Progress

I had hoped to do a lot of sewing over this three week holiday from teaching.  However, the first two weeks I simply sat around reading book after book and recuperating from having been too busy in November and December.  One of the best books I read was a short paperback novel by Garrison Keillor, A Christmas Blizzard.  It was thoroughly enjoyable.  I remembered as I read it that I had heard the whole book read a year ago, read by Keillor himself, while I was sewing a lap quilt for the DDIL.  I enjoyed it when I heard it and I enjoyed it again when I read it.

This past week I finally roused myself to do some sewing on a quilt I started last June.  When our town quilt club went on its yearly "shop hop" I was determined NOT to buy any fabric, consistent with my huge desire to finish projects and not start any new ones.  BUT at Country Creations I saw a quilt that really captured me.  It was available as a kit, but only in single bed size, so I purchased two single bed kits, in order to make a large quilt for a queen sized bed.  I ended up spending more on fabric there than any other member of the club.  Talk about having to "eat your words!"

Last summer I made all the blocks required for a single bed, plus all the four patches needed for the rest of the queen size quilt.  This past week I put together the rest of the blocks and started sewing them together.  Today I was working on adding the sashing between the blocks.  Only the upper right hand corner is finished, but it's looking good!  Our bedroom here is green, so the quilt will not be used there.  Jim suggested using it at our condo in Arizona, so that's the plan.  This is the first batik quilt that I've made, and I'm really liking it.

I usually attend two quilting groups, one in town and one in the country.  Last year I took a year off from the country group because I was president of the town group for that year.  Plus, it was the year I went back to teaching violin and conducting the small string group, and that, along with a few other "civic" duties was more than enough.

This past Thursday I went back to the country group.  The queen size quilt project above had to remain at home, in order to keep all the blocks where they belong, and not risk mixing up the order.  So I needed another project to work on.

I bought the material for a lap quilt for the DDIL a year ago December in a very fine fabric store in Coquitlam, when we were visiting DS#2 and his family.  This lap quilt (with borders) was on display there and both DDIL and myself were very taken with it.  But the store did not have any kits for the quilts it had on display. That  meant buying yardage, which in turn meant that there was enough of each fabric to produce two lap quilts the same.  After I finished the lap quilt for DDIL I packaged up the remainder of fabric in a large plastic ziplock, so that was the project I grabbed to take along.

Thursday I cut out the blocks, cut them apart according to the directions.  Each block was cut in half, sewed to another block, cut in half again, and sewed to a different half.  By the time I left to go home all 24 blocks were complete.  Today I sewed them together, and am quite enjoying the result.  It needs a small inner border and a larger outer border to complete the top.  It's a simple lap quilt, but quite vibrant.  I plan to gift it to a friend sometime this year.

I'll post pictures of both quilts when they are finished.

Oh, and Happy New Year!