THE TABLE RUNNER FACTORY AND SWEET TWEETS

 This past week has me sewing table runner like crazy for my guild's quilt show boutique shop.  I just want to get these things done, off to Peggy the lady in charge of that part of the quilt show.  My oldest daughter is coming out to stay for 10 days to visit us and quilt with me.  She has a quilt top all pieces and we intend to quilt is together and also put bindings on some projects.  She is a new quilter, so coming for some vacation time and a bit of one on one classes in quilting your projects and binding them.

I have three completely finished.

These and a number of other ready to quilt.

These and several others in various stages of completing the binding.  I usually do several up to this point then finish the joining of the binding ends completely in  a second step that finishes the binding process.

And yes a good 9 or so ready to get binding ready to go on and finish them all off.  Beside a stack of ones on the back of my chair in the family room that I finish the hand work on the  bindings in the evenings.  A total of 17 or 18 in the end.  Yes, I do feel somewhat like I am a table runner factory. 

But this is on the horizon.  I have Sweet Tweets Block One with a good start ready to go.  The green on the side is for the leaves and the vines and the brown for those little bird legs.  

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GARDENHURST BIRDS AND PILES OF JELLY ROLL STRIPS

I pretty much finished with all the quilt show boutique table toppers and bowls that I intended to make this past week.  Also got the last couple of quilts hanging around the sewing room that needed quilting done and I am working on the last of the handwork on the bindings.  So at last I was able to finish the bird appliqué wall hanging with the scalloped border this weekend.  

And yes it is done.  I could not wait to hang it up on the entry hall wall.  Let me tell you that scalloped border is a pain to deal with, but they are so pretty.  I was a bit concerned that the sleeve which had to be set low on the back of the quilt would cause the top scalloped edges to flop over, but found just a little bit of double sided Scotch tape insured they stayed up. 

I said I was done making quilt show boutique items up until last Tuesday night.  There is a free table set up at guild meetings where anyone that wants to rid themselves of any quilt related items can leave them.  I snagged all these Christmas fat quarters and jelly rolls right off that free table.  I mean there has to be a good 40 or more of the jelly roll strips, a few 5 inch charm cut pieces, and a couple of yards of fat quarters.  So it is back to making some runners for the boutique.  I even snagged some batting as well.  

Yes, 6 all quilted and ready to bind and at least another 4 or more to go.  Pretty much they run about 26 to 28 inches long and 14 or so inches wide.  I can knock out 3 quilted and ready to bind in an afternoon.  

    

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QUILTING THE MONSTER

 This week has me trying to get things done.  I am finished with all my quilt show boutique projects.  Time to move on and quilt two quilt tops, bind them and finish them up.  I still have my bird appliqué project to finish quilting and Sweet Tweets to start.

I have been putting off quilting this monster for a month or two.  It is 50" by 72" and bigger than I have ever tried to tangle with before.  And yes, I use large pins rather than safely pins as it is faster to pin and take them out, but a bit dangerous at times.  

Yahhh, I managed it and it was not nearly as awful as I thought it would be.  Not a wrinkle front or back either.  I will say my Bernina 750Q has that nice big throat on it and that makes a big difference for sure. 

My placemats are done, and they are just so pretty.  I got the kit from Connecting Threads and really need to check them out again as these are just so nice.  

The kit came with 6 panels so I only use four on our dinner table so made this cute table runner with the other two.  

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LOTS GOING ON THIS WEEK

After finishing my table toppers I took a bit of time with another pattern and sewed up some fabric bowls.  

The first two are a bit larger, I had a bit of trouble with the thread I was using to gather the circles.  After that I put some heavy duty thread on the bobbin and top and all went much better.  I may make a few more over the next couple of weeks now that I have it down well.  I am hoping this is the last of my quilt show boutique sewing.  

I purchased this fabric a good year, ago possibly more, with the idea to make myself some placemats.  Since I have been doing fall placemats for myself this past week or two, time to work on these as well.  There are 6 of the 10 inch square pieces each are different.  I only plan to make 4 placemats and use the other 2 to make a table runner. There are two strips of the above border print which will look great as part of the table runner's borders. 

I will use the top print as borders on two of my placemats and the 3rd print down for the other two.  The second and bottom prints for binding 2 each of them.  I only had 1/2 yard of each of the prints, should have bought more, but I think this will work out fine.

My fabric from Connecting Threads arrived on Saturday.  Now I can start Sweet Tweets.  I am still digging around in my stash, because more fabric is always better.  

Once we finish our front yard a couple of weeks ago we found ourselves with left over rock.  As this area was always a bit of a weedy mess, we thought that we might as well use the rock in this area.  Of course the left overs was not enough so we had to purchase more.

Once that was done the rest of the area look pretty bad so the project continued with mulch instead.

I think we are done, but we said that a couple of weeks ago so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

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