Circling the squares

Hi everyone! I can't believe it's October, can you? The weather has definitely taken a cooler turn, which is nice, but we have no turning leaves yet.  We do have leaves all over, though, because our neighbors had some gigantic trees taken down over the last couple of days. When I say gigantic, I mean really, really tall. They brought in cranes and everything. It was quite the project.

 

I had a project, too, though it did not involve cranes or leaves, and only a tiny bit of drama. And it turned out much prettier than a pile of branches and sticks! Here she is:

 

 

Like I said, prettier than a pile of sticks! This is my second hollow 9-patches quilt, made from scrap squares for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I made the top in the "before times," in 2019, which seems like so long ago, doesn't it? If only we had known what was coming. . .

 

 

I am so happy with this quilt, and not just because it's so bright and cheerful. I rented free time (not lessons) on the longarm and quilted this up myself. (I also quilted another one at the same time, but that will have to wait just a bit for its debut.) As always, it was more fun than a box full of scraps, and I came home with a finished quilt, which is just the best.

 

 

Look at those great colors! I tried to quilt this all over with circles in various sizes, but some of them are more circle-ish or only suggestions of circles, more like ovals, really. Some of them overlap a bit, but most of them are separate. I had a little trouble in a couple of spots, since I quilted myself into a corner, so to speak, and had to make some very, very small circles to back myself out of it. But that's why we use blendy thread colors, right? Since this was my first shot at making circles, I feel pretty okay about how they turned out. If nothing else, it makes a nice texture.

 

 

When I was quilting this, there was another quilter using the other machine, and we spent some time admiring each other's quilts and encouraging each other. It was great! When I was feeling bad about my flat circles, she picked me up, and when she had to rip some backing that had folded over and gotten quilted in, I commiserated. I can't even tell you how good it felt to be with a kindred spirit. Plus, it helps to know that I'm not the only one who screws up when stitching. 

 

 

Every bit of this quilt except the backing is a scrap, including the binding. The backing is a really pretty gray and white print that I bought for something else, but that didn't work out too well, so it was available for this quilt. I know, I actually bought gray and white fabric, but like I said, it didn't work out!  

 

I am thrilled to have this one quilted up and out of the closet, and I am so, so pleased that I'm making so much progress in that area. I might be trying to make up for last year, when it feels like I got nothing done. Anyone else have that feeling? 

 

 

Hope you all have a lovely fall weekend, filled with fall-themed goodies. Is it cool enough for hot apple cider, or should I wait? How about pumpkin pie?  Maybe pumpkin donuts! Thoughts?

 

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished or Not Friday, Oh Scrap, and soscrappy for RSC21.

Some of this and some of that

 Hi everyone! How are you all doing today? I am happy to say that this past weekend was one of the best weekends ever, as we got to go to visit our Wisconsin grandchildren for the first time in 15 months, and to meet our smallest granddaughter for the first time ever. I'm happy to say that Giggles is just the happiest child, and is so cheerful that it's contagious. It was glorious, and so long awaited. I think my heart grew several sizes. Also, restaurants are now called "the french fry store," which is what the 3-year-old calls them. Guess what her favorite food is?

After that, how can anything else compare? It can't, but I've got a few irons in the fire-- or in the sewing room-- right now, and I'm making some progress. I've got one machine set up with the walking foot and am really trying to power through some more donation quilts. It's going okay, mainly because I'm sticking with plain straight stitching. It isn't fancy, but it gets the job done.

 

And on the other machine, I'm making some dolls today:

 

 

This is a panel by Stacey Iest Hsu and it is just darling. The dolls themselves are very easy to make, just stitch around the edges and stuff with fiberfill. The hardest part is the cutting. And look-- they even come with some tiny pets:

 

 

I need to get these finished up, because my local tiny granddaughter is finally coming over, on Mother's Day. By then her parents will be all vaccinated and ready to re-enter life. I can't wait to hug her too, and I'm in a hurry to get "her room" ready. Too bad that darned job keeps getting in my way! (There's only 25 days to go in the semester, not that I am counting or anything.)

I've also started cutting these half-hexies for another donation quilt:

 

I think it's going to be quite lovely, and it's also the first time I've really appreciated how fast the Accuquilt can cut shapes. I'd been using it to cut some scraps into squares to add to the bins, but I think this summer I'll have to explore using it a lot more. For now, it's going to make quick work of cutting this donation quilt, so maybe I can have it finished by June.

One other thing that I'm working on is what to do with these little crocheted circles:

 

 

There are about 50 of these, and they were all made by my grandmother in the last months of her life. She had had a stroke and couldn't sew any more, but a lifetime of needle work meant that she needed something to do with her hands, so she just kept making these over and over. She didn't really know who we were, but she certainly remembered how to do this.

 

I had thought that I would applique these to different-colored solid squares and join them into some kind of a quilt top. When I started putting the colored squares on the design wall, they looked awful. No matter what colors I used, I didn't like them. Then I thought about just hand-stitching the circles together for a kind of free-form blanket of sorts, but I don't know how that would work, really.

 

 

My current idea is to make type of whole cloth quilt using one solid color and then applique the circles onto it. Maybe I could quilt a crosshatch and then applique a circle in each square? I'm not sure how that would work, either, but I'm kind of stuck. Anyone have a better idea? 

So, that's what's happening around here. some of this and some of that. Plus a lot of zigzagging batting together, but that's a boring story. At least it gets used! I'm sure many of you have heard about the email issue with blogs and the widget that emails posts to you going away, but I haven't had time to look into it yet.. I'm sure there's a workaround somewhere, but I just haven't had any time for research. We'll see what happens.In the meantime, let me know if you know anything!

Hope you're all having a good week with long-postponed happy small gatherings and hugs. And if not, they're coming soon! I have high hopes for a semi-normal summer. Another thing to wait and see!

Sharing at Midweek Makers.