My Design Wall and Gwennie

With my two weeks of traveling in August and all the other crazy stuff of the past month, I only finished 3 stars for my next round of my Gwennie Inspired QAL. They're the blue and yellow stars on my design wall.  The fourth is in the final stages of being constructed.

Those hourglass blocks are the first of my leader and ender quilt blocks (as per Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville).  The four sawtooth stars are for a new medallion quilt I started.  The block assembly instructions are from Barbara Brackman's Star in a Time Warp BOW she did last year.  They are a snap.  I don't usually like working with triangles because of the bias, but if one just guides the fabric in doing this star, no problems.

I hope to get back to my Gwennie Inspired this month in between working on the commission quilt I'm hoping to finish soon.  What are you up to?

Some of This and That

I took hand stitching with me on my trip.  What with interacting with family, travel restrictions and other fun sewing at both destinations, only got a bit done. One star in CO and one here.  Two Gwennie inspired stars:

Two to go.  

I used about two yards for Lily's Quilt and 3/4ths yd for the quilt repair and a tenth for these two stars. I also bought 3 yards of fabric that I am keeping, so my YTD total ending August is 40.83 yds.

Speaking of traveling, I was in awe of the huge mountains (really, volcanoes) I saw from the plane and in Vancouver (Mt. Hood).  This is from the plane on the way to CO, and believe it is West Crater - Mt Hood would have been on the right side - I was sitting on the left side and saw three of them north of the Columbia almost in a row.  The other two may have been Indian Heaven and Mt Adams. WOW.

DS#2 took me on a scenic drive from Horsetooth Reservoir to Estes Park to visit the Rocky Mountain National Park.   What a beautiful drive through Drake and Glen Haven!

In Glen Haven we stopped for fudge and to admire the gorgeous quilts - all for over $1K each.  On the way back, we stopped in Drake for a cherry pie - yum!  And our destination:

Phone was acting up again, so I bought a postcard - looked like this but without the fall color.  Had lunch in a restaurant next to the Fall River Visitors Center.  It was a wonderful day.

And in Fort Collins

I got to do some sewing also.  DS#2 was gifted years ago with a quilt from DD.  He uses it a lot,  and the quilt had come to the point where it needed repairs.

 One of the bandannas needed to be replaced.  I was so happy I had read Sandra Hatch's book, llustrated Guide to Vintage Quilting (Master Quilter's Workshop).  She shows you how to repair an old quilt.  So I knew what to do.  Went to the LQS.  They happened to have some bandanna fabric. Bought 3/4th yard (I needed a 21" square), some Perl cotton thread, and a sharp tapestry needle. Fortunately, I had pins, invisible thread, and a seam ripper in my hand quilting box to round out my supplies.  Back at DS's , I removed the torn square, inserted the fabric and whipped stitched the square in place.  Again, I had to use a carpenter's tape and a straight edge and the scissors I bought to cut it.  I used the Perl cotton to tie the square once I was done inserting the block.

It is a big quilt - queen size - the one photo I took of it was too dark to show. And hand sewing?  Didn't get much done on that - I'll show how far I got in my Kathy's Slow Stitching post.