Monday Making

I've got a bunch of things on the hopper as usual; I've decided to move forward with some Double Irish Chain blocks to complete a 12-piece redwork series I finished last year, Kitties to Stitch and Quilt, from the book by Nancy J. Martin.

They will turn into 10-inch blocks and a good sized throw quilt at around 50 x 50 inches. Today I'm going to cut some white strips and some red squares and hopefully get started framing the redwork. Then later on I'll work on the alternating blocks. That's gonna require a lot of scraps- great!

Over the weekend I finished (minus outer borders) piecing my Tomte top, which will be a gift for a friend this Christmas.

That's just the gnome- the quilt includes three tree blocks of equal size to the gnome. The pattern is by Sherri Noel for Rebecca Mae Designs and the official title is Scandinavian Tomte Quilt. You can buy it at the link. I picked it up at The Quilted Crow quilt shop (link on the sidebar).

He was fun to make but he is fussy and all those little corners really have to line up. I am not the greatest at technical perfection and he is not perfect but he is fine.

Today I am not going to have much/any time for quilting and in fact this will be a light week for sewing overall. But I'll do what I can.

What are you making this week?

September Projects-in-Progress

I finished my JayBird Quilts August Stars quilt top yesterday before leaving for work, so that means I can clear the decks a little and think about what's next.

I have one project in active mode- a comic book quilt I'm making for a relative, kind of an easier version of the Book Nerd/Angela Pingel pattern I finished earlier this year. I am waiting on some fabric to come from Etsy so I can finish cutting. Then piecing should be a snap.

In UFO mode there is the following (all of these are unpieced top projects; I don't count unquilted tops the same way):

• The Summer Reading quilt,
• The French General Celebration Sampler,
• 12 Days of Christmas Redwork.

This month I'd like to finish the library top. I'm really only actively working on the redwork now. Some projects I'd like to do and have all the fabric for are:

• Unicorn layer cake quilt,
• Jelly Roll Waves,
• Christmas Tomte,
• Halloween Haunted House,
• Cat Christmas Wreath.

Since I did finish a difficult quilt top yesterday I may just take the day off from sewing and do some other things that need doing. But I'll be back tomorrow, probably cutting out Tomtes!

Monday Making

Still working on August Stars; I started out making the Baby size but decided I needed it to be bigger, so now I'm working my way up to Youth size. You can see the size chart and everything else about it here on the Jay Birds Quilts page.

Anyway it turns out that it's a lot of work to do that, and I went from almost-done -with-the-top to feeling a-little-behind.

I just love those big colorful stars and I didn't feel like I had enough with the Baby size. I want to keep making them and making them.

Today I finished what I hope are the last of the diamond four-patches; the genius of the pattern is there are no Y seams thanks to those triangles. Even when I enlarge it, there will be no Y seams, just some weird piecing that is still all straight.

 I really can't wait to get the top finished and start thinking about how to quilt it. What would you do?