What I've Been Working On Lately

No pictures today, because I've not got anything finished! I have a lot of UFOs, but of course, keep coming up with new projects. I decidcd I should try to post at least once a week anyway.

My daughter is buying her first house, so I'm working on a house-warming gift. She has the link to this blog, so I'm not going to say anymore about that!

Friday, I went to a Project Linus Sewing Day. The owner of the little quilt shop near me lets them use her classroom. Anyone interested comes to sew or knit or crochet or whatever. It continued on Saturday, but one day is enough for me. The local chairperson brought a huge amount of donated fabric, and some of us picked through it and sewed away. A couple of ladies come just to sew the Project Linus labels onto the blankets. I started two flip and sew from some cute Noah's Ark border print fabric. No panels to go with it, but there were about 3 yards of the border and another 3 yards where it had been cut off. I found another piece to go with it and brought them home to finish. These will be little NICU blankets, about 20 x 24 when finished.

We also shared a number of techniques for making blankets. One lady takes scraps of fleece and pieces them by butting them together and using a multi-step zigzag stitch. She then crochets an edge on most of them. Fleece blankets of various sizes are popular - either with a blanket stitch edge by machine or hand, or with fringe. When you do the fringe, you simply pull the fringes through little slits in the fleece, but to do the corners, you cut out about a 3-inch square. She takes those and other scraps of fleece to make her blankies.

I found my niche for Project Linus. I actually enjoy binding quilts, but many quilters don't care for that part. So, I'm the designated quilt binder. Since the part I find most tedious is machine quilting (although I do do it), I took a couple that I pieced for someone else to quilt, then bring them back to me to bind. I also brought home some really pretty sweatshirt type fabric to do a machine blanket stitch edge on, and a flip and sew that someone else did that day to be bound.

I don't know when I'll get any of these projects finished. Won't get into the sewing room much the rest of this week. My daughter's husband in the Air Force is headed to Korea, so she's moving back to Georgia to stay with his mother and be near her sisters and brother (and us in Alabama). There was an accident a few hours before they were ready to start the trip, and their pickup truck was damaged too much to make the trip. He took off with the rental truck and furniture Sunday morning, and she and the kids are flying here (from Phoenix), arriving Wednesday morning. We were going to go on to Georgia on Friday anyway to see SIL before he leaves for Korea, so she'll go the rest of the way with us. It was considerably less expensive for her to come here than to Atlanta. He'll be going back to Phoenix to be deployed from there, so he'll be there long enough to deal with the "broken" truck before he leaves.

We'll enjoy seeing our grandsons! Leo (4-1/2) calls me regularly, but this will be a chance for Ty (who will be 2 in march) to get to know us better. We haven't been around him very much.