Weekend Sewing

Chilly and rainy weather this weekend made it a good weekend to stay in and sew.  I finished the next 2 blocks in my quilt  guild's Half Square triangle block of the month:

The pinwheel block on the left can only be made with 16 half square triangles, but it was tempting to make the one on the right by substituting Flying Geese like this:

However, I guess that would be contrary to the name of this quilt which is "Half Square Triangle Sampler", so I stuck with the program.  Here are the first 4 blocks:

Our guild is making Adult Clothing protectors as our charity project this Christmas. Basically they are adult bibs.   When my father developed Parkinson's disease, his shaky hands could make it hard to keep food from slipping off the fork or spoon and so I know firsthand how handy it was to have something to keep his clothes clean at mealtimes.  This weekend  I bought some fun, yet manly, fabrics and got them cut out and ready to sew into protectors.

Our guild is also having a fun challenge this year, which is to use a magazine photo as inspiration for a quilt.  I found a great page for my inspiration and spent the greater part of my sewing this weekend making the quilt top.   Can't share a photo of it  yet, but here are the fabrics I was working with:

Seems our quilt guild is keeping us busy with sewing this year!

The Wedding Hankie

Our son got married in October and we were delighted to welcome a new daughter-in-law to our family.  I wanted her to have a special wedding hankie to carry on the big day, so I set out to make one.

I bought a piece of lightweight white cotton fabric and cut it to 10 1/2 inches square.  Then I folded the raw edges under twice to give a nice neat edge.  I secured the edge using my sewing machine and a blanket stitch.

With a large needle and crochet cotton, I hand sewed a blanket stitch around the edge to give myself a base row for some crochet stitches.  I used the machine stitches as a guide to help me make evenly spaced hand stitches:

Then I switched to a crochet hook and did a few rows of stitches all the way around.

I boxed up the hanky and had it ready to give to the bride.  Two nights before the wedding, I learned that she did not have anything blue for her "Something Borrowed, Something Blue..etc.".   I told her I had something for her, and that I could make it blue.  I then gave her the handkerchief, and told her I would add some blue ribbon.

The following morning, I went to Michael's and bought some narrow blue ribbon,

and that evening, amidst all the other wedding preparations and after  the rehearsal dinner, I used a safety pin and wove the ribbon in and out of the spaces in the crochet border. 

On the morning of the wedding, I was very pleased to be able to give her her "something blue".

Half the squares, twice the fun

My quilt guild's Block of the Month this year is called "Half Square Triangle Sampler" by Jeni Baker.  All the blocks are made up of only Half Square Triangles.

The pattern directions are for 12" blocks for a nice lap size, but I have decided to make my blocks in a 6" size instead.  I want to use a couple of charm packs that I purchased a while back at an overstock sale:

When I opened up the wrapping, I realized that it contained multiples of only 7 different fabrics.

I checked the stash to see if I had anything to add, and I came up with these additional fabrics:

(Hey Linda N!  Notice the blue/green ginko leaf fabric.  It lives!)

Each of the fabrics will be paired with white to make up the HST's.  I cut the white fabric into 5 inch squares and marked them with an "X" from corner to corner:

Then sewed 1/4 inch on each side of the line:

and cut apart into squares.

Each square generates 2 HST's:

So, instead of drawing a diagonal line on the back of 4 small white squares, I only had to draw 2 lines on the back of one larger square.  Works for me!

Here are my first two blocks of the Sampler:

My quilter friend, Rosemary, is also making the guild's BOM.  You can see her blocks here.