Quilting Bee and Sewing Night!

Today looks to be a wonderful day. We skipped our walk this morning because of a threatening weather radar and tornado watch, but an hour after our normal leaving time it still hasn't rained and the sun even made a peek through the clouds.

I had so much to do this morning, though, that it really made it much easier without the walk in the mix. My quilting bee meets this afternoon. I have iced coffee made in the fridge and will have a pot of hot coffee available. If you're a flavored coffee drinker and have a Meijer anywhere near you, try their store brand Michigan Cherry flavored coffee. OH MY. It's fabulous. Add a little french vanilla creamer and it's heaven in a cup.

I made a chocolate pound cake last night and bought some mini eclairs so all that's left to do is clear a few things from my sewing table and I'm ready to go.

As soon as the quilting bee ends, I'll be getting dinner ready and then sewing until I drop. A friend is coming over as soon as her dinner is finished and we're going to sew and chat and watch movies until we can stay awake no longer.

We try to do these late night sewing nights every few months. I'd rather work on a project that is fun and doesn't NEED to be done. In my last post I talked about the bags I needed to make and while writing that I realized I do NOT want to spend my entire sewing night on these bags, even with as much fun as they are to do. That gave me the push that I needed and the first is done. I customized the inside pocket by adding a layer so there are two pockets hanging there instead of one. There is a cardboard insert in the bottom that gives it some stability and a magnetic closure at the top. I was really happy with how it turned out!

Bag number two is well under way. The instructions have you quilting a very large piece of fabric and then cutting it apart. I found this very tedious and difficult and it reminded me why I don't machine quilt! To make this bag, I took a different approach and cut the pieces first, slightly larger so they could be trimmed, and quilted them. MUCH easier and way more enjoyable than the first way. All of the pieces are now quilted and the construction will begin during my quilting bee this afternoon. I don't know how much of it I'll actually get done, but I'm hoping to have most of it finished so that I can finish it in quick order after the bee is over.

I'll have stroganoff sauce in the crockpot (I'm working on that while posting) so all I have to do is make the noodles which means I should be able to keep working after the bee and maybe even have the bag finished (or just about) before our sewing night officially begins.

I decided my big project for the night is to work on an old top. In looking for something else I ran across these blocks so decided I will work on them for the weekend, hoping to have the top completely done once the weekend is over. Then I will have to concentrate on the toppers and album quilt for my parents' anniversary party. I'm appliquing on topper number 8 and the quilting is under way on the album quilt, but with only two months left I'll have to pay attention to how much I'm getting finished.

Looking at this strip paper pieced project, it's probably more than I can do in a weekend, but I'll see what I can get finished and maybe I'll keep it within reach for the occasional day that I need a machine project as a distraction. For now, I'm looking forward to looking at something different for a couple of days!

Ruthie's language is exploding, both verbally and with signs. She's been quite entertaining the last couple of days and is warming up more and more to the kids' friends, who make nearly daily appearances of late. She lost her head the other night and was doing all her tricks for them, LOL, and I told them all that someday they might regret working so hard to get her to interact with them because she'll be begging to play their games and go places with them. In reality, I think our little darling will have quite the social life as it won't be long before she's included on shopping trips and the like. Here she is enjoying a bowl of ice cream.

Happy Quilting!

Sue