What have I been stitching up?

I'm glad you asked!
First, my June Threads Together blocks are done, but not sent yet. Alison asked us to make cross blocks, with as many or few crosses as we wanted. She sent a fun collection of reds and some tone on tone whites and solid white to work with.


Next my Craft Hope quilt. You will remember I was making a quilt to send to an orphanage in India. This is the quilt I'm working on for that. It just needs the binding wrapped around from the back to the front and attached and its ready to go, which is good because it needs to be in Texas in 11 days. I used lots of big, elaborate prints, which sort of reminded me of Indian sari fabric. And since I have two boys, I decided to make something pretty and girly, but hopefully something that won't show dirt too badly.



I really liked the simple design I used for the Craft Hope quilt. So much so that I've decided to use the same design for a quilt for my friend Lisa's baby that is due around the same time as mine. I started one really crazy, complicated quilt in all reds and black and white polka dots and dark blues. Then I remembered that Lisa likes more muted colours than I do, and that I wanted to finish the quilt before she goes back to Bogata in Sept, so I decided to cut into my Heather Ross stash instead to make something soft, sweet and simple. For you other fabric junkies out there, I picked up 2m of green West Hill horses for the back.


I also have three blocks to work on for my two quilting bees. The blue and grey solids are for July for Threads Together, the tone-on-tones are for Lish for the Stash Busting Bee, and the forest animals are for Shannon, who is making a hunting lodge quilt for her nefew. I need to have these all finished before I go on holidays in a week, so after art camp is done, you can know that as well as packing and cleaning, I'll be stitching up a storm.

And this is a sneak peek at something I'm working on now and then when I get the chance -- a quilt for me. These are my Pop Garden scraps from this picnic quilt where I used up almost my whole stash of these fabrics. I've added some of my favorite browns, as well as some fantastic greens I've been generously given in assorted swaps. I made the first block when I was doing a test block for this star block . I'm making 15 more, and then I'll figure out what to do with them once they're done. This one is just to pull out and work on when I don't have anything else with a deadline to sew. Although I might like to finish it in time for the new baby, since I tend to do a lot of couch snuggling and nursing with new babies while everyone older plays around us.


I was being pretty disciplined about doing one major quilting project at a time, but I've found that with the boys at the stages they're at, there are only certain parts of a quilt I can do during the day when they are awake. So if I'm at a spot that requires some thought and concentration and possibly math or a lot of ironing, I can't do it when they're awake. So if I have several projects going, there's always something I can mess around with at any given moment. Hopefully this isn't the beginning of the end of sanity.