Another start

On Sunday afternoon, I decided to sort through all the catalogs and magazines that had been piling up in the living room.   The ones with clothing were all advertising stuff for spring and summer!  Consequently, almost all went into the recycling bin.  

But one of them went up to the sewing room with me.  It was a pamphlet with patterns for scrap quilts that came with my renewal of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine (sorry about the glare), and it showed a very do-able little quilt using pieces of the rainbow, arranged ROYGBIV style.

I have a new grandniece or -nephew coming this winter, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.   I'm sure the parents haven't decided on a color scheme for their little surprise, so I'll wait to create a back in a color(s) of their choosing.  (I hope it's not "neutral" like the last one I made them!)   I've made three rounds and hope to add the green round today.

I'm using a white dotted fabric for the strips in between.  The original pattern shows a light blue dotted fabric which is also nice, but I don't have enough of any color for that.  It's quite easy although it's important to square up everything after each round of color.  I don't want to end up with a parallelogram!

I'm heading to the quilt shop this morning with the Gumballs and purple Round Robin quilts.  I'll tell Marie there's no rush on the quilting.  Having just finished Dear Jane and Wensleydale, I am definitely not in a hurry to bind two more quilts.

I need to get some more thread as well as a new blade for my smaller rotary cutter.  I am hoping to make a Flowering Snowball quilt this fall also, and I find the smaller cutter is easier to use around the plastic templates.   I already took a small chunk out of one point the other day as I tried to cut some pieces ahead. 

Gumballs top

Even though I had a lot to do last week (Heritage Days, after all), I started a new quilt.  It's a scrappy one called Gumballs, a pattern I saw in another blog and which appeared in McCall's Quilting some years ago.  I decided to try to use up some blues and, unusual for me, cut all the pieces before sewing them into blocks.  I needed 120 nine patches and 120 half-square triangles, plus other fillers!  I can almost close my blue fabric tub now.  

Over the weekend I managed to get most of the blocks together and finished the 60" x 72" top yesterday.   I have some pieces of previous backs ready to put together today.  But I'm not all that thrilled with the whole thing.  Maybe I'll like it better once it's quilted.  At any rate, I'll take it to Marie for quilting when I have the back ready, and I'll probably give it to Bags of Love after that.  

Meanwhile, Dear Jane has been languishing on a chair, waiting to be bound, and I did get half-way around over the weekend.  Our perfect weather has come to an end, and it looks like I'll be indoors watching the rain for the rest of the week.  

Our blueberries are coming in strong right now, and I've already frozen several bags.  I want to bake another blueberry buckle for Friday (my birthday) so will try to get outside in between showers to pick two cups more.  We're planning to go out for Chinese on Friday with Chris and Paul's sister Pat.  I'm sure we'll be too full after dinner for cake, so I'll give them each a piece to take home afterwards.

And speaking of blue, I must be in a blue period as last week I also finished a blue tote bag for my brother Axel to give to a friend who has been driving him around.  It's hard to see, but both sides have a pocket between the handles.  I used pre-quilted fabric from "Connecting Threads" for this bag and another one I need to put a button on.

Yesterday I went to the quilt shop where they offer a discount of half my age around my birthday.  I bought about many yards of mostly neutrals, stocking up for the coming year.  Phew!  Had a nice, long awaited chat with Robin while she cut everything.  That in itself was a birthday gift as we don't get together often enough.