Productive Monday

Monday is typically our quilting day at church, but when the church office is closed, we cannot have quilting either.  That is OK though, sometimes it is good to have a "free" day.  I took the opportunity to finish a couple UFO's.  I started a rag quilt for one of my grandsons last week.  I had flannel shirts and jeans already washed and waiting for a reason to make one of these quilts again.  It is an extremely easy quilt to make, but it is hard on your hands when it comes time to "rag" the quilt.  For that reason, I have done this one in stages.  I finished putting together the squares for the second half of the quilt  on Saturday, and did some of the rag cutting, but my hands gave out.  This morning I decided it was a good project to get done.  One of the things I like to do on these jean quilts is to add lots of the character of the jeans, like pockets, plackets and even repaired holes. I also patch together smaller pieces to add extra "rag" lines. The problem with the added "rag" lines is the additional pain your hands need to endure... but I still like how it finishes the look.

Several weeks ago I started a mystery quilt, that is I gave the first week's instructions to several of the ladies in my two quilt groups.  Only a couple ladies have actually done anything with this Christmas table runner, but with it being my idea, I thought I should make one ahead of handing out each new set of instructions.  I was probably at the 4th set of instructions when I put my pieces on my design wall.  My husband is always ready to critique what I am doing, and often he comes up with some pretty good ideas.  He started moving the pieces around and came up with a totally different looking table runner.  It looked more like a table topper than a runner, but I really liked the new layout.  The original table runner was a rectangle, not very exciting.  I had border fabric already, but with the new layout I had to tackle mitered corners.  Having a border print really added to the complexity.  I have done many a mitered corner, but I don't remember doing one with a border print.  There may be an easier way to do this, but I had to do alot of manipulating of the angles to get the inside border to line up correctly.  Now the table topper needs to be quilted and bound, but the piecing of the topper is done.

Third finish for the day was the quilt I was quilting for a friend.  It has been on the frame for about a week.  Some of the quilting I do allows me to sit most of the time, but this one was one that I had to stand up all the time, so I had to limit how long I could work on it at one time.  Just before supper I finished the last pass and was able to take it off the frame.  My friend will be happy, I have had her quilt for several weeks.

It looks like the new fishing boat that my husband bought a couple weeks ago is ready for a test run.  May not get any fishing done, but tomorrow we will put her in the water and see if we can cruise around a little.  If all looks good, next time we may take fishing poles with us.  We already bought our first Texas fishing license, so we are ready.