Quiet weekend

It was a long holiday weekend here and Patient Husband and I found ourselves alone with no visitors nor anywhere to go, so while he watched lots of college football I decided to use the last five days of summer vacation to work hard on some projects that haven't seen much action for awhile.

First up was this CrabApple Hill design ( Embroidery reads: Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's House We Go) that's been sitting in a drawer since last October when I made all of these flying geese by hand at a retreat. So...I sewed them into the border strips, attached them to the quilt and decided it needed more size so added another border. It's now 71 inches square. After laying it on the floor to gaze at before it once again found itself folded in a drawer, Patient Husband declared he liked it but it was different from what I usually do. I like different. It feels very fall to me. The embroidery was done by my mom.

She did beautiful work! I have a drawer full of quilt squares she embroidered for me just waiting to be put together.

Another close up......

Oops...just realized this picture is sideways...but you get the idea....I really like the fabrics I used to make the geese. They give just a little color to a basically two color quilt, and I used up lots of scraps (and bought some, too!)

Project two: It took awhile but I figured out the placement of that darned center flower on the red quilt I've been cutting hundreds of leaves for. I figured it out and I have a plan. I got the leaves down and the center flower down. There was no pattern for this so I had to do a lot of figuring from looking at the photo of the quilt.

Everything is a bit crinkly because the iron is on strike right now. It works when it wants to.

Somewhere in this whirl of activity I decided to make four Christmas pillowcases for the kids. I'm deteremined to work off my stash and I must have dreamt this project because I didn't need another one this weekend, but after finishing the second border on the flying geese quilt this morning I rummaged through the drawer for this candy cane fabric and whatever reds I had enough of. I think they'll like these!

AND I finished rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I wanted to finish it before the weekend was over and staying up late a couple of nights, I did it.

The weather turned. It's really quite chilly with a brisk north wind that's whipping the waves on the lake into a fury, but it's good for walking and riding the bikes and we roused ourselves to do that so we didn't sprout roots to our chairs.

That table in the top photo is now empty, the machine put away and I feel good about the progress and if I spend the rest of the autumn sewing on leaves or making yo-yos then so be it. With school starting now I can use the big library tables to baste three quilts, including the geese, so they'll be ready for quilting. Maybe not so many new projects for awhile. Maybe.....