April and May combined

Thanks to my friend Claire, I realized I never took a photo of her second donation top that I quilted up and now will be sending to Wraptheminlove- the charity group noted on my sidebar.

without further excuses..here it is:

I have been busy working on my small quilt group round robin pass along blocks.  Our hostess of our group is not playing so she shuffles our pizza boxes and assigns them on to the next person.  I love the randomness of this approach.  Our group is a wonderful mix of experienced quilters and newer quilters.  Same with age, we cover a wide range of age and experience and of course, preferences in what we like in terms of fabrics, patterns, styles, type of piecing, well you get the idea.

The first one I received had a fat quarter mixture and a variation of a traditional block.  I went to my copy of Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced quilt patterns book, looked up blocks I thought would complement the starter block and made my block using some of the fabric from the box and adding in some of my own fabric.  I confess I used this challenge to do a little, ok, a lot of stash enhancement to work with this round robin  block challenge.  I threw some of what I used in with my block and was happy to pass it on.  Our only rule is you must attach what you create to what you receive.
Each person had the option of including a notebook with their inspiration and/or thoughts on what to do with the block they chose to use for the round robin challenge.  So far what they have written has been terrific in guiding me to have a fair sense of what they like.  We have two months between swapping boxes, a decent amount of time to work in.  I usually start as soon as I can after receiving my box.  I know how life can get hectic for myself and my habit of thinking I can do something faster than it turns out in "real life".  I will admit the second one was a snap to know what I wanted to do for it.  The owner gave great color preferences, both in what she liked and did not like.  I am starting today as what I want to make involves a lot of different pieces to come together.  I bought a very slight amount of fabric, two fat quarters to add in either color or texture I lacked in my stash.

I am taking photos of what I am making for each , but, of course can not show them here.    I am saving them to a folder and at the end can do a summary or some sort of collage of them.

Having Monday off is so wonderful!
 Yesterday was consumed with errands and finally revamping my ironing board and the big board I use over it so they work better together.
 I finally replaced the bleeding cover on the big board with new fabric...instead of throwing a piece of muslin over it and making do.  I don't know why I will put off simple fixes that make quilting so much easier, other than I had to put the big board into my car and drive out to the shop to have it recovered.  I had neither the muscle nor the tools to do it myself.  Luckily they were kind enough to do it right away and I only had to pay for the new fabric.  A very short wait and the job was done.

Today I am happy to spend time here updating and sharing at least one photo of another ufo finish.
I now have credit of 3 finishes out of the 14 on my list that we are doing at our guild as a challenge.
I already showed the other donation quilt finish and the Indian Summer quilt finish too.

As I can not share the block or blocks I will be making for this current round robin, I hope to quilt up a charity top given to me at the last guild meeting from the gal that is in charge of our guild charity donations and then upload that photo here.
I used to do a lot of free motion quilting years ago and have allowed that skill to really get rusty.  If this new charity quilt is not too huge, I may work on my free motion quilting on it.  First I need to pin baste it together.

Ok..update done for now!   No promises on the next post...however I am happy to be back at my sewing machine and quilting groove!