A late I Like Thursdays and a Friday Finish

Wednesday was getting readY for some library lesson presentations and story times at the library.  Thursday was presenting the lessons and a surprise story time. By the time I got home I was exhausted.

Enough excuses. I did finish a baby quilt:

All it needs now is binding.  I love the center dogie fabric!

All of this flannel fabric wAS leftover from previous St. Anne's quilts. I used the cotton fabric on the back. My flannel medallion was too cute not be front and center.

Throughout last week, I spent more time at home except for my assignment. It was just too cold for me. However I did take a walk with DH and saw our neighbor up the hill had installed a fascinating windmill.

The merest of a breeze would make it turn.

I like what he did for the base.

To the left of our hill is Cucamonga Peak again covered with snow from the last two storms.

The right side of the hill has a view of the easterly mountains. They are spectacular, but I haven't had a chance to take a photo. 

We have sightings of new flowers in our yard.

The geraniums have begun blooming.

We found our first Bird of Paradise

Our Christmas poinsettia is still as beautiful as when we got it in early December.

I'm linking to Finished or Not Friday, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop, Let's Make Baby Quilts, and Free Motion Mavericks. You'll find them in my Linky Parties tab under the header.  Blessings!

6 and 6 in 2018 - October

I finished two this past month, and one was actually a quilt I had listed as getting done. I'm amazed.
My new project done was Sweet Land of Liberty (Lori's QAL that started in January):

All it needs now is a bit of embellishment on two blocks and then it can be sandwiched.  With such a busy quilt top, how would you quilt it?  I'm at a loss and welcome all suggestions.

The second finish is also from Lori - a weekly sew along in October where we made a mini quilt.

This one is all done and gifted already to a long time friend.

As to the UFO I was suppose to do this month, I didn't even look at it. It is destined to go on next year's list. How about you?  How did you do?  Would love to hear from you.  Hopefully, I'll be able to make some progress in the coming last months of the year.  I'm done travelling but Nov-Dec are the busiest with life events, so maybe not.  Blessings!

I'm linking to Amanda's Finish it up Fridays , Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop? , Finished or Not Friday and Oh, Scraps as the SLOL came totally from scraps from my stash.

Blessings,

Friday Finish

My Sajou quilt is done. Thank you Lori for such a fun Quilt Along.  I decided after much thought and consulting with my daughter (another quilter) that using the triangle pink for the binding would pull the eyes toward the edges and have one take in all the quilt, not just the center.

The  construction of the quilt gave me a bit of trouble, but from posts I have seen on blogs over the years, I was able to overcome them.

First off, once adding the last border, I saw that my outer edge had become wavy as the light pink triangle edges are on the bias and had stretched a bit. So I didn't think it was going to lay straight once I bound it.

Then I remembered a post a while back by Lynette at What a Hoot.  She had a large quilt which did the same. I remember her stitching around the outer edge of the quilt to try and take in the stretched fabric and make it more straight.

So that's what I did.  Setting my stitch length at  3 per inch instead of the 2 I normally use for piecing, I went all around the quilt. This longer stitch acted as if I was going to ruffle the edge. And it did, just enough to take in the stretched fabric. Click on the photo and it will get bigger so you can see the

stitch line and the gentle gathering above the green triangle. Phew, problem  solved.  Next I had to trim the backing and batting and get the edges ready for binding.  Oh, oh - as I laid my ruler on the first edge, I saw that I was going to lose most of my points of those print triangles because there wasn't  1/4"worth of seam allowance at those points. Drats.

Okay, I had enough batting around (just) to conquer the problem.  I laid my ruler with the 1/4" mark just at the points and cut off the excess from there. 

As you can see in the photo, my new edge became the batting not the quilt top.  When I sewed the binding on (using a stitch setting of 1.8 to make the seam strong), that new line was where I lined up the binding. Again, problem solved. I think I only lost a couple of points instead of most.

I'm linking to Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? and some others.  Blessings,