Yesterday, friends and I spent six ( yes, 6!!) hours sorting/cutting/recycling two large fabric donations received by church sewing group and sad to say ( although I prefer to look at it as good) that's only halfway through the goodies.

I am getting my things ready for a quilting retreat next weekend, Friday - Sunday. At the retreat I am making a disappearing 9-patch with Christmas fabrics and also have a small hand wool appliqué project to work on. I had signed up for this retreat this past April but a big snowstorm changed those plans so weather should not be an issue this time, I hope. Keep those machines a humming!

Congratulations, Quiltingvagabond- they’re gorgeous!

Love those flamingos, Janequilter

Rob

They are huge! Finished block size is 17" x 25". Pattern calls for 9 blocks to make a twin size quilt.

JQ, love your flamingos!

What I'm busy with
 

I'm in the beginning stages of another dresden plate.

wow, that's huge! but looking great

Pictures of VQW activities
 

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Forgot to post my Honor Flight Quilt that I competed during the last VQW. This week I'm working on a flannel quilt for my grandson with a winter theme-black red white with reindeer.
Pix to come. I apologize for the orientation.

Taught by Grandma......That is a well shaped dresden plate! Love it on the cream background!

Nesie, love your reindeer flight quilt. Colors are handsome....................

Managed to get my top completed today in spite of my grandpuggie "helper" ;) [ATTACH=CONFIG]602257[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]602258[/ATTACH]

what is your pattern thimblebug6000? great scrap buster......

It is two separate blocks that I thought looked good together. The star is one I have used before and the other looked kind of like an Irish chain variation (I don't remember where I saw it but the star is from a blog and it is called scrap jar stars)
The star pattern looks really nice as is, but I had a ton of 2" squares cut so wanted to try to use more of them in the alternate block. Here is the one I made using just the scrap jar stars, and gave it to a group helping women. [ATTACH=CONFIG]602265[/ATTACH]

What great work y'all did this weekend! Love the flamingos, and grandpuggie's favorite, and the dresden plate!

Mine aren't that fancy, but I completed 3 baby quilt tops made with 5" charms, and finished the hand binding on another baby quilt. Tomorrow, I'll be working on binding a couple more baby quilts.

Looking forward to the next VQW!!

Well, I completely missed this VQW! I need to start putting them on my calendar...

Thimblebug, your scrappy quilts are so wonderful! I really love the Irish Chain/scrap stars that you are doing now. Grandpuggie is adorable, too.

Many pretty things have been done this weekend. I'm working on a RWB quilt, but far from finished.

Such lovely finishes and progress. I just love all of the pics.

So far today I finished my 9-patch, worked on a 5” Block lap quilt which I plan to donate to my guild in a couple of weeks. I also pinned a cat throw. Tomorrow I plan to work on the 35 BHMQ blocks from last year.

The flamingos are great and I love thimblebug's scrappy.

I didn't do so well. I planned to FMQ my string quilt today but had problems with my Juki (operator error, I suspect). Now I'm ripping out some bad looking quilting to I can redo. Not my best VQW, but it looks like everyone else did great!

Taughtbygrandma, your dresden is beautiful!

Karamarie, I sure hope weather isn't an issue for your retreat this time! Our guild has a retreat this month also--October 18-21. I'll be cutting projects for it later this week. Just returned from visiting friends and presenting QoV. Hope to get a quilt quilted this afternoon.

Thimblebug2000, love your helper!

I will be handstitching down the bindings at my small group so still have to sew them on, but here's my project freshly off the sewing machine. I knew I had barely enough backing to use and as I quilted from the top down the top got into the white part of the selvage, so I took some of the binding fabric and stitched it down. Looks like about 1/4" will show of that on the back of the pink boat corner, not a bad fix!

Sometimes when I quilt I learn more about myself than I do about the process. Had some hard times with this top. I feel good with the workmanship of the piecing and the fabrics chosen. I really like working with stripes and this was a good project for them.

This was my first time using fleece for the back and overall I liked it and will do it again. I think I would like to use a really thin batting the next time. The color of my back is dark and didn't show through too much to the top, but I'd definitely consider putting in a piece of muslin or flannel or batting if I used a dark back with a light top. I thought it wouldn't matter since it was marked if I started the clam shells from the top or the bottom -- but I was wrong. It was much easier to connect the rows going from the bottom up.

I made some sort of of mistake numbering my blocks and placement, am not happy with the two red boats next to each other in the middle or the two waters in the upper corner, think I miss-numbered the center 1 and 2 blocks. I decided to not give in to my impulse to take the top apart and redo those blocks. But I'm really unhappy with the quilting :( Had a rather tearful conversation with the hubby and a good talk to myself about it. I have vision issues with progressively declining vision. I thought I had already accepted that my best work is behind me -- I need to work more with what that means for me in the future. I need to tell myself that I'm relearning to quilt now, or at least learning to quilt with the vision I have. I already realized that I can't get the results I want on my old sewing machine even when my vision was better and although I was getting pretty good results that was years ago after years of practice. No wonder I had issues. But good news is I have a dear friend who lets me use her long arm. Note to self: Use Long Arm!

The reality is that the little boy this quilt is going to isn't going to care even if he does notice that some of the stitching is wonky, that I had to make some corrections, that the tension isn't quite right and the stitch size is mostly too small and definitely not consistent. It was made with love using the best workmanship I could do. I will give it with love and it will be received with love and hopefully used to rags with love.

Everyone has such interesting projects this month. Lovely.

Iceblossom, that little sailboat quilt is cute as can be! The little boy will love it! Looks like a great job to me. No need to beat yourself up. You are doing wonderfully!

I ended the weekend with 3 baby quilt tops done. Two of them are sandwiched. And, I finished hand sewing the binding on 1 other quilt. So, I ended up with one older quilt finished and 3 more in the unfinished pile. --- I need another VQW real soon to catch up!

Amazing work shown here this past weekend! Wow!!

I'm one day late... but 300+ hst all sewn! Now to cut them apart, trim them and press them. That will be tomorrow though. I used the Magic 8 HST method.

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Thanks for the virtual weekend with you ladies. I finished my Flamingo quilt and it is off at the Longarmer. I will post pictures when it returns. (raining too hard to take pic)

These are beautiful. Thanks for sharing the pictures

I’m sure the teacher will think it’s lovely. Nice work.