QUILT TOP COMPLETED

I just put the final border on my pinwheel quilt top.

Now I'll finally begin quilting my autumn leaf quilt.

My new threads are arriving tomorrow

while we are spending the afternoon at Epcot for

Christmas Candlelight Procession.

Saturday I'll be in the mood to decorate inside and out for the holidays! 

DESIGN WALL MONDAY

No design wall in my southern home, but I took a picture of my latest scrap project.  I had stitched the blocks together in one direction, and the seams are pressed, and it is pinned, ready to sew the remaining seams in the top together.

The pattern is called Pinwheels on Parade, and found in one of the Nickle Quilt books.  My plan was to sew from my bins of precuts.  The centre of this quilt was made from 5 inch squares.  I had separated all the batik squares, and had enough for the dark blocks, but not enough for the light ones.  I had packed lots of "neutral" prints to help use up the scraps, so I cut 5 inch squares, after I took all the neutral ones from my "light" stack of 5 inch squares.

My next decision will be what to use for the borders.....

DH and I finally made it to the clubhouse on Sunday afternoon and pin-basted my autumn leaf quilt!  I'm anxious to start quilting, but I ordered a few spools of thread from Superior Threads, and I plan on using one or two of them in this quilt.

Check out all the creativity shared at Judy's blog, Patchwork Times.

MY SECOND BOM FINISHED TO DATE

This is my "Version 2" BOM from my northern guild.  Pattern is found here!  Once again, I am using my stash for this project, with batiks being chosen for this one.  This is the quilt up to part 5.  Now I can send my photos of the two quilts to the organizer, as I want her to know that I'm keeping up, even though I can't attend the meetings!

When this project was announce, there were lots of different "Part 1" centre blocks brought in to the next meeting, and I'm hoping that everyone is keeping up with the parts.  I know how much work goes into organizing this type of project. 

MORE BLOCKS FINISHED

I had decided to make both version of my guild's BOM project this year, both using fabrics from my stash.  This is version 2 - with a paper pieced centre.  I decided to make this from batiks, choosing neutral, blue, green and plum for my colours.  These 4 blocks will be used in round three, and the other 4 will provide corner blocks for the final round.
Now I have to get back to a couple of projects that have deadlines!

I baked chocolate, chocolate chip, peppermint cookies this morning, and made some Cheddar sausage balls for the pot luck tomorrow.  My group has been keeping me busy with calls, questions, asking me to re-send files that mysteriously disappeared from their computer......

DH picked kumquats from our friend's tree - they are still north and the fruit is dropping on the ground.  He scrubbed the fruit, quartered each one to remove the seeds, and then had a lesson in making microwave jam.  He made a batch on Sunday, then another one today, after picking up more sugar.  He even made enough puree for 2 kumquat pies - everyone's favourite at the Kumquat Festival in Dade City.  We'll keep the puree in the freezer to give to the tree owners when they arrive.  There is still more fruit on the tree that needs to ripen, and hopefully they'll be able to pick more when they arrive in January, - that is if a hard frost doesn't damage the fruit!

Our visiting dog was happily reunited with her family yesterday afternoon.  The house is quiet today, and DH gave it a good vacuum to pick up all the tiny bits tracked in by doggie feet during the past week.   

SECOND MEDALLION BLOCK COMPLETE

I mentioned the two options for my guild's BOM program here.

I posted the finished block for Option 1 on Monday.

Yesterday I finished the centre medallion block for Option 2.  It was paper pieced, and I'm pleased with the results.

 Once again, my palette was limited by my stash!  All these batiks came from my collection.  I'm hoping I have enough yardage of each, but if not, I'll have to go shopping!

DESIGN WALL MONDAY

First, another small finish.  I've been having fun playing with batik fabric lately.

 Here's the finished table runner.  Lots of half square triangle blocks!

 I just did simple quilting as the fabric speaks for itself.  I used a variegated "Rainbows" thread from Superior thread in the border and block centres, and just some simple stitch in the ditch for the rest.

 On Friday, I finally began cutting the wonderful Oriental print that I found last winter.  It had a huge 24 inch pattern repeat.  I spread out three of the blocks - to - be, to show some of the variations.  I haven't tried octagon blocks before, and these will have kaleidoscope triangles to complete the corners.  I spent some time yesterday, adding a narrow accent band to the outside edge of each piece.  I've cut 30 blocks, as I want a larger quilt (the original pattern was only 40x40 inches).

Head over to Judy's blog to see what creative happenings are on the other linked blogs.