August BOM

Monday, amid packing, I finished the August BOM which means I will only be behind the month of September when we return home in October. 

I finalized my stitching to go bag……

..….and elected to sew the binding on the Quadrangle quilt first. 

The roadside attraction for our first day of driving was in Zanesville, OH - Cottrill’s sidewalk of sculptures.

There are two blocks of sculptures and they are amazing!

Check out what this sheep is wearing…..

Ice skates 😂😂.

Fun times! Cherie 

The Question….

……I’ve been asking myself is what do I really want to work on. The answer is some improv, some liberated piecing, using my vast collection of thrifted shirts, and a few projects I’ve had in mind for years. 

Given these answers, I’ve decided that while I enjoy cutting up leftover fabrics for the scraps user’s system à la Bonnie Hunter, I don’t really want to sew with them. I’ve offered this 5 1/2” high stack of 3 1/2” squares to friend who does sewing for charity. Similar to giving my batting cutoffs to Jan, they are used, just not by me 😉😉.

I have a love of re-using containers and found the perfect almond windmill cookies container to put the squares in for packing.

Along the same lines, Patty said she was going to order more white flannel for the thread beds she makes. That reminded me I bought extra wide white flannel for a design wall when I first moved to PA but I’ve been using flannel backed table cloths. I like them as I can easily roll it up to preserve what is on it and put up another one which means I never used the flannel.

The flannel and the Friendship Star quilt packages were both taken to the post office on Saturday. Fingers crossed both will arrive safely.  

Letting go of things that, realistically, I will never use will help me focus on the projects I most want to make but seem to take a backseat. That’s the plan, anyway.

 Cheers, Cherie

Completed! Finished! Done!

I have put in the very last stitches on the Friendship Star quilt. It seems heavy but weighs only 9 pounds…..so much less than I would have guessed. I ended up glue basting the binding which took several hours but worked well. I used my zipper foot to get close to the edge of the binding and used my stiletto to help keep the binding fold out of the way.

It worked pretty darn well and saved a ton of time vs hand stitching the binding down. The corners came out really nice too.

Here’s the label….this quilt is going to England thus the USA on the label.

Here’s the finished photos of this 108” x 108” monster.

Linking up with Finished (or not) Friday….because it is FINISHED!

Yippee! Cherie

Binding Time

I cut and sewed the binding strips for Friendship Stars yesterday. I did my usual pre-check to make sure no joins landed on the corners.

Today I got the label prepared and sewn in the corner.

I used a strip of the selvage to make the octopus and now there’s nothing left but to get to sewing!

Happy sewing! Cherie

I Win!

I played backing chicken and I won! Yippee!!

I did lose at bobbin chicken, running out of thread about 15” from completing the last row of quilting but better that than not having enough backing!

This quilt is huge and it’s heavy. I’m definitely going to sew the binding on by machine using glue basting. I’ve been sewing on my featherweight in a featherweight table but it is the size of a card table…..just not enough real estate to manage this size of quilt. So I got to thinking.  We have a large desk that isn’t used much since I’m no longer working. Also we both use iPads and no longer have a desktop computer…so I asked about moving our desk into the quilt studio. 

I’m not certain if I’ll rearrange things or not but this will work for now! It will be so much better for sewing on borders and bindings!

Cheers, Cherie