Progress made

I had to make a couple stops after work so that cut into my quilting time. I did get a fair amount of quilted though.

I am still confident that this will be done by Saturday. I am ready for it to be the weekend and get a few extra hours of sleep.

Call me crazy! LOL!!

Remember the second quilt that was in pieces that I put together for a friend? You could look back at my posts June 30 - July 3, 2025, where I worked on assembling this quilt. The binding is already done and the outside board is quilted. I just need to quilt the black background and outline stitch the floating squares and half of the center medallion. I just found out my friend will be heading over to see my nephew's band play this weekend so I decided I would get this finish and hand it over to her. Yes, call me crazy, but I now have a fire under my backside and want to get this done! To paraphrase an old disco song "Ain't no stopping me now!" There is no deadline on the flannel quilt so it can be put to the side and I will go back to it after I get this quilt done. I am free motion meander stitching the background.

I outlined the area I got done last evening which was a lot! At that pace I will easily have it finished by Saturday and it will be one more project done and it would not have sat on the list for years! Woohoo!

More courthouse steps blocks and the big handoff

Four more courthouse step blocks are done and I managed to get them up on the design wall. They are not in their final places; I'm just sticking them up there so I can see where I am going with this quilt top. 11 made; 9 to go.

I handed off the leather jacket yesterday and the fellow was quite pleased with it. He wasn't sure it fit him anymore, but he tried it on and it was a perfect fit! He said he couldn't wait to show it to his mom. His dad died 5 years ago. He thought the lining fabric was perfect and approved with a big smile the way I fixed the edge of the cuffs and patched the vents at the sleeves. Whew!

More blocks and design wall space

I got four more blocks made last evening. I only have four light flannels and 5 dark flannels, so there will be a lot of repeating. The four on the left are the new blocks

I am running out of space for the flannel blocks, so it looks like I am going to have to sew together the red zig zag top.

Making binding, cutting flannel, and pulling weeds

I had a few strips of this red and white striped fabric I want to use for the binding on the red and white zig zag quilt.

Three strips were only 2" wide; I cut my bindings 3 inches wide. Here is my solution. I sewed the stripe strip on to a white stripe of fabric.

I pressed the seam open

Trimmed the strip to 3 inches

Joined the strip with a strip of 3-inch fabric at each end. I don't want to have that joining seam in a corner. It would be harder to get a nice, mitered corner with the extra bulk.

Flip the binding to the other side and you would never know the binding was pieced.

I still didn't have enough of the striped fabric so I added a couple pieces of the red polka dot fabric.

A woman I work with asked for two lap sized flannel quilts in blue and cream. I just happen to have the fabric on hand. I bought this flannel last fall when Hancock's of Paducah had it on sale for a ridiculously great price. I got cut some strips

Then I started sewing some blocks. She doesn't want them exactly the same so I thought I would do a log cabin for one and courthouse steps for the other. The courthouse step blocks go together much faster. These blocks will finish around 15 inches.

I did go outside for about a half hour to pull thistle. One plant had matured and had gone to seed. I will be fighting with those next year. I ended up pulling up 47 plants of different sizes.

Blocks made and another show

All the blocks are made for the red zig zag top. Here is what it looks like now

Of course I have lots of extra blocks!

In the middle of the day I had a show to work for my nephew. It was outside at the art museum. The load-in and out were fairly easy and thank goodness we did get a nice crowd. I had left the house at 12:30 and we were done about 4:45. I needed to run a couple errands after the show so I got home around 6 PM.

Back to the red zig zag quilt top

I decided I wanted to get this top done. That meant I needed to make more blocks. The point of making this was to use up the blocks I had which I did, but I need more!

I got the 3" wide strips cut. This is a mix of fabrics that are in the top and small bits in the red pile that need used up.

I am out of white strips so I will go thru these pieces and cut the smaller pieces into 3" strips.

Here are the strips sewn together so far. Next is to press and cut them into 5 1/2" blocks.

Yes, I will have more blocks than I need to finish this top, but I will just add those to the pile of blocks I already have from the last production of these blocks.