Catching up

Hi there! Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Miracle of miracles, it only rained once here, but not on the parade or the fireworks, though we were nearly eaten alive by mosquitoes at the fireworks. I think they were actually snacking on the bug spray. We spent almost the entire weekend outside, except for the few hours we spent in an actual movie theater watching the new Tom Cruise movie. It was. . .hmmm. . .LOUD. But the hubster enjoyed it, and the popcorn was good.

As for sewing, I did a lot of those boring things that must be done but have no entertainment value at all, like putting on bindings, piecing together a backing for Fiesta Pinwheels and delivering it to the quilter, and stitching together batting for the same quilt. I call this "Frankenstein" batting because of the big zigzag stitches, so I guess I was "Frankensteining." I also cut and marked for some more Pleated Patchwork blocks, but I didn't actually sew them.

One thing I did do was stitch these babies together:

These are the 4 patches and 9 patches from the abandoned Burgoyne Surrounded quilt. Surprise--they're white with red, not red with white.

It was a surprise to me, anyway. I looked at the directions, and sure enough--I did the cutting and piecing for dark with a light trail. Well, that would have been stunning in red and white. If only I'd finished it then. And the pieces are much smaller than I expected. The 4 patches are 2 1/2 inches (finishing at 2 inches) and the 9 patches are 3 1/2 ( finishing at 3).  I have 68 of the 4 patches and 85 of the 9 patches. I'm obsessively searching block books for a setting for these, but I haven't found anything I really like yet.  Since they're white with red, I'll probably have to add another color, but I don't know what that will be yet either. Maybe I need to go to some quilt shops and look around. Gosh, won't that be awful? Anyone with a good idea, let me know!

And then there's this:

Aaaah! There are 5 different projects here! I definitely need to focus, but maybe I should clean off the ironing board first.

That's what's going on here! Lots of getting back on track with everything after the holiday, and lots of work in progress.  We are getting ready for a vacation, too, so it's extra hard to focus. I get more absent-minded the closer I get to vacation, so I'm going to tuck a couple of those 9 patches in my suitcase right now, just in case I run across any quilt shops in our travels.

Have a great week! Hope you make lots of progress! In the meantime, hop on over to Freemotion by the River and Freshly Pieced for some inspiration. And if it's Saturday, be sure to check out So Scrappy too!

And watch out for those mosquitoes. They bite.