Pre-Thanksgiving Ramblings...

I am about to meet my goal - got my backing together for my Snowflake quilt and deliver that to the quilter when I head home to Mom’s for Thanksgiving (and see good quilt friends that have not been seen in ages!). It is so close and feels so good getting another quilt accomplished.

I picked a flannel backing for this one - the cold weather is setting in and I decided I wanted this quilt super cuddle worthy and warm. I am not a cold weather person, give me summer all day long. However, since the kiddo said “we’re keeping this one,” I’m anxious to get it quilted and on the couch for snuggles.

I’ve been on the road the past few works for work and then we had some stressful life experiences with my car needing some major repair and my apartment setting the smoke alarms off on a weekly basis. Everything is fixed (fingers crossed) and some balance is returning to our lives.

I was hoping to be further along on a tree skirt for Christmas. I’m following the Missouri Star tutorial and picked up a quilting foot for Gracie Clare to try out her stitch mode that makes it look like you’ve hand quilted your quilt. I’ve begun to play around a bit more with the actual quilting tools I have on Gracie and needless to say, it is a bit addicting - almost more than the quilting itself (gasp!). Anyway, back to the tree skirt - ha!

Let’s get back to the tree skirt! I’m using Moda and have started to lay out the design - you need two charm packs for this one. I forgot the name of the line, but it was released this year and should still be in stores. Here’s my start!

My quilty friend, Sheria, and I coordinated and managed to get together for a night of quilting a few weeks ago. So, Xander and I packed up and headed over. Usually, when I head that way, I take over a few options for patterns and material and work on cutting out another quilt. So, this trip I took over a few fat quarter packs I had ordered from Fabricbubb and patterns. So, it looks like the next quilt will make some important boys in my life next gift list. I picked the Radiate pattern from Then Came June and this cute forest animals bundle to start cutting up. So, this will be the next quilt on the roster!

One thing I noticed, batiks seem to not quite be the full fat quarter dimensions. This is the second time I’ve cut batik fat quarters and they don’t seem to quite be the 21 inches. I’ve started to square off the raw edge first so that the material isn’t short (i.e., there’s some selvage in my quarter inch seam potentially on a few pieces). The first time this happened to me, I thought it might be because I starch/Best Pressed my material, but this time I didn’t…let me know in the comments, has this happened to you and your batik fat quarters?

Hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know what’s on deck - what is everyone working on in their neck of the woods? Let me know below and to all - Happy Thanksgiving!