Fast Finish

Good morning, my friends. Our weatherman has been right about the forecast. We had a couple of reasonably nice days Tuesday and Wednesday, but the rain has returned today. We're expecting a wet weekend. That's Oregon for you. If there's anything you can count on here, it's rain in winter.

We were late getting off to the grocery store yesterday. That meant I didn't get into the sewing room until nearly 3:00 p.m. Despite my late start, I was able to get my challenge quilt to binding stage. As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to do this one as a quilt-as-you-go project. I found a piece of scrap batting in just the size I needed. Smitty helped me lay out the quilt back and the batting.

And then I just went to work with the quilting. When it was finished, I gave it a red binding. Here's your peek. It's colorful...I'll give it that.

So, it awaits my needle downstairs. It's a small quilt at 20 x 20 inches, and so I should have no problem hand-sewing the binding today. When I decided on this project, I was looking for something that fit the "Motion" prompt, but I was also looking for something I could do quickly. The holidays always seem busy to me, even though we've scaled back our holiday preparations significantly. Also, we'll be heading south right after Christmas, and so my time to work on it was limited. Still, I didn't expect to finish it in three days. It leaves me plenty of time to work on my usual "meat and potato" projects in these waning days of 2025.

Next up, I'll return to my quilts-to-be-quilted pile. The Whimsical Garden is up next. It's been relaxing on my quilting machine for the past couple of weeks. It's a colorful project, but I'll be quilting it all in white thread.

It's a rather large quilt, and so I'll aim to quilt a row of blocks each day before I turn my attention to the sashings and borders. I'm guessing it'll take a little more than a week to get it to binding stage.

The quilting won't take all my sewing time, and so I'll also be sewing together the Merry, Merry Snowmen. These are the blocks for that quilt:

I like it when the quilts I'm working on fall near the holiday they represent. The border fabrics were selected from my stash...

I'm not sure if I'll have fabrics for a back. Maybe. And if not...well, I have a fabric shopping trip in my future. Recently, a family member of a dear friend asked me if I could make her a Christmas table runner. I said I would, but only if she didn't want it this year. She didn't, and so I'm gathering up what I need to make this free Nordic Star Table Runner from The Crafty Quilter. I'm borrowing this image from her website. I hope she doesn't mind.

(image credit)

Pretty, huh? I have a supply of Christmas fabrics, but nothing I really liked for this project. So, I'll go on a shopping expedition sometime within the next several days. I'm planning to kit this up to take along when we head south. I've also selected several other small projects for kitting, but I'll say more about that when I get that far.

Oh yes, and I almost forgot. If you've been following my Paypal dispute, I'm happy to say they've refunded the entire amount of my bogus transaction. For now, it's time to get on with my day. I'm looking forward to sitting and hand stitching that quilt binding. It'll be good to have that project in the finished column and ready for its reveal on February 1st. It sounds impossibly far away right now, but it'll be here before we know it.