Sewing Projects

Did you get a chance to do anything quilty over the weekend? I finished up a few projects. This one is a quilt top for Aurora, as you might guess since I paper pieced her name on it! I used the Baby Genius line of fabric. It's pretty bright--hope it hasn't burned out your retinas, looking at it!

Project #2 was the July Bag for the challenge at the British Quilting List. No, I'm not a resident of the U.K., but my friend Helen, of Kelso, Scotland, is. In January of this year, she mentioned how they were going to be making a different bag every month. You can check it out here: http://bqlbagblog.blogspot.com/ Helen couldn't share the patterns with me, of course, as that was part of the rules, but she encouraged me to join the group so I could play too. I did, a Yank amongst the Brits, but they are friendly and don't seem to mind. I posted a photo of one of the bags I'd made, as well as talking about the bag challenge, to my other cyber group, which led to several of them joining too! Here is the July bag: I added an inside zipper pocket and decorated it with a button from my grandmother's button box.

Project #3 was two little balls for Melanie, my pregnant-with-twins-and-stuck-in-the-hospital friend. She invested so much time and effort in obtaining the Dr. Seuss fabric for the baby quilts; I didn't want to toss out even the tiniest scrap of it. So..the balls are the result. I didn't have much left, and mostly the pieces weren't big enough to even use for the balls. Still, they turned out cute, and Melanie can amuse herself by tossing them at the nurses. The patterns for making these balls and others come from a Jinny Beyer book called "Patchwork Puzzle Balls." I've found they make a nice handwork project and go together much easier for me, at least, when I stitch them by hand.