Friday Night Sew-In

Another Friday Night Sew-In has come and gone, and as usual, it was an excellent opportunity to plan an uninterrupted evening of sewing fun. The only thing I can think of that would have made it better is if there had been something on TV to watch, but with March Madness going on, most of the shows that WERE on were reruns. Still, there were the cable channels and a couple programs I hadn't seen before.

Why is it that borders always take a lot longer than we expect? I thought I'd slap the borders on the picnic quilt in no time and be off on another project, but of course it didn't exactly work out that way. Here's the quilt top once I got the borders on. It's just spread out on top of my bed, so the resident quilt can be seen underneath but I think you can tell where one starts and the other stops. I'll try to get a better photo soon.

I'm pretty pleased with it so far. After getting the borders on, I decided to piece a back for it and cut the batting. Then I laid it all out and clamped it down on the tables on the patio so I can pin it tomorrow. Because the point of this quilt is to be able to make something quickly that can be used for a picnic, I'll quilt it in a fairly simple all-over pattern, and I hope to have it done before too long.

I wasn't sure if I'd continue on and work on the matching picnic tote tonight, but in the end I decided to finish piecing some blocks that had been hanging around on the design wall waaaaaaaaaaaay too long.

You may remember these basket blocks from a few months ago. I'd started appliqueing the flowers and got sidetracked by another project and then my arms fell off, so these have just sat on the wall. The problem was that five of the blocks hadn't been sewn into actual BLOCKS, and so they couldn't be moved easily if I needed the wall space. Now that task is done, and hopefully I'll be able to get back to the applique before too long.

I have one more "clean up" type of "chore" that I wish I could have taken care of tonight, but I ran out of time. I absolutely, positively need to make a new cover for my tabletop ironing board. Every spring, it seems, I find I've worn out the old one. Maybe that's something I'll get around to this weekend. Right now, though, it's bed time. Thanks for visiting!