Sidetracked!

I declare that my nickname should be "Sidetracked"....why, because I do it so often! I was working on making the BOM for the quilt guild, I wanted to finish all of them by the next meeting April 7th. I'm hoping a lot of others will do them so that if someone wins them, then they will be able to make a full quilt out of them....sidetracked again. So, I'm digging through my scraps, since most of the blocks I chose for the year are scrappy, next thing 10 days have passed and I think I'm finished....wrong! I look up to the top of the book case and there are two more large popcorn tins stuffed full of scraps. Those are just going to have to wait until next week, I will finish these blocks first.

Since I devoted so much time to sorting scraps, I went looking for scrappy quilt patterns (another side-trip) and found this absolutely fantastic website called Quiltville. http://www.quiltville.com/

Bonnie Hunter is the owner/author of it and she has lots of free instructions for many scrappy quilts. I discovered that she and I share basically the same system for organizing scraps (good thing since it was in day 5 of sorting scraps or so that I found the site), I just added two more boxes to my stash labeled "Crumbs" & "Strings". I feel totally justified for not throwing out all those scraps, just wish I would have done it sooner. I now have a basket sitting on the shelf that I toss leftovers from my project and told myself that I would go through it at least once a month or more as I needed to sort it...no more buckets, cans or assorted ziplock bags full of scraps!



Yesterday, I finally finished the pillow shams made from the free pattern I got from "Design in Machine Embroidery" magazine donated by the HoopSisters. It is a "Turned Ribbon" and the quilting and piecing was done "in the hoop". They provided a second block intended for the back, but I decided to add some 3D organza based flowers from Jenny Haskins, "Gracious Impressions" and make a matching pillow sham. They really turned out nice and will make a lovely gift.















Well, today I'll continue working on the BOM for the guild. I think I have about 5 more to do. Once I finish them, I need to pull together the stuff I need for the April Program....me on "Machine Embroidery and Quilting", the pillow shams are part of it. I need to pull quilt tops, place mats and anything else I can find that I still own and haven't given away yet...which isn't a lot. I'm going to cover threads, needles and stabilizers as well.