Two little finishes

This little quilt had been hanging on the side of my design wall in flimsy form for months. I pretty much knew how I wanted to quilt it, I was just waiting until I was threading Gidget for some other project, with a color that would match this. Finally happened last week, when I was quilting my latest swap quilt that I cannot show you yet.

The pincushion is a result of the bag of tiny Kim Diehl scraps I found in my sewing room last week. I actually made this pincushion in "pillow" style, rather than the box style I normally make.

I know it isn't real obvious, but I mixed machine and hand quilting on this. You can see the machine quilting pretty well here. If you look closely at the border fabric you may be able to tell that there is hand stitching along that little vine that meanders back and forth across the stripe.





Maybe you can see it better in this shot. 
This quilt is almost square, measuring 9 1/4" x 9 3/4". I didn't plan the size. I just sliced up a bunch of mini charm squares and stitched them together until I had used them up. It was my usual "fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" design method.

Since Bonnie Hunter posted her new leader/ender challenge for the coming year several people have asked me if I am joining in. That would be a "no". I love leader/enders and use them constantly, but I have enough UFOs waiting in line for their turn under the needle, that I always use one of them as my leader/ender project rather than creating a new UFO.

These windmill blocks have been my leader/ender for about 2 1/2 years now. Occasionally I let the smaller units in a project be its own leader/ender, but when that is not the case, the windmills are my "go to". I have about 150 4" blocks so far and there are many more strips cut in this color scheme, waiting to be sliced  into the windmill shape.




I must admit that I have had a bit of a distraction from sewing this week. Little Maggie, and her mother (DD#1), are here from Oregon and are spending the week with us. Who wants to sew when they can spend time with family?


Until next time, 
Janet O.