Another UFO Bites the Dust!

About a year ago, at the height of my Farm Girl Vintage frenzy, I was doing projects left and right. It was around this time that I realized my "style" or quilting, so I took advantage and made project after project. No harm there! However, I have a few unfinished projects here and there in my sewing room as a result fo the FGV mania. This weekend, I finally finished one of them.

First up was getting the batting ready. I have so many 6" or 7" wide scraps of batting, most of them leftover from quilts taken to the longer-armer. I can't say it was a real joy to piece them all together, but it did yield enough batting to finish the project.

I butted the pieces up against each other and sewed them together with a wide zig-zag stitch then flipped them over and did the same on the other side. Stitching a second time may not have been necessary but I wanted to be sure they wouldn't come apart. A good pressing with the iron flattened them out nicely.

The main aim was to "git 'er done!" so I opted for a quick straight line quilting job. Easy peasy! Typically, I'm a fan of attaching the binding by machine and then hand-turning it. I love the look of a binding with no visible stitches, but lately I've gotten a lot better at doing the binding completely by machine. That's now my go-to binding method for some projects, mostly quilts that aren't going to end up on a bed or a lap. Within four hours, I had four of these little cuties quilted and bound...

The design was inspired by the Blue Plate Special pattern. This particular placemat is mine; I'm a lefty, so the cutlery pocket is on the left. ;) Although I have a couple projects that I've yet to finish from when I first learned to sew and quilt three years ago (don't judge!), I was happy to tick this year-old project off the list! Not only did I get satisfaction from that, but the patchwork pumpkin design also somewhat sated my desire for autumn. I am not a summer lover, and I'm looking forward to cooler temperatures, shorter days and those comforting foods of fall. These will be on our dining room table for a while.

Lastly, I finished my aunt's quilt - the Jinny Beyer project that scared me half to death and ending up being not so terrible - and mailed it off to her, but I completely forgot to take a photograph of the finished quilt! Ugh. She was kind enough to share a photo of it with me.

I'm happy that she is so happy with it!

I'm linking up again with Sew Fresh Quilts this week. Lorna is so creative and makes beautiful patterns...go give her a visit. Now if you'll pardon me, I have to make a torturous decision - start a fun, new project or tackle a long-idling one. Decisions! Decisions!

Picnic Quilt

Yesterday was kind of a dull day, just a monotonous Tuesday morning. That is, until 9:45 when I got one of my favorite calls. "Hi, Dan. This is Millie P's, and we're calling to let you know that your quilt is ready to be picked up."

HOT DANG!

Then my day wasn't so boring, but I found it hard to focus, because all I wanted to do was get out the door and get my quilt so I could get it home and bind that baby! I handed it over to them four weeks ago and was eager to get the job done.

That's the quilt top pre-quilting. I went with an all-over feather pattern.

There are a couple of close-up pictures of the quilting. They did a great job (as usual)! I didn't waste anytime once I got home; I picked out a fabric for the binding, a little yellow chick pattern from Lori Holt's Calico Days line, and got to cuttin'.

Here they are all cut, joined and pressed. Aren't they just precious? I decided to do this one completely by machine. When I'm making a quilt for somebody else, I attached it by machine and then hand-turn the binding to the back. I need to brush up my machine-binding skills and this one is staying in-house, so I wouldn't mind a few mistakes by completely machine-binding it.

Now that she's all done, I just have to run it through the wash and snuggle with it in the basement.

I love how colorful it is, and the layout made it really fun to piece the blocks together.

Now that I've ticked another one off the to-do list, I can move onto the next! :)

Today, I'm linking up to Lorna's Sew Fresh Quilts Let's Bee Social.