A couple of finishes and some frustration

Thursday I picked up two quilts made of miscellaneous blocks from Marie, the long arm quilter.  Both will go to "Bags of Love," which puts together bags with toiletries, a book, a stuffed animal, a quilt, and more for kids going into foster care.  I bound both quilts over the weekend and feel so good to have two UFOs done.   I'll get them back to Marie this week or next, I hope.

The first quilt is made of orphan blocks that didn't really go with any other orphans in my growing pizza box.  I liked the setting I found on a pattern that I've had for a long time.

The second quilt is mostly made of blocks of the month I made in 2023 in my various guilds.  The two tulips were leftover from another quilt.

This was the first time using the walking foot on my little Brother, and, while noisy, it did a fine job.  I do miss the smoothness of the Elna's dual feed foot, but the end result is a binding on.  I always machine sew both sides of the binding on charity quilts and those going to children so that they wear well.

With those quilts out of the way, I sandwiched the first three rows of Dear Jane and started quilting it.  That should keep me busy most of the week.   I want to take my time working on each individual block with the walking foot.  I am definitely missing the large harp on the Elna, though.

My Fly with Me pattern arrived in the mail over the weekend.  I bought it because I was intrigued by its various sizes and shapes of flying geese.   I thought it would make a nice scrap quilt.  When I opened it, I was dismayed to find no foundation sheets or templates.  These all needed to be acquired by scanning a QR code which I did with my phone.  How to get the resulting information onto my computer in order to print the pattern pieces led to an afternoon's frustration.  

After I wrote to the designer in Germany and got no response, I wrote to the shop owner who sold me the pattern, Phyllis.  She had the same problem and also got no reply from the designer.  Now I don't feel so dumb, but neither of us can still use the pattern.  What a boondoggle!   

Phyllis says she is no longer going to stock any Zen Chic patterns without assurance that the pieces are included with the pattern, and she very kindly refunded my money.  She removed it from her website, too.  I started drafting the pattern with graph paper, but the blocks are all 12" and my graph paper is only 8.5" wide.   So I am making my pattern 6" square.  I could have done this to begin with but don't feel good about simply copying a design seen online.   Getting to know Phyllis was a good thing to come out of this.  I needed more backing fabric for Dear Jane, so I bought it online at Phyllis' shop.   She's very speedy at filling orders, and my fabric is already on its way.