The Final Three

I finished three more quilts last week before the guild meeting.  I ended up with 20 entries in the drawing, and as a guild we finished 60 UFOs.  Even though I had 1/3 of the entries in the jar, I did not win the money.  Bummer.  At least I have 20 completed objects.

Here are my three finishes.

This first quilt is a mystery block of the month by Kimberly Einmo that was published in American Quilter magazine in 2005.  I had made all the blocks and then left them in a box all these years.  I think that happened because I had something turned differently than what the pattern required.  I decided no one would notice and just sewed them all together.  Those borders took me like an hour a piece!  I quilted it with a pantograph and machine bound it to have it finished in time.  It is stunningly bright in person.  It looks quite summery.  The outside border fabric is a Moda and was labelled "Classic Florals by Moda".  Not so many designer lines back then.  I'm not sure what this quilt's fate is yet.

Next is a Row by Row quilt from last year.  This is a kit I bought from Modern Domestic and had to wait until the end of Row by Row before they could mail it to me.  I had to add backing, batting, and binding, plus some extra black because I mis-cut a piece.  I think it's so cute!  I did ruler work on the long arm to stitch in the ditch and make the grid.  I'm planning to hang this in my sewing room, assuming it (sewing room) gets done sometime in the next decade.

My final finish is one of my favorites.  This is a kit I got on clearance from McCall's.  Score! The fabrics are Miss Kate by Bonnie & Camille and a printed, solid blue coordinate (white on the back, blue on the front).  The pattern was printed in McCall's and is called Bursting Star.  You can find it online.  I quilted continuous curve with a ruler through all the star points and drew a freehand design for the corners.  I just love how this turned out.  I think I want to hang this somewhere in my house.

We've had exceptionally rainy weather lately.  This is good, because we were in desperate need of rain.  It's not so great for trying to take quilt pictures or doing anything outdoors.  It stopped raining long enough the other night that we were able to go for a walk.  When we came back, we started to walk along the sidewalk in front of the house and almost got hit by a mockingbird flying out of the clematis.  My husband looked at the vine and found this nest.

So far this year we've hosted phoebes, house finch, a sparrow (those babies didn't meet a good fate), and now the mockingbird.  I'm sure there's lots more, but these are the nests we've found so far.  

We also have a hummingbird with a broken beak.  My kids have nicknamed him Chubs because he's quite portly and aggressively defends one of the hummingbird feeders.  His beak looks like a seam ripper right now.  I read that the beaks can be broken by flying into a window or fighting with other hummingbirds.  He seems to be able to drink from the feeder with no modifications right now.  We will let mother nature take her course on this one.

Other things happening right now:  kids are with their grandparents for two weeks.  I'm kinda bored.  I've been doing a lot of cleaning and tried out a new steam mop yesterday.  My hard floors feel so clean.  I'm planning to do a requested resize on one of my doll patterns.  I have a secret swap to work on for guild.  I'm finishing up my #PolaroidGreetingSwap3 blocks right now.  I'm hoping to get to the post office to buy international stamps tomorrow and then get both domestic and international envelopes mailed.  I'll share pictures of all the blocks soon.  Or you can check them out on my Instagram feed.  Link to right and up a bit. ---->