Make-A-List Monday #11! (And an upcoming Giveaway!)

Good morning, all!

The view from my workroom/dining room window!

Can you see my little friend out there in the woods?
behind the 4th trunk from the left...

It is a BEAUTIFUL day in Middle Tennessee - the sun is shining, it's about 60 degrees outside - and it's a holiday!!  Yipee!!  And - - - first thing this morning, checking my e-mail, I found out I had won 99 apple-core die cuts from Vickie over at Spun Sugar Quilts (she got a little over-zealous with her new GO! Cutter and I was the lucky recipient of her zeal!!)  Those are going to be really fun to play with....


So now, it's time to see how I did on last week's list - - -

1.  Quilt and bind the completed flimsy for the quilt ministry.  Done!  I love the way this one turned out -it's going to be hard to give it away!  

2.  Pull and cut fabrics for the fourth quilt for the ministry; package in small kits to distribute to fellow quilters to work up blocks and return.  Done!  I gave out four kits, and have one of them back so far - the others to arrive Wednesday.  


3.  Pull fabrics for the fifth ministry quilt.  I haven't done this (physically) yet but I have a very good idea of which fabrics are going in the pile....


4.  Choose a pattern for a gift quilt (October birthday!)  I spent yesterday afternoon on the boat looking through magazines for inspiration and doodling in my design book - I think I've come up with a design to use.  Some tweaking today and a test block should answer that question.


5.  Help my friend made a Jacob's Ladder pillow for her son's new college dorm room!  Done!  We had a great time working on it together and it will be delivered today in a college care package!

6.  Enter every AccuQuilt GO! Cutter give-away I can find!  (Can you tell I really want one of these?)  SO DONE!  I sure hope this is a lucky week for me......  keep your fingers crossed!!




And now, this week's goals..........


1.  Sew up blocks and finish a flimsy for the fourth ministry quilt.  (This one is for a young man in Louisiana, so we'll call it the Louisiana quilt for now!)


2.  Organize fabrics received last week through donations into the stash.


3.  Pull fabrics for the fifth ministry quilt.  (This one is for a family moving into a house our church is building, so we'll call this one Welcome Home!)


4.  Lay out my Bee Splendid blocks and number for sewing into a flimsy. (I think I may go roll up the living room rug and do this right after I finish this post - hubby is out running and I might have just enough time to do it!)


5.  Prepare for my 100th post GIVEAWAY!   (I guess that means I've got to figure out how that Random Number Generator works!)




Yes, that's right - if you'll look in the right sidebar, you will see that this is my 98th post - which means that my Friday post will be #100 - and that means GIVEAWAY!  I have a great set of fat quarters especially purchased for this purpose, and who knows what else might make its way into the pot?  So if you've just been blurking (blog-lurkers, you know who you are!) you might want to make a comment on Friday!


So - - - have a great Labor Day, be safe, and I'll see you back here on Friday!!!  (Tuesday, too, I hope!)


Later!


Sarah


PS  Check out this giveaway!  Lots of really cool stuff to be given away at The Quilted Fish!!!

Sew&Tell Friday - Thoroughly Modern Millie!!

Hi, all!

I hope you all have big plans for your Labor Day weekend - I've finished the quilt I was working on, so now I can play without feeling guilty!!  So let me introduce - - - - Thoroughly Modern Millie!!


We received a request through the quilt ministry for a quilt for a high school senior with medical issues and her favorite colors are grey, black, yellow and green..............  whew!!  An unusual color combination, and our fabric stash is notoriously low on greys!  So I went on a search and found four beautiful greys and grey/blacks at Joann's, of all places.  I bought a yard of each, not knowing how they would go into a quilt.....   Later on, at home, a picture of a quilt caught my eye and sparked my imagination - instead of traditional blocks, I drew out a large square within a square within a square pattern.   Adding yellow, green and white narrow borders between the grey pieces drew in all the colors requested.

After the top was pieced came the task of quilting.  I've been wanting to try straight line channel quilting for a while, but the thought of using it on a whole quilt was a little bit daunting - so I used it for the narrow borders!  I love the look - just wish it didn't take so long!  For the inner darker border, I used a "beadboard" pattern - channel quilting with an inch between pairs.

The center, with its nifty circles, called for something different - so I used free motion quilting around each circle - sort of a pebbling, but not quite.  I like the way it came out!





The medium grey border was printed with circles too, so I did a little more free motion quilting to balance out the center circles.

I wanted the back of the quilt to be simple, yet have some punch, so I went to see what I could find in the fabric stash.  Four great black and white prints later, and this is the result....

I love the boldness of it, and take a look at how cool the quilting looks on the back:

All in all, I'm very happy with my finish this Friday - and now I have to give it away!  But hopefully its new owner will love it as much as I do....

I'm linking up to Amy's Sew & Tell Friday and Andrea's Lush Friday - be sure to check out everyone's wonderful finishes for the week!!

Later!

Sarah

Scrap Happy Summer Parade!

Hi, all!

Well, Em over at Em's Scrapbag has been hosting Scrap Happy Summer - and it's time to show all the scrappy projects from this summer!!  So here are my entries in the Scrap Happy Summer Parade.....

"Sail On"

"Caribbean Reflections" front

"Caribbean Reflections" back

"Peaceful Paisley" front

"Peaceful Paisley" back

Summer Oranges (front)

Summer Oranges (back)

And yet, even with all this scrappy sewing, the scraps keep reproducing.........   So I guess I'll just have to keep on sewing!!!   The sacrifices we make........ ;-)

Be sure to check out what everyone else has done with their scraps this summer over on Em's Scrapbag! There's lots of inspiration there.....

Later!

Sarah