I Have a Friday Finish!

It's been kind of quiet here on the blog lately.  I have been sewing a lot, but not on anything that I can blog about right now.  But yesterday I took a little break and went to a Guild Summer Sew In day, and I started on my UFO Challenge piece for July. 

My #3 for the UFO Challenge for the month was to sew together my swap blocks for this quilt, and today I finished the top! I made the blocks with my friends Mary & Starlyn, and we swapped them so we got a nice variety of fabrics for the scrappy look. 

The quilt pattern is called High Cotton designed by Kim Diehl, and it's the cover quilt on her book called Simple Comforts (A book I highly recommend by the way).  So now that I've moved it from the unfinished-project pile of bins to the un-quilted pile of tops, I'm really sparked to tackle that pile :)  Can you relate ~ How many piles do you have going in your sewing space? 

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

What I'm Thankful For Today...

...I'm thankful that this pile of 72 album blocks, is finally a quilt top!

This is another huge quilt top at approx 90" x 101" ~ I've been making a lot of big ones lately!  There was an excessive amount of piecing in it too...and with not a bit of applique which was really strange for me.  Each of the 72 blocks has 27 pieces, plus 161 sashing rectangles, plus 90 sashing squares = 2195 pieces!

The pattern is called Friendship Album designed by Jo Morton and was published in American Patchwork and Quilting Magazine the October 2009 issue.  I pieced it for a customer, but my husband and I have really taken a shine to it (doesn't it look great on my bed?), so I think there are some more album blocks at some point in my future :)

Now I can take a little break from the sewing machine and start baking and getting the house ready for the family coming for the holiday weekend, and I'm thankful for that too! 

Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving weekend and Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Americana Celebration

Here is my first Finish It Up project for the weekend. It's my Project Quilting Challenge quilt, I'm calling it Americana Celebration. This week's Project Quilting challenge theme is Stars Over America, so I of course went with traditional patriotic colors (I love doing patriotic quilts!).

I think it looks cute vertical too like a wall banner :) The center stars and circles were cut with my Accuquilt Go, and machine appliqued, and I quilted fun free motion stars and loops in the outer border.

I had to go with a quick project this week, since I have other finishes that I have to get done this week too, so a table runner fit the bill. I'll let you know later in the week when the voting is up for the Project Quilting challenge :)

Hopefully I'll have some more finishes to show you later this weekend!

Enjoy the Day!
~ Dawn

Made it into the Finish It Up Challenge

My "Orange Pile" fabrics from Pat Sloan's online retreat from back in February finally went from what you see above to what you now see below!

I had gotten the blocks done back on the original retreat weekend, and used Pat's recent Finish It Up Challenge to set them into a quilt top by the deadline (which was yesterday). My original intent for the borders is what you see plus a pieced inner border between the brown and orange ones, but I decided that finished would be better, so there's no pieced inner border ~ but I can live with that.

I had big plans for the Finish It Up Challenge, and pulled out several older, not-quite-done projects, but with getting ready for, going to, and recovering from Quilt Market, I was lucky to get even the OP quilt top done. I plan to leave the other projects out though and try to do one a month to move some of them along. What "works in progress" do you have that you can take to the next level? I'll keep you posted on how mine are going.

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Finish It Up!

Pat Sloan has issued a Finish It Up Challenge over on her blog. You can read the details here, but in short you can get in the running for a prize if you post before and after pictures of a past project that you take from pieces to a pieced top between now and May 22nd.

So I went into my vault ~ I mean closet ~ that has many projects that look like the one in the above picture, just waiting for me to notice them, and I pulled out this bin.

The Bloomin' Rose swap was from a couple of years back. I have about 20 of these blocks that are rough edge applique. They are intended to be subcut and sewn back together to other blocks for a very scrappy look. Pat had published this in a McCalls magazine a while back.

The little purse swap was one on Pat's swap site that I participated in and here they sit. If I can get these sewn together with some focus fabric, they might make a cute little girl quilt to donate to Mountain Baby Blankets (they need quilts for big kids too).

I have twelve of these blocks all made by others on Pat's Yahoo Swap site. I'll have to go shopping to find a good focus fabric to go with them :)

Then I also have my OP Challenge quilt to finish (it's still in the same condition that I left it in at the end of the online retreat weekend). I'd like to get that one done for me.

Of course I have other things to finish up (Farmer's Market, Calendar Stitchery Blocks, Walk in the Moonlight, Times Remembered, I Believe...the list goes on), along with things for the quilt shop that I've started, and designs for Spring Water Designs. I think it's important though to fit in things that are just for fun/just for me, so I think I'll participate in Pat's challenge and see what I can get to. What do you have that you can Finish Up this Spring?

Enjoy the Day!
~ Dawn