What I'm Currently Working On

After I got the basket quilt top put together, and just before we went away on vacation, I pulled out another project that had the blocks all completed which just required putting them together and adding borders.  These are the blocks from the Fat Quarter Shop 2017 Patchwork Quilt Along.  I got them all laid out on the design wall and have the first two rows sashed together.

Then I got side tracked....  I love watching the Missouri Star Friday Tutorials with Jenny Doan and I really liked this one.   Missouri Star "Time to Sew" youtube quilt tutorial  I didn't follow it exactly but used it as the basis for my blocks.  My half square triangles finish at 2.5" which is half the size of Jenny's and I used them in all the corners of the blocks and did not use sashing.  I sewed twelve blocks together this morning and it is going to become a cover for my Q'nique Sewing Machine.

I have been wanting to make sewing machine covers for awhile now and the spools of thread seemed like the perfect pairing.  You must realize by now how I like themes!

Away from the Sewing Machine on the Danube

My husband Gregg and I along with my cousin Pam and her husband Keith just spent two weeks travelling from Prague to Budapest.  Part of the trip was a river cruise on the Danube.  We had a great time!  Here are a few "quilty" pictures from our trip.

In Prague, there was a sewing store only a few blocks away from our hotel.  We saw it at night so it was closed.

This cobbled sidewalk could be very easily translated into a quilt pattern.

In Budapest, there was a sewing machine right inside the door of a restaurant we went to on a taste testing tour.

And the best sight of all, Saint Stephen's Cathedral in Budapest is roofed with hexagon flowers.

Now that we're home and mostly recovered from jet lag I should be posting more regularly....

Basket Quilt flimsy completed

I last posted about this quilt in May.  I had all the blocks made then and had since sewn all the rows together and had half of the quilt in one piece and the other half in four pieces.  I got it all together into one piece on Monday.

The instructions were to now add a thin border.  It's hard to see in the above picture, but the bottom and sides have about half an inch of background fabric beyond the corners of the baskets while the top has about 2.5 inches of background fabric above the basket handles.  I like symmetry, so I decided to add more background fabric to the three skimpy sides so they were all the same as the top and then put on my thin border.  I used the three black prints to make my 1 inch finished border and then added the same amount of background fabric all around again.  This is what the quilt looked like yesterday.

The next step was to add a 6.5 inch border of another fabric.  I did some calculations and figured I had enough fabric left that I could put on a 5.5 inch border made with squares from the rest of the fabrics the baskets were made with.  On the long sides, I had to have one block that was one inch larger and on the short sides I had to have one block that was half an inch smaller.  I probably could have sewn the seams of the blocks on the long sides a little narrower and the seams of the blocks on the short sides a little wider and the result would have been unnoticeable, but I think it turned out fine.  Once the quilt is finished, I won't be pointing it out.

I could only sew together enough black fabric for three of the corners so I looked through my scraps and found some other fabric for the fourth corner.  The black is a little darker but if you squint I think they coordinate well enough.  I won't be pointing this out on the finished quilt either.

The quilt is currently 81" x 90" so a nice size.  Now I just need backing and binding fabric....