Little Ones (people and quilts)
It's hard to believe that summer is already winding down!
The Left Coast contingent arrived in early June and are now preparing to head back west. I guess it will be nice to be back in our own bedroom and to have more space where the toys have been. But truly, it has been an amazing and wonderful couple of months that I wouldn't trade for anything. To those of you who have family nearby, count your blessings. Mine are so far away, we rarely get more than a few days every couple of months with them. Three-year-old Greta is a gem, so sweet and full of fun. And to see baby June grow from a bobble-headed 2-month old to a feisty 4-month old who is full of smiles and gurgles and who can roll over and wants to learn to crawl -- such a blessing!
My Memphis grandsons started school today, though here in New York it will be another month. They were here for just a week, but they were HERE! (refused to allow photos, though).
Of course, with all that's been going on, I haven't had a lot of time to sew at home. The precious three hours each week at the local quilt shop with our little quilty group have been my little piece of sewing heaven. Still, much has been accomplished.
Progress on UFOs
The quilt top is done for a sampler block-of-the-month project that I started about 5 years ago. It still needs to be quilted. I'll share the finish when it's done.
The 160 blocks for the Otsego quilts (two twin-size quilts), in process for several years, are finally done! Yahoo! I had to order more of all but two of the fabrics. Nonetheless, I realized that I am one row short for each quilt. And I don't have enough fabric to make two more rows. ARGGH!
So near and yet so far. I'm still trying to figure out how to make this work. I *really* wanted to get these done this summer. But I guess one more year won't be tragic.
Table-top Mini Quilts
Meanwhile, two more mini-quilts made it onto the 12" hanging rack in the front hall. For July, I just cut a panel from some patriotic fabric and framed it in red, white and blue with a gold binding. Uninspired, but sometimes you make do. I plan to replace it with something more interesting next year.
Much more fun was a very small quilt (9" x 12") that is almost like being on the beach. I was inspired by a similar quilt that I saw on the web, although it was a wall hanging, about 24" x 36". I changed the color palette a bit and used some clouds-on-blue for the sky, quilting around some of the whitest areas of the clouds. The quilt looks wobbly in the photos -- I don't normally wash these little quilts, but this one needed a bath before it was fit to be shown!
For the water and sand I just did slightly wavy lines, but I did a little free-motion bubble shapes for the foam along the beach. It came out sort of uneven, but considering that the widest point is only one inch, I didn't stress too much about it.
I had to satin-stitch around the sun, which I really don't like very much. But it was ravelling around the edges.
The sun's rays are in a gold polyester thread with a lot of shine, using a built-in serpentine stitch in various stitch lengths. This was the way the rays were done on the quilt I'd seen on the web. I may go back and add some stitching around the rest of the sun, though not so dense. The jellyfish thing doesn't really do it for me. The reflection on the water is the same gold thread, just vaguely wavy lines.
For the border I used a lovely striped summer fabric that I'd bought to make pillow covers. It turned out to be not quite right for that project, but it was perfect for the binding and one width of the fabric was just the right size. Now to figure out what to do with the remainder of the two yards.
While I am sad that my summer of grandchildren is nearly gone, I am looking forward to spending more time on sewing projects old and new. There are still a couple of UFOs that I really want to finish, and so many new quilts to make! There are 2,715 items in the "Quilt Patterns" folder on my computer, and that doesn't count all the books and magazines on the shelf. If I could put time in a bottle...
