...with a little help from my friends

Having quilty friends makes it much easier to get a lot of quilts finished.  Especially when one of those friends comes for a week and is a production quilter.  Thanks Pat for putting together these quilt tops!

Judy A. gave us the center Corvettes and Ellen (if memory serves, which it frequently doesn't anymore) gave us the backing.  Pat had made yards of bias binding from a diagonal print featuring signal lights some time ago.  This was a most appropriate use of it!

It's a great quilt for a boy.  It seems harder to put together "boy" quilts from our stash.


Cathy gave us some blocks, and Pat magically transformed them into this top using a Savers fabric from my stash that picked up the colors for a border.

I also had a perfect backing fabric, a woven plaid also from Savers that was wide enough not to have to be pieced.  Yay!

 Thanks again friends!  A lot of children are going to get some comforting quilts!

Space for a girl

Pat put one more top together from the space blocks she had along with some of my stash fabrics.  We thought this one would be more of a girl's quilt, since it had purple binding and a flowered backing.

 I'm hoping to finish a few more so I can deliver an even dozen to Dr. Kaufman on Wednesday. 

Cranking them out...

Pat picked up the space blocks as part of a kit--for a wall hanging.  She combined them to make three tops.  I had some space fabric as well to add to it.  

 We used a sheet from Savers that must be really high thread count, although we didn't discover a few holes in it until we were rolling it up on the longarm.  

Pat added a little applique of space fabric to cover the holes on the backing, but not without bleeding on it in the process.  In washing it out I noticed that the backing is such a tight weave that it holds water!  

Our stack of quilts is growing, and I'm going to deliver them next Wednesday so I'll be able to finish some more.  

I also quilted Pat's beautiful zen quilt.  It came together wonderfully, and the binding fabric was a batik that was a dream to use besides being beautiful.  It's waiting for something else to run a load in the washer.  The week is going by much too quickly.  Back to the sweatshop...the third space quilt is waiting for binding.

Another finish

Another quilt from Kathy E.'s blocks.  I don't have 30s in my stash except for one small piece of vintage blue with little white characters--a small piece and only 36" wide, so after I put together these blocks I was having a hard time adding anything to it to make it a little bigger and more rectangular.

Pat has a good eye for putting things together.  Works for me, and another top done for one of Dr. Kaufman's patients.  Thanks Kathy E!  I have a quilt to bind...back to the sweatshop.

A friend's quilt

A friend from AZ, Yetta, made this wonderful quilt for her grandson.  When I saw the picture of it on the quilting forum we frequent, I thought it would be a fun quilt to do.  She entrusted me to do the quilting.

 
 

 

  I'll be mailing it out to her today.  I hope she's happy with the results! 

Lemons, lemonade and such...

We recently stopped at Schwebach Farms in Moriarty on the way home and I bought a buttercup squash.  Had never tried it before, and it looked appropriately like fall with bumpy outer skin and witche's moles here and there.  I planned to make a squash and goat cheese filling for tortellini.

Well, the best laid plans.  After I roasted the squash and mixed it with the goat cheese, it was a bit too watery, and would just squeeze out of the tortellini as I tried to fold them in the appropriate shape.  I decided to abandon the squash and just stuff my torts with plain goat cheese.  We had them in a thin chicken broth with a few slivered vegetables, and it was yummy.

The next day I looked for some yeast bread recipes featuring squash and found this one.  I think this may be one of the most delicious yeast breads I've ever made!!  What a wonderful way to use up the squash, and I'm sure the bit of goat cheese that I had mixed with it didn't hurt the bread any.  I froze a couple of loaves to have when Pat is here.

 I may get squash to just use in breadmaking now!  Looking forward to a week of sewing (and eating) when Pat's here.

Another one finished

It's good to have quilting friends that give you blocks and pieces parts to make quilts for our cause!  Kathy E. was very generous with blocks from swaps she participated in on About.com quilting forum and wasn't going to use.  

I made this blue and white quilt from the sampler blocks.  I had the perfect backing in my stash.  I love it when I don't have to piece a backing.  This one just fit.

 Thanks Kathy, and I'll be using the other blocks soon in a quilt! 

From leftovers

One of the times Pat was here she made a quilt using a wonderful cactus print.  She always has great scraps and I hoarded what she didn't use.  I came across them the other day and put together another donation quilt.

 I think I'm about out of donated tops to quilt, and I'm going to have to start putting more tops together.  I do still have a number of blocks, which makes putting tops together faster for me since I don't love repetitive piecing.  I also need to do some scrap reduction.

One to donate, one to sell

I finished a couple of quilts.  The first is a little doggie themed quilt with some orphan flying geese blocks.  Thanks to Pat, I had the perfect backing, a flannel with doggie prints.

The second quilt is one made from my stash of Route 66 fabrics.  This particular print features the "Bluebird Hotel" sign which bears a striking resemblance to the Blue Swallow Motel, which we used to own.  I'm sure it was a deliberate attempt at bypassing trademark issues, which at the time the fabric came out we would not have pursued.  It is a generous lap quilt, 64 X 79" and I'll be selling it. 

 I quilted it with the clouds and lightning bolts pantograph.  The backing is a solid, celery green color.  

Room done

Our addition is finished!  Well, at least the part we contracted to have built.  Now comes all the work Dale will be doing to wire it, and finish the interior.  I'm just the gopher and helper.  My favorite part is acquiring things for the new room!  Our new front door will be a dark turquoise color.   

We've been busy with a few other things, Thursday afternoon we had a really loud lightning strike which took out our power.  We thought the whole area was without power and so never called until four hours later.  They came out and restored power with 45 minutes.  Lesson learned, we'll call sooner next time.

When the power came back we learned we lost our DSL modem, flat screen TV, a satellilte tuner in my sewing room, and the electronics in our satellite dish.  The modem is replaced, satellite restored, and now we're just waiting on the flat screen.