The End of Summer …. FINALLY!

This has been an awful summer.  Hot, sticky, heat shimmering off the pavement, miserable drought stricken Summer.  I am so happy to see the end of it.  I am ready to dive into Autumn!  YAY!
I may not have been blogging, but I have been busy.  Where should I start to tell you all the things I have going on?
          
Let’s start with something you have already seen.  This sweet little quilt, I call it my Bluebirds quilt.  You can’t see them in this picture, but there are bluebirds in this quilt.  It is almost finished.  I have the blue sashing sewn on and the top is all put together.  All I need to do to finish is to embroider the little bluebirds flying around the border, sandwich it and quilt it, then scallop the border and bind it.  That sounds like a lot, but really it isn’t.  She will have her grand reveal here soon.
Then I have been working on a quilt I like to call Vintage Kids…..
           
 
The only reason I am not submitting this one for publication is the fact that the embroidery designs were not digitized by me.  In fact, I got them as a free download from the Allbrands message board.   You can go there to their free designs thread and snag them.  There are 9 of them.
            
I am still putting the final sashing on the embroidered blocks, but then all I will need to do is sew the blocks together and quilt it.     
Also on the cutting table are 2 quilts that I am making for my guest room using one of Meg Hawkey’s designs, The French Cottage Garden quilt
   . 
I have a loooong way to go on this quilt.  I’ve just started the embroidered panels and there are 4 of them, 2 for each quilt.  These panels are different from any others I have worked in the past.  See?……. they are colored!  Meg uses a really neat technique where you use crayolas to color your panels and then set the was with a hot iron.  Turns out beautiful ….. just like watercolors.  Kind of like coloring fabric with Pigma Pens, but this gives you more of an Impressionistic finish.  It is nice.  When you have them colored and set, you then backstitch around the designs to give them definition.  If you want to try something different, give this a try. 
This one will not be finished, I am afraid, until after Christmas.  No worries though.  These are for me.  No deadlines. 
I had to put the work on these 3 quilts on hold while I started work on another Meg Hawkey design …… Vintage Tin, a quilt I am making for my step son who will be home in November.
    
    
                
Miles and miles of backstitch!  I’ve been working on this for 5 weeks and am leaving myself 2 more weeks to get the embroidery done.  I have SOME of the piecing done.  I never follow the directions on patterns I purchase.  I love Meg’s embroideries and buy her patterns for those, but then I take off on my own and put together the quilt the way I want.  This quilt was designed to be a small quilt.  When I am finished it will fit on Brent’s queen size bed.   So, needless to say, this will be the ONLY thing on my plate until it is finished.  Then MAYBE I can get the Vintage Kids and  Bluebird quilts out of the way before we start the New Year!
Thanks for sticking with this post for so long.  I do appreciate you stopping by.  I hope to not be so long between posts next time.  Until then……

Enjoy,
Merry Gay