14 it is!

My local discount/grocery store had fleece throws on sale for $4.99. Hmm, thought I, that is cheaper than a crib sized batting. Why not buy one of those and cut it into four doll quilts' back/batting?

Here is the result: a pink strips top welded to an aqua fleece backing. Pretty cozy for a doll.
Note: some strips are made of left-over cuttings.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Nap instead of exercise class
Spaghetti for dinner = comfort food

Doll Quilt #13

One more doll quilt finished that is made up of pink strips. I decided to NOT stitch in the ditch, but instead to quilt curving lines down the middle of the strips.

One more in the works, and then I need to pick out a UFO on which to spend some time!

Sara

Gratitudes:

Breakfast with friends
Groceries purchased for the week and put away
Did my "citizen's duty" by attending Township Board meeting, not bad!

Doll quilt #12

The latest doll quilt I think is my favorite.

The blocks are Rail Fence with bright orange and pink dominating.

The back is pink polka dots.

So I have now made twelve doll quilts for the Guild collection in November, They are stacked on the commode cabinet in the livingroom.

I am now working on enough quieter pink strips to make two more tops. But then I think I need to put some time in on some UFO or other before the end of the month.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Escapist literature
Tasks completed
Out for pizza

Lake and Crazy #11

We are still having gray skies, but down the hill to the lake a Kousa dogwood has turned a bright color.


And meanwhile I have gone rather crazy with doll quilt #11. This is just four log cabin blocks that have the strips set so they form a Greek key or maybe a labyrinth. I chose VERY bright colors, and now I think that I should have put a wider border to contain the impression more. Too late, it's done! Hope there is a mod and crazy little girld somewhere who will love it.


Last night I went to a concert by Holly Near. Loved her informality and her social action music!
Today she had a workshop for our Women's Chorus (we sing something by her every year) and the women's chorus in Lansing. She talked about some of the things we need to "practice" for social change, such as being allies rather than antagonists. And she also listened to us sing, and then had us all sing some simple songs without music on a page. Says we need to have some songs like this ready for a possible opportunity. Good teaching and good fun!


Sara

Gratitudes:

Gaining a little energy around budgeting
Time with Lynne (DDIL) in the car to and froom Lansing
Conversation with Chorus members at lunch

Gray day yet colorful

Cloudy and even rainy most of the day, but the maple trees along our driveway are blazing!

And in the sewing room, I discovered a shoebox with LOTS of 3.5" blocks. Some of them were "confetti" blocks made sometime in the past. Sixteen of them made this 19" square doll quilt. This is #10.

Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Stretching at exercise class

Lunch benefitting the Salvation Army Auxiliary

More tree color as I drove around town

Doll quilt #9

Made from left-overs of Double Delight again. Don't remember that I made so many extra blocks, but there they were in a shoe box!

This time I decided to showcase the light corners of the Nine-patches by using a dark background fabric. The paisley was a long time resident of my Blue stash shelf.

Added a border to "float" the blocks.

Almost enough fabric left for the back, so I added a little strip of African style fabric to eek it out.

We had a bass sectional rehearsal tonight for the G.R Women's Chorus. We have a lot of foreign language songs: this year French, Macedonian, Serbian, an African tribal language.. .altogether nearly half of our songs! But tonight we mostly worked on our notes and rhythms.

We are having a workshop with Holly Near on Saturday in Lansing, and we need to have a piece to present. Lori, our director, has chosen "Rosa Sat So Martin Could Walk". The rest of the chorus is "Martin walked, so Barack could run. Barack ran, he ran and he won, so that all our children could fly!" The tune is jazzy and syncopated, a fun song to sing--and appropriate to present to Holly, who does a lot of social action songs herself.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Tenth doll quilt finished [photo tomorrow]

Made tapenade, yummy!

Maples on driveway turning more orange today

Doll quilts 7, 8

I found some 3/4 Square Triangles (at least they are something more than HALF Square Triangles)--already made. So I put 16 of them together into a doll quilt top.

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That left me with 20, so I made a rectangular doll quilt top. That one seemed big enough to just finish.

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With a combination of stripes on the back.

Now the square top seemed too small, so I added blue borders to that one.

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The backing is a really wild swirl of colors.

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On all of these I have made the binding by simply cutting the backing to 3/4" larger than the top and batting, pressing that 3/4" in half and turning it over to the front for top-stitching. It goes really quickly, and seems sufficient for the project.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Some progress with the financial gurus

Quick haircut

Charlie cooked dinner--brats.

Frosty Sunday

Viburnum leaves after a foggy, 30 degree night.

Sedum "Autumn Joy" backed by "Queen of the Prairie" filipendula, and miscanthus grass.

I found some left-over nine-patch blocks from Bonnie Hunter's Double Delight mystery, and made this doll quilt yesterday and today.

For once I tried some free motion quilting, not stitch-in-the-ditch.

Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Crispy walk this AM looking at the frost

Fall tree color really coming along

Tasty steak for dinner

Doll Quilts 3, 4, 5

These doll quilts are rather addicting! Once I look in my boxes and find some 3.5 or 5" already-made blocks, then it is the work of only a few hours to put one together and be totally finished. A great feeling. Yes, this looks alot like the first one for this year. But THIS one has a blue border!

And this one was from already-made double four-patches.

Thirdly, simply strips and a bright orange with red polka dots backing and binding.

I also got one more "spacer" border on my Your Way Mystery quilt. Just another white one. I am waiting for the last border fabric to arrive in the mail. It's a Michael Miller black and white stripe that I couldn't find enough of in town.

At SpoolSpinners last night we saw how everyone has put their Your Way Mystery together,

including in some cases the borders.

It was wonderful!

They are SOooo different, but you can see we were all following the same recipe.

Here are a few more that I didn't see at our retreat earlier:

Sara

Gratitudes:

A quiet day with no "obligations"

Said a fond good-by to the Summer Sun quilt for the winter

Charlie removed a mouse I had stepped on in the laundry room!

SCG doll quilt 2

Above is the doll quilt for Santa Claus Girls that I finished today. I found some Nine-Patches that were "resting" in a container. After finding some other browns to go along with them, the quilt came together very quickly.

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And here is a glimpse of the scraps used to make a back.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Frost patterns on the grass this morning.

Hot soup for supper

Chorus rehearsal tonight was fun

First Santa Claus Girls doll quilt

The first doll quilt I finished for the Santa Claus girls:

Our Guild collects dolls and doll quilts for needy kids every November, so it is now time to get started on using up some scraps in this fashion.

I found another box of flannel in the basement today. Oh, my goodness. Can't use that much up on doll quilts, so I'll have to find another plan for flannel.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Nice to hear the waves of Lake Huron

Home made bread

Lots of junk from boat garage into the trash!

Blogger's Quilt Festival - my showcase

Park City Girl is having her second Showcase during Quilt Festival in Houston. It's for those of us who don't get to go to Houston. We're having our own Festival on our Blogs. Each participant is writing about and showing her choice of ONE quilt.

So here is my favorite from this year (so far):

It started with a challenge on the internet to make a Rail Fence quilt. I decided to make mine monocromatic, and use up a lot of my YELLOW fabrics.

When I was putting the blocks together I decided to put the lighter ones in the middle and the darker ones around the edges. Since this was in late June, all this yellow made me think of "Summer Sun", and it was going to be done to use THIS JULY!



The idea then was "Sun".

Therefore I made one block that was a Snowball for the center, and slashed some of the other blocks to insert "rays". It wasn't great, needed a better center. . . .

so I put WonderUnder on the back of a piece of white, cut a spiral, and then fused the spiral down to the Snowball block.

Catherine Martin does my quilting on large quilts. I asked her to use a "summer" weight bat and to quilt in radial lines from the center out to all the edges. She did an even better job by making those "flames" in the middle and on some of the quilted rays.

I used up lots of scraps and more of my yellow fabrics on the back. I wrote various song lines about SUMMER there with an orange marker. "Summertime, and the livin' is easy!"

"In the good ol' summer time, in the good ol' summertime!"

One of the sections also became my LABEL.





When the quilt was ready for the bed, I realized that it needed special pillowcases. There were enough scraps left to make cuffs for the two pillows and also my little knee pillow.

This quilt has been just a joy to me. Right now I hate to think that it has to go into storage as we need a heavier quilt for the fall, and our duvet for the winter.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Enjoyed the quilt on our bed for three months.

Just home from a fun trip to Mackinc Island.

Reading Barbara Brown Taylor's Altars in the World in the car with Charlie.

Home and gone again

Two days at the Grand Rapids Women's Chorus workshop/retreat were lots of work AND lots of fun. WOW, there's a lot of music to learn.

As soon as I got home I needed to SEW! Found some 2" strips and got a doll quilt top put together this evening, and enough four-patches for another. I was impressed by Jacquie's work at our quilting retreat. She had flannel scraps and made a BUNCH of doll quilts for the Guild collection in November.

Now Charlie and I are packing for four days "up North". That will be three nights at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, and then one night at a B & B on Lake Huron. Lots of fun being retired! We hope the fall colors are as good as the last time we went up to the Clergy Conference at the Grand Hotel.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Laughter at the "Little or No Talent Talent Show"

Meeting new chorus members

Sleeping in my own bed

Batik Strip Twist finished

Washed and dried this morning:

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So here it is with crinkles.

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And the hearts still show up.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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National Parks show by Ken Burns on PBS this week

Dried cherries to put in my oatmeal

Grand Rapids Women's Chorus retreat today and tomorrow--lots of music!

New phone and hearts

We are joining our son's "phone family" to save some money.
This means we each got a new phone, but had to wait a few days for them to be delivered.


We are also getting rid of our land line. I am going to use the number from our land line on this cell phone, and that takes some time to arrange apparently. Mine was not ready to work for a while.


But now it's working! I could even see that it was Lynne who was calling me before I answered!

I just have to remember to carry it in my packet all the time, and plug it in every night. It's hard to stick with new habits.

Today I finished up the hearts I was quilting on the Strip Twist. They look better than I was expecting--partly because after three of them I made a template!

Next is working on the quilting of the border, which will be simple. The binding is all ready to be applied after that.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Charlie cooked fish tonight (I need it three times a week)

Zeke, our dog, seems not aware he had surgery

Going to a play tonight, "Top Dog/Under Dog" [not about Zeke]