Happy Halloween

My favorite (so far) Halloween quilt. It is named "Owen's Quilt" in honor of a favorite young man whose birthday is Halloween.

While on retreat, I finally finished this quilt top. All it needed was the final border. Guess this tells you how much I hate sewing on borders, huh? I can't lay my hands on the book at the moment (imagine that), but will post the name of the pattern when I find it. It's done in modern Christmas fabrics.

The day lily wall hanging has also been completed. Now it goes into the pile "to be quilted someday."

Last but not least, two veggie blocks are finished and the third one started for the kitchen wall hanging. Both the lilies and the veggies are patterns by Ruth McDowell. I would have been well advised to have made the corn block larger. Both for aesthetic reasons and for ease of piecing. It's giving me fits. Lots of steam being applied.

Day Lilies

I began working on these day lilies several years ago. Three flowers were completed and then the project sat in the "time out" box until this week. I went on a quilt retreat with three friends to a summer cottage owned by one of them. I love these home made retreats the best. We were blessed with lovely Indian summer weather and I pulled out this project box to take along. The lily in the upper right quadrant is not quite finished. I hope to finish it tomorrow. Then a decision will have to be made as to what to do with them. They are from Ruth McDowell's book, "Pieced Flowers." I so enjoy making these that I believe that I will make a triptych of pieced vegetables next. There is a perfect wall in my kitchen that is begging for some adornment.

Ready for Bonnie

I'm ready for Bonnie Hunter's "Grand Illusion" mystery quilt. The first clue will be posted on Friday, November 28, 2014. All the introductory information is here. Fabrics, with the exception of the yellow yardage, were pulled from my stash. Truth be told, I could have pulled that as well but Bonnie is using one fabric for the yellow in the mystery quilt, so I decided to do the same. That required a small bit of fabric shopping while I was away in San Diego. Bonnie Hunter was in San Diego during the week I was there, but with all there was to do at my brother's house, I didn't feel I wanted to take the time to attend her lectures. I will catch up with her next fall when she will be here in St. Louis in conjunction with the Quintessential Quilt Show put on by Circle in the Square Quilt Guild.

Back in May I had visited my brother in the East Bay of northern California to help with packing up and moving to southern California. This trip was to help him and his wife unpack. It was a big job and we didn't get accomplished as much as I had hoped. It's trickier unpacking than packing in some ways. Decisions about where things need to go have to be done by the people living in the house. Then, just when you think you have figured it out, another box is opened and you have to rethink what you just did. Sometimes things have to be moved again to make a sensible arrangement.

I did of lot of citrus picking and eating, though. There are 30 fruit trees on my brother's property. Mostly they are citrus of every type plus five avocado trees. We ate fresh grapefruit every morning. Sometimes as a snack again in the afternoon. Limes for beverages. And the promise of many juicy mornings to come as soon as the navel oranges ripen in January.

The days were sunny and warm with misty mornings and cool nights. Perfect weather. Except for the lack of rain.

Final Layout and Possible Borders

I finished sewing the blocks together on the Stepping Stones project. I have a piece of Kaffe Fassett fabric pinned up on the right that I am thinking of using for the borders. It is for another project, but I think I can get more, or something similar. The magenta strip was pinned up just to see if I want another smallish inner border before the final floral one. That is not the color that will be used. If I decide to make another border, it will probably be the purple that is in several of the blocks in the quilt top.

Margaret, this is for you. You wondered at the sharp long points, and here is how it's done. They are paper pieced. As you can see, some of the paper has been removed as the sections were sewn together. No reason to pick out tiny bits from the seams later if it can be helped. That will be a little project to do one of these evening in front of the television. By the way, this is a Judy Niemeyer pattern.

Stepping Stones Progressing

I am fiddling around with the final layout for "Stepping Stones", which was started back in August at a Judy Niemeyer workshop hosted by my guild. The instructor was May Snook of Rolla, MO. The blocks still need  the remainder of the sashings plus a border. The pattern calls for a piano key border, but not being a fan of that style, I will probably come up with something else.