Block Six....Hop to It

Summer is winding down.... Tomatoes coming in daily... So here's my block of the month from Edyta Sitar's Quilt in her Hop to it Book. Half of the blocks ar enow completed.  Made from wool, I see pieces of my garden in every block.

I'm typing from a hotel room-- yep..I've been in class today and had a ball.  All the nerves, all the worries, all the "I'm too old for this" has passed.  I just love it.....

I'm finishing this post early=== back to the books....

Gratitudes:

Don taking care of my pups, my garden, my flowers

My safety in travel-- talk about a country mouse in the city mouse's world.

2 quilt shops I visited along the way.... I'll post later.

The Pillowcase...

Promises are important to me. I don’t take them lightly. I emailed Carol and wanted to participate in Jami’s pillowcase project. I put it on the back burner. She sent out a progress post last week and last night I made my pillowcase. There was machine quilting to work on--- I’m 2 quilts down-2 to go--- but you always have time for the things that matter the most. I hadn’t forgotten that email to Carol asking for the details to make a pillowcase. I wish it were a dozen…..It should be a dozen… But here’s mine…

The flag print came from San-- so it’s the gift that keeps on giving……

Michigan to Florida….my package left with three-day –select postage. Anyone has almost a week to get one made….

My favorite part...

My favorite part of quilting………..I have thought about it a lot. There’s the choosing the pattern—I love… I study quilt photos constantly. It’s relaxing to me. Some people workout to the television, or music, I study quilt pictures. I like choosing the fabrics and cutting out the pieces. One of my favorite things to do is to total up the individual pieces for a total count of a quilt. Piecing and bring those individual squares ranks pretty high. I just love bringing it to life.

While I don’t love stretching a quilt—the machine quilting is the most challenging part for me and it’s something I want to work at getting better at. Bindings are addictive because you are just so close to being finished with the project. When a quilt is completed, I have put time and energy into it…. Most of the time I’m tired of it and I’m pretty hard on myself as to whether I did a ‘good enough’ job.

But I have spent time thinking about it this weekend—my very favorite part of quilting is taking that quilt out and covering a table, covering a bed, hanging it up—maybe throwing it over a ladder-back chair.

I have 4 quilts pieced…. Four of them not quilted. I’ve even blogged about getting them quilted and I put it off—I think it’s because stretching them onto the frame is the hardest part for me. I want to complete them so this afternoon I got one stretched and part of the way machine quilted. For those that don’t relish that “ladder-back chair” experience---to have the un-quilted projects on the shelf is no big deal… but it bothers me… and I’ve promised myself that I’m giving at least 30 minutes a night this week to work at getting these projects done. I’m working from easiest to hardest because I’m hoping to improve as I work at it.

This weekend Don ran 10.25 miles… he’s working toward a relay with Eric. I ran the pups twice on Saturday and a 4 mile workout this evening on the elliptical machine. I went to the farmer’s market and picked black-eyed susans from the roadside.

I played in the garden, knocked out the housework and got a nap after reading a few pages from my IPAD. This weekend was outstanding…. Boring to some, pretty much perfect to me.

I can deal with Monday…