October 31, 2016

It has been a beautiful fall day here in Michigan.  We're enjoying the pretty fall leaves inside and out.  Here's a picture throught the living room window of the backyard, where the leaves are falling fast:





























Inside, my fall leaf quilt is on display on the railing near the front door, and we are enjoying it's beautiful colors.  The quilt pattern is "Third Weekend in October" and is designed by Ruth Powers.

I've been productive in my quilting studio - working on very simple things.  I've taken out my box of scraps, and have been cutting simple squares from the scraps.  While going through the scraps, I found several quilt blocks that were there from various sources.  Also in the basement storage,  I came across a bundle of dish towels that were purchased long ago, when I had plans to embroider them.  Yesterday, I fused the orphaned blocks onto the dish towels, machine blanket stitched around them, and made something out of nothing. Always a pleasure when I do that!

Here are my dish towels, ready to gift to new homes:

Hope you are having a beautiful fall day too!  Happy Halloween!

As usual, I'm linking up with Design Wall Mondays, to see what other quilters are working on.    (Here)  

What's Happening in October

First, here's a little doll quilt I just finished.  It's a project for the retreat that I go to in Shipshewana every fall.  The ladies at our table challenged each of us to make a little quilt using any nine of the Jane Stickle squares in it.  Jane Stickle squares are 4.5 inches, but they wanted the little squares to be 3 inches or smaller.  I made my nine squares to finish at 2 inches, but the quilt looked very small with only nine squares, and I didn't want to make any more - 2 inches is tiny!

So, I used some half-square triangles that I had to enlarge the quilt a little bit, and added pink and brown 1 inch hst's around the edge.  It is machine quilted very simply and last night I put the binding on it.

The quilt measures 12.5 inches by 12.5 inches.  I am looking forward to seeing the other ladies little quilts when we meet in November.

Secondly, I've been keeping up with the 365 Challenge of either 3 inch or 6 inch blocks.  The blocks have been mostly 3 inch blocks, and yesterday's block was one with mitered corners.  Ugh, I always have trouble with mitered corners.  I cheated and used hst's instead, and it went together very easily.  Here's a picture to show you what I mean:

I drew lines through the picture to show me how to convert it from mitered corners block to a simpler block using half square triangles.  I also used a small print fabric so the seams didn't show very much.

After 9 months of making blocks every day, I look for the easiest way to make them.  

Thirdly, I made binding, and am sewing it on a picnic table sized quilt that I made. The quilt is made from left over pieces from an aborted mystery quilt project from two years ago.  I started Bonnie Hunter's "Grand Illusion" and became disillusioned with my quilt.  The pieces and parts were made into four quilts.  This is one of them:

The quilt is about 55 inches square, and I have another one just like it.  I intend to use them as picnic table covers at the cabin.  I enjoy hand binding, and it will be relaxing work in the evenings this week.  What are you working on?

As usual, I'm linking up with Design Wall Mondays (Here)