My sewing week begins

We drove up to our cabin yesterday to spend the next 2 weeks!  YEAH!  Our son is coming up tomorrow with their new baby -- my daughter in law's family is flying in from Germany tomorrow night and they'll see the new baby for the first time and spend 10 days visiting with all of us.  They are all big skiers so guess who will get to babysit!! WOOHOO!!!

Sadly,  the bigger  3 grandkids are spending Christmas with the other grandparents in Portland ( I really am not a great sharer of grandkids, I've gotta tell you!) so I should have more time to sew.  I'm trying to look at the bright side.

I want to show you a few things.  This is what we drove by just near the border between California and Oregon!!  This is the immense Mount Shasta.


It is a huge set of mountains set in the tiniest town of Weed, California! Spectacular!

Here is my almost finished quilt of valor-- I just need to add my navy blue border.  I'm happy with how it turned out.  I'm going to figure out who I can get to quilt it in order to gift it quickly!

Since I never got the exact measurements from Primitive Gatherings for the strips, I just made them 2" and when the 5 strips were sewn together, I trimmed the block down to  7-1/2" unfinished.  So the blocks finish at 7"--on the diagonal, they are almost 10" so the quilt will be just the right size.  I had fun doing it and am now using the leftover strips to make some log cabin blocks.  Remember that great log cabin quilt I saw in Paris, that was basically red/white/blue?  I'm going to throw in some of the other colors used--yellows! maybe green!  Mix up the blues and reds and pinks.    I will show you the progress later this week.  The blocks are about 6"...much larger than the quilt I showed you.  Oh well.

On the drive up, I worked some more on my wool appliqué blocks.

It's not exactly round, but compared to the next one??  It looks perfect!


It kind of looks like a football!  Yup, it was supposed to be round.  That's what happens when you don't trace the pattern onto the fabric before sewing!! HA!  I'm ok with it.  I have only two more to do.  I saved the most complex ones for last.  I think I will trace the patterns this time. VBG   In case you're wondering, the centers of the flowers are not buttonholed.  They are just too small.  I stitched from one side to the other and then put a french knot in the middle.  Good enough.

Once they're done, I'll start the center as well as the borders.  They should take me a while!   Next trip back up to Oregon in January!!  And when they are done, I'm going to be giving away the entire pattern for all 12 blocks as well as the finished blocks (center and borders!). So keep an eye peeled!

I got the baby's quilt back from the machine quilter.  I love that she offered to do the binding by pulling the minky from the back to the front.

It's very soft and I suspect that the baby may spend more time on the minky side rather than the pieced side... but I don't care.  

Just wanted to share the view from my sewing room.  It looks like most of the snow that was on the trees has already come down but you can get an idea of how gorgeous (I think) my view is.  No mountains but I love the trees and the snow.