Side Projects

Slowly but surely the Works in Progress are, well, progressing.  But recently I took a bit of time for a couple other projects.

My quilt guild president is stepping down, after several years of leading her team to give us high quality programs and wonderful quilt shows. We are secretly making a commemorative quilt for her. During a recent trunk show of antique quilts I found out her favorite quilt block is the Bear Paw. I decided to make that block, but oooh boy, the size they wanted was 5.5 inches finished. Yikes! That is some small piecing!  But I was determined to do it.

After calculating that the triangles needed to be 3/4 inch finished, I carefully cut them out. I changed my sewing machine needle to a brand new sharp size 12. Then I used tissue paper under the triangles so they would not get drawn down into the feed dogs. That worked perfectly!  When the block was assembled it was 1/8 inch too small. Aargh!  I picked out the seams of the inner sashing and re-sewed them with a more scanty seam allowance. That did the trick.

The next side project was to make a hostess gift for a family member we planned to visit during Thanksgiving week. Pat Sloan had a little fall-themed table topper on her website that was just what I wanted.  In just a couple hours it was done, quilted and ready to bind. I decided to use a single fold binding and quickly stitched it on. It turned out so pretty I almost don't want to give it away.

Now back to the THREE quilts I am in the midst of quilting....

Fall colors must be on my mind now that it is finally cool in the South.  Both of my side projects used brown and rust shades. Sometime soon I will begin an Endless Chain quilt with a medium brown background  once I decide on the block size. I ordered the fabric from my favorite online source, Connecting Threads, and it arrived a few days ago. I will allow myself to start once I finish one of the WIPs.

Please leave a comment and share what you are working.