Bag Ladies are In the Bag

The bag ladies are not intoxicated...just to be clear. But they are finished. I had the most faithful assistants working with me to bring this to a close.

Sadie...I need you! I've been working on this quilt binding for hours, and I need some relief.

Okay, Smitty. Just let me know when you want me to take over. I'll be right here.

We're almost finished, Sadie. I'll just rest my nose right here. Pawssibly, I can hold on to the end.

When I'd turned the last corner and finished it off, I laid it down for it's "four corners" picture...um...excuse me...would you mine just...

Okay, there we go. Did I mention Smitty helped finish this off?

And there we go. A happy and colorful quilt.

As mentioned previously, I've been rehoming some of my quilts and lightening my load. While I was stitching around the binding, I was considering what to do with this one. It's going to go to a friend who was diagnosed with a rather aggressive cancer earlier this year. (Yeah...2020 has been a major bummer of a year.) She's been undergoing treatment, and it looks like she's going to be okay. Nevertheless, she's had trouble regulating her body temperature, and so I decided to pass along this quilt to her. It'll be a great snuggle quilt for someone trying to keep warm.

Moving on, I was in a mood to switch out my fall runners, toppers, and wall-hanging for the more Octobery stuff. This little table topper is called Pumpkin Patch. The pattern was from the September, 2016, issue of Quilter's World.

This next little wall-hanging was the result of an all-day class I took with Meg Hawkey of Crabapple Hill Studios when she visited a local quilt shop. The embroidered pumpkin pie design was hers, and then I borrowed two more pumpkins from the table topper above to make this little quilt. I really like this little space on the wall between my kitchen and dining room. Originally, I didn't set out to have it be a quilt-swapping area, but it has worked out that way.

And, check out those bullion stitches. Those were my first successful ones. Meg sat by my side and taught me how to make them. The trick is not wrapping the floss around the needle too tightly.

And, finally, this little runner on our breakfast bar. This little quilt is called "Cornflowers," and the pattern was one I picked up from a "clearance" box at a San Diego quilt shop. It was from Sticks and Broomstraws. The flowers and the prairie point borders are made to look like candy corn. Rarely do I make the same quilt twice, but I think this would be cute done in spring colors with flowers made in different colors. Maybe some day I'll do it, but it was a pain top-stitching around all those petals and leaves, so maybe not. 

Okay, so then I went back to my slow-stitching. I filled in as much as I could on the latest plate for Pieces of the Past.

Today I'll start on this next section. I couldn't quite fit the whole thing in the hoop, which activates my OCD something awful.

While I was working on that, Mike brought in the mail. Lo and behold, there was a mug rug from my "ghost" partner in the Teal Mini Swap. Sheesh. Now who woulda' thought? So, thank you, partner. I take back all the bad thoughts I had about you. Why didn't you respond to my many messages??? Whatever. I love all the colors in this.

When describing my likes and dislikes for the swap, I always just say I'm a born cat lover. She included a fat quarter of this cute fabric. Are these cats wearing pajamas, or are they children wearing cat pajamas? I'm kind of going with the cats wearing pajamas because of the whiskers. Very cute.

Also in the mail was a bag of 50 tongue depressors I ordered. I saw this on Pinterest...or somewhere...I can't remember. It's ribbon wrapped around tongue depressors. I thought this would be a good idea for left over quilt binding.

So, I had quite a bit of leftover quilt binding, and I spent some time wrapping all of it around the tongue depressors. I used bent pins and old sewing machine needles from my "sharps" container to fasten the ends. I had in mind to use a large jar like the one above, but I had so many they were packed in too tightly, and I couldn't really see them. Instead, I used one of those plastic bags I save from sheet sets. And there they are...all tidy now.

I spent so much time on that, I barely had any time left to work on the New Mexico Kitchen block. I only had time to add the bowl of batter there on the right.

I'll have more time to work on it today, and I really do expect to get all of the fusing finished. If I'm really speedy, I should be able to get a start on the top-stitching.

So that was kind of a full day. I even squeezed in some housekeeping. Today there's nothing on the calendar. It's going to be an NBS day (Nothing But Sewing). I love Saturday, don't you?