Wrestling with a quilt, helping a neighbor

Looking through my quilt project journal, I noticed that I started making Sisters Choice on June 1.  I have tried to keep up with blocks of the week for the Moda Blockheads program (sometimes 3 or 4 at a time), and a few smaller things.  But mostly I've been working on that quilt all summer.  It took three weeks to quilt the center, and now I am finally finishing up some log cabin borders that I'll need to quilt.  I rue the day I decided to quilt it in sections as it seems so unwieldy now.  I will be adding the last border and then will add more batting and backing fabric to all four sides.  Only then will I be able to quilt it.  Next time, I'll try to quilt the whole thing once it is put together and,  perhaps, not do the tedious 1" grid crosshatch that took me so long in the center.

My online swap group has decided to swap 12" Missouri Star blocks in 2018, and I volunteered to write the guidelines.  There are several methods of making this block, so I've been testing them out.  The one at http://www.quilterscache.com is paper pieced, which I'm not wild about doing, especially if we're making 15 or so blocks.  But we found several rotary cut directions that may work, and my trusty Judy Hopkins Around the Block Again book has one, too.  It's a nice block.

For the same online swap group, I swapped 6" blocks from Sylvia's Bridal Sampler out over the weekend and took two trips to the post office to mail them back to people.  The blocks are really nice, and mine should go well with the Moda Blockheads blocks.  As I've been working on the Sisters Choice quilt, I've been thinking about sashing and settings.  Navy blue?

Most of yesterday was spent helping neighbor Manny with a PowerPoint presentation.  He and Paul are doing a program on the earliest settler of Montpelier, Col. Jacob Davis, on October 16.  I've already transferred Paul's photos to .ppt slides, so I have become more adept at using Microsoft's Picture Editor feature.  I spent the morning putting Manny's photos into .ppt format, and then we spent some time discussing what to keep/take out and how to use PPT itself.  It's been interesting.