May 2023 - Sewing, Quilting and Family Life

My Holly and Berries quilt is back from the quilter - now for the trimming and finding fabric for the binding. I'm very pleased with the quilting.

I quilted this donation quilt. Again it needs trimming and binding too.

I had a drawer completely full of 2.5" strips of varying lengths.  I sorted through them and cut all that were long enough into 16" segments. I made the bargello one first. # 521 Scrappy Bargello 48 x 66

I had so many segments leftover that I started this one too. 

I finished the top and it is ready for quilting now.

#522 Scrappy Trips 48 x60

Had a fun trip to the beach with this little guy.  The pool and ocean were much too cool for swimming but we had lots to do each day.

 

He loves to go to this playground and I can see why. This was super nice.  If you are in Emerald Isle, NC.  It's named the Jean Preston Memorial Playground (she was a State Senator from Emerald Isle who died from an accident in 2013).  It's adjacent to a public boating access and there is also a board walk that goes out  onto the sound.

Mother's Day Weekend

The girls and I enjoyed a night out at a paint party on Friday Night.

Sunday afternoon was Girl Fun and Games at Shelly's.

A Bordering Day with a Visitor

I wanted to make this 60" square top a little bigger so I used most of the cut off HST's from the star blocks  to make the borders for the top and bottom.  Added a 2 inch border to each side.  It's 64 by 72" so  now I can make a backing for it

Several years back, a friend loaned me her Accucut (sp) cutter and I cut out a whole lot of blue and white scraps.   This past winterI sewed the triangle/square pieces together. Then I made a few blocks and figured out they needed a shoo fly block as alternate block.

 

Added borders to this top to to make it 64 by 70"

Made a backing for this today so it is ready to quilt!

 

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It has been very dry here for the past month with only a few light showers.

We finally had some good rains and my flowers along with the weeds are flourishing.

It was so nice that this little guy came over to visit and stop to smell the flowers with GiGi!

Tickled his nose!

 

May Projects

I have no idea what the name of this block is but I have seen it several times in pictures on FB Groups and on various blogs.  I've made it before in a 9"block .  It is simply a 2 by 3.5" rectangle.  

The 9" blocks takes 18 pieces and the 12" block takes 32 pieces.  They actually sew together pretty quickly.  The hard part is cutting out all those small rectangles. This will be a 48 by 48" donation quilt.  

 I call it Little Tabs. 

I quilted it and showed it at our May Bee Meeting along with the other 2 donation quilts that I got quilted and bound.  It looks a little less jarring from a ways back.

Both of these quilts are about 42 by 48"

I pulled this out of the UFOs.  I started it in 2017 when I went to a Missouri Star Quilt Retreat with a group of friends.  I struggled with it as I used jelly rolls from two different manufacturers and their 2.5 inches varied a little so they didn't match up as well as I would have liked.

I finished sewing the blocks together and added the borders. 

The pattern is called Ribbon Star - I'm pretty sure MSQC must have a video tutorial as it was in one of their Block Magazines.

 I even used every scrap of those jelly roll strips into the backing. Made several backings with plans to catch up on some quilting in June.

I have so many UFO's - but never let it be said that it has ever kept me from starting more - no one ever wants to run out of them!

Trying to make more donation quilts in kind of manly colors this summer!