Odds and Ends Bits and Bobs

 The girls wanted to watch a Christmas movie together, and that gave me the chance to finish off the last little bit of binding on Soul Searching.  It is officially done before the end of the year!

Next, I finished sewing the string blocks together into a flimsy.  I have made quite a few flimsies this year and not a lot of finished quilts but it is what works for me right now, so I am calling it a win.   

The weather is glorious today and I have the sliding glass doors open to let in the ocean breeze.  Now I have to decide whether to make some trial blocks for new 2021 quilts or settle in for some more hand quilting and sappy Christmas shows.   Difficult decision.....  I might go with some quilt block drafting.  I have a plan for a new challenge quilt!   I need to try out my ideas and do a bit more planning I think.

The End Begins

I took a day off on Wednesday because most of my students were taking the PSAT.  It was a great opportunity to get Soul Searching bordered and ready to quilt.   I do enjoy seeing a years worth of quilts all start to come together.  

I never have large quantities of any backing fabrics, so I pulled out everything black and cut it into 10.5 inch squares or rectangles.   Here they are in a brick layout ready to be sewn together.   I have a quilt that I agreed to quilt for a coworker of Kurt's.  That means I will be setting up the quilting frame again.  If I plan strategically, I can get several quilts finished while it is out.   

How are your year end plans working out?  Hopefully you have a quilt or two ready to get finished up before 2020 is gone forever.  I am hopeful that 2021 will be a less eventful year.  
 

Sunshine After Rain

As much as I love making blocks, seeing them start to come together is strangely satisfying too. I will be missing a few colors this year as the school year has been unusually frantic, but I'm starting early so that I can fill in the gaps as I go along.  Soul Searching will need one blue and one purple to round things out.  If I am feeling especially energetic, I might add one more row.   It is always nice to add in black and brown to ground the rainbow.

Kurt built me a design wall last weekend and I have flannel and batting all ready to go so that I can arrange my blocks as finished quilts start coming together.  I had flannel backed table cloths thumbtacked to the wall, but they were getting pretty frayed and I threw them all out during a quarantine cleaning spree.  

Things seem to have settled down at school.  So far we have officially had only one positive student and one positive teacher.   We had a big batch come back from quarantine on Wednesday and they were all so happy to return.  The teacher is still out and has some underlying health issues, so we are all hoping and praying that she will be OK.  One nearby high school had to quarantine the entire football team, they ended up sending 115 kids home in total.  Parents are livid that they will have to forfeit the next two games.  

It is looking like it might be a bit of a rainy day.  There is a wall that needs to be painted after we had a window installed, but since I can't do that in the rain, I might have to sew a bit instead.