I had 2 goals this weekend.  Either complete both “past due” blocks for the Splendid Sampler that I haven’t done yet, or finish one and the one for Sunday.  Second, finish the machine quilting block – as in, quilt it.  The final weekend score…. 0 out of 2.  Oops.

I did however at least complete Sunday’s block, # 59.  I didn’t get farther ahead, but I didn’t fall farther behind.  Each of the Dresden templates could be cut out of a 2.5″ square and when I was picking through my box where I keep the fabric for this, I could where I had made a half square triangle at some point and not used it.  So I threw it in here! I’m not sure why she set it up this way, but the top 5 horizontal strips were each 1.5″ and the last one was 2″.  that means when it’s sewed to sashing, the top strip will be narrower than the 4 below it and the bottom one will be wider.  That’s a long way of saying it’s supposed to look like that!  Haha!

Regarding the machine quilting block, I’ve been making a concerted effort to try to visualize the pattern she has set for but not to copy it line for line.  Angela Walters has a Craftsy class that does a great job of explaining “dot to dot quilting” and that’s the way I think about quilting – getting from here to there.

It’s not easy to see the blue center block here, but I did get that quilted and the 4 orange pieces.  Other than the outside edges which are the same as the other blocks, that leaves me about half done.  Oh and I did trim the previous 8 blocks and stitched close to the edge on each of them. I will probably end up using green, blue, orange, or a combination of those for the small strips that will connect the blocks.  She has explained how to connect the “quilt as you go blocks” which I haven’t done before but I haven’t tried it yet.

I had an idea how today was going to go.  I was going to take a break from the quilting and knock out one of those appliqued SS blocks.  I had just printed out the patterns and the phone rang.  It was my sister and she had been out of town for a number of days so we had some catching up to do.

I definitely can’t talk and draw templates and trace and cut out shapes and hold a phone at the same time.  But I could cut out one or two pillowcases.  We kept on talking so I cut out some more. We kept on talking – I cut out 10 more pillowcases until I ran out of pillowcases to cut!  But we were still talking.  I told her I was going to start sewing while we kept talking (she knew I had cut these out).

By now I had not only cut out the cuff, binding, and main piece of 10 pillowcases but I had pinned each of them together so I started chain stitching the cuffs on. I even got all of the cuffs pressed into place, which is an important part of the process.

I have doubles of 4 of these so you can’t really make out 10 of them.  I was on the verge of sewing the side seam when my husband finally said something to the effect of “your ear is about to fall off” so I stopped before I start sewing the side seams.  But seriously – there’re 5-10 minutes left on each of these and then I’ll have a dozen completed for Christmas presents.

I got stuff done this weekend in the way of sewing.  Not what I had planned exactly but overall, I still made a lot of progress.