Eight days a week

That popped into my head as I was checking to see when I posted last.  Now, to remember what all I've done in those eight days.
First, I finished my I Love My All Stars quilt!!  YAY!!  It's not perfect, but darned close to it.

This was my first time trying So-Fine thread and also the cotton/wool blend batting from Connecting Threads.  I LOVE the So-Fine - it gave me a couple of issues, but I worked them out.  I really couldn't tell any difference in the cotton/wool versus the cotton/poly that I usually use.  I have two more pieces that I'll use for one of my 'garden' quilts - don't know if I'll buy again or not.

The borders, in my mind, were going to be piano key stitched... well, I wasn't concentrating on what I was doing when I started stitching them and I ended up with 'corrugated' borders - that's ok, I like them.

I finished that quilt at 5:30 on Thurs. night - just in time to take to guild meeting - with only two sides of the label still needing to be hand stitched on. 

Friday, I pretty much putzed around... spent an hour in E.R. with a quilting friend and took my 'stuff' for Saturday's class to the library, but didn't even set up.  I did talk with Gloria about doing quilt blocks for Linda G. as a departure gift ( she's moving to Arizona within the next few months).  Gloria wanted to do something with a cruise ship - we looked online but didn't see anything exactly cruise ship, but did find a paper pieced ship that she liked.  This pattern had other transportation blocks so we decided that's what we'd offer up for others to do for Linda.  I printed up two of each when I got home... brought them in Saturday and told the gals there about them and our plan - the patterns went like hotcakes, even after I requested a dollar for each copy to help cover my costs ( I paid $10 for the patterns and then there was my ink and paper used).

Saturday was spent in class with Toni, who was our guest 'teacher'.  Such a nice lady... she brought a bunch of her quilts to show and she made copies of some of the patterns to give to us.  It was also Ruth's birthday and we had cake after enjoying the potluck lunch we had.  I didn't get as much done as I had hoped to, but I got the scallops sewn onto a few blocks.  I THOUGHT I needed more scallops, but now that I look at the quilt, I realize that I probably didn't.  I had wanted to make the blocks look like they were floating on the background.  If I had put them up on my design wall, I probably would have realized that I was right in the first place.  Oh well, I still like it.

Yesterday, I finished making the 'needed' scallops and got them stitched down. Then it was on to stitching the blocks into a quilt top before adding a small inner border and the larger outer border.  I finished about 10 last night.

 I even have a good idea of how I want to quilt it... it just has to wait in line.

Saturday, I got a small 9 block quilt top plus 2 'orphan' blocks from Gloria.  They were made by guild members in 2003 ( before I joined the guild); I only recognized four names - and only one of them is still a member.
Here's one of the blocks....

 I printed this up in black and white and proceeded to design a quilting pattern for it.  Since there are only the nine blocks in the piece and then the two orphans, I'm just going to do the same thing in each - I THINK.  Going to try it on one of the orphans first.  As I got to looking at the top this morning, I noticed that the blocks did not all meet up around the edge like they should have.  I took the parts of the seams out and redid them.  I'd really like to add a small border before loading this onto Mo'e... called Gloria to ask her if it would be ok with her, but she didn't answer ( either she wasn't home or her phone wasn't working again).  I don't think she'll have a problem with it, but I want to ask her to be sure.

Back to the blocks for Linda G., I realized this morning that the patterns DID NOT print at 100%... more like 75%.  I posted a message on our FB page letting the gals know... and that I would test a pattern and let them know.

It worked, just came out at 8" instead of 10.5".  I don't have a problem with that - hope no one else does.

OOPS!  The wheels go UNDER the car, not up in the air hovering over the car. LOL

Here's the first block completed.

I'm not thrilled with the satin stitching around the headlights, but it is what it is.  I should have switched machines... "Marie" does not do satin stitching as nicely as "Jan" ( my older Janome) does.

Since I still have LOTS of 2" squares left from the "Scalloped Potato" scrap quilt, I started making more blocks.  I'll use them to make another quilt like "S.P." - just without the scallops.

Guess that's all ... think we're all caught up.  Hopefully, I won't wait another eight days before posting again.  :)

TTYL