 of each set folded together, ready to sew.  That is 8.  The top 2 sets are completely from stash and the bottom 2 are from new fabric I bought on the bus trip just for pillowcases.

 

The 4 on the right side are kits I bought at crazy days and I just still need to check measurements and trim pieces if needed. 

 

The 4 kits in the middle are singles and ready to go.  The top one is from stash and the other 3 are new purchases from the bus trip or crazy days.  And the one in the front - Winnie the Pooh - needs a grey cuff and I just couldn't find anything in the stash that worked. It was also purchased on the bus trip.

 

My plan this year is to make each grandkid a pillowcase that I'll pair up with a book.  There are Bambi pillowcases in that back stack and you know what book will go with those, probably for the girls.  And the rest of the pillowcases will go into my donation/gift stack. 

Design Wall Monday - door hanger

 

I bought this panel on the bus trip earlier this month, along with some fat quarter to use for a piano key border. And this weekend I made the piano keys and added them to the panel. This was supposed to be a door hanger for my front door.

 

I thought I had the math figured out just right so that the colors went around correctly and everything fit, but I still ended up making some changes as I sewed.  And I don't like those changes, such as the corners.  Plus I'm just not so sure I like that blue in there at all after looking at the photos. In person it isn't quite that light.  This is one of the ways that a UFO is born - because I need to keep looking at this one for awhile before I invest any time or money into quilting this as is. So, it's in danger of just getting set aside. 

 

Maybe I just need to remove those borders and just put binding around that center panel.  Check out what other quilters are working on this week: http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

Final border

A final border of 8" strips has been added to last year's Saturday Sampler.  This is now a really BIG quilt at 99" x 115".  I want a deep overhang when I put it on our bed.  So my next step is backing and dropping it off to be quilted.  

It took me 2 hours to cut the strips and sew them together, while wrestling with this huge quilt. This may be the biggest I've ever made. 

County Line is finished

 

County Line is finished - yay!  That makes one more small finish for August.  This might just be my new favorite Kim Diehl Simple Whatnots pattern.  It may end up displayed on my kitchen counter for fall.

 

It is definitely a pattern that would look great in any kind of fabric combo.  I can imagine this done with a dark background and bright or pastel in the blocks.

 

 

The quilting is a simple diagonal stitching line through the X's.  I may decide to go back later and add something simple in the larger background areas, but I don't think it really needs much else.

Design Wall Monday - not much progress

I only managed to sew for about an hour this weekend as we had company Saturday, and there just seemed to be other things I needed to do on Sunday. Only a bit of progress has been made on my Kim Diehl County Line project, and since it's small it shouldn't be taking so long. I have 3 blocks out of 15 left to finish before I can put the rest of the rows together. I'm hoping that this afternoon I'll finally get back to my sewing room.

 

 

I have a couple of design boards that I use to lay out pieces when I'm sewing. The little pieces are laid out just how they fit into the blocks and that reduces the errors such as sewing a piece in the wrong direction.  An added bonus is that the design board can be lifted up and moved when needed without disturbing the arrangement.

 

Check out Design Wall Monday at: http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/ to see what others are working on today.

Bicycle girl pillowcase

 

This pillowcase kit was a Crazy Days purchase earlier in the summer.  It was too cute to pass up.