Gloomy Friday

Well, this week has just flown by. I've had something to do every day since I returned from retreat on Sunday and it seems as though I've accomplished nothing!  Especially in quilting. I wanted to keep up the pace I set at retreat but here at home, there's always something distracting--computers, tv, yardwork, grocery shopping, and the occasional house chores. Yuck!  I just want to keep quilting!

Although today is gray and overcast with spits of rain, I stopped by the garden this morning to see if the winter rye had sprouted yet--and it has!  I've never planted a cover crop like this so I'm anxious to see if it helps any. For those of you who don't garden, we can plant a crop of a winter hardy seed like winter rye and it will sprout in the fall and with luck, continue to grow in the spring. It all gets turned under before planting, adding lots of nutrition to the soil. Some refer to this as "green manure." 

This is the long view of the garden with my 4 brussell sprouts still standing there.

This is a closeup of the winter rye sprouts--they're about an inch or two high now. I have no idea how high they'll get before snowfall.   It's an experiment!

I have worked on a couple of things this week.  For our guild gift exchange in December, we are to make a zipper pouch with a surprise inside, and a second zipper pouch to be donated to a sale we're having later in the year.  I've taken a lot of kidding this past year over the crumbs I save, so I decided to make up some crumb fabric and use that to make the pouch.  Each side is different and it measures about 10" by 8."

For the surprise inside, I am putting in a bundle of 3 fat quarters from my stash, a charm square of Christmas fabrics that I'm never going to use, a new Frixion pen and a note pad with three wooden magnets. Oh, and I'll add some chocolate when the time comes. (If I get the chocolate now, it'll be gone by the time of the December meeting!)

And for the lining, I used this funky frog fabric (do you like alliteration?) that I found in my stash.

For the pouch to donate, I'm going to make some fabric out of the huge amount of selvages I've been collecting. In fact, I may make more than one pouch out of the selvages since I think they'll sell and it will make a little dent anyway in my collection.

At retreat I began making pinwheels as part of finishing off the embroidered blocks I made last spring, the Farmhouse Window Sills pattern.  I only got as far as finishing off 2 of the 4 blocks so this week, I finished off the other two and now need to make more pinwheels to put the top and bottom borders around the blocks.  In this pic, they look rather yellow, but they're more bright when you see them.

I also assembled the 9-patch house quilt and put on the hourglass border.  I thought I had enough green for a third border, but no, not quite. So this top is done.  As I said in a previous post, this will be donated to the new Habitat House neighbors we'll have this spring. Again, thanks to Sharon at Vrooman's Quilts for the idea of using my leftover 9 patch blocks.

Also at retreat, we all worked on making a strip quilt for one of our members who's been diagnosed with colon cancer.  For some reason, no one took a pic of it, but, trust me, it turned out very nice.  I have fabric for the backing and will get it to the quilter soon.

That's how my week has been. I have to get down to the sewing room now and make up some blocks for the Civil War Jubilee quilt that I'm in charge of for the guild quiltalong.  And maybe I'll make a few pinwheels as well.  :)  Hope your day is going well too.