Busy Week

The past week was really busy with appointments, phone calls, and errands. Lots of hurrying up and waiting. And then there was a high school graduation and celebration out of town on Friday.

FuzzyHusband has been encouraging me to get out more and meet new friends in the area. With that in mind, I let myself get talked into a quilting class yesterday. I'd been meaning to try paper piecing for the longest time anyway and the concept was interesting.

Getting some practice with my new machine's free motion foot was nice too. It's not the best quilting job, but I can't get better without practice. I haven't bound it because I didn't figure out until I was already home (and the shop was closed) that the fabrics for the dark border and binding were mislabeled in the kit. So I need a new strip of fabric for my binding. Whoops. That's what I get for being excited to play and not checking the widths against the directions.

After assembling and quilting comes embellishing. I just tossed the flowers, leaves, and bag of beads on the quilt for this photo. It was late and I wanted to get some sleep. I'll be arranging and attaching the pretty bits later today.

All in all it was a fun little class and a great way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday. I'll likely be doing more of these. Every month there's a different mini quilt pattern and they all feature different piecing and embellishment technique, so each one is a skill builder. Plus the other ladies were lots of fun.

And if I'm being totally honest, I needed a mental and emotional break from my friend's quilt. It's been harder to do for me than I realized and I was really fighting with the quilting last weekend. So I promised myself that I'd only work on fun little things for this holiday weekend to give myself a break. Plus I could totally have seen my friend taking this class too. Like me, her favorite color was purple and she loved flowers. And I could hear her in my head telling me to have a bit of a rest. So I listened.

Speaking of resting, two of my ladies were competing for table space and attention the other day. I couldn't resist getting some photos. This one is my favorite.

Stay safe over the holiday and I'll see you next weekend!

Self-care Sunday

Happy Mother's Day from Ellie Bean

She's such a helper.

Top and Back

The quilt top got finished Wednesday evening. 

I'm quite pleased with the borders.

I finished piecing the back late last night/early this morning. This was an effort to use as much of her Downton Abbey fabric as possible. I did have to buy some more fabric, which was a neat trick since that line isn't made anymore.

Without showing the label, for privacy reasons, here's a closer lok a the details on the back.

The whole quilt gets layered and basted tomorrow afternoon. I'm got a friend coming over to help me since two sets of hands will likely be necessary. Today I'll make the binding because having it done ahead of time will be nice.

While I was out shopping for more fabric and batting on Friday, I picked up another stuffed animal pattern. This fellow is going to be fun!

And His Fuzziness decided to delay mowing the lawn for a few hours yesterday in favor of picking and de-petaling a mess of dandelions. There will be dandelion wine in our future. The spheres are re-hydrated golden raisins. The contents are happily bubbling in the stock pot. Apparently the recipe calls for letting everything ferment together for 3 days before straining the chunks from the liquid and continuing fermentation in another vessel.

That's all for now. I should find breakfast and get to making binding. I'm hoping to have everything mostly quilted by next Sunday. It's going to be a heavy job with all that fabric. There will have to be periodic breaks to rest my arms and shoulders. See you next time!