Something finished...

Here you can see the Double Delight blocks all laid out on my living room floor. It's the only place in the house big enough to lay out a quilt. I knew I liked this quilt but once it was laid out I decided I LOVED it!! The combination of colors just works for me.




And here it is all sewed together with borders and all. I don't think I've ever done this much sewing on any one quilt. The color scheme is the same as the original instructions since I was trying to come up with a quilt to make using blue/brown/pink anyway. The browns are all different prints since I didn't have enough of any one to do the whole thing. I did the outside border corners the same as one of the pictures of someone else's finished top that I saw. Best of all, it's all made from stash. Not sure how I'll quilt it yet but I have another top I need to quilt first so there's time to think about it.

It's really good this top is done. I was appliqueing some hearts on blocks for a group quilt and my Pfaff suddenly decided it was going out of time. Didn't hit a pin or anything, stopped stitching to turn the block a little & when it started back up it made a bird's nest on the bottom & the timing was suddenly way off. Guess it will have to go see the sewing machine doctor. I finished the block on my little Brother machine. It's a nice enough machine but IT JUST ISN'T MY PFAFF.

I retreated..............at home

Judy L. over at patchworktimes.com has been hosting an at-home retreat this weekend & I decided to play along. I had to work on Sat. so didn't get started until that evening, by pressing & trimming the brown/gold square-in-square patches for the Double Delight mystery from over on quiltville.com. By the time I went bed Sat. night this is what I had ready to go for today.


And here are the finished blocks that I put together today. I feel so productive!! I tell you, I have never done so much cutting, sewing, pressing and trimming without having any finished blocks. Now they just need to be pressed and then I can start setting them together. I don't think I'll show any more pictures of this quilt until the top is completely finished. I feel like it's getting to be a very boring, drawn out affair.

Where does the time go???

I'm sure I don't know. And I can't say I've accomplished a whole lot since the last post a week
ago. I did get the back pieced for the patriotic string quilt & cut the batting to size. I want to get it loaded on the machine Tues. or Wed. & get started on the quilting. Today I finally got started sewing on the Double Delight mystery quilt. I sewed and pressed and trimmed and sewed and pressed and trimmed and repeated for hours and I'm still not finished with step #1.
The pieces were all cut in advance too. I'm beginning to think it may be next New Year's before this one is finished.

Friday I went to stay with my grandkids while their parents were in Omaha. My SIL had been sent to Clarkson Hospital to have surgery for a cyst in his pancreas so grandma got called on to babysit. I had no idea how long I'd be there so I packed up my laptop, a book & new quilting magazine & my lightweight sewing machine and the parts & pieces of the DD. Was also returning their computer which had come to see Computer Dr. Grandma to get it working right again. The upshot was that I set up all my sewing stuff, set up their computer only to find it needed a new mouse, searched the town of Pierce to find one, looked through my magazine, never opened my book, now the computer needs a keyboard, and found out the Omaha Drs. want to wait on the surgery until the cyst develops thicker walls, daughter came home, I packed up all my stuff & came home & SIL was supposed to come home today too, to await the optimum time for surgery. I never sewed a single stitch!! Such is life.

I'm including this last picture as a bonus. It was taken from my
front step last Tues. It was just so pretty out with all the frost
& snow on the trees.

Cuttin' Up

It was so cold Tues. & Wed. that the best thing to do was stay inside and work on quilt projects. I spent quite a bit of time cutting pieces for the Double Delight mystery. Didn't get to do much on Thurs. since I worked at the library, but today I was back at it. While the pattern was offered in steps as a mystery I didn't start cutting until I had printed out all the steps. Then I started cutting..and cutting..and cutting, until this is what my Double Delight looks like at this point. Now I can sew..and sew..and sew. And THEN I get to trim...and trim...and trim. (Not really looking forward to that part.)

Not the ideal day..............

This is the view out my front door as of about ten minutes ago. I think I'll stay in and find something to do where it's dry, warm & and not windy.Maybe something like ironing some of these fabrics and starting the cutting on Quiltville's Double Delight mystery, which is no longer a mystery to me since I have printed out all the available steps.
These piles of fabric I pulled for the mystery have been growing. It's scrappy so I want lots of variety in the pinks & neutrals. I'd like a few more blues, too, so I may have to dig through those a little more.

Or, maybe instead of working on the quilt I should get back to finishing the 23 Things in the Nebraska Learns 2.0 online class. The end of January will be here before we know it. Decisions, decisions.